Flight of the Earls

The Flight of the Earls (Imeacht na nIarlaí) took place in September 1607, when Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and about ninety followers, left Ulster in Ireland for mainland Europe. Their permanent exile was a watershed event in Irish history, symbolizing the end of the old Gaelic order. The event was first named as a "flight" in a book by the Reverend C. P. Meehan that was published in 1868. Historians disagree to what extent the earls wanted to start a war with Spanish help to re-establish their positions, or whether they accepted exile as the best way of coping with their recent loss of status since the Treaty of Mellifont in 1603. Meehan argued that the earls' tenants wanted a new war: "Withal, the people of Ulster were full of hope that O'Neill would return with forces to evict the evictors, but the farther they advanced into this agreeable perspective, the more rapidly did its charms disappear." After the defeat at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell traveled to Spain to seek support from Philip III. Unsuccessful, he died in Spain and was succeeded by his younger brother Rory O'Donnell. The O'Neills and O'Donnells retained their lands and titles, although with much-diminished extent and authority. However, the countryside was laid bare in a campaign of destruction in 1602, which induced famine in 1603. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was pardoned under the terms of the Treaty of Mellifont in March 1603 and submitted to the crown. When King James VI and I took the English throne in 1603, he quickly proceeded to issue pardons for the Irish lords and their rebel forces. Already reigning as king of Scotland, he had a better understanding of the advantages from working with local chiefs in the Scottish Highlands. However, as in other Irish lordships, the 1603 peace involved O'Neill losing substantial areas of land to his cousins and neighbors, who would be granted freeholds under the English system, instead of the looser arrangements under the former Brehon law system.