Rory O'More
Rory O'More was a notable figure in early 17th-century Ireland, primarily recognized for his role in the Irish rebellion against English rule. While details of his early life remain largely uncertain, he was likely born into the O'More family, a once-prominent clan in County Leix, which had been displaced due to English invasions. His father, Calvagh O'More, settled the family in Kildare, where Rory gained an education and established connections through marriage into the Barnewall family, influential within Catholic circles.
In 1641, as tensions escalated between King Charles I and the English Parliament, O'More emerged as a leader in organizing a rebellion in Ulster. He collaborated with prominent local leaders to challenge the Protestant planter aristocracy amid rising anti-Catholic sentiment. O'More aimed to coordinate a major uprising that would not only target Dublin Castle but also take advantage of widespread public gatherings. However, his plans were thwarted by betrayal, leading to a smaller, less effective insurrection.
Despite setbacks, O'More played a crucial role in rallying support among the Catholic Old English community and helped sustain the rebellion for nearly a decade. His eloquence and strategic timing capitalized on the political crises in England, though the rebellion ultimately faced defeat under Oliver Cromwell. O'More's later years are shrouded in mystery, with accounts suggesting he may have lived incognito in Ulster. His legacy is marked by his attempts to unite various factions in Ireland against English oppression and his contributions to a significant chapter in Irish history.
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Rory O'More
Gaelic Irish rebel leader
- Born: c. 1592
- Birthplace: Unknown
- Died: In or after 1666
- Place of death: Unknown
O’More’s notable accomplishment was fomenting and leading the Irish rebellion that began in 1641 and ended with disastrous consequences in 1651.
Early Life
Nothing is known with any certainty of Rory O’More’s early life, and many popular tales confuse him with Rory Oge O’More, another Irish rebel, who died in 1578. In earlier times, the O’Mores had controlled Leix (Laoighis) County, but English invasions had displaced and dispossessed them. Because the O’Mores were an unreconstructed Catholic and rebellious clan, the plantations carried out under James I scattered them to Connaught, Kerry, and Clare. Rory O’More’s father, Calvagh O’More, settled his family in Kildare at Ballina, where they presumably lived as local gentry. Rory was literate and quite accomplished as a speaker in both Gaelic and English, which would indicate some level of education, quite possibly on the Continent. His family’s reputation was such that he was able to marry into one of the notable Catholic Old English families of the Pale, the Barnewalls. His father-in-law, Patrick Barnewall, was an outspoken proponent of both the Royalist and the Catholic causes, giving Rory an entrée into these important circles.
Life’s Work
By early 1641, the English king Charles I and Parliament were moving toward open conflict, as Charles’s policies in Scotland had led to revolt of the Covenanters and the king’s need for money that only Parliament could provide. In February, O’More traveled to the province of Ulster and met with several Ulstermen, including Sir Phelim O’Neill, who led the powerful O’Neill clan while the more notable Owen Roe O’Neill was on the Continent, and the twenty-five-year-old Connor, Lord Maguire, second baron of Enniskillen, a rash, debt-ridden spendthrift from County Fermanagh who was a member of the Irish Parliament and well-connected in Catholic Ulster circles. Together, they sketched out plans for an uprising against the Protestant planter aristocracy in Ulster that would coincide with a rising in Dublin and the Pale.
Ulster Catholics deeply resented the physical dislocations and anti-Catholicism that accompanied the English plantations, and they were crippled by the economic instability and rising debt that resulted from Stuart policies in the province. A rebellion that targeted the planters was a natural outgrowth of the increasingly intolerable conditions in the province and an extension of violence that was already occurring on a small scale. Victory would mean a disruption of England’s earlier discriminatory policies against the Irish. O’More and Maguire decided to coordinate the planned Ulster uprising with one in the city of Dublin. The latter attack would target the seat of English military power, Dublin Castle, which was believed to hold arms enough for thirty thousand men.
Organization of manpower in Dublin was accelerated by O’More’s plotting with the so-called Colonels—Irish military recruiters in the service of Spain, including Richard Plunkett, James Dillon, and Hugh MacPhelim Byrne—who were allowed by English authorities to travel through Ireland seeking enlistees. In August, 1641, Maguire, O’More, and the Colonels finalized details for a coordinated assault on the castle and Ulster, to take place on October 5. O’More was to lead a hundred men from his home province of Leinster in an assault on the little gate of the castle, while Maguire would command a hundred Ulstermen who would storm the main gate. The event was postponed, however, and the Colonels pulled out.
The remaining rebel leaders, O’More, Maguire, and Phelim O’Neill, met one last time on October 15 to make final arrangements for the rising, now planned for October 23. The 23rd, a Saturday, was a market day, when large crowds would be flooding Dublin’s streets. The rising would take advantage of these crowds, partly to provide cover and confusion, partly as a source of additional manpower in the assault. At the same moment, smaller bands of rebels in the countryside of the Pale were to rise up and attack authorities, providing a diversion for the main castle assault.
On the night of October 22, however, the plot was betrayed when one Owen Connolly appeared at the house of Lord Justice Sir William Parson and outlined the scheme. Word quickly spread, and O’More dashed to Maguire’s house to warn him, but the young nobleman was captured and imprisoned by the English and eventually divulged the rebels’ plans, including O’More’s role as leader. Only eighty of the two hundred rebels appeared in Dublin, and they, along with O’More, aborted their attack and fled to the countryside. Ulster had risen the day before, however, and O’Neill’s armies had quickly seized Charlemont and Dungannon. The rebellion had begun in earnest despite the Dublin debacle.
O’More next appeared at the head of a small army that crushed an English column at Julianstown (November 29, 1641). The Catholic Old English rulers of the Pale had balked at participating in the rebellion after the Dublin plot had been foiled, but a large number gathered at Crofty Hill (Knockcrofty) on December 3 to hear O’More’s argument for their active participation in the next stages. An eloquent speaker, O’More reminded them of the official anti-Catholic policies that had become increasingly stringent, and he warned them that, with the rising in Ulster and the writ branding the Catholic Ulster leaders rebels against the Crown, the trend was likely to continue.
O’More noted that Parliament had failed to redress any of the grievances raised by the Irish over their poor treatment and that, as Parliament was on the verge of civil war with the king, they were most likely to dispatch an army of Scots Covenanters to crush all Irish Catholics, Gaelic and Old English alike. He stressed that the rebellion was in fact in support of Charles I and against the pernicious and increasingly radical Parliament. The Pale leaders applauded O’More and met together on December 7 at Tara to make their own plans.
The spring of 1642 saw the supposed massacre of tens of thousands of Ulster Protestants by the rebels, which galvanized anti-Catholic sentiment in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In February, thanks to Maguire’s testimony, English authorities placed a reward of œ400 for O’More’s capture, or œ300 for clear evidence of his having been slain. At the Battle of Kilrush (April 15), the English routed O’More’s army of some six thousand men, who were poorly armed and possessed little powder. O’More and his brother fled to Ballina. He is thought to have escaped to Flanders, where he helped arbitrate Owen Roe O’Neill’s return to lead the Ulstermen. If so, he probably arrived with O’Neill in August, 1642.
O’More remained active in O’Neill’s service, though details of his activities are sketchy. In the summer of 1648, O’More participated in O’Neill’s war on the Confederation of Kilkenny, which resulted in the destruction of that body and set the stage for the campaign of Oliver Cromwell in the spring of the following year. In September, 1648, O’Neill harnessed O’More’s eloquence, sending him as a messenger to Murrough O’Brien, sixth Baron Inchiquin (later the first earl of Inchiquin), in what amounted to a last-ditch—and fruitless—attempt at negotiation.
In the last months of the rebellion, O’More served as an infantry colonel in Connaught and finally as rebel commander in Leinster, but he was a commander with practically no army. In early 1652, he and a few followers were driven to one of the rebels’ last outposts, Bofin Island (Innisbofin). There, he was finally abandoned both by the governor of the local forces, Colonel George Cusack, and by the bishop of Clonfert, who surrendered his post in February. O’More still had a price on his head and had been specifically exempted from the Cromwellian Act of Settlement (August 12, 1652), which granted pardons to many of the rebellious Irish. His own last years are shrouded in mystery, and there are not-improbable tales of him living as an Ulster fisherman into the 1660’s.
Significance
O’More’s personal connections allowed him to coordinate the native, Gaelic leadership in Ulster, best represented by the O’Neills, with the discontented Old English rulers of the Irish Pale centered on Dublin. Though his plan to secure Dublin Castle, and thereby arm a broader uprising, fell through, his efforts did result in a sustained rebellion that lasted for nearly a decade. Capitalizing on the old adage that England’s trouble is Ireland’s opportunity, O’More timed the rising perfectly, maximizing the Old English fear of Scottish interference and Parliamentarian tyranny. The rebellion ended, however, with Cromwell’s disastrous victory and the repression that followed and with O’More’s own disappearance into oblivion.
Bibliography
Bagwell, Richard. Ireland Under the Stuarts. Vols. 1 and 2. London: Holland Press, 1963. The rebellion’s early phases—especially Maguire’s role—are treated in admirable detail.
Bennett, M. The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland, 1638-1651. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997. Standard treatment of the wars and their interconnections.
Casway, J. Owen Roe O’Neill and the Struggle for Catholic Ireland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. An important study of Ulster’s roles in the rebellion as background for O’More’s contributions.
Fitzpatrick, Brendan. Seventeenth-Century Ireland: The Wars of Religions. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1989. Authors recognize the important mixture of religion and nationalism in the rebellion, and in O’More’s motivations.
Kenyon, John, and Jan Ohlmeyer. The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Contains separate chapters on the course of the Irish phases of the struggle, and usefully emphasizes military matters over other considerations.
Perceval-Maxwell, M. The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Dublin: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. Well-focused short study of the early phases of the rebellion and O’More’s actions.