In above map, small piece east of L. Currane, and north of word "Macgillicuddy," has been shaded as 3, instead of as 5. Also, small piece nearly surrounded by as لال OWEN MOR THE JOURNAL ОР THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF IRELAND FOR THE YEAR 1906. PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS-PART IV., VOL. XXXVI. Papers. THE LORDSHIP OF MAC CARTHY MÓR. BY W. F. BUTLER, M.A., F.R.U.I., MEMBER, [Read JUNE 18, 1906.] PART I. [To avoid constant repetitions, the authorities consulted are here given. The greater part of this paper is based on the Survey of Desmond, with the accompanying maps, in vol. dcxxv of the Carew MSS., preserved in the Lambeth Library. I have supplemented the maps by details drawn from the Books of Survey and Distribution from Cork and Kerry, Vallancey's copies of the Down Survey barony maps of Kerry, and the Down Survey maps of Bere and Bantry. For genealogical details re the Mac Carthys, I have relied on "The Life and Letters of Florence Mac Carthy Mór." For the historical details, I follow the entries in Smith's and Gibson's "Histories of Cork," as well as the Calendars of the State Papers. Special mention should be made of a work on Kerry History, composed in the eighteenth century, apparently by a member of the Franciscan community of Muckross, and published under the title, "Ancient History of the Kingdom of Kerry," in the Journal of the Cork Jour. R.S.A.I. (Vol. xvI., Fifth Series. } 2 A [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] Historical and Archæological Society for 1898, 1899, and 1900. The editor, the late Father Jarlath Prendergast, added copious notes to this valuable work. The same Society's Journal for 1906, p. 53, contains a valuable report on the Mac Carthy territories in 1597, from the pen of Nicholas, son of Sir Valentine Browne. It has been published by Mr. James Buckley, under the title, "Munster in A.D. 1597.” Finally, I may refer to articles of my own in the same Journal (1896, p. 360, and 1897, pp. 121, 233), on "The Divisions of South Munster under the Tudors," in which are to be found references for many of the statements in this article. My special thanks are due to Mr. Kershaw, the Librarian of Lambeth Palace, who gave me every facility for consulting the Carew MSS. preserved in the library there. The description of the rights of the Earl of Clancarty given in "Life and Letters of Florence Mac Carthy Mór," page 31, is there attributed to Sir Warham St. Leger. The editor of the "Calendar of State Papers" considers it was drawn up by Sir William Herbert.] As Killarney may be looked on as the centre—if not geographically, yet at least politically-of the lands which in the sixteenth century made up the lordship of Mac Carthy Mór, a short account of that lordship, its extent, its sub-divisions, its organisation, may not be without interest to the members of the Society now assembled in Kerry. First, the name Mac Carthy Mór seems to call for some remark. The great family of Mac Carthy, most powerful of the clans called Eoganachts, the descendants of Eoghan Mór, ruled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries over the kingdom of Desmond, or South Munster, and their name is intimately associated with the architectural splendours of the Rock of Cashel. When Henry II. arrived in Ireland, he found Dermot Mac Carthy ruling at Cork over the kingdom of South Munster. Dermot submitted to Henry, ceding to him the city of Cork and the adjacent cantred of the Ostmen, and became recognised as vassal king of the remainder of his dominions. But scarcely had this treaty been made when Henry granted the whole kingdom of Cork-extending, as the grant puts it, from Lismore to Brandon Head-to Robert Fitzstephen and Milo de Cogan. With them King Dermot made a fresh treaty, ceding to them seven cantreds near Cork, and being recognised by them as ruler over the remaining twenty-four cantreds which made up his kingdom. But this treaty was no better observed than the other. The Anglo-Norman invaders pressed in on every side; and Dermot was slain in an ambush in the year 1185 by Theobald Walter, ancestor of the house of Ormond. Dermot was succeeded in the remains of his kingdom by his son Donal Mór, called "na Curra," from the Carragh river, on whose banks he had been fostered, and whose inaccessible valleys gave a secure refuge from the invader. It is from this Donal Mór, according to one account, that the name Mac Carthy Mór comes. Donal Mór and his successors maintained themselves against the invaders, sheltered by the mountains which, from the shores of Lough Leane, seem to present an insuperable obstacle towards the south. On the slopes of Mangerton, the battle-field of Tooreen Cormac preserves the memory of one of the encounters between the mail-clad Norman cavalry and the lighter-armed Celt. At last, after nearly a hundred years of conflict, the decisive victory of Callan, in 1261, secured the Mac Carthys in the possession of a large part of their former dominions. The great Norman house of the Geraldines was for a time utterly crushed. Dunloe and half a dozen other castles, built to bridle the native Irish, were captured; and, as an old chronicler forcibly puts it, for twelve years "The Carties played the divill in Desmond." The Irish of South Kerry and West Cork secured their freedom. They descended from their mountain strongholds, and pushed out into the plains, extending their conquests on the east to the walls of Cork and to Mallow, and on the north as far as the river Maine. We know little of the history of the two following centuries. But some kind of agreement was come to between the Mac Carthys and the Earls of Desmond, who had succeeded to the rights of De Cogan and Fitzstephen. The natives were left in full occupation of somewhat more than half of Cork and Kerry, and in return they promised to aid the Earls in war, also to pay them a tribute of one hundred beeves from the barony of Carbery and the sum of £214 118. 2d. yearly from the rest of their lands. One would like to know how the Earls' rentcollectors fared among the mountains of Iveragh and Glanerought." At last, in 1552, when the power of the Tudor monarchs was making itself felt in Ireland, the reigning Mac Carthy Mór, Donal, son of Donal, submitted to the Crown, renounced his Irish title, and, after some years, was offered and accepted an English earldom. The character of this Donal, last independent ruler of Desmond, first and last Earl of Clancarty of the main line of the descendants of King "Calendar of State Papers," 1581, p. 368, for Desmond. References to the Carbery Beeves" are numerous: see especially Sir R. Cox's " Regnum Corcagiense"; and an article by Mr. Berry on the "English Settlement at Mallow under the Jephson Family," in Journal of the Cork Hist. and Arch. Society, 1906, p. 1. The later boundary-line between the lands of the Earls of Desmond and those of the Mac Carthys, in many cases, follows no natural feature, and must have been settled by treaty. This is specially noticeable near Killorglin, and in the district between the mouth of the Laune and that of the Caragh river. Only by a treaty, too, 2 A 2 |