Owen Roe O'Neill

Owen Roe O'Neill (Irish: Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill; – 1649) was a Gaelic Irish soldier and one of the most famous of the O'Neill dynasty of Ulster. O'Neill left Ireland at a young age and spent most of his life as a mercenary in the Spanish Army serving against the Dutch in Flanders during the Eighty Years' War. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, O'Neill returned and took command of the Irish Confederate Ulster Army. He is known for his victory at the Battle of Benburb in 1646. O'Neill's later years were marked by infighting amongst the Confederates, and in 1647 he led his army to seize power in the capital of Kilkenny. His troops clashed with rival forces of the Confederacy, leading to O'Neill forming a temporary alliance with Charles Coote's English Parliamentary forces in Ulster. He initially rejected a treaty of alliance between the Confederates and the Irish Royalists, but faced with the Cromwellian invasion he changed his mind. Shortly after agreeing an alliance with the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Ormond, in which he was promised an Earldom, he died on Tuesday, 6 November 1649. Early life O'Neill was the illegitimate son of Art MacBaron O'Neill, a son of Matthew O'Neill, 1st Baron Dungannon and younger brother of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who held lands in County Armagh. His alleged great-grandfather was Conn O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, the most powerful figure in Ulster and the first O'Neill to take a title from the Crown as part of the surrender and regrant policy of the Tudor era. Through Conn, he was descended from Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Kildare, the leading Anglo-Irish noble of the era, member of the Earls of Kildare, who more or less ruled Ireland in the 15th and early 16th centuries. His year of birth is unknown but was likely to have been around 1585. It is also not known exactly where he was born, but it was probably near Loughgall in County Armagh where his father's estates were and where O'Neill spent much of his youth. His mother was the daughter of Hugh Connolly O'Reilly, lord of Breifne O'Reilly in County Cavan.