Since the last Cork post, the investigation has moved north through two further Ó Maol Phádraig records, adding more evidence for the family’s wider distribution and the range of environments in which they appear. This post now returns to Cork and picks up the southern story where it was left, at Rahanisky in 1585.
The previous Cork post ended at Rahanisky in 1585, where Fiant 4752 placed Tadhg mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig and Conchobhar Óg mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig immediately after Richard Barry of Rahanisky, together with Manus O’Keeffe. Their shared patronymic made them probable brothers of Domhnall mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig, who had appeared eight years earlier in Fiant 3082 among the followers of Donnchadha mac Cormac Mac Donagh of Duhallow. Dr Mike Fitzpatrick and Matthew Fitzpatrick had already noted that probable relationship in their study of the early modern Ó Maol Phádraig records.
Rahanisky also introduced a second important connection. Richard Barry was not simply a gentleman living north of Cork city. He and his brother Redmond Buidhe had first appeared in 1573 as military retainers of Sir Cormac mac Teige MacCarthy of Muskerry. Richard was still in that service in 1576, and by 1577 the family had acquired Rahanisky. Rev. Edmond Barry’s reconstruction from fiants, inquisitions, wills and family records identifies Richard, Redmond, David and Thomas as sons of David fitz David Barry Roe and follows their movement from MacCarthy service into the Rahanisky estate.
That was where the previous investigation stopped. Fiant 5618, six years later, now makes it possible to look backward and see that the 1577 and 1585 records were probably never separate stories.
Thomas Ó Maol Phádraig at Dunbulloge
Fiant 5618, issued in 1591, contains a small local group:
Donogh mac David O’Keeffe of Dunbulloge
Tadhg mac Donogh O’Moroghowe, of same
Thomas Ó Maol Phádraig, of same
Thomas therefore belonged to a defined Dunbulloge group rather than simply appearing somewhere in a long Cork pardon. The entry places him beside an O’Keeffe and an O’Moroghowe, two surnames already familiar from the MacCarthy-Barry world of the earlier pardons. That alone extends the Cork Ó Maol Phádraig story forward by another six years, but the more important connection lies elsewhere in the same fiant.
Among those pardoned was Thomas fitz David Óg Barry of Rathvillek. Earlier records place a man of that same name at Rahanisky with Richard, Redmond and David Barry. The Barry family reconstruction identifies those four as brothers, sons of David fitz David Barry Roe.
In 1585, Richard Barry had appeared at Rahanisky with two probable sons of Conchobhar Ó Maol Phádraig. In 1591, Richard’s brother Thomas appeared in the same pardon as another Ó Maol Phádraig. The Barry connection had survived.
Two families appearing in parallel
The surviving records now allow two probable sibling groups to be placed beside one another.
Conchobhar Ó Maol Phádraig
- Domhnall — 1577
- Tadhg — 1585
- Conchobhar Óg — 1585
David fitz David Barry Roe
- Redmond — 1577
- Richard — 1585
- Thomas — 1591
The Barry relationships are documented. The Ó Maol Phádraig relationship remains a reconstruction based on the shared mac Conchobhair patronymic, but the repetition is difficult to ignore.
On 6 September 1577, Domhnall mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig appeared in Fiant 3082 with Donnchadha mac Cormac Mac Donagh of Duhallow. The immediately following Fiant 3083, issued on the same day, contained Redmond mac David Barry of Rahanisky in a pardon headed by Callaghan mac Teige MacCarthy, brother of Sir Cormac MacCarthy of Muskerry. Eight years later, probable brothers from those same two families appeared together at Rahanisky.
That is the point at which the three records begin to look less like isolated pardons and more like fragments of one continuing network.
What September 1577 really contained
Fiant 3082 originally seemed to be a Mac Donagh MacCarthy pardon with an Ó Maol Phádraig among the followers. Read in sequence, however, September 1577 reveals a much broader settlement. The Mac Donagh MacCarthys of Duhallow were one branch of the wider MacCarthy political world. Immediately beside them in the pardon sequence were men connected to MacCarthy Muskerry, including Callaghan mac Teige and the newly established Rahanisky Barrys.
The Rahanisky family had already spent several years inside the Muskerry military following. In 1573 Richard and Redmond Barry were recorded among Sir Cormac’s followers, and Richard remained associated with MacCarthy service into 1576. In 1577 their father David fitz David acquired Rahanisky from Viscount Buttevant. Edmond Barry’s reconstruction places that transfer between Richard’s late-1576 Ballygarvan record and Redmond’s appearance “of Rahanisky” in September 1577.
So when Domhnall Ó Maol Phádraig appears in Fiant 3082, the Barry family that will later appear beside his probable brothers is already present in the adjacent MacCarthy pardon on the same day. The apparent change from MacCarthy in 1577 to Barry in 1585 therefore becomes much less dramatic.
Barry and MacCarthy were overlapping worlds
The Rahanisky Barrys provide the clearest example of how the system worked. Richard and Redmond remained Barrys, members of a substantial cadet branch with their own family ambitions and eventually their own estate. At the same time they could serve Sir Cormac MacCarthy of Muskerry militarily. The categories were layered rather than exclusive.
A man might belong to one family, hold land through another lordship, fight under a more powerful patron and appear in a pardon headed by another member of the same political coalition. The Mac Donagh MacCarthys of Duhallow belonged to that same wider world.
Paul MacCotter traces their line through Diarmaid mac Diarmada MacCarthy, ancestor of the later MacCarthy lords of Duhallow. In the early fourteenth century Barry and Cogan lords of Muscridonegan were already making war on this same Duhallow MacCarthy figure, whom an English record rendered simply as “MacDermot.”
The relationship between Barry and MacCarthy power in north Cork therefore had a long history of conflict, accommodation and service. By the sixteenth century those relationships had become deeply interwoven.
The Condon bridge
Patrick Condon provides another connection between the two Ó Maol Phádraig records. The 1585 pardon was headed by Honora Barry, wife of Patrick Condon, and members of the Condon family. Dr Mike Fitzpatrick and Matthew Fitzpatrick note that Patrick Condon also appears in association with Donnchadha mac Cormac Mac Donagh and that both men had complicated dealings with the Crown during the Desmond conflicts.
Condon therefore links the Duhallow MacCarthy environment of 1577 to the Barry-led pardon in which Tadhg and Conchobhar Ó Maol Phádraig appeared in 1585. It is useful evidence, but the neighbouring pardons provide an even stronger bridge because they put the Barry family itself into the same 1577 sequence.
Manus O’Keeffe
Manus O’Keeffe gives another point of continuity. The day before Fiant 3082, a Barry-led pardon contained Manus mac Conchobhair mac Donnchadha O’Keeffe. Eight years later, the Rahanisky group contained Manus mac Conchobhair O’Keeffe immediately after the two Ó Maol Phádraigs.
The combination of personal name, patronymic, surname and political setting makes the identification highly persuasive. If the two entries refer to the same man, the 1577 world and the 1585 Rahanisky group are connected not merely by surnames, but by an individual.
Then in 1591 another O’Keeffe appears immediately beside Thomas Ó Maol Phádraig at Dunbulloge. O’Keeffe therefore accompanies the Ó Maol Phádraig story at both Rahanisky and Dunbulloge, while also reaching back into the 1577 pardon sequence.
What Fiant 5618 changes
Fiant 5618 does not introduce an entirely new Cork population. It reveals that the relationships visible in 1585 continued. Thomas Ó Maol Phádraig appears at Dunbulloge with O’Keeffe and O’Moroghowe, while Thomas fitz David Óg Barry appears in the same pardon. The latter belonged to the same Barry sibling group represented by Redmond in 1577 and Richard in 1585.
The sequence is unusually compact:
1577 — Domhnall mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig; Redmond mac David Barry of Rahanisky in the immediately adjacent pardon.
1585 — Tadhg mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig; Conchobhar Óg mac Conchobhair Ó Maol Phádraig; Richard Barry of Rahanisky; Manus O’Keeffe.
1591 — Thomas Ó Maol Phádraig; Donogh O’Keeffe; Tadhg O’Moroghowe; Thomas fitz David Óg Barry in the same pardon.
That pattern is the real significance of the three fiants.
What kind of network was this?
These records belong to the years between the First Desmond Rebellion, the Second Desmond Rebellion and the conflicts that would eventually merge into the Nine Years’ War. The Crown repeatedly used pardons to draw local lords and their followings back into obedience. The same men could serve the government at one moment, resist it at another and later receive another pardon. Families such as MacCarthy, Barry, Condon, O’Keeffe and O’Mahony survived by negotiating within that unstable political environment.
The Rahanisky Barrys illustrate the mixture of functions involved. Richard began as a military retainer of MacCarthy Muskerry and later became head of a substantial estate. By 1586 an inquisition described him as seized of Rahanisky and associated lands amounting to eight ploughlands, while Edmond Barry’s later reconstruction follows the estate through additional holdings, rents and settlements. A lordly establishment of this kind combined land, livestock, military obligation, household service and local administration.
The Ó Maol Phádraig men repeatedly appear inside that world. In these particular fiants their position is defined more by place and company than by occupational labels, and their company was remarkably consistent.
Was the connection already Barry-facing in 1577?
The later records allow another reading of Domhnall’s appearance in 1577. The Cork Ó Maol Phádraigs may already have been connected to the wider Barry service world, with individual family members operating under MacCarthy lords when required. The Barrys themselves show how such an arrangement worked: Richard and Redmond remained members of the Barry dynasty while serving Sir Cormac MacCarthy militarily.
Domhnall’s presence in a MacCarthy pardon therefore need not mark a separate Ó Maol Phádraig branch or a later change of allegiance. The men of 1577 and 1585 may represent the same family moving inside one overlapping system of Barry and MacCarthy lordship.
An older Barry shadow
That possibility brings the investigation back to Robert Omolpatrik in 1306. Robert appears in the Irish Justiciary Rolls during litigation involving Philip de Barry of Kilbrin, while the later Rahanisky Barrys belonged to another cadet line of the wider Cork de Barry dynasty.
The intervening centuries remain largely silent, yet the recurrence is notable. An Ó Maol Phádraig already appears in the legal and landed society of the Barry dynasty in the early fourteenth century, and Tudor Ó Maol Phádraigs repeatedly appear around Barry descendants nearly three centuries later.
The 1306 record therefore provides a much older precedent for an Ó Maol Phádraig–Barry association in Cork. Whether that represents continuity remains open, but the Tudor records make the question worth asking.
References
Barry, Rev. Edmond. “The Barrymore Records.” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. Relevant sections dealing with the Barry Roe family, Rahanisky, Richard fitz David Barry, Redmond Buidhe Barry and the 1570s–1590s fiants.
Fitzpatrick, Mike, and Matthew Fitzpatrick. “Ó Maol Phádraig — the Name, the People, and the Clans, Part III.” Journal of the Fitzpatrick Clan Society. Discussion of the early modern Ó Maol Phádraig records, including Fiants 3082 and 4752.
MacCotter, Paul. “Lordship and Colony in Anglo-Norman Kerry, 1177–1400.” Discussion of Diarmaid mac Diarmada MacCarthy and the development of the Duhallow MacCarthy line.
Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland / Elizabethan Fiants. Fiants 3082, 3083, 4752 and 5618.
Calendar of Justiciary Rolls of Ireland. Proceedings involving Eustace le Poer and Philip de Barry of Kilbrin, 1305–1307, including the 1306 appearance of Robert Omolpatrik.