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 of Knockninny, and Thomas identified them as followers of Captain Rory Maguire. They threatened to murder him if he remained and claimed to possess the king’s authority to take his property and the goods of the other English inhabitants.
When Thomas described the attack under oath in Dublin on 6 June 1642, he also supplied a much longer list of people whom he claimed to know were in open rebellion. Among them were Domhnall Óg Ó Maol Phádraig of Aghakillymaud and his son, Bryan Óg.
This is the earliest chronological appearance of Bryan Óg in the 1641 Depositions so far identified. Later witnesses would describe him as a gentleman, yeoman, captain and commander, connecting him with Belturbet and the forces of Philip mac Hugh O’Reilly. In Thomas Seman’s account, however, Bryan first appears through his father and their home at Aghakillymaud, within a local movement centred upon Rory Maguire.
To understand why Thomas was attacked, why Rory Maguire led the rising in Fermanagh and why the two Ó Maol Phádraig men appear among his followers, it is necessary to return to the beginning of the seventeenth century.
From Gaelic lordship to Plantation county
The Nine Years’ War ended in 1603 with the defeat of the alliance led by Aodh Mór Ó Néill and Aodh Rua Ó Domhnaill. The English Crown initially attempted to govern Ulster through a settlement with the surviving Gaelic lords, but mutual suspicion soon undermined the arrangement.
In 1607, the departure of several leading Ulster nobles in the Flight of the Earls allowed the Crown to declare extensive territories forfeited. From 1609 onward, the government reorganized large parts of Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone under the Plantation of Ulster.
Land was surveyed and divided into proportions granted to English and Scottish undertakers, Crown servitors, the established Church of Ireland, the London livery companies and a limited number of Gaelic proprietors classified as “deserving Irish.” The grants required the building of defensible houses, the establishment of towns and the introduction of British Protestant tenants.
The Plantation changed more than the ownership of individual farms. It introduced a new legal, political and religious order. Castles, fortified houses, market towns, estate courts and surveyed property boundaries became the visible structure of Crown authority. Gaelic families who remained on the land increasingly found themselves living as tenants within estates that had been granted to newcomers or to proprietors recognized under English law.
The change was neither instantaneous nor complete. British settlers depended upon Irish labourers, tenants, craftsmen and cattle traders. Gaelic landholders leased property from Plantation grantees, while some established Irish families retained land and entered Crown government. The two populations conducted business, formed local accommodations and lived beside one another for more than a generation.
Beneath that coexistence lay unresolved questions about who rightfully possessed the land and whose law would determine its future.
Fermanagh and the Maguire dynasty
Before the Plantation, Fermanagh had been the country of the Mag Uidhir or Maguire dynasty. Maguire authority rested upon numerous family branches, subordinate kindreds, military followers, church relationships and local dependants spread across the county.
The Plantation reduced this political system but did not destroy it. Certain Maguires received grants as “deserving Irish,” allowing members of the former ruling dynasty to retain considerable land and influence under the Crown.
Brian Roe Maguire was created Baron Maguire of Enniskillen. His sons Connor and Rory consequently belonged to both the older Gaelic order and the new political establishment. Connor succeeded as second Baron Maguire, while Rory held land, sat in parliament for County Fermanagh and received a captain’s commission in the Irish army raised in 1640.
Rory also married Deborah Blennerhassett, the widow of the wealthy Protestant settler Leonard Blennerhassett. Through the marriage, Rory acquired a castle and lands reportedly worth £900 annually. He was therefore neither landless nor excluded entirely from Plantation society.
His position illustrates the tensions within the Catholic landed class. The Maguires had retained wealth and political recognition, but their authority remained dependent upon a Protestant Crown government that could challenge Catholic land titles, restrict Catholic worship and contemplate further confiscations.
The growing insecurity of Catholic Ireland
Catholics constituted the majority of Ireland’s population, but the Church of Ireland was the established church and senior government offices were dominated by Protestants. Catholic worship continued widely, although without full legal protection, and recusancy laws could penalize those who refused to attend established services.
Land was an equally serious concern. The Plantation of Ulster demonstrated that military defeat, disputed title or alleged disloyalty could be used to transfer entire territories. Catholic proprietors who had survived the earlier confiscations feared that future legal investigations would place their estates in danger.
These fears intensified under Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who governed Ireland as lord deputy from 1633 until 1640. Wentworth strengthened the Crown administration, increased revenue and investigated land titles. His efforts to extend plantation into Connacht alarmed Catholic landowners across Ireland.
Irish Catholics had offered financial support to Charles I in exchange for concessions known as the Graces. These were expected to provide greater religious tolerance and improved security of land tenure, but their implementation was repeatedly delayed or denied. By the late 1630s, many Catholic landowners had lost confidence that loyalty and financial support would protect them.
The danger was no longer confined to families that had already lost their estates. Men such as Connor and Rory Maguire could see that their favourable treatment under the Plantation offered no permanent guarantee.
The crisis of the three kingdoms
Events in Scotland and England transformed Irish anxiety into a political crisis.
In 1638, Scottish resistance to Charles I’s religious policies produced the National Covenant. The resulting Bishops’ Wars exposed the weakness of the Crown and forced Charles to summon the English Parliament after eleven years of personal rule.
Wentworth raised an Irish army in 1640 for possible service against the Scottish Covenanters. Much of the army was Catholic, and men such as Rory Maguire received military commissions. The force was subsequently disbanded, leaving trained Catholic officers and soldiers without employment and uncertain about their future.
Some hoped to enter Spanish service on the Continent. Others became available for military action in Ireland.
The English Parliament moved against Wentworth, who was executed in May 1641. Irish Catholics did not necessarily regard his fall as a victory. Many members of Parliament were openly hostile to Catholicism, while rumours circulated that English or Scottish forces intended to invade Ireland, suppress Catholic worship and seize the remaining Catholic estates.
Ireland was governed by a king whose authority was collapsing, an administration divided between competing interests and a parliament in England increasingly suspicious of both Charles I and Irish Catholicism. Every community had reasons to fear that another would act first.
The conspiracy
The rising began as a conspiracy among a relatively small group of Catholic landowners and military men. Rory O’More of Laois emerged as an important organizer and approached Connor Maguire in Dublin early in 1641.
The principal conspirators came to include Connor and Rory Maguire, Hugh Óg MacMahon, Phelim O’Neill and other members of the Catholic gentry and former military establishment.
Their plan centred upon a surprise attack on 23 October 1641. Connor Maguire, Hugh Óg MacMahon and their associates were to seize Dublin Castle, the administrative centre of English government in Ireland. The castle contained government records, money and a substantial store of weapons and ammunition. Its capture would have paralysed the administration and armed the conspirators.
At the same time, allied leaders in Ulster were to seize important castles, forts and towns. Phelim O’Neill would lead operations in central Ulster, while Rory Maguire would attempt to secure Fermanagh and its strategically important fortresses.
No surviving evidence identifies one individual who formally assigned Rory his role. It appears to have formed part of the plan agreed among the conspirators. As a Maguire landholder, former army captain and member of the county’s former ruling dynasty, Rory was the natural leader of the Fermanagh rising.
The conspirators were preparing an armed coup rather than a popular national rebellion. They hoped that surprise and control of the principal strongholds would compensate for their limited forces. Having seized the machinery of government, they intended to present political and religious demands from a position of strength.
They did not initially present themselves as opponents of Charles I. Their stated cause was the defence of the king, the Catholic religion and the rights and property of Irish Catholics against the English Parliament and its allies.
The failure at Dublin
On the night of 22 October, Owen O’Connolly informed the authorities in Dublin of the intended attack. Connor Maguire and Hugh Óg MacMahon were arrested, and Dublin Castle remained in government hands.
The central operation had failed before it began, but the warning could not stop the northern rising. Messengers had already travelled, men had assembled and local leaders were preparing to act on the following morning.
On 23 October, Phelim O’Neill captured Charlemont and other positions in Ulster. Rory Maguire and his followers moved against the government and settler strongholds of Fermanagh.
The simultaneous plan had now broken into separate local movements. Each leader operated with the forces available to him, while news, rumours and uncertain instructions spread through the countryside.
Rory Maguire’s attempt to control Fermanagh
Rory’s immediate objective was to capture Fermanagh’s castles and other fortified positions before the settlers could organize their defence.
Sir William Cole, a leading Protestant landowner and official, received advance warning of the rising. This allowed settlers to strengthen Enniskillen Castle and other defensible locations. Rory gained control of much of the open countryside but failed to capture Enniskillen and several important strongholds.
That failure shaped the experience of the surrounding population. Local insurgents could not immediately overcome every fortified centre, but they could attack the dispersed settlers living on farms and small estates.
Horses, cattle, food, weapons, money and clothing were seized. Settlers were ordered to surrender their property and leave. Their removal deprived the surviving garrisons of potential supporters while supplying the insurgents with provisions and livestock.
The original conspiracy also released grievances that its leaders could not fully control. Some participants acted out of loyalty to the Maguires or in defence of Catholic interests. Others sought to recover land, remove rent obligations, extinguish debts, settle personal disputes or acquire property. The collapse of government authority allowed political rebellion, economic opportunism and local revenge to operate together.
The rising consequently changed character almost immediately. What had begun as an elite-led attempt to seize the government became a broader struggle over land, religion, authority and survival.
The 1641 Depositions as evidence
The principal surviving descriptions of these events are contained in the 1641 Depositions, a collection of approximately 3,400 statements, examinations and associated documents preserved at Trinity College Dublin.
Most deponents were Protestant settlers describing property losses, imprisonment, stripping, assault, forced expulsion and murder. The depositions contain an extraordinary quantity of local information, including names, occupations, family relationships, townlands, rents, livestock and household goods.
They must also be read carefully. Many were recorded months or years after the events. The deponent’s spoken account passed through a clerk who employed legal formulae and sometimes reorganized, corrected or expanded the testimony. Estimates of financial loss could be revised or deleted, while lists of alleged rebels might be added after the main narrative.
The depositions preserve individual testimony rather than judicial findings against every person named. A person accused of being in rebellion was not necessarily accused of committing every robbery or act of violence described elsewhere in the record.
Thomas Seman’s deposition demonstrates these features particularly clearly.
Thomas Seman of Rellye
Thomas was examined in Dublin on 6 June 1642 before commissioners Henry Brereton and William Hitchcock. His deposition survives in Trinity College Dublin manuscript MS 835, folios 222r to 223v.
He was described as:
Thomas Seman of Rellye in the County of Fermanagh, weaver, aged twenty-two years or thereabouts.
The word “yeoman” was entered but struck out, leaving “weaver” as Thomas’s occupation. He made a mark rather than signing his name, and the endorsement on the manuscript gives his surname as “Seaman.”
Thomas was a craftsman, but he was not landless. He held the profits of a small tate called Reylye or Rellye and a parcel of land called Gole by fee-farm tenure in the Plantation proportion of Aghalane.
A fee-farm was a long-term, often effectively heritable, interest subject to a fixed rent. Thomas therefore occupied a more secure position than an agricultural labourer or short-term tenant. At only twenty-two, he combined his trade as a weaver with a continuing interest in Plantation land.
Aghalane and the probable location of Rellye
The Aghalane proportion was a small Plantation estate of approximately 1,000 profitable acres in the southern Fermanagh borderlands. It was originally granted to Thomas Monypenny but passed around 1613 to James or Thomas Creighton. The Creightons constructed Aghalane Castle around 1615.
In 1616, Thomas Creighton leased lands including Derrykennan to his uncle Abraham Creighton. The estate therefore contained several layers of proprietors, lessees and smaller occupiers by the time Thomas Seman obtained his fee-farm.
The original grant included a quarter called Derrykennan containing Derrykennan, Gubbuckreere, Relagh, Cornowel, Cornakill and associated islands. Relagh is the most convincing identification for Thomas’s Rellye or Reylye.
If that identification is correct, Thomas lived within the Derrykennan section of the Aghalane estate, close to Kinawley, Upper Lough Erne, the Woodford River and the routes leading towards Belturbet.
The accompanying parcel called Gole is less certain. The Aghalane grant contained a denomination recorded as Goleomackean, and Thomas’s Gole may have belonged to that property. The abbreviated form in his deposition prevents a firm identification.
A “tate” was a traditional Ulster land division whose actual acreage varied according to local conditions. Thomas’s description of Rellye as a “small tate” should therefore be understood as a local territorial unit rather than a farm of standardized size.
The attack of 23 October
Thomas said that he was robbed and stripped on the first day of the rising by:
- Flaithbheartach mac Thomas mac Donn Maguire.
- Brian mac Rory mac Donn Maguire.
- Cormac mac Thomas Dubh mac Corry.
- John mac Phelim mac Corry.
- Owen mac Caffery.
- Turlough mac Cabe.
- Several other men from the half-barony of Knockninny.
The first two men belonged to Maguire lineages, while Cormac and John belonged to the local Corry family. Owen’s family and residence were not supplied. Turlough was probably a member of the MacCabe kindred.
Thomas described all six, together with their unnamed companions, as followers belonging to Captain Rory Maguire.
These were local men operating within an existing network. They probably knew which settler households possessed land, livestock, weapons, money or other useful goods. Their knowledge of the countryside would also have allowed them to identify holdings that could be attacked before their occupants reached the security of Enniskillen or another fortified centre.
After taking Thomas’s property, they ordered him to leave the country immediately. If he remained, they threatened to murder him.
Their purpose was therefore more extensive than robbery. Thomas was to be stripped of his property and removed from the district, leaving his fee-farm holding without its settler occupant.
Thomas’s losses
Thomas valued the clear annual profit from Rellye and Gole at £5 7s. The Latin expression ultra reprisas indicated the value remaining after rents and other charges had been deducted.
The draft originally valued his interest in the land at £50, but that figure was struck out. Thomas also claimed £16 in money and debts owed to him. A total of £66 was entered and then deleted.
The final account should therefore distinguish between the surviving figures and the abandoned calculation:
- Clear annual profit from the land: £5 7s.
- Money and debts: £16.
- Deleted capital valuation: £50.
- Deleted total: £66.
The reference to debts is revealing. Thomas participated in the local economy as more than a subsistence tenant. Other people owed him money, perhaps through his weaving, agricultural activity or local credit arrangements.
Debt records could also become targets during a rebellion. Expelling a creditor or destroying evidence of an obligation could benefit neighbours as directly as taking his cattle or clothing.
“All the rest of the Englishmen”
Thomas said that the attackers justified their actions by claiming to possess the king’s commission authorizing them to take his goods and those of “all the rest of the Englishmen.”
That wording identifies Thomas as part of the English settler population, at least in the eyes of his attackers and the clerk who recorded the testimony. It also joins the seizure of his property to a wider programme directed against a category of inhabitants.
The alleged royal commission became one of the principal political claims of the rising. Phelim O’Neill and Rory Maguire issued a proclamation at Newry on 4 November declaring that they acted under authority from Charles I. The document produced in support of the claim was a fabrication, although it exploited widespread uncertainty about the king’s relations with Irish Catholics.
Thomas’s deposition was taken more than seven months later. His recollection may preserve language already circulating among Rory’s followers on 23 October, or the chronology may have been sharpened by subsequent knowledge of the proclamation. The deposition records what Thomas swore the attackers said; it cannot determine when they first heard or adopted the commission story.
Invoking the king served several purposes. It distinguished the insurgents’ cause from outright rejection of monarchy, gave property seizures an appearance of lawful authority and reassured potential supporters who regarded rebellion against Charles as unacceptable.
At Aghalane, the language of high politics was converted into a direct local message: the king supposedly authorized the removal of Thomas and the confiscation of English property.
Robbing, stripping and expulsion
Clothing was valuable property in the seventeenth century, but stripping also exposed the victim physically and socially. A person deprived of clothing, money, food and transport faced severe difficulty reaching safety, especially in late October.
Stripping could:
- Supply clothing to the insurgents.
- Humiliate and reduce the status of the victim.
- Prevent the victim from returning easily.
- Increase dependence upon other settlers or a fortified refuge.
- Communicate that the former occupant no longer possessed local protection.
When accompanied by an order to leave and a threat of murder, stripping became part of forced displacement. Thomas was not merely being fined or temporarily dispossessed; he was being removed from the territory.
The wider list of people in rebellion
After describing his own attackers and losses, Thomas said that he knew additional people to be in open rebellion. His list continues across the manuscript, with part of it apparently added after the section containing his mark and the commissioners’ names.
The structure requires caution. The six men named in the robbery are directly accused of attacking Thomas. The people in the subsequent list are accused of being in rebellion, but most are not accused of participating in the robbery.
Thomas named the following:
| Person recorded | Residence or description |
| William mac Morage | Of Derrycoran; son of Art Dubh mac Morage |
| William mac Faragh mac Carye | Of Kinnine |
| Phelim Dubh mac Rory Maguire | Of Goalen; gentleman |
| Unnamed son of Thomas Rua Maguire | Of Legan; gentleman |
| Turlough Maguire | Son of Brian of Legan |
| John Agaldon | Of Legan |
| Garrett O Reilly | The manuscript arrangement is uncertain |
| Rory Ballagh mac Cossedue | Associated with a place rendered as Tiraroe or Sirorgan |
| Garrett O Reilly | Of Aghaolla |
| Anewny or Grany Maguire | Daughter of Hugh mac Shane Boy Maguire of Kinmine |
| Edmund O Reilly | Of Canaeeghtoragh |
| Patrick O Dollan | Of Tirarowe |
| Rory O Frunty | Of Drumelutt |
| Shane mac Faragh mac Corry | Of Kinmine |
| Phelim Og Maguire | Of Drummully; gentleman |
| John Maguire | Of Derye |
| Philip Dubh Og Reilly | Gentleman |
| Domhnall Og Maol Phadraig | Of Aghakillmadrye |
| Bryan Og Maol Phadraig | Son of Domhnall Og |
| Edmund mac Maguire | Of Derrykennan |
| Connor mac Rory Boy Maguire | Of Carna |
| Brian mac na Moye | Of Dromemanymore; yeoman |
| Turlough | Name deleted |
| Art Dubh mac Morage | Of Derrycaullein |
The list includes Maguires, O’Reillys, Corrys, members of other local families and the two Ó Maol Phádraig men. Several are described as gentlemen or yeomen, indicating that the movement included people of recognized local standing as well as unnamed followers.
Only one woman appears: the daughter of Hugh mac Shane Boy Maguire of Kinmine. Thomas’s version renders her name approximately as Anewny, while another deposition calls her “Grany ny Maguire.” Her inclusion indicates that participation or assistance attributed to the rebellion was not recorded exclusively through military action by men.
A tightly connected local landscape
The places in Thomas’s testimony cluster in southern Fermanagh, especially within Knockninny and the country adjoining northern Cavan.
Derrykennan belonged to the same Aghalane quarter that contained probable Relagh. Edmund mac Maguire of Derrykennan was therefore associated with the immediate estate district in which Thomas held land.
Derrycoran and Drumany More survive as neighbouring townlands in the Tomregan area of Knockninny. William mac Morage lived at Derrycoran, while Brian mac na Moye was described as a yeoman of Dromemanymore. Their proximity indicates that Thomas was naming people drawn from connected neighbourhoods rather than assembling a random county-wide catalogue.
Legan produced several people from an apparently related group: an unnamed son of Thomas Rua Maguire, Turlough son of Brian Maguire and John Agaldon. Kinmine similarly appears as the home of the daughter of Hugh mac Shane Boy Maguire and Shane mac Faragh mac Corry.
Other places remain difficult to identify because seventeenth-century clerks wrote Irish names phonetically and later territorial boundaries changed. Goalen, Aghaolla, Canaeeghtoragh, Tirarowe, Drumelutt, Derye, Carna and Derrycaullein will require comparison with Plantation grants, inquisitions, estate papers and later townland forms.
Even where exact modern identifications remain uncertain, the pattern is clear. Thomas was describing an interconnected borderland society organized through residence, kinship and allegiance.
The other Seman depositions
Thomas was not the only person bearing the Seman surname to testify about the rising in Fermanagh.
James Seman of Cornahola was also examined on 6 June 1642. He was twenty-eight years old and described as a yeoman. His deposition was heard by John Sterne and William Hitchcock, the latter also serving as one of Thomas’s commissioners.
James said that he was robbed and stripped on 23 October by men from Knockninny who belonged to Rory Maguire. He and his household were ordered to leave the country under threat of murder, and his attackers also claimed to possess the king’s commission.
James held the small tate of Cornahola by fee-farm in the proportion of Dresternan and leased an additional parcel called Dromekellan. His reported losses included land, livestock, household goods, clothing, corn, money and debts, amounting to £210.
His broader list repeated several people found in Thomas’s testimony, including Phelim Dubh mac Rory Maguire of Goalen, members of the Legan Maguires, Garrett O’Reilly of Aghaolla, Rory Ballagh and the Maguire woman from Kinmine.
John Seman of Feaglash gave another deposition on 26 July 1642. His much longer list included numerous inhabitants of Knockninny and Kinawley, among them several O Maol Phadriag.
The shared surname, neighbouring residences and common experience make it plausible that Thomas, James and John belonged to the same extended settler family. No record examined so far defines their relationship, so they should be treated as a connected deposition cluster rather than as proven brothers.
Their accounts reveal a repeated pattern. The attacks occurred on the opening day of the rising, were attributed to Rory Maguire’s local followers, involved the seizure of Plantation property and concluded with orders that the victims leave the country.
Domhnall and Bryan Ó Maol Phádraig
Thomas recorded:
Dannell oge O Mull patrick of Aghakillmadrye
Brean oge sonn to the said Dannell O Mull patrick
These men can be identified as Domhnall Óg Ó Maol Phádraig of Aghakillymaud and his son, Bryan Óg Ó Maol Phádraig.
They were not among the six men accused of robbing and stripping Thomas. Their names occur in the subsequent list of people Thomas said were in open rebellion.
Aghakillymaud belonged to the Kinawley and Knockninny district. The name survives in Aghakellymaude or Aghakillymaud Electoral Division, although the boundaries and identity of the seventeenth-century land denomination remain to be resolved. It may have been a smaller settlement, an estate subdivision or a local district whose name later survived in the electoral division.
Its general position is nevertheless significant. Domhnall and Bryan lived in the same southern Fermanagh borderland as Aghalane, Derrykennan and the approaches to Belturbet.
Thomas supplied no occupation or social designation for either man. Domhnall appears as the head of the household, while Bryan is identified through his relationship to his father. The record presents two generations of the family participating in the same political movement.
Bryan Óg’s later emergence
Later depositions allow Bryan to be followed beyond the opening of the rebellion. Different witnesses described him as a gentleman or yeoman and as a captain or commander. He was variously associated with Derriglush, Annagh parish, “Polenemadre near Belturbet” and Belturbet itself.
He also appears as a follower of Captain Philip mac Hugh O’Reilly.
These later descriptions place Bryan within the military struggle for the Fermanagh–Cavan borderlands. Belturbet was a strategically important Plantation town on the River Erne and had developed from the Butler estate at Derriglush. Its location connected County Cavan with southern Fermanagh and the waterways leading into Upper Lough Erne.
Thomas Seman’s deposition may therefore preserve Bryan at an early stage in his wartime career. On 23 October, he was known locally as the son of Domhnall Óg of Aghakillymaud. In subsequent records, he appears independently as a man exercising military authority around Belturbet.
The change in description may represent Bryan’s rise during the conflict, although variations between witnesses and clerks also have to be considered. His eventual prominence should not be projected backward so far that he is made a commander on the evidence of Thomas’s record alone.
The Ó Maol Phádraig within the Maguire–O’Reilly borderland
The appearance of Domhnall and Bryan beside Maguires and O’Reillys fits the longer history of the northern Ó Maol Phádraig.
Before the Plantation, members of the family appeared in records connected with the Ó Raghallaigh lordships of Cavan, the Drumreilly and Dowra districts, and the wider corridor extending between Lough Oughter and the Shannon–Erne country. After 1610, Ó Maol Phádraig tenants were recorded on Plantation estates in Cavan and Fermanagh.
By 1623, Philip and Brian Ó Maol Phádraig were tenants at Drumdoney, while Edmund and Brian Ó Maol Phádraig were connected with Drummully and Derrybrick. Tadhg Ó Maol Phádraig appeared at Aghindisert on the Balfour estate. These records show that members of the family had become established within Fermanagh’s Plantation landscape before the rising.
They were neither simply outsiders entering Fermanagh in October 1641 nor remnants living entirely beyond the new estate system. Like many Gaelic families, they had adapted to Plantation tenancy while retaining relationships with the Irish political society surrounding the Maguires and O’Reillys.
Domhnall and Bryan’s association with Rory Maguire can therefore be understood as the mobilization of an existing regional network. Later, Bryan’s connection with Philip mac Hugh O’Reilly drew him more directly into the Cavan side of that same borderland.
Why Thomas was targeted
No personal quarrel between Thomas and his attackers is recorded. The circumstances point instead to a combination of political identity, landholding, economic opportunity and territorial strategy.
Thomas was vulnerable because he was:
- Regarded as English.
- A fee-farm holder within a Plantation estate.
- In possession of money and debts.
- Living outside a strongly defended centre.
- Surrounded by local men aligned with Rory Maguire.
- Positioned near important routes between Fermanagh and Cavan.
His removal delivered immediate goods and money while clearing a Plantation holding of its settler occupant. It also reduced the number of people who could supply or reinforce the surviving Protestant strongholds.
Thomas had probably lived, worked and traded among the same communities from which his attackers came. The uprising turned ordinary economic knowledge into military intelligence: who held land, who owned cattle, who extended credit, which house contained weapons and which road offered the quickest route to safety.
What the deposition reveals
Thomas Seman’s four manuscript pages bring together several levels of the 1641 rising.
At the highest level stood the crisis of Charles I’s three kingdoms, the conflict between Crown and Parliament and the failed attempt to seize Dublin Castle. Within Ulster, Rory Maguire attempted to recover political and military control of the county historically ruled by his family. At the local level, men from Knockninny attacked a twenty-two-year-old weaver and removed him from his fee-farm.
Domhnall and Bryan Ó Maol Phádraig appear between these levels. They were local inhabitants of Aghakillymaud, but they were also participants in a movement connected with one of the principal leaders of the rebellion. Bryan subsequently emerged within the military network of Philip mac Hugh O’Reilly and the struggle around Belturbet.
The deposition therefore supplies more than two isolated family names. It places the Ó Maol Phádraig inside the political geography of southern Fermanagh at the exact moment when the Plantation settlement began to collapse into war.
Thomas’s testimony records the first day of that transformation. The unsuccessful conspiracy at Dublin had become a rising in Ulster; Rory Maguire controlled the countryside but not all its fortresses; settler holdings were being emptied; and the Ó Maol Phádraig of Aghakillymaud had entered the surviving historical record as participants in open rebellion.
References
1641 Depositions, Trinity College Dublin, MS 835, fols 219r–220v, deposition of James Seman, 6 June 1642.
1641 Depositions, Trinity College Dublin, MS 835, fols 222r–223v, deposition of Thomas Seman, 6 June 1642.
1641 Depositions, Trinity College Dublin, MS 835, deposition of John Seman, 26 July 1642.
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