The Brutal Rebellion That Built 3,000 Castles | Tales of Irish Castles | EP 3

Ajouté : 2026-05-15

[00:00:01][music] >> Castles are our most dramatic landmarks from the Middle Ages, built as monuments to domination and power.

[00:00:10]Scattered all over the Irish landscape, these ancient buildings with their soaring walls and great towers leave you in no doubt about their military and defensive purpose.

[00:00:20]Just hope you brought a ladder.

[00:00:22]The Anglo-Norman aristocrats who invaded Ireland in the 12th century built their castles to control and intimidate the unruly the Irish.

[00:00:33]As English rule was consolidated, the castles served as administrative centers, >> [music] >> garrisons, and jails, as well as lavish homes for the English lords.

[00:00:46]In this series, I'll be telling you stories about dramatic sieges, bloody battles, lavish lifestyles, ghostly presences, warring families, and feudal lords.

[00:00:59]After all, the history of Irish castles is the history of Ireland itself.

[00:01:15]The Anglo-Norman invasion of the 12th century saw Ireland quickly overrun by King Henry's powerful knights with their superior hardware and military expertise.

[00:01:26]These men are seen as an elite. It requires a lot of skill and a lot of training.

[00:01:31]So, they were the ultimate fighting machine.

[00:01:34]Like gladiators, almost.

[00:01:38]The conquerors took control all along the East Coast and as far [music] west as the Shannon, parceling out the land into huge estates where English rule was law and taxes paid to the crown.

[00:01:49]Basically, administration is growing.

[00:01:51][music] Lords want more officials working for them. They need to be housed. So, castles become more complex residentially, defensively, and in terms of display.

[00:02:02]Ireland experienced its first ever building boom. The Irish had never seen anything like these impressive newfangled structures. But, while conquering Ireland was one thing, keeping and controlling it was another.

[00:02:15]The The Irish fightback begins in the 13th [music] century. It accelerates in the 14th century, partly as a consequence of the Black Death and the the Bruce Wars, which which affected the Anglo-Norman colony to a greater extent than the native Irish.

[00:02:33]So, thereafter, from the 14th century up to the Tudor period, uh the Irish uh were in the ascendancy. The colony's borders began to shrink substantially. [music] So, what you ended up with was the Pale. You had areas around the urban centers like around [music] Waterford. You had the great earldoms.

[00:02:55]But, around [music] that, there's a sea of Irishness. There's a sea of Gaelic land >> [music] >> uh land law and tradition and and literature, and which which doesn't come into contact with this [music] at all.

[00:03:07]It's It's two separate societies which live side by side.

[00:03:13]In a colonial [music] sense, the Norman invasion failed. Many of the Anglo-Norman families went [music] over to the Gaelic side. They became Gaelicized.

[00:03:23]By the [music] 14th century, a new type of castle was beginning to appear on the Irish landscape.

[00:03:28]The tower house was based on a Norman design, but it was typically Irish. And we'd end up with almost 3,000 of these around the country.

[00:03:36]The tower houses were the residencies of the well-heeled of the time. But, the big difference was that they were built by both the wealthy Irish chieftains and the English lords.

[00:03:47]In the 15th and 16th century, when you have a new period of castle building in Ireland.

[00:03:53]What are being built are the tower houses, which are the fortified residences of the lords of Ireland at the period, both Gaelic and Anglo-Norman.

[00:04:06]Basically, everybody seems to have built a tower house in [music] late medieval Ireland.

[00:04:11]We have possibly up to 3,000 tower houses, maybe much more um being built in the Irish landscape between about 1380 and the mid-17th [music] century.

[00:04:25]Tower houses built by the Irish clans.

[00:04:28]The land was good and they were in striking distance of extended lands in Leinster called the Pale. So, raiding and plundering was the order of the day.

[00:04:37]>> [music] >> Leap Castle is a typical tower house built by the warring O'Carrolls to run their mini empire and defend [music] themselves against the English.

[00:04:51]This is a an early 16th century tower house built by the O'Carrolls of Ely.

[00:04:59]The central part is the tower, obviously. And then on each side, you have 18th century additions.

[00:05:08]So, this was an important stronghold for the O'Carrolls.

[00:05:11]You have to remember that not only are these residences, they're also defensive structures as well.

[00:05:18]The politics of the time was you had to defend First of all, you had to defend yourself. And this castle, Leap, was impregnable before the advent of cannon. It could not be taken.

[00:05:30]They dot the countryside, particularly here in the Midlands, where in Tipperary and Limerick alone, there are thousands [music] of them.

[00:05:37]Well, tower houses they usually indicative of a breakdown of central authority. The taxman doesn't like tower houses. Anywhere where there's strong government, you have big castles belonging in like King John's castle in Limerick. But where the the king's writ doesn't run and everybody is a law unto himself like the Irish chieftains and then like the Anglo-Norman lords [music] who sort of gone native, the tower house, this [snorts] personal one-off family castle, becomes very characteristic.

[00:06:12]The medieval tower house with its smaller proportions still works as a home. Restoring it, traditional musician Sean Ryan has lived in Leap Castle for over 20 years.

[00:06:23]How are you doing?

[00:06:23]>> you, Sean? I'm telling you. I opened the door.

[00:06:28]So when you arrived Sean in '91, what what was here?

[00:06:31]Well, absolutely nothing.

[00:06:33]Nothing gaping hole here. Last family here at the Darbys and they were burned out in 1922.

[00:06:40]Why were they burned out? He had a bad reputation in the area as a landlord and in 1922, a local battalion of the regulars came and um they lit a match and set fire to the house. Why did you buy it? What what was the attraction for you? Uh a little fit of madness, I suppose. Yeah.

[00:07:02]Look at the staircase we have to walk on your hands and knees.

[00:07:05]You can see why they built the castle here with that view. I mean, you can literally see everything's coming at you. Oh yes, indeed. Yeah.

[00:07:11]Um it's known as Leap and Khan or the plain of the hounds.

[00:07:15]In the middle 1400s, this was a town. It was called Ballycarron or Ballycarroll.

[00:07:20]And a license for cattle market, the whole lot.

[00:07:23]You know, so it was always an important place. We were saying they were they were a particularly bloody clan. They fought with everybody.

[00:07:29]>> With everybody, yeah. Fought among themselves as well. With a history of bloody feuds and gruesome murders, it's hardly surprising that Leap Castle has a reputation for hauntings and ghostly apparitions.

[00:07:41]Now. So this is this is um known as the Bloody Chapel.

[00:07:45]This is the Bloody Chapel.

[00:07:46]>> Bloody Chapel, yeah. I'm guessing this isn't isn't going to have a happy ending in shambles. How does a room end up with a name like the Bloody Chapel?

[00:07:53]Well, because of the many documenters um happenings and stuff here. When you say happenings, when you say happenings, you mean murders?

[00:08:01]>> Murders, absolutely, yeah.

[00:08:03]>> Right.

[00:08:05]And the entrance to the oubliette was just here. The oubliette, what's an oubliette? Oubliette, um it seemed like I don't speak French, but it comes from the French meaning to forget. Once you went down there, there was no coming out. So, you're brought up here and pushed down there.

[00:08:21]>> I'm put down there, yeah. Pushed down.

[00:08:23]Still there and still open. It's still that's the the opening.

[00:08:27]When somebody very important might be down there, they would open the hatch and come up and have a fine banquet here when you're starving to death below, like.

[00:08:35]Mhm.

[00:08:37]And just remind remind us you you live here. I live here, yeah.

[00:08:44]Way back in in in the 1500s, the the O'Carrolls were quite often at war with the Butlers of Ormond.

[00:08:52]>> [music] >> And the O'Carrolls invited mercenaries down from north of Sligo, the subtribe of the O'Neills, the northern McMahons.

[00:09:00]So, it's said that 29 of them came. But anyway, after the campaign, [music] they invited the McMahons, 29 of them, back here. And the story is that they poisoned the wine and killed all 29 of them rather than pay them.

[00:09:16]>> [snorts] >> There you go. There's thanks for you.

[00:09:21]By the 15th [music] century, the Irish had taken the art of castle building and made it their own.

[00:09:26]Outside the Pale, their tower houses were the seats of power for the Irish clans, >> [music] >> from where they ran their mini empires.

[00:09:33]And these new castles, built on a smaller scale than the original Anglo-Norman structures are still being used as homes [music] today for those of a very particular temperament.

[00:09:44]I think you have to be a certain type of person to want to live in the castle. I mean, I wouldn't say that you have to be mad. I think you'd have to have though, how would you put it?

[00:09:52]A romantic temperament. You know, you have to be interested in in history and the past rather than the present and the future.

[00:09:59]I mean, they're difficult to do up, you know? You can't just add nice comfortable extensions.

[00:10:04]They're impossible to keep warm and you probably spend most of your days running up and down the stairs dusting.

[00:10:09]>> [music] >> The Americans just love a castle. Ballet teacher Rebecca Armstrong fell for the mystique of Clonony Castle in County Offaly, built around 1500 by the McLoughlin clan. She is happy to adapt it to 21st century living.

[00:10:25]>> [music] >> My surroundings have always been very important to me. They have to be aesthetic. [music] And they have to be different.

[00:10:36]>> [music] >> I had seen it many times crossing on the way to Clonmacnoise, but the one day I saw a for sale sign and I thought, "Well, that gives me license to jump over the gate and have a real look around."

[00:10:49]And when I came inside and I saw all the little tiny rooms inside the walls, I thought, "I must have this."

[00:11:03]In the fortified medieval towers, they were all built very similarly and generally to the left of the front door, there would be a guard room. So, if you come through here, the guard would be the first person to catch you and he'd attack you with a sword before you even got to the stairs.

[00:11:22]Also, there's a murder hole just above us here. So, it was a bit of a double whammy. Renovating a castle is an enormous undertaking with very strict rules about conservation.

[00:11:33]From the beginning, we all agreed, the heritage officers and myself, that we wanted to leave it looking as much like a ruin as possible.

[00:11:42]Because once you start tarting them up, it there's just it's an impossible line to draw. It's almost sculpting when you have to replace a stone and make it look like it's never been away. Because you can't put screws in the walls, you can't do anything like that. So, we could take this out and we could even remove the staircase and we could turn it back into a ruin in about a week's time. But while you and I like to entertain at home in the good room, which is usually downstairs, in a keep like Clonony, the better rooms are upstairs.

[00:12:14]In order to get to the first floor, you had to be a member of the aristocracy.

[00:12:19]You had to be of equal station to the Laird of the castle. So, everything was done to impress.

[00:12:25]This is why we have all of our really good stuff on this level. And as you go up the tower, everything gets posher and posher.

[00:12:35]So, I bet you can't wait to see the top floor.

[00:12:42]>> [music] >> This is my favorite room. It's now my bedroom, but up until this year, for fundraising purposes, it was the dance class.

[00:12:52]>> [music] >> Well, my favorite thing is the fireplace, which is actually a power shower.

[00:12:58]And I had some little boys staying [music] here, and boys aren't fond of taking baths and showers, but they couldn't wait to take a shower in the fireplace so they could go home [music] and tell their friends, "We stayed in a castle and we showered in a fireplace."

[00:13:13]Living in a castle only works for people whose aesthetics are more important [music] than the practicalities.

[00:13:20]And it's fine for me because I'm on my own and I live rather simply and I don't eat a lot.

[00:13:26]So, it works for me.

[00:13:29]I I love getting up in the morning and looking out over the view.

[00:13:33]It sets up my day very nicely.

[00:13:38]Closer to Dublin, English control was maintained by great families like the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, who by the 16th century [music] were the leading power in the country.

[00:13:50]50 years after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, the castle was built here by Maurice Fitzgerald.

[00:13:56]Yeah, the Fitzgeralds were to become one of the most important families in all of the Pale. They were the governors of Ireland. They were the Earls of Kildare.

[00:14:04]Maynooth Castle was described as one of the most lavish Earls' houses in all of Ireland and England.

[00:14:09]All power, all tax, all administration centered round Maynooth Castle, which was It's big enough what you see today, but all that's left I think is the gatehouse tower and the solar tower.

[00:14:20]Uh the main keep, which was enormous and probably something along the lines, perhaps of Trim Castle, uh was blown up in the Confederate Wars.

[00:14:29]By 1500, the power of the Earls was so great that in reality the castle was the center of political power in Ireland.

[00:14:37]But fortunes change fast, and just 35 years later, six of the Fitzgeralds were in the Tower of London about to be executed for treason.

[00:14:48]Garret Óg Fitzgerald was the Lord Deputy of Ireland, as well as sitting in the Council of State, the Parliament of the time.

[00:14:55]The council allowed the Anglo-Irish some control over their affairs, and in the 1530s, the council met not in Dublin Castle, but in St. Mary's Abbey over the Liffey on the north side.

[00:15:07]Now, what do you think of this place?

[00:15:09]Well, this really is a hidden gem, isn't It is a hidden gem, and it's a direct connection to the great Cistercian foundation of St. Mary's, which started here in 1139.

[00:15:19]And this beautiful room with its groin vaulted roof and ribbing dates back to the 1180s. So, why did this room play such an important part in the downfall of the Fitzgeralds? Well, the Fitzgeralds had been the most powerful noble family in Ireland. And of course, if you're that powerful, you actually can run into problems because Henry VIII, King of England, was starting to grow suspicious of them. Because they were off in their own thing. He He might have thought they were taking the other side as it were against him. Yeah. Um they had probably backed the wrong side during various wars for kingly succession in England.

[00:15:56]And Henry doesn't forget.

[00:15:57]>> And Henry had a very good memory, an extremely good memory.

[00:16:01]>> [music] >> Gerald Og, who was then the the the head of the family, if you like, and the Lord Deputy of Ireland, was called over to London for a meeting. To answer. To answer charges that might be put to him.

[00:16:14]But he was put into the Tower of London.

[00:16:17]Uh now, that was translated back home as into the Tower of London and the head off. There was no way of corroborating that. So, his son, who was now the acting Lord Deputy in Ireland, >> Thinks his father's been murdered.

[00:16:29]>> Thinks his father has been murdered in the Tower of London. So, he just rides from his sumptuous castle in Maynooth and he comes into the Council of State, which are meeting here in this room, all sitting there waiting in anticipation for a meeting that he's going to chair.

[00:16:44]And he just charges into the room full of temper and bangs his [music] sword of state onto the table and basically says, "I'm at war with Henry VIII." and just storms out.

[00:16:55]>> [music] >> I love the fact that it's also a Chinese whispers and paranoia and I love that.

[00:17:00]You know, and he's he's he's he's he's running he's running a war on the basis of it.

[00:17:06]With the citizens against him, Thomas had to force his way into the city by cutting off the water supply, laying siege to Dublin Castle with his soldiers and cannons.

[00:17:15]However, they had little effect on the sturdy walls.

[00:17:23]Thomas attacked the outer gate, New [music] Gate as it's called at Cornmarket there at James's Street.

[00:17:29]His cannons were too small to make much impression on the gate. So, he moved his attack to Ship Street. And that was the nearest any attacker ever got to Dublin Castle and the city walls.

[00:17:38]>> [music] >> And he failed. Ship Street? Ship Street.

[00:17:41]God, he got close, didn't he? He got very close. How long would it have been from start to finish that that his attempt to take Dublin? Oh, couple of days. Is that all it was? Oh, that's all. Yeah, yeah, that's all.

[00:17:50]The rebellion was a massive miscalculation. And the citizens of Dublin, hearing that Henry was sending an army to regain [music] control, turned against the besiegers, slaughtering them themselves or else handing them over to the castle. [music] By winter, most of Thomas's supporters were deserting him.

[00:18:10]And in March, the English army made their move on his key fortress at Maynooth.

[00:18:14]After burning down the town, they attacked the castle. And after a 10-day siege, during which the castle was bombarded using the latest of heavy siege guns, the castle was breached. The garrison was captured and put to death here at the castle gate.

[00:18:28]Silken Thomas and his five uncles were taken to the Tower of London and executed as traitors.

[00:18:41]Henry VIII's decision to separate from his first wife, Catherine, meant that he had to split with Rome and the Catholic Church.

[00:18:48]You know, the English Parliament went along with his plans. And they passed laws making allegiance to the Pope an act of treason.

[00:18:55]The Reformation had begun. And that was to have a profound effect on Ireland.

[00:18:59]You see, the Irish people had two choices.

[00:19:01]You either go along with the scheme or you rebel.

[00:19:05]Not surprisingly, they chose the latter.

[00:19:09]Henry VIII was a volatile ruler. After ordering the beheading of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, the Boleyn family fell out of favor.

[00:19:17]Well, Anne Boleyn was accused by the king of various treasonable offenses, including sleeping with her brother and various other men to um uh to cheat on the king is a treason. Um and so eventually she was put to death um as everyone knows. And the the effect on the Boleyn clan was catastrophic. Her brother was also executed. And um her family fell out of favor, which could be extremely dangerous in the Tudor court. So, what you see them doing is simply keeping a low profile, essentially going into hiding.

[00:19:50]Two of her cousins fled to Ireland to lie low, and it seems they found their way to Clonony.

[00:19:56]There were two ladies, Mary and Elizabeth Boleyn, heads intact, and they were sent here for safety because it really was at that time quite dangerous to be a Boleyn.

[00:20:06]To be tainted means you are not allowed to speak to them or of them.

[00:20:13]These ladies lived a very long life. They never married.

[00:20:19]And when the one died, they say the other jumped from the tower.

[00:20:23]Because of the They couldn't be buried consecrated grave, so they were put in the stone quarry together because they wanted to be together.

[00:20:33]I think these ladies probably had a very isolated life, and in that sense, I think it was very sad. You can be privileged and poor at the same time. Um um I I do think their lives were difficult from that point of view, and I can certainly understand how the one sister did not want to go on alone.

[00:20:54]The Irish fightback of the 15th and 16th centuries saw a second wave of building across the country as the Irish chieftains developed their own unique style of castle.

[00:21:04]These tower houses allowed them attack as well as defend themselves from the forces of the crown. And when the Reformation threw Protestant versus Catholic into the mix, the politics of Ireland became even more fraught.

[00:21:16]But taking on the English required a fighting force, and the Irish struggled to match the numbers or skills of the invaders. The Irish um don't have standing armies. Standing armies is is something that we associate really with the 18th and not particularly the 19th and 20th century. These are big, large, full-time armies.

[00:21:32]Um you have conscription or you have full-time professional armies. At this time armies are raised when they're needed.

[00:21:42]I thought mercenaries were a reasonably recent development. You know, soldiers that you'd find fighting in Sarajevo, Kosovo, and Africa. It was news to me that the Irish paid soldiers to help them fight the English as far back as the 14th and 15th centuries.

[00:21:58]And back in those days, the best and most efficient mercenaries were called gallowglasses, and they came from Scotland.

[00:22:05]And you didn't mess with these boys.

[00:22:08]Well, the term gallowglass is a corruption of gall ogly, which just means the foreign young men.

[00:22:15]They were the descendants of the Vikings who had settled in that area.

[00:22:21]Now, they were very well trained. They were very well armed. They had their own leaders. They would have been armored as well. These mercenaries came down into Ireland, and they formed the the the the shock troops of the Irish lords of medieval Ireland. Women had gallowglasses as part of their dairies.

[00:22:41]So, if a woman got married, she could bring mercenary soldiers with her, and very importantly under Irish law, a woman could control her dairy. So, that means when she went to her new husband, she may have a hundred or so mercenary soldiers at her beck and call, which could be hugely important for her husband, but which also meant that her husband wasn't going to cross her. So, you have women who are extremely politically powerful.

[00:23:09]So, what's so distinctive about the galloglass then, Davis? What what makes them stand out from the rest of them?

[00:23:14]Well, if you're going to pick just one thing that was distinctive about the galloglass, you'd be looking at the axe in particular.

[00:23:19]It's a special type of axe called the sparth axe.

[00:23:22]And it had a long, straight um razor-sharp edge, sharp as a shoemaker's knife knife according to um Richard Stanihurst, who was a contemporary Dubliner at the time. The sword was essentially a um a side arm in this particular case. But, for many warriors, of course, it would have been the main arm. Um double-edged uh and light, it was um very effective for the hit-and-run warfare that was endemic in in Gaelic Ireland back then in the 15th and 16th centuries. So, would they have carried the two of those side by side?

[00:23:49]Uh not necessarily. Swords were expensive items um even for galloglasses, and some of them may have used the skean as their main secondary weapon instead, which was the Irish traditional fighting knife.

[00:24:00]Single-edged, but pointed, you know, very acute point, which could have been used perhaps to break through the small, you know, weaker links in armor. And you can get a good downward blow, isn't it?

[00:24:08]Yeah, it is. It's very very nasty indeed. We think it may have origins going back to 13th, 14th century, even earlier maybe. But, um they were used as late as 17th century. Some references even talk about them being thrown in combat. So, tell me about the chain mail, Davis. I mean, what's it made up of?

[00:24:22]>> It's basically um a shirt made out of 30,000 individual mail links. The estimation is is that, for example, you know, let in terms of labor and expense, about say a workshop of six people would have produced maybe two of these shirts in a single month.

[00:24:37]>> 30,000 links in each of them.

[00:24:42]On the North Antrim coast, Dunluce must be one of the most spectacular castles in Ireland.

[00:24:46]>> [music] >> Originally built by the Anglo-Normans, it was soon in the hands of the MacDonnells, a clan of fierce galloglasses from Scotland, renowned for their Viking ancestry.

[00:25:01]Hector McDonnell, whose father was the 13th Earl of Antrim, is part of a lineage stretching back to the wild McDonnell clan.

[00:25:09]And you move backwards and forwards between here and Scotland.

[00:25:12]Um you were speaking the same language.

[00:25:16]You move by boat. Moving by land anyway was a torture, you know, because there weren't any proper roads. It took you forever. You got bogged down. You died of disease.

[00:25:26]The McDonnells weren't just mercenaries.

[00:25:28]They became agents, hiring galloglasses out to other families. The McDonnells were trying to control the Antrim coast because they were involved in this export-import business, which was bringing in these fighting men as they were required by native families and sometimes by the English to to fight for them. And it was a fairly sort of straightforward deal, you know. You installed and that's one of the reasons why you find McDonnells all over Ireland is that they were there as representatives of the family and the local chieftain would say, "Okay, I need some fighting men next year." And they'd say, "Okay, we we'll get them."

[00:26:12]The locals hated it because they had to house these people. So each family living on the on the on the chieftain's property or territory would find themselves landed with one of these galloglass families who who probably ate them out of house and home, I'm sure.

[00:26:30]Um and that was how the system worked.

[00:26:32]So it certainly was a sort of disintegration of the Norman world.

[00:26:37]Sorley Boy McDonnell was the Scotch chieftain who first came across the sea to Antrim, establishing the clan as a powerful and independent presence on the wild northern coast.

[00:26:48]First major figure here at Dunluce is is Boy, Sorley Buie, which is Buie uh meaning yellow. So you can imagine him having I imagine him having long blonde hair. And with the Viking ancestry he's got, then blonde hair is not really a surprise.

[00:27:06]I think he was a proper noble barbarian, if I can put it like that. He was very much a man of his type. He would have spoken Irish cuz that was the proper language for the time. You Gallic was a dialect.

[00:27:21]Sorley actually established and and consolidated the the McDonald's territory. There were constant battles with the O'Neill clan right through Sorley Boy's reign. And of course with the English as and when it suited them.

[00:27:38]Some of the English monarchs weren't that interested in Ireland. You know, I mean for years you could be left alone to get on with things and run your own little kingdom.

[00:27:46]Others, however, felt that they needed to assert themselves. And Elizabeth the First was one of them.

[00:27:53]Sorley Boy was Well, he was a continuous thorn in her side. He was wild. He was unruly. He was proud, independent. A bit like her, really. And the 16th century would be marked by an ongoing feud between their two forces. [music] Ireland was just very very difficult to capture as as as a whole unit. I mean, the Anglo-Normans had failed to do it.

[00:28:15]The Romans didn't come to Ireland because I think the Romans looked at the place and said, "Nah. We wouldn't be able to take it all. It's not worth It's not worth the investment." But Elizabeth was determined to bring the whole of Ireland together as a kingdom operating under English law.

[00:28:35]Elizabeth saw the McDonald's as renegades. And in 1573, [music] she sent the Earl of Essex to bring Sorley Boy to heel. There was an occasion he knew that he was going to be attacked by the English. Um and it was Lord Essex who was one of uh, Queen Elizabeth's sort of fancy boys. Sorley Boy made the mistake of thinking he was going to come up country across land. And, um, so he moved all the women and children onto Rathlin, the island off the coast. It was so as to keep them safe, basically. He hadn't thought what Essex actually did was he got a couple of frigates. So, he just landed on on Rathlin and they had a glorious time. And they killed every last person on it and they were all women and babies, you know, they just it was a pretty sort of disgraceful bit of behavior.

[00:29:22]Um, and Sorley Boy is supposed to be standing on a cliff watching this happening to the to all the all the unprotected womenfolk and their children.

[00:29:33]When Elizabeth the First came to power, she had many problems facing her in Ireland. The Irish had resisted the Reformation and all attempts to force them to embrace Protestantism and were becoming increasingly resentful of her attempts to rule by force.

[00:29:51]Most of the aristocracy who were here, be they native Irish or or Old English, remained Catholic.

[00:29:58]Which put them on put them at odds with the with the Crown. By the end of the 17th century, all of those families had had their lands and wealth confiscated.

[00:30:09]Rebellion was on the cards and the instigator would be one of the other wild men from Ulster, Hugh O'Neill.

[00:30:15]And to further enrage Elizabeth, he looked to Catholic Spain for assistance.

[00:30:21]Many of the, uh, lords in Ireland began to look at rebelling. They looked to O'Neill, who was considered one of the most charismatic characters of the day, as well as being an extremely astute politician and a tactician. [music] They looked to him for leadership and he actually led the rebellion against the Crown. This whole period is called the Nine Years' War. Queen Elizabeth looked to the first Earl of Essex's son, the second Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, to quell the rebellion.

[00:30:52]Essex led the largest force ever sent to Ireland. 16,000 men landed in Dublin with orders to put an end to the insurrection.

[00:31:01]Cahir Castle in Tipperary would be at the center of the drama. This imposing fortress was so well defended, it had never been attacked. But the siege of 1599 would put all of that to the test.

[00:31:16]Built on an island in the River Suir, Cahir Castle didn't need a moat.

[00:31:20]I mean, the river itself kept the enemy out.

[00:31:23]In fact, there was so little room on the island for attackers, it was almost impossible to storm.

[00:31:28]So, Cahir Castle, with its stout towers and thick curtain walls, quickly gained a reputation for being impregnable.

[00:31:38]They had some wonderful defensive defenses. And the first one we have here, right over the door or gate here, a machicolation.

[00:31:45]Now, that comes from the French machicoulis, meaning roughly meaning, from my pigeon French, a neck crusher.

[00:31:51]Macher means to crush, and col is the back of your neck. And that's exactly what happened, okay? You'll find them dotted all the way along the outside of castle walls. For maximum effect, they're placed over a door, such as the one here, or at the corner.

[00:32:04]Now, judging out here, a medieval toilet. This is known as a garderobe, okay? A garderobe in French means a wardrobe or a closet for clothes. But all the waste came down, it gathered here at the bottom. They cleaned it out, we believe, only once every year. They discovered, after a short period of time, not alone did all that waste give off a dreadful smell, okay? It gave off a gas called ammonia, which is still used, I believe, in dry cleaning today.

[00:32:26]And all that ammonia would percolate right up through the building. The ladies, especially, would hang their garments up there at night when they went to sleep. And of course, as the French say, voila, all the bugs and the lice and the creepy crawly were killed dead.

[00:32:39]Now we're standing in the trapping area at Cahir Castle, okay? Very affectionately named because of course the people who were caught here had absolutely nowhere to go. They kept the portcullis up and they allowed the troops to dash in here. And you might think that was a terribly stupid thing to do. The troops of course suddenly discovered they couldn't go any further because there was a heavy wooden door here. And of course in the 5 seconds it takes to realize they've made a serious mistake, the portcullis was dropped behind them.

[00:33:09]Instead of heading north to deal with Hugh O'Neill, Essex decided first to march southwards. So, Essex and his army marched into Clonmel, which is 10 miles from Cahir.

[00:33:19]Also arriving in Clonmel by boat was his heavy artillery, a cannon and a culverin.

[00:33:25]So, the first job was to try and get that heavy artillery from Clonmel to Cahir.

[00:33:30]Now, that was no easy feat you see because remember they had no horses and carts to do all the heavy work.

[00:33:35]So, that meant they had to drag everything by hand.

[00:33:39]And that's 10 miles.

[00:33:42]That must have been great crack.

[00:33:44]Though the castle was part of the estate of the loyal Lord Cahir, at the time of the rebellion it was in the hands of his brother, James Gallda, and he supported the rebellion.

[00:33:54]He refused to surrender the castle to the Crown forces.

[00:33:59]Lord Cahir was sent forward to parley with his brother and according to the eyewitnesses of the time, >> [music] >> they actually insulted each other in both English and Irish.

[00:34:11]James Gallda refused to surrender the castle and eventually it was felt necessary to turn the attention of the cannon and culverin against its walls.

[00:34:25]The cannon and culverin, the two heavy artillery pieces used during the siege, had never been used here in Cahir.

[00:34:32]And it was to prove highly effective.

[00:34:35]The inhabitants of the castle, about 80 of them were killed when they sallied forth during the siege.

[00:34:43]James Galda, Lord Cahir's brother, escaped with some of his followers by swimming underneath a mill wheel and across the river to safety. However, those remaining inside surrendered the castle to the crown forces and to the Earl of Essex.

[00:34:58]Um not before quite a lot of damage had been caused to the eastern walls of the castle. Now, we have a little reminder of that three-day siege. If you look up here, three quarters way up the inner wall of the guard room, to this day, about 414 years ago, you'll see there that cannonball lodged in the wall.

[00:35:16]Other than his success at Cahir, Essex's campaign in Ireland was a disaster. He lost thousands of troops both in battle and through dysentery and typhoid.

[00:35:25]However, his biggest mistake was accepting a truce with O'Neill without Elizabeth's permission.

[00:35:32]He did, if you like, damp down the embers of rebellion in Munster, which that wasn't enough and his campaign was certainly by Elizabeth. Ultimately, he lost his head on account of it because she considered it a grave disappointment for all the resources she poured in and all the hopes she'd pinned on Essex.

[00:35:54]The war wasn't over. O'Neill had been in constant communication with the Spanish and two years later in 1601, several thousand Spanish troops joined O'Neill at Kinsale. With the new threat from the combined Spanish and Irish team, it was time for Elizabeth to put her best squad in the field, sending Lord Mountjoy as captain of the new English team.

[00:36:13]O'Neill marched on the English lines and he did so in a night march.

[00:36:18]By the time dawn broke over the area where he had hoped to arrive, they'd got lost. Mountjoy saw his opportunity. He sends his cavalry to attack them, they scatter them, and it's all over in half an hour.

[00:36:33]The defeat of Kinsale saw the end of the campaign against English control that had marked the previous 70 years.

[00:36:40]When many of the old Irish leaders sailed away from Ireland forever in the flight of the earls, the days of the independent Irish kings and lords had come to an end.

[00:36:49]The flight of the earls is a pivotal event in Irish history. By fleeing their lands are liable to be confiscated, they have left native society leaderless, and it presents James, the new king, with the opportunity for one of his visionary schemes, which is a British a British project, the plantation of Ulster.

[00:37:11]One of the Irish lords who stayed, pledging allegiance to the crown, was Sorley Boy's successor, Randal MacDonnell.

[00:37:18]So, Randal went down the road to Carrickfergus and suggested that he might surrender.

[00:37:24]And they went through the usual procedure, which was the one of surrender and regrant, uh which meant that if you came in as a tribal lord, you then were given back the entire tribal territory as your own property. You actually became made turned to yourself into a big scale landowner by surrendering to the English.

[00:37:50]333,000 acres [music] stretching the whole way from Larne to Coleraine, and everybody else's rights to the territory [music] were were wiped out in the process.

[00:38:01]When the time came, he then bought a peerage. He he was not given a peerage. It was the price he paid to be in various rebellions and so on. It was the price he paid for being an acceptable member of society. In a move to ingratiate MacDonnell's with the aristocracy, Randal sent his son, Randal Oak, to the court of King James to find a wife.

[00:38:23]There he met Catherine Manners, the young widow of the Duke of Buckingham.

[00:38:28]The two fell in love and much to the disapproval of the court were married.

[00:38:35]She left a comfortable life in London, her position in the court of the king, a life of finery and privilege to come and live in what must have seemed like one of the wildest castles in Ireland.

[00:38:46]And all it seemed for love.

[00:38:49]She brought an enormous number of her personal possessions out of the houses which her husband first husband had in England, including something like 3/4 of a mile of tapestries. I mean enormous amount, more than you could ever put up in a house like Dunluce. You know, I mean they must have been stuffed into the attics or something like that.

[00:39:09]You can only imagine what Lady Catherine must have thought of her new home and her new Irish neighbors. There are many colorful myths about her time here.

[00:39:17]The story goes that on a wild December night 1639, a banquet taking place, a wild storm brewing outside. And while the guests are sitting at dinner, there's a crash.

[00:39:30]Catherine comes rushing back in and apologizes profusely to her guests saying that there would be no pudding.

[00:39:37]She was too well mannered to inform her guests that the kitchen had just fallen into the sea taking most of the staff with it.

[00:39:44]There's absolutely no evidence that anything fell off at the time. I mean, what you see and the castle looks a ruin because after they were kicked out, Cromwell put a lot of his unpaid soldiers on the land and they understandably asset stripped the place. So, they pulled anything out that was of any value whatsoever including all the cut stone and so on and left it as a wreck.

[00:40:07]And that's the way it got to the state it is.

[00:40:13]>> [music] >> When civil war broke out in England, Catherine and Randall's Catholicism saw them on the losing side. By now bankrupt, they were forced to leave Dunluce for Waterford, where Randall turned his talent for survival [music] to privateering in the Bristol Channel, and then helping King James escape from England. Catherine, however, didn't survive the tumultuous times. My good woman died in the city of Waterford of a flux upon a Saturday between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning, being the 3rd day of November, 1649.

[00:40:44]And in the same year that King Charles the 1st was beheaded by the Parliament of England >> [music] >> before his own court gate at Whitehall.

[00:40:52]At that time, General Cromwell did lay out leaguer to Duncannon.

[00:40:56]But shortly after he did raise the siege. I beg all those that shall happen to look upon this book to be pleased to say three Ave's for the soul [music] of the Duchess of Buckingham.

[00:41:08]And that, you know, it makes me want to cry that. I mean, it's the words of somebody who who really loved his wife.

[00:41:18]The end of the 16th century and the flight of the Earls saw the Irish [music] noblemen scattered around Europe. It seemed that our invaders were in the ascendancy as both English language and law finally prevailed.

[00:41:29]However, peace wouldn't last very long.

[00:41:32]The 17th century would see Ireland both ravaged by rebellion and become the battleground for English and European wars.

[00:41:40]It would be our bloodiest century ever, and Irish castles would remain center stage throughout.

[00:41:48]>> [music] [music] >> Hallelujah.

[00:42:10]>> [music] >> Hallelujah.

[00:42:21]Hallelujah.

[00:42:29]Amen.