Sorley Boy MacDonnell

Somhairle Buidh Mac Domhnaill ("Charles of the Yellow Hair, son of Donnell") anglicised Sorley Boy MacDonnell (in Scotland, MacDonald) (c. 1505 - 1590), Scoto-Irish chieftain, son of Alexander MacDonnell, lord of Islay and Kintyre (Cantire), and Catherine, daughter of the Lord of Ardnamurchan, was born at the Castle of Dunanynie near Ballycastle, County Antrim in Ireland.

Clan MacDonnell

The MacDonnells of Antrim were descended from a family that the English had attempted to cultivate since the early 14th century in their efforts to influence the course of politics in Scotland. At the end of that century, an ancestor of Sorley's had married Margaret Bisset, heiress of the district on the Antrim coast known as the Glynns (or Glens), which union laid the basis for Sorley Boy's claim to the lordship of that territory. MacDonnell migration to the Glynns and the island of Rathlin increased in the early 16th century, after the clan had rejected overtures from an increasingly powerful James IV, king of Scotland; despite English fears that they were forming a fifth column (in league with the Ulster clans of O'Neill and O'Donnell) for a Bruce-style invasion of Ireland, the clan spread into the adjacent Clandeboy and the Route. This migration was cemented when the king's successor, James V, maintained favourable relations with the rival Campbell clan in Scotland, although he did swing around to favour the MacDonnells in the 1530's, restoring certain lands to them in Kintyre and Islay and encouraging their expansion in Ireland. This period of royal favour ended with the defeat in 1539 at Belahoe of a combined force (including the MacDonnells) by an English army: Scottish plans for an invasion of Ireland were then put off, while the feared French invasion of England never occurred.

Military Leader

Once the invasion crisis had passed, the MacDonnells had to make a tenuous effort to hold onto their lands in the Isles and in the Route, opposed as they were by both the English and Scots governments. It was during the following decades that Sorley Boy came to prominence. In the mid to late 16th century the Dublin administration made several attempts to eject the MacDonnells from Ulster. During the first campaign c.1550, Sorley Boy was taken prisoner and conveyed to Dublin Castle, where he suffered a confinement of 12 months, being eventually exchanged for certain prisoners held by his brother, James, who was leader of the clan.

On his release, Sorley Boy received a large ransom after seizing the constable of Carrickfergus Castle, and went on to subjugate the MacQuillans. This clan was the immediate rival of the MacDonnells in Ireland, dominating the northern portion of Antrim - the Route - with their stronghold at Dunluce Castle, near the mouth of the river Bush. In 1558, James committed to him the lordship of the Route upon the death of his brother Colla, and Sorley Boy promptly raised a force of troops on the Scottish coast to confront the MacQuillans. He landed at Marketon Bay in July 1559, where the MacQuillans were strongly posted at the foot of Glenshesk, and attacked them at Beal a Faula, driving them south with heavy losses in a decisive battle.

Sorley Boy was now too powerful and turbulent to be neglected by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers, who were also being troubled by his great contemporary, Shane O'Neill; the history of Ulster for the next twenty years consists for the most part of alternating conflict and alliance between MacDonnells and O'Neills, and attempts on the part of the English government to subdue them both. With this object Elizabeth aimed at fomenting the rivalry between the two clans; she came to terms sometimes with the one and sometimes with the other. One event that simplified the situation was the success in 1560 of the Protestant revolution in Scotland, which lessened the threat of invasion, such as her father, King Henry VIII, had suffered in 1539. But complications were never far away owing to the criss-cross of dynastic and political allegiances and betrayals. At this time Shane O'Neill was allied by marriage with the Campbells, the MacDonnell clan's chief rival in Scotland; yet Sorley Boy's wife was an illegitimate half-sister of the same Shane.

Clan Chieftain

Upon Elizabeth's accession in 1559 Sorley Boy submitted to her authority under the Earl of Sussex, then lord lieutenant of Ireland, and in return was confirmed in his Irish possessions. In 1562 Shane O'Neill paid his celebrated visit to London, where he obtained recognition by Elizabeth of his claims as head of the O'Neills. But in 1563, Sussex mounted a campaign against O'Neill, in which Sorley Boy played his part. Sussex retired in frustration, and O'Neill went on to attack the MacDonnells, ostensibly in the interests of ridding the English of Scottish interference in Ireland: he defeated Sorley Boy near Coleraine in the summer of 1564, laying waste his territory; in 1565 he invaded the Glynns, destroying all Scottish settlements there, and at Ballycastle Bay he won a decisive victory, in which James MacDonnell and Sorley Boy were taken prisoner and Dunluce Castle fell into O'Neill's hands. James soon afterwards died, but Sorley Boy remained O'Neill's captive till 1567, during which period he seems to have won his captor's confidence. After his unexpected defeat by the O'Donnells, O'Neill turned to the MacDonnells for assistance and attended a feast laid on by them at Cushendun, bringing with him out of captivity Sorley Boy and his late brother's widow, Agnes, in order to secure an alliance with the Scots. In an event which seems to have had the approbation of the lord deputy of Ireland, Henry Sidney, O'Neill was murdered by his hosts. Immediatley Sorley Boy visited Scotland and returned to Marketon Bay with 600 redshanks, in whose presence he swore never to leave Ireland.

In 1569, an alliance between the O'Neills and MacDonnells was secured upon the marriage on Rathlin Island of Shane's successor, Turlough Luineach O'Neill, to the widow Agnes. Sorley Boy spent the next few years in striving to frustrate the schemes of Sir Thomas Smith, and later of the Earl of Essex, for colonizing Ulster with English settlers. Sorley Boy was willing to come to terms with the government provided his claims to his lands were allowed, but Essex determined to reduce him to unconditional submission. After a time spent in Scotland, Sorley Boy returned and made an unsuccessful attempt on the crown garrison at Carrickfergus. In time, he came to terms with Smith, who supported his claims to title in the Route on condition that he take up the reformed religion. In 1573, letters of denization were addressed to Sorley Boy, but Essex frustrated these with the renewal of his plantation scheme; but once again, Sorley Boy maintained his position, when Essex too came to terms with him upon the failure of the English nobleman to negotiate with the Scottish regent and the Earl of Argyll a withdrawal of the Scots from Ulster.

Essex then switched tack, having struck a deal with Turlough Luineach, and defeated Sorley Boy around Castle Toome, where the Bann flows out of Lough Neagh. Essex had to withdraw to Carrickfergus for lack of provisions, but he then ordered a follow-up operation, with the intention of driving the Scots from Ulster. Under the commands of John Norris and Francis Drake an amphibious strike force proceeded by sea from Carrickfergus to Rathlin Island, where Sorley Boy's children and valuables, together with the families of his principal retainers, had been lodged for safety; and while the chieftain was himself at Ballycastle, within sight of the island, the women and children (perhaps 700) were massacred by the English. Sorley Boy retaliated with a successful raid on Carrickfergus, in which the garrison broke before a highland charge, and managed to re-establish his power in the Glynns and the Route, which the Mac Quillans made ineffectual attempts to recover. On surveying the results, Lord Deputy Sidney agreed to a ceasefire, although he supported the claims of the MacQuillans to the Route and of Sorley Boy's nephews (sons of the widow Agnes) to possession of the Glens - a typical Campbell manoeuvre, effected through their alliance with Turlough Luineach. At the same time, Sidney forwarded to London Sorley Boy's petition for title, although it sat there without response for years. The MacDonnells then further strengthened their position through an alliance with Turlough Luineach, and by a formidable immigration of followers from the Scottish Isles.

Ambition achieved

For some years the politics of eastern Ulster maintained a balance. But in 1584 John Perrot determined to make a further effort to subdue the turbulent chieftain by leading an army into the province. After another expedition to Scotland seeking help, Sorley Boy landed at Cushendun in January 1585 with a substantial force, but after initial successes was driven back to Scotland, where he offered to accept the terms formerly put to him by Sidney; Perrot declined, whereupon Sorley Boy returned and regained possession of Dunluce Castle. Under these circumstances, Perrot reluctantly opened negotiations with Sorley Boy, who in the summer of 1586 repaired to Dublin and made submission to Elizabeth's representative. When shown the severed head of his son, which had been nailed above the gate of Dublin Castle, Sorley Boy gave the memorable response, "My son hath many heads".

Having made his submission, Sorley Boy at last obtained a grant to himself and his heirs of the greater part of the Route country, between the rivers Bann and Bush (an area then called the Boys), with certain other lands to the east, and was made constable of Dunluce Castle. A month beforehand, Sorley Boy's nephew had received a grant in similar terms of the greater part of the Glynns. At the same time, in the Treaty of Berwick of 1586, a clause was inserted that recognised the right of the clan MacDonnell to remain in Ireland. For the rest of his life Sorley Boy gave no trouble to the English government, although he did assist survivors of the Spanish Armada to escape Ireland in 1588. He died in 1590 at the very place of his birth, the Castle of Dunanynie, and was buried in the traditional place of the MacDonnells, Bonamairgy Abbey at Ballycastle.

Family

Sorley Boy was twice married: Mary, daughter of Con O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone; and in 1588, when he was past the age of eighty years, a daughter of Turlough Luineach O'Neill, a kinswoman of his first wife. Two of his five daughters married members of the O'Neill family. By his first marriage Sorley Boy had several sons (the MacSorleys): two were killed, and Randal, who was created earl of Antrim, is the ancestor of the present holder of that title. It was to Randal that King James I renewed the grants of the Route and the Glynns.