The Ó Maolmochéirghe family occupied an unusually powerful position within the medieval Church of Bréifne. Their surviving history extends far beyond a single parish or hereditary office. Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, members of the family appear as a bishop of Bréifne, an abbot of Kells, rectors, vicars, canons of Kilmore and Ardagh, a dean of Kilmore, a papal notary, an ecclesiastical judge, hereditary coarbs of Drumreilly and erenaghs of Ballinaglera.
Their principal territorial centre eventually lay within the connected church lands of Drumreilly, Oughteragh and Ballinaglera. By the fifteenth century, papal records regularly described the principal benefice as the rectory of Drumreilly alias Cenél Luacháin. The older name Cenél Luacháin had not disappeared, but its practical meaning had changed. It now designated an organised ecclesiastical territory containing churches, vicarages, a hospital, hereditary offices and substantial bodies of church land.
The power exercised by the Ó Maolmochéirghe within this territory is important to the later history of the Ó Maol Phádraig family. When several members of the Ó Maol Phádraig appear together in the Dowra region at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they are found immediately beside Ballinaglera, one of the hereditary centres of the Ó Maolmochéirghe family. Their distribution must therefore be examined within a landscape that had already been organised for centuries through Ó Maolmochéirghe ecclesiastical authority.
An Early Ecclesiastical Family of Bréifne
The earliest known bearer of the surname was Muirchertach Ua Maelmochéirghe, Bishop of Uí Briúin Bréifne, who died in 1149. His position places the family at the highest level of the Bréifne Church by the middle of the twelfth century.
The annals record Matha Ó Maolmochéirghe in 1226 and Braen Ua Maolmochéirghe, Abbot of Kells, in 1274. Kells had once been closely connected with the ecclesiastical organisation of Bréifne and continued to retain interests in churches and rectories there after becoming part of the Diocese of Meath. These early records demonstrate that the family’s prominence long predated the extensive papal documentation surrounding Drumreilly. They were already a recognised clerical kindred whose members could hold episcopal and abbatial office.
The documentary record becomes much fuller in 1400, when Gelasius Ó Maolmochéirghe was appointed to the rectory of Drumreilly, also called the rectory of Cenél Luacháin, following the death of Robert Mac Néill. This is the first surviving papal record directly connecting the family with the principal ecclesiastical office they would continue to hold throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
A Direct Connection with the Papal Court
The year 1414 produced an exceptional concentration of records concerning the family.
On 15 August 1414, John Ó Maolmochéirghe, a clerk of the Diocese of Kilmore, was present at Bologna. He was unmarried, not yet in holy orders and was examined by Master Paul de Juvenacio, a papal notary acting as vice-chancellor of the Roman Church. Following that examination, John was admitted to the office of papal notary.
This was a direct personal connection with the papal administration. John was not merely the beneficiary of an appointment issued by Rome. He travelled to the papal court, underwent examination by one of its senior legal officers and entered an office whose authority was recognised throughout the Roman Church.
The appointment required knowledge of documentary practice, legal procedure and the formal workings of ecclesiastical administration. It demonstrates that the Ó Maolmochéirghe possessed the wealth, education and connections necessary to send a family member from Bréifne to Bologna. Earley and Boyle considered it likely that John had studied at the University of Bologna, where notarial training formed an important part of the curriculum, although the surviving appointment does not identify his place of study.
An Irish cleric bearing the Mac Diarmada name was moving through the same papal notarial system at Bologna within weeks of John Ó Maolmochéirghe. The register does not state that the two men travelled together or describe their personal relationship. Their presence within the same small Irish clerical circle makes contact highly likely, particularly when considered beside the later documented relationship between the Ó Maolmochéirghe and Mac Diarmada families.
The record offers a rare glimpse of relationships normally visible only after the men returned to Ireland. Families later connected through land, marriage and political association were also participating in the international educational and administrative world of the medieval Church. They may have shared information, introductions, accommodation or sections of the journey, although those possibilities cannot now be documented directly.
The same year brought several further papal provisions involving the family. John received dispensations permitting him to hold the vicarages of Drumreilly and Oughteragh, despite being born to unmarried parents. His father was identified as the rector of Drumreilly. The vicarage of Drumreilly had become vacant following the death of Fergal Ó Maolmochéirghe, while Oughteragh was vacant following the death of Simon Ó Maolmochéirghe.
At the same time, Gelasius Ó Maolmochéirghe was defending his possession of the rectory of Drumreilly alias Cenél Luacháin against Luke Ó Rodacháin. Gelasius alleged that false claims had been made against him and appealed through the papal court. The dispute had already involved the Dean of Elphin and the Prior of Inchmacnerin before the Bishop of Achonry was instructed to reconsider it.
The records of 1414 therefore reveal several members of the family connected with the principal benefices of Cenél Luacháin. Gelasius held the rectory, John received the linked vicarages and Fergal and Simon were named as the previous holders of those offices. This was not the isolated advancement of one unusually successful cleric. It was the operation of a hereditary family occupying several connected positions within the same ecclesiastical territory.
The Moytura and Rathmulpatrick Connection
John Ó Maolmochéirghe’s authority was not confined to Kilmore or Cenél Luacháin.
He appears as a canon of Kilmore and papal notary in 1441 and again in 1444. On 8 July 1444, Pope Eugenius IV appointed John, then described as a canon of Ardagh, to act with Cormac Mac Donnchadha, canon of Achonry, and Donald Mac Nóglaig, canon of Killala.
They were instructed to investigate and settle a disputed benefice in the Diocese of Elphin. The lands belonging to it lay within Culdea, Drumcolin, Killmicalan, Thammacha and Eacanach. These places belonged to the wider ecclesiastical landscape surrounding Tirerrill, Drumcolumb and Moytura. They also lay within the same church region in which Rathmulpatrick has repeatedly emerged as an important place in the early investigation of the Ó Maol Phádraig family.
The case was complex. It involved Augustinian canons of Inchmacnerin who had ceased to reside at their monastery, clerics and laymen accused of occupying and dividing the revenues of the benefice, and the power of Tomaltach Mac Donnchadha, lord of Tirerrill. The claimant maintained that local influence made it difficult to secure justice through the ordinary diocesan channels.
John’s appointment is therefore significant for more than his ecclesiastical rank. Rome selected him to investigate the legal possession, revenues and local circumstances of churches in the Moytura region. His involvement suggests that his competence, authority and knowledge of the western ecclesiastical landscape were recognised beyond the Diocese of Kilmore.
The location is particularly important for the wider research. John Ó Maolmochéirghe was exercising papal authority within the church landscape surrounding Rathmulpatrick. The record does not prove that the family originated there, nor does it identify an Ó Maolmochéirghe estate in the district. It does, however, place a senior member of the family directly within the ecclesiastical affairs of the region and suggests that his knowledge of its circumstances was trusted by the papal court.
The commission also reveals the continued importance of old relationships between western dioceses. A canon of Ardagh, a canon of Achonry and a canon of Killala were appointed to act within Elphin. These diocesan boundaries did not separate the churches into isolated worlds. Clergy, families and institutional relationships extended across them.
The Repeated Killala Connection
The presence of Donald Mac Nóglaig of Killala in the 1444 commission was not an isolated occurrence.
On 7 February 1445, the same Killala canon was appointed with the Abbot of St Mary’s, Granard, and the Dean of Ardagh to assign the rectory of Drumreilly alias Cenél Luacháin to Maurice Ó Maolmochéirghe.
In consecutive years, Donald Mac Nóglaig first served with John Ó Maolmochéirghe in the Moytura and Elphin region and then helped supervise the succession of Maurice Ó Maolmochéirghe at Drumreilly. The repetition suggests an established clerical relationship rather than the chance appearance of a distant churchman.
Papal commissioners were often chosen from outside the diocese concerned to reduce interference from local rivals. That procedural explanation does not remove the historical importance of the repeated Killala involvement. The same men and dioceses were connected through consecutive cases involving the Moytura region and the hereditary offices of the Ó Maolmochéirghe.
These records preserve a working ecclesiastical network extending from Killala and Achonry through Moytura and Elphin to Ardagh, Kilmore and Cenél Luacháin. They show the practical strength of relationships whose origins may have been considerably older than the fifteenth-century documents in which they appear.
Power Within the Diocese of Kilmore
In 1445, Maurice Ó Maolmochéirghe also petitioned concerning the responsibilities attached to ecclesiastical lands already in his possession. He explained that their income was insufficient to maintain the hospitality expected of him and sought additional churches and benefices in the deaneries of Dartry and Drumlane, together with benefices belonging to Kells and the episcopal revenues of Kilmore.
During the same year, Maurice succeeded Gelasius Ó Maolmochéirghe in the rectory of Drumreilly alias Cenél Luacháin. MacCotter identifies Maurice as the son of Gelasius, suggesting a direct father-to-son succession within the hereditary coarb family.
The obligation to provide hospitality was not a minor social custom. The holder of the estate was expected to support visitors, travellers, clergy, dependants and members of the ruling class. Maintaining such an open house required substantial lands, livestock and produce. The continuation of this responsibility can be traced through the papal records of the fifteenth century and the annalistic obituaries of the sixteenth.
Another John Ó Maolmochéirghe rose to particular prominence during the middle of the fifteenth century. In 1459, a canonry of Kilmore was created for his lifetime and incorporated the vicarage of Cuil Uí Fhlainn. In 1460, he pursued the vicarages of Drumreilly and Oughteragh. By 1465, he had become Dean of Kilmore and held canonries in both Kilmore and Ardagh. That year he complained that Maurice Ó Maolmochéirghe and Andrew Ó Sheridan were interfering with his benefices.
The position of dean placed John among the principal administrators of the diocese. His offices also demonstrate that Ó Maolmochéirghe power cannot be reduced to possession of a local rectory. Members of the family were integrated into the cathedral chapter, the diocesan court and the wider administration of the Church.
In 1473, the annals recorded the death of “the Official, Ó Maolmochéirghe,” describing him as a man eminent throughout Ireland. The title “Official” referred to an ecclesiastical judge, either of a rural deanery or possibly of the diocesan court of Kilmore. This member of the family therefore exercised judicial authority and possessed a reputation extending beyond Bréifne.
In 1474, Gerald Ó Rodacháin challenged John Ó Maolmochéirghe’s possession of the rectory of Cenél Luacháin and accused him of simony. The challenge did not remove the family. In 1478, Archbishop Octavian de Palatio of Armagh issued letters protecting John, explicitly described as coarb of the church or hospital of Drumreilly, against Gerald Ó Rodacháin and his supporters.
The intervention of the Archbishop of Armagh shows that the family’s possession was not merely a local arrangement. Their claims could be defended through the highest ecclesiastical authority in Ireland.
An Office Held from Time Immemorial
A papal provision of 1479 gives the clearest surviving description of the Drumreilly institution.
John Ó Maolmochéirghe received the poor hospital of Drumreilly following the resignation of Maurice Ó Maolmochéirghe. The document states that the holder of the office had from time immemorial not been required to enter holy orders. The hospital was a benefice without pastoral care, and its revenues had been united with the rectory because they were otherwise insufficient to maintain hospitality.
The phrase “from time immemorial” is critical. By 1479, the hereditary administration of the hospital and its lands was already regarded as an ancient custom. The office was not simply that of a parish priest. It involved the management of ecclesiastical property, revenues and hospitality and could be held by a member of the hereditary kindred who had not entered priestly orders.
John continued to appear as a canon of Kilmore during the 1480s and early 1490s, and he acted as a papal mandatory. In 1495, Gelasius Ó Maolmochéirghe, another canon of Kilmore, sought the vicarages of Drumreilly and Oughteragh from John Ó Maolmochéirghe. Another John pursued the vicarage of Carrigallen during the same year, while Odo Ó Maolmochéirghe appeared as a canon of Kilmore in 1501 and 1503 and obtained another ecclesiastical hospital.
Between 1400 and 1503, members of the family therefore held or pursued the rectory of Cenél Luacháin, the vicarages of Drumreilly and Oughteragh, the hospital of Drumreilly, canonries of Kilmore and Ardagh, the deanery of Kilmore and papal notarial, judicial and administrative offices.
The Lands They Controlled
The authority of the Ó Maolmochéirghe rested partly upon the scale of the ecclesiastical estates attached to their hereditary offices.
MacCotter reconstructed the Drumreilly estate from the surviving land records and Down Survey maps. It included Aghawillin, Corrnamahan, Cully, Derrylahan, Drumreilly, Garradice, Glebe, Killaphort, Kilnacreevy, Knocks, Listahy and Church Island in Garadice Lough. Together these lands amounted to approximately 2,160 acres.
The associated estate of Oughteragh included Cornacreeve, Cornageeragh, Cromlin, part of Curraghnabania, Dernasmallan, Derrinkeher, Drumdartan Glebe, Greaghrevaghmore Glebe, Kilnamaddyroe, Miskaun Glebe, Oughteragh, Prabagh and Unshinagh. It contained approximately 2,310 acres.
In 1585, both Drumreilly and Oughteragh were recorded as church estates of four quarters. Their form descended from older Gaelic units of landholding and had probably been established centuries before the Tudor records.
This was the material foundation of the coarbship. The family’s importance did not rest upon ceremonial titles alone. Its hereditary offices were attached to thousands of acres of church land from which came livestock, rents, produce and the resources needed to maintain hospitality and regional influence.
Ballinaglera and the Erenagh Branch
Ballinaglera was not a peripheral settlement where the surname happened to appear. It formed another centre of the same hereditary ecclesiastical system.
The Irish name Baile na gCléireach means “the baile of the clerics.” Its territory occupied the natural amphitheatre between Sliabh an Iarainn and the eastern shore of Lough Allen. MacCotter identifies it with the northern detached portion of Drumreilly civil parish and argues that it represented an ancient ecclesiastical estate.
The estate was recorded as four quarters in 1585. By 1641, the surviving church land appears to have been reduced to eight cartrons and a detached area of upland grazing. The remaining core may be represented by eight townlands extending along the eastern shore of Lough Allen from Fahy northward to Cuiltia. The church stood in Fahy near Tobar Bheo-Aoidh, a holy well dedicated to Saint Beo Aedh.
The Ballinaglera branch held the office of erenagh, while the senior line held the coarbship of Drumreilly. The two lines belonged to the same wider ecclesiastical family.
In 1587, the Annals of Loch Cé recorded the death of a daughter of Brian Mac Diarmada Ruadh, wife of Cathal, erenagh of Ballinaglera. Cathal can be identified with the Ó Maolmochéirghe erenagh lineage.
The marriage connected the family directly with the Mac Diarmada ruling house of Moylurg. It gives a documented local expression to a relationship also suggested by the presence of Ó Maolmochéirghe and Mac Diarmada clerics in the international church world of early fifteenth-century Italy. The Bologna evidence cannot establish joint travel or personal friendship, but the later marriage shows that the families were unquestionably close.
Wealth, Hospitality and Tudor Survival
The annals show that the coarbship remained wealthy and influential into the sixteenth century.
In 1512, Aodh Ua Maolmochéirghe was recorded as coarb of Drumlane, although Drumreilly may have been intended.
In 1536, Cathal son of Seonín son of John Ó Maolmochéirghe, coarb of Drumreilly, died. The annals described him as a prosperous man of great and lasting wealth, possessing substantial livestock and property.
In 1579, John Ó Maolmochéirghe, coarb of Drumreilly, was praised as the foremost man in Ireland for maintaining a general house of hospitality for the people of Ireland and the wider world, as many as he could support.
The obituary echoes the same obligation recorded in the papal petition of 1445 and the hospital provision of 1479. Across more than a century, the identity of the office remained tied to land, wealth and the maintenance of hospitality.
The Tudor fiants show the family still concentrated within the old ecclesiastical territory. A pardon dated 18 November 1585 names Gilledowe and Tirlagh Ó Maolmochéirghe of Drumreilly; Maurice, John and James Ó Maolmochéirghe of Ballinaglera; and Tirlagh and Gerald Ó Maolmochéirghe of Lisbouan. This was a substantial regional cluster corresponding closely with the earlier church-land geography.
Other records place members of the family at Dromard in south Leitrim, Behy and Killagown in south Sligo, and other locations beyond the old Drumreilly centre. These appearances demonstrate that the family’s relationships and settlement extended outward from its hereditary estates.
In 1603, Donnell Ó Maolmochéirghe of Ballinaglera was pardoned and described as a gentleman. The old ecclesiastical order was already being dismantled, but the family retained status in the district where it had exercised hereditary authority for centuries.
Cenél Luacháin as an Ecclesiastical Territory
By the later Middle Ages, Cenél Luacháin was no longer functioning solely as the name of an ancient descent group. Papal records repeatedly call the principal benefice the rectory of Drumreilly alias Cenél Luacháin.
The territory included the rectory, the linked churches and vicarages of Drumreilly and Oughteragh, the hospital of Drumreilly, the hereditary coarbship, extensive church lands and the related erenagh estate of Ballinaglera.
In practical terms, it had become something resembling a territorial parish or assembly of churches within the Diocese of Kilmore. Its organisation remained shaped by older Gaelic landholding and hereditary succession, but it also operated within the legal and administrative structure of the Roman Church.
The Ó Maolmochéirghe stood at the centre of that system. Their offices allowed them to administer church lands, control revenues, maintain hospitality, participate in diocesan government and preserve relationships extending far beyond Kilmore.
The Road to Dowra
The late Ó Maolmochéirghe records provide the institutional setting for the later appearance of the Ó Maol Phádraig family at Dowra.
A general pardon issued in 1604 names four members of the Ó Maol Phádraig family as residents of the Dowra district: Cowconaught Ó Maol Phádraig, Donell Óg Ó Maol Phádraig, David Ó Maol Phádraig and Cormac mac Seáin Ó Maol Phádraig.
A later record names Brian Ó Maol Phádraig of Dowra, described as a gentleman.
These records will be examined more fully elsewhere. Their immediate importance is geographical. Dowra lies directly north of Ballinaglera, where the Ó Maolmochéirghe erenagh line remained established in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The two communities still occupy adjoining parts of the upper Shannon landscape.
The records do not state why the Ó Maol Phádraig were settled there. They do not identify the exact nature of their relationship with the Ó Maolmochéirghe. They do show that the Ó Maol Phádraig were living beside a territory that had been administered for centuries through the Ó Maolmochéirghe coarbship, rectory, vicarages, hospital and erenagh estate.
That context is essential. The distribution of the Ó Maol Phádraig cannot be understood simply by plotting the places where their names appear in Tudor pardons. Those locations belonged to an older ecclesiastical landscape whose offices, lands and relationships were dominated by the Ó Maolmochéirghe.
The Ó Maolmochéirghe were directly connected with the papal court, powerful within the Diocese of Kilmore, active in Ardagh, trusted in disputes within Elphin and the Moytura region, linked repeatedly with Killala and Achonry, related by marriage to the Mac Diarmada and established at both Drumreilly and Ballinaglera. Their authority created the institutional world within which the later distribution of the Ó Maol Phádraig must be examined.
The next stage of the investigation will look more closely at Dowra, the older landscape of An Damhshraith and the position of the Ó Maol Phádraig immediately north of the Ballinaglera estate.
References
Annals of Connacht.
Annals of Loch Cé. Edited by William M. Hennessy. Two volumes. London: Longman, 1871.
Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters. Edited and translated by John O’Donovan. Dublin, 1848–1851.
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters. Volumes V, VI, XI, XII, XIII, XV, XVI and XVII. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Costello, Michael A., ed. De Annatis Hiberniae, Volume I: Ulster. Dundalk, 1901.
Earley, Joseph E., Sr., and Leonard E. Boyle. “Conflict over the Rectory of Cinel Luachain during the Fifteenth Century.” Bréifne 9, no. 35 (1999): 103–113.
Fiants of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.
MacCotter, Paul. “The Comharba Family of Ó Maolmochéirghe of Drumreilly.”
MacCuarta, Brian. “Leitrim Plantation Papers.” Bréifne 9, no. 35 (1999): 114–139.
Sughí, M. A., ed. The Register of Octavian de Palatio, Archbishop of Armagh, 1478–1513. Two volumes. Dublin, 1999