Turlough Roe - the last Chief

In Turlough Roe[1] we have the first and only of the historical Boyles about whom there is enough documentation to create something of a narrative of his life. His father was  Taidhg Óg, the last formally-inaugurated Chief according to the traditional rites, and his mother was Honora Bourke, of the dominant Norman-Irish family of Connacht. He was said to be still young when his father died in 1607, so it is likely he was born in the late 1590s, too young to have taken part in the wars. In earlier times, he would also have been too young to assume the chieftainship, since this was achieved by might – any of the derbhfine could seize it if powerful enough.

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It seems no-one attempted to do so, perhaps a sign that the old order was gone forever. The forty-three O’Boyles who now held their lands under freehold in English law may have seen no need to challenge for a role that no longer conferred as much wealth and power as it once did.  There is no evidence that Turlough Roe was formally inaugurated as the Chief of the Name,  another sign that the old order had died, though he appears to have been afforded the status and respect of the title.

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Nevertheless he played a significant role in the turbulent events of the 17th century. It is ironic that more is known about him than any previous chief but that his passing drew to a close the long line of chiefs and of the world they that sustained them.

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The departure of the Earls and their allies was deemed treasonous, and provided the opportunity to declare their lands forfeit to the Crown. A plan, the Plantation of Ulster, was drawn up to secure the loyalty of the province by planting English and Scottish settlers on forfeited land in six of its nine counties.

Commissioners were appointed to survey the confiscated land and to divide it into ‘proportions’ to be allocated to the new owners. The proportions were defined in terms of arable acres only, so that a grant of say, 2,000 acres would in fact also contain many times more of ‘unproductive’ land. The confiscated O’Boyle homelands in Boylagh in the south-west of the county contained over 158,000 acres, but the Commissioners deemed it to contain only 10,000 arable acres, which they divided into eight proportions ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 acres, while noting that “there was here vast scope around the 10,000 acres arable for improvement and augmentation…(though)... much of the surface in this precinct still remains and ever will remain unprofitable”[Hill, 1889]

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These estates were granted to Scottish undertakers. were very isolated and were largely comprised of poor and unproductive land, so it proved to be near impossible to attract English and Scottish settlers to take up tenancies. The original grantees either failed to develop them as required, thus forfeiting them, or sold them on.  John Murray, later Earl of Annandale managed to buy up all these estates at knockdown prices, but with the absence of keen Scottish and English tenants, he was forced to rent to native Irish tenants. A later survey of county Donegal recorded that on Murray's lands in the barony of Boylagh and Banagh “the soil in general is mountain, bog and unprofitable ground the corn being altogether poor and small oats some barley but neither wheat nor rye”.

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Though all of the Donegal Gaelic leaders had their land confiscated (even those who had sided with the English in the wars) some land in the north of the county (in what was to become the Barony of Kilmacrenan) was reserved for natives and for veterans of the war (servitors). Forty per cent of that was allocated to seventeen servitors and to Trinity College Dublin. The remaining sixty per cent was divided among fifty Irish grantees - six of them received large estates but the other 44 were granted much smaller estates. The most fortunate Irish beneficiaries of the re-distribution were Turlough Roe O’Boyle the lord of Boylagh though still a young boy, and the heads of the three Mac Sweeney branches, of Fanad, Doe and Banagh. 

Each of these received a grant of 2,000 acres.  These were nominally much smaller that their previous lordships, but by the standards of the Ulster plantation these were large grants and are comparable to anything initially granted to the Scottish and English undertakers, and probably larger than the lands that they had formerly held in demesne[Bardon (2012) p. 194].

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As a chief or lord of a sept, Turlough Roe would have had a personal demesne, a portion of land specifically to provide for his own wealth and income, as well as control over an extensive area of sept territory but these lands were thought of as owned by the sept as a whole, not the personal possessions of the chief.  The bulk of it was occupied by sept members who would make some payment in kind for its use in the form of contributions of troops and the billeting of mercenaries.

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However, the English misunderstood the way the Irish measured and valued land, leading to confusion. The Irish units of measurement were based on the quality and productive capacity of the land, not its actual area. The number of acres needed to sustain a given number of people or cattle would vary, depending on its quality. Moreover, only arable land was considered in determining the grant; pastureland, more important in a cattle-based economy was not counted, so the actual amount of land assigned to Turlough Roe was probably much greater than 2,000 acres[4]. 

[1] In Irish, he was Toirdhealbhach Rua Ó Baoighill. Toirdhealbhach is usually anglicised as Turlough or Tirlogh, though nowadays it is more often rendered as Terence or Charles. Rua means red-haired.

[4] For instance, a Turlough MacArt O’Neill was assigned 3,330 acres in County Tyrone but received over 19,000 acres in reality. (Farrell, 2017, p.218)

The baronies of Donegal, showing the assignation of land under the Plantation of Ulster.