By June 1602 East Bréifne had been at war, internally divided and under increasing Crown pressure for almost a generation. The old Ó Raghallaigh lordship still existed, but the family at its head had been repeatedly fractured by disputes over…
Fiant 6569, dated 25 August 1601, becomes more remarkable the less it is treated as a simple pardon list. At its head stood Edmund FitzMaurice, brother of the late Lord FitzMaurice of Kerry, and beneath him were hundreds of men…
On 29 May 1601, Callaghan mac Teige Mac Cárthaigh of Carrignamuck received a pardon with an enormous company of men and women from across County Cork. Among them were six Ó Maol Phádraig. Only a few weeks later, another great…
Fiant 6516 — 14 May 1601 There are two expressions still heard every day: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” and “I have a guy for that job.” Neither expression would have sounded quite the same in…
6 May 1601 Some records reveal their importance immediately. Others only begin to make sense after months of work elsewhere. Fiant 6505 was one of those records. On the first reading it looked almost hopelessly broad, an enormous pardon headed…
Fiant 6499 — Lord Deputy’s warrant dated 25 April 1601 For more than twenty years, the Tudor records appear to show two quite different Ó Maol Phádraig worlds. One lay in and around Bréifne, where members of the family appear…
After the recent records in the south, the Ó Maol Phádraig story now returns north to Cavan, and to a political landscape that was moving steadily toward the Nine Years’ War. It is tempting to divide the late sixteenth century…