Spanish land at Kinsale

By ART Mac EOIN

As part of efforts to extend English influence and control of Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster commenced in 1586. Confiscated Irish lands were divided into large estates to be rented to English Planters who were forbidden to rent to the native Irish or to marry among them.

The Ulster Plantation faced a number of difficulties, with settlers open to attack and an inherent instability due to native Irish tenants and servants being employed on the large estates.

Between 1594 and 1603, the leading Ulster Gaeilc Chieftains, Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell, led an insurrectionary war against the government of Queen Elizabeth I. Although the fighting began in Ulster, it later spread throughout the country.

In 1598, O'Neill and his allies gained a huge victory over English forces at the Battle of the Yellow Ford on the Blackwater River. The rebellion spread to Munster and many English settlers were killed or forced to flee the walled towns.

The Gaelic Chieftains appealed to the King of Spain, an enemy of Queen Elizabeth, to send troops to Ireland. When Spanish troops arrived, they landed in Kinsale, County Cork. In the Battle of Kinsale, fought on Christmas Eve in 1601, the English under Lord Mountjoy defeated a combined force of Irish and Spanish troops. This defeat was to prove decisive for the Gaelic Chieftains and for the Irish people as a whole.

A Spanish fleet occupied the port of Kinsale in September, with about 3,300 men under their general Don Juan del Aguila. Four other vessels, carrying under a thousand soldiers, were driven back to Spain by storms.

When Phillip III and his council were deciding on an Irish destination port, Killybegs, Galway and Limerick were all likely destinations. Kinsale was never mentioned for, of all the Munster ports, it was the worst choice to withstand a siege, situated as it was in a hollow and with poor walls.

It was merely the weather that drove the Spanish into Kinsale. It only had a token garrison, which fled immediately, leaving the Spanish unopposed entry. However, they did not get the expected support from James Fitzmaurice, the súgán (straw) earl and Florence McCarthy; they had been arrested by an English army under George Carew.

Mountjoy arrived in Cork on 27 September with a small force. O'Neill was reluctant to leave Ulster unprotected and would have preferred to let Mountjoy and George Carew exhaust their forces and supplies in a longer winter siege in barren hinterland. However, he did reluctantly march south with O'Donnell and fighting began at dawn on Christmas Eve, according to the old Julian calendar.

The defeat of the Irish forces and their Spanish allies at the Battle of Kinsale had profound and enduring repercussions for the Irish nation. The English were determined to destroy the power of the Ulster Chieftains. Under the Treaty of Mellifont, signed in March 1603, Irish leaders were forced to give up Irish customs, to live according to English law, and to allow English officials into their territory.

The new English Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, travellled around Ulster enforcing English laws and customs. By 1607, O'Neill and other Gaelic chieftains could no longer stand the restictions on their authority and decided to leave Ireland forever. Their departure became known in folk memory as the Flight of Earls. The Irish people in Ulster were now leaderless and the area was completely under the control of the English government.

The Spanish naval fleet which came to aid the Irish effort against English rule landed at Kinsale on 21 September 1601, 500 years ago this week.