The Nine Years' War (May 1593 – 30 March 1603) was a conflict in Ireland between a confederacy of Irish lords (with Spanish support) and the English-led government. The war was primarily a response to the English Crown's advances into territory traditionally owned by the Gaelic nobility. It was also part of the broader Anglo-Spanish War and the European wars of religion.
The Kingdom of Ireland was established as an English client state in 1542, with various clans accepting English sovereignty under "surrender and regrant". By the early 1590s, widespread resentment against English rule developed amongst the Gaelic nobility, due to the execution of Gaelic lords, the pillaging of settlements by appointed sheriffs and Catholic persecution.
The war is generally considered to have started in May 1593, when Irish lord Hugh Maguire revolted against the appointment of Humphrey Willis as sheriff of Fermanagh. Subsequently an Irish confederacy, led by lords Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Hugh Roe O'Donnell, was formed to resist English incursions into their territory. Across 1593 and 1594, the confederacy utilised guerrilla warfare against royal forces in Ulster and northern Connacht. The confederacy won numerous victories against the royal army, such as the Battle of Clontibret (1595) and the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598). By 1599, the war engulfed the entire island and took on a religious and nationalist dimension.
The confederacy suffered various military losses in 1600, such as the appointment of Charles Blount as Lord Deputy, the establishment of Henry Docwra in Derry and the defection of unsatisfied confederates. The confederacy were not able to secure Spanish reinforcements until the siege of Kinsale (1601–02), where royal forces decimated the confederacy. The war ended with Tyrone signing the Treaty of Mellifont (1603). In 1607, many of the defeated northern lords left Ireland to seek support for a new uprising in the Flight of the Earls, never to return. This marked the end of Gaelic Ireland and paved the way for the Plantation of Ulster.
The Nine Years' War was the largest conflict fought by England in the Elizabethan era and also its costliest. At the height of the conflict (1600–1601) more than 18,000 soldiers were fighting in the English army in Ireland. By contrast, the English army assisting the Dutch during the Eighty Years' War was never more than 12,000 strong at any one time.
Early historians disagreed on the date that the war began. The confederates called it the "eleven years war" in a letter to James I following their surrender. The 17th-century historian Philip O'Sullivan Beare refers to the conflict as the "Fifteen Years War", considering it to have begun in 1588 with the arrival of the Spanish Armada in Ireland. Standish James O'Grady coined the name "Nine Years' War" in the 19th century as he considered the war to have started in 1594.
Contemporary historians consider the war to have begun in May 1593 with Gaelic lord Hugh Maguire resisting the occupation of Fermanagh. The historian James O'Neill has criticised the name "Nine Years' War" and characterises 1593–1594 as a proxy war which England did not yet recognise the scope of until 1594. Hiram Morgan has used the term "Tyrone's Rebellion" to refer to the war, foregrounding the importance of the Earl of Tyrone.
The Nine Years' War was caused by the clashes between the Gaelic Irish lord Hugh O'Neill and the advance of the English state in Ireland, whose control had expanded from merely the Pale to the whole of Ireland. In resisting this advance, O'Neill managed to rally other Irish septs who were dissatisfied with the English government and Catholics who opposed the spread of Protestantism in Ireland.
Rise of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone,The O'Neill
Hugh O'Neill came from the powerful Ó Néill sept of Tír Eoghain, which dominated the centre of the northern province of Ulster. His father, Matthew O'Neill, Baron Dungannon, was the reputed son of Conn O'Neill the Lame, the first O'Neill to be created Earl of Tyrone by the English Crown. Matthew O'Neill had been appointed by Conn as his heir, whereas Conn's eldest surviving son Shane O'Neill was the preferred heir according to the Irish custom of tanistry. After a period of warfare, Shane had Matthew murdered and became O'Neill after his father died. After the murder of Matthew's first heir, Brian, the English authorities spirited the next heir Hugh out of Tyrone to be brought up with the Hovenden family in the Pale. At the parliament of 1585, Hugh O'Neill requested and was granted his English law birthright to the title of Earl of Tyrone. Prior to this and for several years afterwards Hugh O'Neill warred with the aging reigning chief of Tyrone, Turlough Lynagh O'Neill for control of Tyrone. Turlough died in 1595 allowing Hugh to be inaugurated "The O'Neill" against English wishes as this title was forfeited by him and his descendants. Hugh however had also ruthlessly murdered his chief competitor to the title, Shane's son Hugh Gavelagh O'Neill. He also had sub-chiefs who wouldn't toe the line murdered such as Phelim McTurlough O'Neill, lord of Killetra.
From Hugh Roe O'Donnell, his ally, Hugh O'Neill enlisted Scottish mercenaries (known as Redshanks). Within his own territories, O'Neill was entitled to limited military service from his sub-lords or uirithe. He also recruited his tenants and dependants into military service and tied the peasantry to the land to increase food production (see Kern). In addition, he hired large contingents of Irish mercenaries (known as buanadha) under leaders such as Richard Tyrrell. To arm his soldiers, O'Neill bought muskets, ammunition, and pikes from Scotland and England. From 1591, O'Donnell, on O'Neill's behalf, had been in contact with Philip II of Spain, appealing for military aid against their common enemy and citing also their shared Catholicism. With the aid of Spain, O'Neill could arm and feed over 8,000 men, unprecedented for a Gaelic lord, and leaving him well prepared to resist English incursions into Ulster.
By the early 1590s, the north of Ireland was attracting the attention of Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, who had been charged with bringing the area under crown control. A provincial presidency was proposed; the candidate for office was Henry Bagenal, an English colonist settled in Newry, who would seek to impose the authority of the crown through sheriffs to be appointed by the Dublin government. O'Neill had eloped with Bagenal's sister, Mabel, and married her against her brother's wishes; the bitterness of this episode was made more intense after Mabel's early death a few years after the marriage, when she was reportedly in despair about her husband's neglect and his mistresses.
In 1591, Fitzwilliam broke up the MacMahon lordship in Monaghan when The MacMahon, hereditary leader of the sept, resisted the imposition of an English sheriff; he was hanged and his lordship divided. There was an outcry, with several sources alleging corruption against Fitzwilliam, but the same policy was soon applied in Longford (territory of the O'Farrells) and East Breifne (Cavan – territory of the O'Reillys). Any attempt to further the same in the O'Neill and O'Donnell territories was bound to be resisted by force of arms.
The most significant difficulty for English forces in confronting O'Neill lay in the natural defences that Ulster enjoyed. By land there were only two viable points of entry to the province for troops marching from the south: at Newry in the east, and Sligo in the west – the terrain in between was largely mountains, woodland, bog, and marshes. Sligo Castle was held by the O'Connor sept, but suffered constant threat from the O'Donnells; the route from Newry into the heart of Ulster ran through several easily defended passes and could only be maintained in wartime with a punishing sacrifice by the Crown of men and money.
The English did have a foothold within Ulster, around Carrickfergus north of Belfast Lough, where a small colony had been planted in the 1570s; but here too the terrain was unfavorable for the English, since Lough Neagh and the river Bann, the lower stretch of which ran through the dense forest of Glenconkeyn, formed an effective barrier on the eastern edge of the O'Neill territory. A further difficulty lay in the want of a port on the northern sea coast where the English might launch an amphibious attack into O'Neill's rear. The English strategic situation was complicated by interference from Scots clans, which were supplying O'Neill with soldiers and materials and playing upon the English need for local assistance, while keeping an eye to their own territorial influence in the Route (present-day County Antrim).