On 1 April 1654 Peter Rickebee, a smith of Belturbet, was questioned about events he said he had witnessed more than twelve years earlier. His examination returned to the killings associated with the occupation of the town in 1641–42 and…
The Cavan Fitzpatricks in Owen Roe O’Neill’s Army The previous post ended with Owen Roe O’Neill’s northern army preparing to leave Cavan in the spring of 1646. The men had spent the winter in a landscape already familiar from the…
When Owen Roe O’Neill landed in Donegal on 8 July 1642, he brought with him a kind of military experience that few of the men then fighting in Ulster possessed. He had left Ireland in 1605 and spent most of…
October 1641–February 1642 Part One ended with Domhnall Óg Ó Maol Phádraig of Aghakillymaud and his son Bryan Óg among the men associated with Rory Maguire in southern Fermanagh on 23 October 1641. The next stage of the story moves…
23 October 1641 — Deposition sworn 6 June 1642 The Rebellion Reaches Aghalane On 23 October 1641, twenty-two-year-old Thomas Seman was robbed, stripped and driven from his holding in southern County Fermanagh. His attackers were local men from the half-barony…