Great O'Neill

Great O'Neill by O'Faolain, Sean. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780853427698.

Originally published in 1942, this is the story of Hugh ONeill. Born in 1550, Hugh ONeill lived in England from the age of nine as a protege of Queen Elizabeth I. He returned to Ireland as Baron Dungannon and was proclaimed Earl of tyrone in 1585, but when he went through the ancient ritual of becoming "The ONeill", the chief of Tir Eoghain, in 1595, he had bthrown down the gauntlet to Tudor power. Elizabeth sent a succession of commanders to suppress the traitorous earl; the ensuing conflict, for which ONeill combined forces with Red Hugh ODonnell and other Gaelic chieftains, was the Nine Years War. The Battle of Kinsale, in which the Irish forces were defeated in 1601, marked the end of the possibility of a permanent victory for Gaelic Ireland. ONeill subsequently travelled to Rome, where he lived in exile by the grace of the Pope and the King of Spain until his death in 1616.