While Mackay exploited the gap in the Jacobite line at Aughrim Castle, Ginkle attacked the center and broke the Jacobite infantry under Hamilton.  Some 2,000 of Dorrington's men, trapped and surrounded in The Bloody Hollow where they had previously been so successful, were forced to surrender.  Sarsfield galloped to the scene, but too late, perhaps because he had been ordered away from the conflict by St Ruth.  With a heavy heart, he gathered the remnants of his defeated army and retreated toward Limerick

        It was the bloodiest battle in Irish history, with almost 400 officers and at least 7,700 men, 5,000 Irish and 2,700 English killed, including Captain Sorley MacDonnell of Moye, whose father, James, was a close friend of Sarsfield. Some estimates claim as many as 9,000 casualties.  In the early hours of 13 July,  after a torrential rain during the night, the English, in savage fury, murdered more than 2,000 prisoners.  It is said that the little stream at the base of the hill ran red with blood. The dead were stripped of their weapons and left unburied to rot.  Packs of wild dogs took possession of the field, feeding on dead heroes for months.  Some time after the battle, looking on Kilcommadan Hill from a distance, it appeared that a large flock of sheep were grazing there.  But there were no sheep, only the bones of Irish sons and husbands.

        The city of Galway surrendered shortly after the battle without a fight, and the Irish were forced to withdraw behind the walls of Limerick. The French fleet arrived too late to relieve the siege. One of the Jacobite officers who, in spite of being wounded, extricated his regiment from disaster, was Gilleasbuig Mhór MacDonell, Lord Murlough and Kilmore, Colkitto MacDonell’s eldest son, who served as a captain in Antrim’s regiment. Ultimately, the tragedy could not have been averted by any Irish, royalist or Catholic plan or action. Ireland had been crushed by international and ideological forces too great to resist. "The War of the Two Kings” was finally concluded by "The Treaty of Limerick,” signed after Sarsfield surrendered that last Irish stronghold on October 3, 1691. A clause of the treaty allowed Sarsfield to emigrate to France with some 10,000 of his soldiers. Another clause protected the estates of Alasdair MacDonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim, but many of the regiment, including Daniel MacDonnell of Moye and his two sons, went into exile. Louis XIV had to recognize William as King of England, while James became “le roi Jacques,” without reference to what he was king of.  Henry Luttrell was killed in Dublin a year later. Whether his death was murder, or an execution, is a matter of point of view. The Irish Brigade of the French Army was reduced to a quarter of its former size and some 12,000 Irishmen found themselves unemployed in a foreign land where none were concerned for their welfare. Sarsfield was mortally wounded two years later while fighting William again at Landen in Flanders. He is credited with the dying statement, “Oh, that this were for Ireland!”

        Many stories have come from this tragic milestone in Irish history. Brede Lohan, born and raised in Aughrim, but now living in Shannon, gave me this poem, which he attributes to Emily Lawless:

When Saxon’s s sons the scene of death
And robbery had fled,
An Irish wolfhound sought his lord
Mid heaps of pilfered dead.
And strove with more than human love
To rob death of its prize
Then moaned a dirge above his head
And kissed his lips and eyes.
When Autumn penciled Summers blooms
In tints of Gold and Red
And Winter over hill and dale
A ghostly mantle spread
The weird wind wailed across the moor
And moaned adown the dell
Yet guarded well that noble dog
His master where he fell.
Spring timidly was glancing down
Upon the corpse - strewn plain
Where seven months long sentinel
The faithful dog had lain
When carelessly across the moor
An English soldier trod
And paused beneath the only bones
Remaining on the sod.
Up sprang the faithful wolf dog
He knew a foe was near
And feared that foe would desecrate
The bones he loved so dear.
Fierce and defiant there he stood
The soldier seized with dread
Took aim and fired, the noble dog
Fell on his master dead.
 

        Whig pamphleteer Forman, writing from Amsterdam in 1727, refers to the Irish regiments as “seasoned to dangers, and so perfected in the art of war, that not only the Sergeants and Corporals, but even the private men can make very good officers . . .” He goes on to comment on their victories against the Duke of Savoy in the 1702 affair of Cremona saying:

“They wrested Cremona out of the hands of Eugene, when by surprise, he had made himself master of all the town, except the Irish quarters, and saw the Marshal, Duke de Villeroy, his prisoner, who was taken by Colonel MacDonnell, an Irishman in the Emperor’s service. By that action, hardly to be paralleled in history, they saved the whole French army on that side of the Alps. . .”

        Brian MacDonnell of Bonaborough in Leinster, son of Alexander, was another of Sarsfield’s faithful heroes, although he did not go to France either. He had been a tanner by trade and served as a Lieutenant in the Westmeath Volunteer Regiment of Infantry commanded by Colonel Thomas ÓToole. He had military training and skills from his family’s tradition as gallóglaigh, and put them to good use in America. A letter from Sarsfield to the English commander, the original of which may be seen in Trinity College Library, Dublin, shows that Brian was loyal to the Stuart cause to the bitter end:

       Limerick, October 8, 1691

       To George Clarke, secretary-at-war.

       Sir,

       Be pleased to get general Ginkel’s pass for
       the under named officers to go into the country to
       dispose of what effects they have left there, and
       to return with their arms, equipage, and servants,
       and, you will oblige

       your most humble servant, sir.
       LUCAN

       Lieutenant-colonel Birne and Captain Birne
       captain Garrett Birne
*     captain Bryan McDonnell
       captain George Brenan
       captain Thomas Bedford
       captain John Birne
       captain Bryan O'Neile
       lieutenant Daniel Doyle
       lieutenant Peter Byrne
       ensign James Birne
*     ensign Charles McDonnell
       lieutenant Patrick Carroll
       ensign Martin Murphy
       ensign Peter Bath.

        It was a good time to leave Ireland, which was what the Sasunnaich wanted the native Irish to do, after all. Brian MacDonnell’s possession of his land grant in Delaware was the reason why he came to America in 1691, rather than being condemned to go to Austria with the “Wild Geese,” where he would have wandered the bickering countries of Europe until he shed his blood on some forgotten battlefield, buried in some nameless cemetery.  Apparently followed to America by his younger brother Archibald, who was too young to fight at the Boyne or at Aughrim, Brian defeated English oppression in the only way possible. There is no information about Archibald’s wife, but she may well have been the first American born member of this sept of the MacDonnells. Brian and many of his comrades were immortalized by Emily Lawless:

War-battered dogs are we,
Fighters in every clime;
Fillers of trench and of grave,
Mockers bemocked by time.
War-dogs hungry and grey,
Gnawing a naked bone,
Fighters in every clime -
Every cause but our own.

        The majority of the rank and file of the rural population did not follow their chiefs into exile, however. They stayed in the primitive hovels to which they had been progressively relegated by the Norman tyrants, like barnacles on a ship’s hull. No longer able to rely on their patriarchs for compassion or for justice, they paid high rents to foreigners for their increasingly crude, one room shanties. The lucky ones were able to share their smoky abodes warmed by a peat fire, but no hearth or chimney, with a cow, a pig, or some chickens, while their half-naked children played and slept on the dirt floor in their animals’ dung. Some were less lucky and squatted in ditches, or built huts like birds’ nests of a few sticks and some straw, which the authorities usually removed once a year.

        William of Orange wished to honor the treaty of Limerick, which provided that Catholics were to enjoy such rights of worship “as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles II.” But the Protestant nobility in Ireland would not have it and William gave way. A series of anti-Catholic statutes were enacted, called the “Penal Laws,” that were to endure through the reign of George II.

        Under these laws, Irish Catholics could not sit in Parliament, or vote in parliamentary elections. They were excluded from the bar, the bench, the university, the navy and all public bodies. They were forbidden to possess arms, or a horse worth more than £5. No Catholic could keep a school, or send his children to be educated abroad. Since Catholics were barred from buying or inheriting real property, almost all the remaining land still owned by Catholics passed into Protestant hands. By 1700, Protestants, who were never more than 20% of the population, owned 90% of the land. Any member of a Catholic family who became Protestant had special privileges. For instance, the eldest son, by becoming a Protestant, could deprive his Catholic father of the management and disposal of his property. Catholic bishops and other higher ecclesiastics were banished from the country and were liable to be hanged, drawn and quartered if they returned. A certain limited number of registered priests were permitted, but unregistered priests were subject to the same penalties as bishops. The intent was that, once the current generation of clergy died, no new ones could be trained and ordained.

        Randal MacDonnell, 4th Earl of Antrim (1680-1721), was suspected of “Jacobite conspiracy” in the political crisis of 1714-1715, but nothing was proved. His son, Alexander, 5th earl, was brought up as a Protestant by his uncle, 3rd Viscount Massereene.

        In Ulster, Protestants enjoyed a privilege, called “The Ulster Custom” denied to Catholic Irishmen. This practice, which was never an actual statute, gave the tenant the right of occupancy. A Protestant tenant farmer who raised a crop, or urban worker who had improved his property, could sell his produce or his leasehold and generate cash for passage money for himself and his family across the Atlantic. The landlord could only stop the conveyance if he could show good cause, a provision intended to keep Protestant control of Ulster and to prohibit Catholics from buying their way back into the province.

        But then the Sasunnaich determined that what had worked so well to suppress the Catholics, needed also to be applied to “dissenters,” who were now in the majority in Ulster and occupied many of the positions in government, be it Magistrate, Tax Collector or Postmaster. The “Test Acts” of 1704 and 1705 sought to establish the Anglican Church as the “official” church and to declare the Presbyterian Church “illegal.” The Leinster MacDonnells would have to give up their religion again for the sake of political correctness if they were to retain their property and positions. Presbyterian clergy could not perform marriage ceremonies and those previously married within the Presbyterian Church were declared to be living as fornicators. Presbyterians, like Catholics, could no longer hold any military or civil office, no matter how minor. In Londonderry, for instance, 10 of the 12 aldermen and 14 of the 24 burgesses were put out of office. This act of betrayal greatly angered Ulster Presbyterians, who had supported Cromwell and fought in the 1689 siege of Londonderry, but their only relief from tyranny was in flight. Once in America, many wrote to their families of the wonderful opportunities and unlimited land available to be wrested from the nomadic Indians. Thousands of Scots-Irish followed their pioneers so that by 1770, it was said, some 12,000 Ulstermen were reaching America each year. It was another hundred years before their Catholic neighbors were generally able to do the same. Be that as it may, at the outbreak of the American Revolution, fully one third of the American population were Gaelic.

        In Ireland, by the 1840s, some 64% of the holdings in Connacht were smaller than five acres and nationwide, the potato constituted the sole source of food for about three million people. Catholic Ireland was reduced to living from the produce of a tiny rented potato bed. When “Phytophthora infestans” (potato blight) struck in 1845, the sole sustenance of all these people disappeared before their eyes. Crops that appeared healthy when dug, rapidly became moldy and disintegrated, leaving death by starvation, typhus, dysentery and cholera to accompany the frigid winter of 1846-47 as the precipitate cause of reducing the Irish population by more than 1,500,000 in ten years. In Protestant Ulster, the thriving linen manufacture, prohibited to Catholics, allowed the “Unionists” to survive by purchasing adequate food supplies from abroad at market prices. Almost the entire burden of the potato famine was born by the Catholic south, the ultimate result of 800 years of English greed, tyranny and sectarian genocide, leaving a heritage of tortured ghosts to join the “little people” as the guardian spirits of the Gaedhil. It was left to later generations of Irish heros, ÓConnell, Parnell, Pearse, Connolly, Markievicz, Tone and hundreds of others, including many MacDonnells, to lead the resurrection of the Celtic civilization.

May we never taste of death nor quit this vale of tears
Until we see the English go begging down the years;
Packs on their backs to earn a penny pay,
In little leaking boots, as we went in our day.

Time has o’erthrown, the wind has blown away
Alexander, Caesar, such great names as they.
See Troy and Tara where in grass they lie -
So even the very English yet might die!

                                    A 17th Century Gaelic Bard
                                                  Translated by Maire MacEntee

        The Penal Laws made it virtually impossible for most of the Catholic Irish to accumulate passage money to emigrate to America at this time. A Catholic tenant had no tenure and was at the mercy of his Protestant landlord. If the tenant raised crops, he was prohibited from selling them and if he improved the property, the landlord could remove him or raise the rent. For many Irish, potatoes were the only food they ever saw. Besides, English religious laws in the American colonies were as restrictive against Catholics as they were in Ireland. Their only viable option was to enlist in a regiment for service in Europe, where their Irish heritage was generally lost in a generation or so, absorbed by the entrenched cultures of their host countries.

        The Sasunnaich did all they could to destroy the records of their atrocities. There are no official Diocesan records remaining of Tighearna Coille, in fact there are no parish records at all for the entire 17th Century for the Catholic Diocese of Dublin, which includes Wicklow. Betham’s Index to Irish Wills shows: “Alexander McDonnell, of Spinans, Donoghmore, Co. Wicklow, farmer 1687, I. p. 252.” This will was apparently destroyed in a Dublin fire. The area along the foot of the Wicklow Mountains was called “Clanndonnell Countrie” as late as 1641. Spynins Hill (or Spinans) is located in north Upper Talbotstown between the River Slanry and the Glen of Imale. The name Donoghmore is from the Gaelic Domhnach (Holy Place), and Mhór (Great), or Great Holy Place. This name appears in fourteen places in Ireland. Another will listed in Betham’s Index was that of Owen MacDonnell of Kailebeg (north of Spinans), gentleman of 1663 (I, p. 95).

        In 1892, Hercules Henry Graves MacDonnell, an accomplished Dublin solicitor and published author, published a 46 page account of the descendants of the MacDonnells of Tynekill (sic), who had been brought up as Protestants since the time of James MacDonnell, 7th of Leinster.  James was a Catholic Confederate leader who had died in 1661, having lost all in the service of his country and his religion. Hercules was the third son of the Rev. Richard MacDonnell, Provost of Trinity College Dublin from 1852 until his death in 1867.  We found a copy of this work at the Royal Irish Academy, which had been donated in 1934 by Lord Moyne.  But Sir Walter FitzGerald, in his 1905 article for the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society, refers to a 75 page account by Hercules, with the same title, published in 1897 by a different publisher.  In the earlier edition, Hercules tells us that James' heir, Fergus, 8th of Leinster, moved to Wicklow c.1690 where he leased the farm of Coolavina or Coolavin, an estate of more than 398 acres.  The baptisms of his twin sons, John and Thomas, were entered in the Church of Ireland Register of Wicklow in 1699.  In the Appendix to the later edition of Hercules' work, Coolavin is said to have been located a quarter mile north of Newrath Bridge and lay between the Dublin road and the "Broad Lough," or long tidal water that runs for three or four miles close along the shore and next to the railway from Wicklow.  On the 1838 Ordnance Map, there is a house marked as the "Old Mill" next to the stream from Newrath Bridge which apparently was the farm occupied by Fergus in 1690, and held by his son Charles and their descendants until 1844. The two adjoining townlands are called "Tinakilly."

        Fergus' eldest son, Charles, 9th of Leinster, who married Mary Hall, daughter of Richard Hall of Newtown Mount Kennedy, had his son, Francis, baptized in Wicklow in 1727, and his son Richard (named after his maternal grandfather) baptized in 1729, as well as others down to 1741.  Charles left Co. Wicklow in 1747 and moved to Baytown, Barony of Dunboyne, Co. Meath.  It was told in the family that Charles went to London to "seek for some favor or redress from the king himself."  Another version asserts that he lost his property or interest in Coolavin and lost a lawsuit to recover it in Wicklow, whereupon he appealed to the courts in London.  Hercules H G MacDonnell, a noted solicitor himself, contended it was more likely that his suit was for the forfeited property in Laois, and other records indicate that members of the family continued to reside in Wicklow until 1845.  Hercules reports only that Charles filed a suit in the Irish Court of Exchequer, that an appeal was made to the House of Lords in 1739, and that the final decision was against him.  At the time of Hercules' writing,  the records of the House of Lords were not accessible, not yet having been arranged and indexed.  Hercules did not know if Charles ever actually had an interview with the king, although he thought it possible.  Charles did bring back a favorable impression of the courtesy he received in London, since he named one of his sons George, after the king.  Charles' first wife, Mary, died in 1758.  Charles married again in 1760 to Mary Begg, but had no issue.  Charles died May 7, 1767 and was buried at Kilbride.

         Charles' eldest son, Francis, 10th of Leinster, continued to reside at Baytown until 1793.  He died June 8, 1807 leaving several children, but Hercules H G MacDonnell does not list them. Rather he reports that, as of 1892, there were no surviving representatives of Francis' line.  We have no information confirming the exhaustion of this senior line of the MacDonnells of Leinster however and, in fairness, it should be noted that by asserting the demise of Francis' progeny, Hercules has a conflicting interest, in that his father, Richard, would then be the progenitor of the new senior line.  The obvious and fair solution to this quandary brought about entirely by the false and alien pretensions of feudalism, is to elect the best qualified of the surviving Leinster MacDonnells to be chief

        Richard, 2nd son of Charles, 9th of Leinster, settled in Peacockstown, near Ratoath, Co. Meath, where he married a daughter of Captain Sandys.  Nearby was the residence of Mr Lowther, M.P., who was known as "Father of the Irish House of Commons."  His friendship with Richard led him to procure a Revenue appointment in the City of Cork for Richard's eldest son Robert.  Richard MacDonnell died in 1805 in his son's house in Cork.

        In Cork, Robert married Susanna Nugent of Ardmore, Co. Waterford, on August 27, 1786.  She was a granddaughter of Alderman Gillett of Youghal.  Robert's eldest son, Richard, was born June 10, 1787.  Robert prospered for most of his life but, due to the sudden loss of value of his properties after the fall of Napoleon, along with many others, he died in Dublin, an impoverished and disappointed man, on February 23, 1821.  For many years, he resided at Westgrove, later called High Park, near Douglas, and later at Ballindeary, near Cork, between Carigaline and Oyster Haven.  His widow died in her son's house, Knocklyon, Co. Dublin, November 30, 1836.

        Robert's son Richard obtained a fellowship in Trinity College, Dublin, at the unusually early age of twenty-one.  On January 26, 1810 he married Jane, daughter of the Very Rev. Richard Graves, Dean of Ardagh.  They had nine sons and five daughters.  Richard earned his LLD in 1813, which he later gave up when he took Holy Orders.  In 1814 Richard signed the Petition in favor of Catholic Emancipation.  He was made professor of Oratory in 1816, and of Mathematics in 1820.  In 1825 he published advanced views on Reforms In Academic Education, which were adopted over time. December 30, 1851 he was appointed Provost of T.C.D. by the Earl of Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant, and served from 1852 until he died, January 24, 1867, governing the college in his firm and impartial manner.  He is interred in the vaults of Trinity College Chapel. 

        Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell (1814 - 1881), KCMG, CB, the provost's second son, was a throwback to the lords of The Isles in more ways than one.  Not only did he have the yellow hair that would earn him the appellation "Buidhe," but his spirit led him to the governance of British colonies around the world, with competence and style, including Gambia,  St Lucia, St Vincent, South Australia, Nova Scotia and Hong Kong.  Richard was knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace November 28, 1855.  Rev. Richard MacDonnell's other eight sons included another member of the Bar, two members of the clergy and three military officers, the youngest of whom was Major General Arthur Robert MacDonnell, RE and JP.

        Charles MacDonnell, apparently an heir of the senior line of the MacDonnells of Leinster, wrote in his diary, titled “Diary Of A German Diplomat,” that he was born in Wicklow in the 1820s and inherited a family estate so burdened with debt that he sold it and entered Austrian service c.1845. He was made aide-de-camp to another Irishman, Count Nugent, and was himself made a count and took up residence in Rome. And so, in a very real sense, The MacDonnells of Leinster were also victims of "The Potato Famine," which event so impoverished Ireland as to discourage anyone from living there.

        Still, in 1860, Charles MacDonnell returned to Ireland to recruit a new Irish brigade to defend the Papal States against Garibaldi. A Dubliner wrote of him: “If ever chivalrous devotion to a fallen cause was personified it was in this loyal and brave-hearted gentleman.” Charles took 1,800 recruits to Italy but, five months later, the Papal army collapsed and the surviving Irish were sent home.

        Three years later, the count stumbled upon a library in the village of Frascati, near Rome, that had been established by Henry, Cardinal of York, last of the princes of the Royal Stuarts. Upon the death of his brother, Prince Charles Stuart, Henry had commissioned medals to be struck which declared, “Henry IX, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of men, King of England, France, Scotland and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.” Once the Bishop of Frascati, at his death, Henry bequeathed his library to the college in the town, directing that it should be always accessible to the public. Charles MacDonnell whiled away a summer translating Henry’s rare and poignant diary, seated day after day in the same chair that had been occupied, fifty years previously, by the crownless heir of three kingdoms.

        Meanwhile, in 1883, the British government demolished Charles MacDonnell's home, retaining only the name, and built a manor on the site for Captain Robert Halpin, captain of The Great Eastern, who had laid 2,600 miles of telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1866. William and Bee Power purchased the estate in the late 20th Century, renovated it, and established a well known luxury hotel, which still bears a corrupted version of the name, although the present owners are ignorant of its source. Both Charles and Henry are fading memories but, even so, the MacDonnells of Leinster continue their unbroken succession from the lords of The Isles in Free Ireland.

        This is the family that the Lord Lyon now claims are not qualified to represent Clan Donald as chief.

Trinity College Campanile, Dublin

        In 2001, this writer, searching for the seat of my ancestors, and having obtained no information from Wicklow’s historical society, was driving out of town, planning to continue my search in Talbotstown. I glanced to my right and spied a discreet sign which I thought had brought all my research together. Directly across the road, on my left, was an ancient Irish cemetery, its church long gone, apparently victim to Cromwell’s roundheads. Not knowing what I might find, I brazenly drove up the long, impressive drive toward the grove of trees at the top of the hill. I found that the grove shaded an elegant small hotel. The manager gave me permission to take photographs, but a later e-mail to the owner, Mr. Powers, went unanswered. Nevertheless, I was confident that our heritage was found.  But our story is more complex than I thought, new doors continued to open, and the search went on.

        Having received an article on the MacDonnells of Tynekill (sic) from their 1905 journal, sent to me by The County Kildare Archaeological Society, I discovered the existence of a book written by Hercules Henry Graves MacDonnell in the late 19th Century which had been used as a source by the author of the article, Sir Walter FitzGerald.  So, in 2006, I went to Ireland to photograph Tighearna Coille and to look for HHG MacDonnell's 75 page account.  I found a 46 page edition of the work at The Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, which had been donated in 1934 by Lord Moyne.  Then, in September, I received an e-mail from Ian MacDonnell of Melbourne, Australia, telling me that a mutual friend, Ron Mathews, of Port Arlington, in Co. Laois, had told him of me, and that we had missed each other at Tighearna Coille by one day.  As it turned out, Ian had the later 75 page version of Hercules' work which he e-mailed to me, so that now we have it all.  Its relevant content has been analyzed and posted to this website, so that, hopefully, the information will not be lost again.  Next, in November, 2006, I received an e-mail from P. J. Goode in Dublin, telling me that he had found a volume of "Celtica" in a Dublin bookstore which, in an article written by Anne ÓSullivan, described and analysed "The Tinnakill Duanaire," discussed above.  Since then, we have been working to acquire a copy of this document, which will add significantly to the saga.  ÓSullivan also refers to another document we did not know about, the 1631"Ostend Duanaire," written for Captain Somhairle MacDonnell of Antrim while he served with the Antrim Regiment in Flanders.  This should be our next inquiry, as our quest to recover our heritage goes on.

Built in 1883 on the probable site of the estate of the MacDonnell governors of Wicklow

Tinakilly House Hotel, Wicklow

 

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

              Sir Walter Scott
                                         From the Lay of the Last Minstrel

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