Florence Mac Carthy - Succession Disputes

Succession Disputes

MacCarthy returned to Ireland (though he was still technically a prisoner) in November 1593, following his wife and child. In the next year, his uncle Owen (the MacCarthy Reagh) died and was succeeded by his nephew, Donal na Pípí. The latter bound himself in the sum of £10,000 not to divert the MacCarthy Reagh succession from MacCarthy, who was in turn his tanist. Florence appeared before the council at Dublin in June 1594 to reply to the accusations of Lord Barry, a local rival of MacCarthy's with whom he had a land dispute, which again implicated him pro-Spanish intrigues with William Stanley. Florence then returned to England by licence and remained there until the spring of 1596 in a vain attempt to prosecute Barry.

In 1596, Donal MacCarthy, MacCarthy Mór and Earl of Clancarthy, died without male issue and the matter of the MacCarthy succession became highly complicated. Clancar's estate should by law have reverted to the crown, but Florence had a mortgage on the lands and also had right by his wife. Another Donal, the Earl's illegitimate son (not to be confused with Donal na Pipi), also asserted a claim, not to the English Earldom, but to the Gaelic title of MacCarthy Mor. Florence MacCarthy would in future correspondence, refer to Donal as "Donal the bastard".

It was most unlikely that the English authorities would acknowledge Florence as MacCarthy Mór or grant him the derived English title – Earl of Clancarthy as they wanted to break up the MacCarthy lands; so the real dispute in law came down to the recovery of lands by Florence from an English mortgagee (William Brown), who had possessed them on account of a debt owed to him by the earl. In June 1598, MacCarthy travelled to England to pursue the matter.

However, the situation was transformed by the arrival in Munster of the Ulster forces of Hugh O'Neill, who was leading a nation-wide rebellion – the Nine Years War – against English government in Ireland. In the autumn, Donal MacCarthy (the late Earl's illegitimate son) was reported to have acknowledged the authority of the rebel O'Neill and assumed the title of MacCarthy Mór; but the O'Sullivan Mór withheld the White Wand or rod of inauguration (which symbolically approved the accession of a chieftain) in favour of Florence MacCarthy. In a desperate situation, when it seemed that all the native lords in Munster were going into rebellion, the crown granted Florence MacCarthy a free pardon, on terms that he immediately withdraw his followers from rebellion in return for qualified acknowledgment of his title against Donal MacCarthy; but he prevaricated and only returned to Munster after Sir Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex – whose favour he had been relying upon – threw up his command as lord lieutenant in Ireland in late 1599 and returned to England under a cloud. Florence MacCarthy had managed to negotiate English support for his claims to land and title, but he also maintained contact with the rebels to the same end. This has made some commentators claim that his real sympathy lay with the rebels, especially as he was described in his youth as being "very zealous in the old religion ". However it is more likely that MacCarthy was using both sides as a lever to further his own aims.