Shane O'Neill - Relationship With The English

Relationship With The English

Although Shane had allied himself with the Scottish MacDonnell clan, who had settled in Antrim, against the English, Queen Elizabeth I, on succeeding to the English throne in 1558, inclined to come to terms with Shane, who after his father's death functioned as de facto chief of the formidable O'Neill clan. She accordingly agreed to recognise his claims to the chiefship, thus throwing over Brian O'Neill, son of the murdered Matthew, baron of Dungannon, if Shane would submit to her authority and that of her deputy. O'Neill, however, refused to put himself in the power of Sussex without a guarantee for his safety; and his claims in other respects were so exacting, that Elizabeth consented to measures being taken to subdue him and to restore Brian.

An attempt to increase the enmity of the O'Donnells against him was frustrated by Shane's seizure of Calvagh O'Donnell in a monastery some time after O'Neill's invasion of Tír Chonaill became an embarrassing rout of O'Neills forces. Elizabeth, whose prudence and parsimony were averse to so formidable an undertaking as the complete subjugation of the powerful Irish chief, desired peace with him at almost any price; especially when the devastation of his territory by Sussex brought him no nearer to submission, after Shane's dramatic destruction of much of Sussex's withdrawing army at the Battle of the Red Sagums, 18 July 1561. Sussex, indignant at Shane's request for his half-sister Lady Frances Radclyffe's hand in marriage, and his demand for the withdrawal of the now isolated English garrison from Armagh, received no support from the Queen, who sent the earl of Kildare to arrange terms with O'Neill. The latter, making some trifling concessions, consented to present himself before Elizabeth.

Accompanied by the Irish Earls of Ormonde and Kildare, he reached London on 4 January 1562. William Camden describes the wonder which O'Neill's wild gallowglasses occasioned in the English capital, with their heads bare, their long hair falling over their shoulders and clipped short in front above the eyes, and clothed in rough yellow shirts. Elizabeth was less concerned with the respective claims of Brian and Shane, the one resting on an English patent and the other on the Gaelic custom, than with the question of policy involved in supporting or rejecting the demands of her proud suppliant. Characteristically, she temporised; but finding that O'Neill was in danger of becoming a tool in the hands of Spanish intriguers, she permitted him to return to Ireland, "recognising" him as "The O'Neill" and of Tyrone (meaningless, as she had no authority to do so, and it was already done); though a reservation was made of the rights of Hugh O'Neill, who had meantime succeeded his brother Brian as baron of Dungannon, Brian having been murdered in April 1562 by his kinsman Turlough Luineach O'Neill. At that time he was even designated the 2nd Earl of Tyrone, but the grant was never delivered, as Shane turned back to hostilities.