Post by Waverley on Dec 28, 2008 1:38:50 GMT 1
Hated by many, mistrusted by all: a fair verdict on Randal MacDonnell the man who wheeled and dealed across Scotland and Ireland in the troubled era of Civil War and Commonwealth? Jane Ohlmeyer puts the man in his geographical and cultural context and re-evaluates his career and motives.

Arrogant, condescending, crafty, calculating, childish, fickle, reedy, haughty, headstrong, indiscreet, impatient, importuning, interfering, loudmouthed, manipulative, myopic, perfidious, pretentious, self-centred, uncooperative and whining: these are merely a selection of the adjectives used by his contemporaries and by later historians to describe the personality of Randal MacDonnell, 2nd Earl and 1st Marquis of Antrim.
The criticisms started at the top. Two of Ireland's lords lieutenant, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and James Butler, Duke of Ormond, were his most vocal and malevolent critics. The former, who disliked Antrim's character and religion and questioned his competence and loyalty, denigrated and ridiculed Antrim at every opportunity. Many members of both the Protestant and Catholic Irish communities also shared Strafford's contempt for Antrim.
The marquis' abysmal reputation among his contemporaries – and subsequently – is largely the product of his disloyalty and treachery to the Stuart cause during the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. But to what extent did he deserve this appalling press? For whom was he a 'patriot'? What did concepts such as 'patriotism' or 'treason' actually mean to Irish and British Catholics amid the warfare and political instability of the mid-seventeenth century? Why were 'traitors' and 'collaborators' tolerated in Cromwellian and Stuart Britain?
Randal MacDonnell, born in 1609, was the eldest legitimate son of Sir Randal MacDonnell, later 1st Earl of Antrim, and Alice O'Neill, daughter of Hugh O'Neill, 3rd Earl of Tyrone, and was heir to a vast estate of roughly 340,000 acres in County Antrim. Antrim enjoyed an illustrious pedigree. His Irish grandfathers – Sorley Boy MacDonnell and Hugh, Earl of Tyrone – had been great Gaelic warlords who had dominated affairs in Ulster, and for a time in all Ireland, during much of the later sixteenth century.
On the Scottish side he was descended from Somerland, first Lord of the Isles, through his son Domhnall, the eponymous ancestor of the Clan Donald, and thus related to the MacDonalds of Dunnyveg and the Glens, of Clanranald, of Glengarry, of Keppoch and of Sleat. Moreover he was recognised by his Scottish kinsmen as 'leader of the hosts' and their 'helping warrior' against the aggression of neighbouring Clan Campbell (led by the earls of Argyll) who had already laid claim to the hereditary lands of Clan Donald in the Western Isles.
In Ireland Antrim was chief of the Irish MacDonnells and, thanks to the discerning marriages of his siblings, he was related to the leading Old English families in the Pale and to the native Irish ones in Munster, in Connaught and above all in Ulster. In addition, the presence of his illegitimate brothers and exiled cousins in Flanders ensured that his ties with Catholic Europe were particularly strong. This heterogeneous, human pool from which Antrim was able to draw supporters (and sailors too) thus extended from the Hebrides in the north-west to Flanders in the south-east.
The geographical setting of Antrim's world was of paramount importance in his life. In the early modern period distance was 'public enemy number one' and the marquis' territorial and political base was far from the centre of government: his traditional world stretched from the Hebridean islands of Uist, Skye, Rhum and Canna in the north, to Kintyre and Jura in the east and to County Antrim in the west, encompassing some of the most remote and inaccessible regions of Stuart Scotland and Ireland. Indeed Antrim's empire was almost totally inaccessible by land. Though there were 'several high ways' linking Glenarm with the more northerly towns of County Antrim, overland travel was almost impossible without a guide since 'the lower ways are deep clay, and the upper ways great and steep hills'. But one could travel easily between the outposts of Antrim's world by sea. Thus the North Channel between Torr Head and Kintyre was only twelve miles wide and on a fine day could be crossed in a matter of hours (while, by contrast, the journey to London – via Dublin – could take between seven and ten days even in good weather). It was the sea, not the land, which united the Marquis of Antrim's archipelago.
This physical proximity between Ulster and Western Scotland also facilitated social interaction at every level. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, Gaelic Ireland and Gaelic Scotland were parts of the same ethos and had formed a single cultural, linguistic and even political entity since earliest times. The location of Antrim's power base on the periphery of Britain, which was a particularly 'high risk' area during the early modern period, and the cultural homogeneity of his followers, made him an especially valuable asset to all other political figures.
For this reason Charles I insisted in 1627 that Lord Dunluce (as Antrim was known before the death of his father in 1656) be brought to Londoe where he remained for the next eleven years. During this time he pursued, without success, some of the most eligible young ladies at court until in 1635 he finally wed Katherine Villiers, widow of the infamous Duke of Buckingham, who was not only a rich Catholic heiress in her own right but as a favourite of both the king and queen, one of the most important women at the Caroline court. As a result Antrim's power and influence suddenly spread far beyond the Celtic Fringe. For, despite the fact that he was a Catholic, 'Irish Scot' of Gaelic extraction, he now became – thanks to his marriage to an influential English noblewoman – a man of all three of the Stuart kingdoms.
Where then did such a man's true loyalty lie? The overriding constant in Antrim's life was his 'tribal' ambition to use every artifice available to him in order to preserve intact (and, where possible, to extend) his inheritance and that of his clan. He was determined to consolidate further the MacDonnell foothold in East Ulster; to regain the forfeited Scottish lands of Clan Donald (Kintyre and Jura) which were controlled by the earls of Argyll; and, in addition, to keep his corner of Stuart Britain and Ireland Catholic. But Antrim's Scottish ancestry, his Irish upbringing and his resolve to uphold these Gaelic values created a personal dilemma for him. For he also hoped to secure political power in Protestant England and favour at the Caroline court. In short, he sincerely wanted to succeed in, and to be accepted by, two very different worlds; to be both lauded by Gaelic bards and painted by Van Dyck. Antrim's divided loyalties, occasionally amounting almost to an identity crisis, go a long way towards explaining the inconsistent and chameleon-like behaviour excoriated by his contemporaries particularly during the 1640s.
During the 1630s, however, there was no conflict of loyalty and Antrim’s extensive contacts throughout the three kingdoms enabled him to serve the Stuarts as well as himself and his clan. In 1638 he offered to rally the MacDonnells on both sides of the North Channel as bulwarks against the rebellious Covenanters in Western Scotland. Eager to find a speedy and cheap solution to his Scottish problems, Charles I accepted. In the event, Antrim's army never left Ireland; yet the abortive expedition was not without its significance.
In Scotland, Argyll, one of the most important and powerful Scottish nobles who had previously resisted joining the Covenanters, now openly sided with their cause. In England, the king's willingness to conspire with an 'Irish papist' against his Protestant subjects (even if only Scottish ones) did little either to dispel the rumours of popish plots which were circulating in London, or to inspire confidence in a monarch reputed to have been brainwashed by a Catholic coterie at his court. While in Ireland, the divisions and animosities aroused by Antrim's proposed invasion served, on the one hand, to divide the country's meagre resources at a time when a united and concerted effort might have produced very dramatic results in all three kingdoms. On the other, it generated negative and hostile feelings towards Charles I at all levels of society. Strafford was particularly horrified that the king was prepared to arm a Catholic army 'of naked and inexperienced Irishmen' or 'as many O's and Mac's as would startle a whole council board' and 'in the great part the sons of habituated traitors'. Even worse in Strafford's eyes was the fact that this army was to be led by a papist 'of the race of O'Neale, and upon my knowledge the great admirer of his grandfather Tyrone'.
Despite Strafford's caustic scepticism, Antrim continued to support Charles with pristine loyalty and in May 1641 was prepared to rally the 'new Irish army' (which had been raised by Strafford in 1640 to fight in Scotland) and to use it against the king's rebellious English Parliament if the occasion arose. In the event Antrim's grand strategy to solve his royal master's British problems was frustrated by the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641. The insurrection, led by many of his friends and kinsmen, exacerbated Antrim's personal dilemma, for, while he wanted to see 'the free exercise of the Roman religion, which I am devoted to and am engaged to maintain in duty to God and respect of my future happiness and salvation', he was nevertheless, for the time being at least, totally dedicated to the king's service.
As a result he threw himself into the Royalist war-effort. Between the spring of 1642 and the spring of 1644 Antrim hatched at least three separate plots with Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria, which involved raising and sending an Irish army against the Scottish rebels. The first ended in disaster after Antrim's design was made public; yet its political and military ramifications ran deep. In Scotland news that the royal couple had been conspiring against the Covenanters was decisive in convincing moderate politicians to ally with Parliament and to sign the 'Solemn League and Covenant' (September 1643). Moreover the Covenanters now agreed to send an army of 21,000 men into England to fight for Parliament against the king (they played a key part in the parliamentary victory at Marston Moor, July 1644, when the king's Northern army was smashed).
In the event, the only conspiracy to reach fruition occurred in 1644 when nearly 2,000 Irish veterans were dispatched to serve in Scotland under the Royalist commander there – the Marquis of Montrose. The invasion by Antrim's 'idolatrous butchers' (as one Covenanter called them) in the summer of 1644 had an immediate and dramatic impact on British politics. The Edinburgh parliament adjourned and sent an army of 6,000 Covenanters under Argyll to put the Irish to the sword. But Argyll met with little success, for 1644-45 was the Royalists' annus mirabilis in Scotland and Antrim's troops played an important role in Montrose's victories at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, lnverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth. The invasion also impinged significantly on English affairs. Argyll's pursuit of Montrose immediately reduced the pressure on the Royalist army in the north of England and thus gave a breathing space to the king's forces after Marston Moor. Moreover Montrose's continued victories in Scotland resulted in the removal of regiment after regiment of the Covenanting army from English soil and also prevented a second Scottish army of invasion from crossing the border. Ultimately, of course, Antrim's brigade did not prevent Charles' defeat in the first English Civil War; but they did offer the king (as the Duchess of Buckingham astutely observed) 'most hopes to bring him with honour out of his misfortunes'.
And Antrim also gained: the presence of his personal army in Scotland temporarily ousted Argyll from the Western Isles, re-established MacDonnell hegemony there, and forced part of the Scottish army of occupation which had ensconced itself in his County Antrim estates over the summer of 1642 back across the North Channel into Scotland. However sending an army to fight in Scotland was one thing: supporting and supplying it was quite another. The Irish confederate government, which had largely financed the original expedition, refused to help him further; Charles I, after Marston Moor, was unable to help him; and so in desperation the marquis decided to approach the great continental, Catholic powers of France and Spain for arms, munitions and shipping. This decision to turn to the Continent for aid was highly significant because, for Antrim at least, it transformed the 'War of the Three Kingdoms' into a 'War of the Five Kingdoms'.
In a brilliant move, the marquis offered the Spanish governor-general in Brussels 2,000 of his Irish and Scottish dependents for service in Flanders. Desperate for Catholic cannon-fodder, Spain accepted. In return for Antrim's veterans, the Spanish administration in Flanders supplied Antrim with the arms and ammunition he so desperately needed, together with two fully armed Dunkirk frigates (each worth about £2,000). Encouraged by this success, Antrim tried his luck again the following year and in the autumn of 1646 he offered to send 1,200 troops from Kintyre in Scotland to Flanders in return for further financial assistance. Once again the Spanish governor-general accepted. But on this occasion, in the hope of securing yet better conditions, Antrim also touted the same mercenaries to the French crown.
Ironically, however, Antrim's eagerness to become a military entrepreneur in Flanders and France and to flex, as chief of the MacDonnells, his military muscles, undermined his devotion to the Royalist cause and from this point onwards (1645-46) one can see his loyalty to the Stuart crown beginning to waver. Thus when Charles I, after handing himself over to the Scots near Newark on May 5th, 1646, ordered Antrim's Irish brigade to disband, the marquis not only- refused to surrender but mooted a design to raise an army of 30,000 men with which he hoped first to reduce Scotland and then to march into England and to free the king. Antrim's recalcitrance in Scotland therefore seriously threatened any chance of securing a peace between the king and the English and Scottish parliaments.
In Ireland, Antrim also blatantly defied the king's authority and from January 1647 he threw in his lot with the Irish Confederates. He led the opposition to any permanent peace settlement with Ormond (and thus the king); he attempted to undermine Ormond's Irish power base; and he became one of the most active and vocal supporters of Archbishop Rinuccini, the papal nuncio who had recently arrived in Ireland determined to promote the Catholic cause over that of the king. As a result Antrim helped to ensure that the king received no Irish aid. While at the same time his firm adherence to Rinuccini's party contributed to the total destabilisation of Irish politics and further divided the already fragmented Irish Catholic party which, as a result, collapsed during the winter of 1648-49.
Even though the Confederation foundered, Antrim managed to survive the English invasion of Ireland in August 1649 because, desperate for a new benefactor and protector, he quickly changed sides yet again. First he liaised with prominent Cromwellians; then he demonstrated his willingness to serve the new regime by securing the surrender of New Ross, a key port in County Wexford, and by persuading his followers in Ulster and elsewhere to abandon the Royalist cause. Next he spread the rumour that the commander-in-chief of the king's army in Ireland, Lord Inchiquin, had also sold out to the Commonwealth, which (true or false) further weakened the Irish Royalist war-effort.
By siding with the Cromwellians, Antrim had for once apparently picked the winning side and although he was still classed as an 'Irish papist', he enjoyed Cromwellian favour, protection and indeed a government pension throughout the 1650s. However the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the spring of 1660 overturned this comfortable modus vivendi. In an effort to find a niche for himself in the new Royalist world order, Antrim hurried to London where he was immediately imprisoned in the Tower.
However, after investigating Antrim's sullied political track-record for five years, the Restoration government finally pardoned him and in December 1665 restored him to his property in East Ulster. His restoration was largely due to the influence of his important friends at court – especially Henrietta Maria; to the harangues of his London creditors who were owed around £30,000 from the 1650s; and to the corruption of high-powered government officials who, in return for hefty bribes, were prepared to pull strings on Antrim's behalf. Nevertheless the marquis' restoration was extraordinary and everyone could see it. The publication of a pamphlet, entitled Murder Will Out, drew public attention to the grievances of his political enemies and to the career of 'a rebel upon record, and so lately and clearly proved one'. But eventually the storm abated and Antrim survived with his land and power intact until, in 1683, he died in bed.
So for whom was Antrim a patriot? Between 1658 and 1645, he indeed seems to have served the Stuart cause with unswerving loyalty both in Scotland and Ireland. However after the winter of 1645-46 he openly and deliberately defied orders given to him by the royal family. Moreover throughout the later 1640s, through hatred of the Marquis of Ormond, he not only tried to sabotage Royalist schemes to win the war in Ireland and Britain for the king, but also joined forces first with the papal nuncio and then with the English Parliament, both avowed enemies of Charles I. Little wonder that he quickly 'gained the reputation of pulling down the side he is on, or, in the words of another contemporary, behaved like a spider who went about 'making poison out of everything' alienating and infecting 'the greater part of the kingdom'.
Because Antrim failed to serve his sovereign as a 'loyal' subject should, he was tarred a 'traitor', while his willingness to collaborate with the king's enemies conveyed the image of a 'chief for sale'. However concepts such as 'treachery' and 'patriotism' meant little in the early modern Gaelic world, where a man's first loyalty was to his family and kinsmen, then to his religion, and only finally to his sovereign and country. Although since the Reformation the MacDonnells, like many others in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, had been forced to compromise and negotiate in order to survive at all, sooner or later a choice between the old faith and the new became inevitable. For Antrim's grandfather, Hugh O'Neill, it had been the Nine Years' War (1594-1603), for many members of the Old English and Gaelic Irish it had been 1641-42; and so by holding out until 1646 Antrim had in fact remained 'loyal' to the crown for longer than the majority of his Catholic compatriots.
Antrim, however, was not alone in doing whatever was necessary in order to protect his personal, patriarchal interests. Many other Irish Catholics were in similar straits. Here the list is seemingly endless and includes many of Antrim's own kinsmen (such as his nephew, Lord Dunsany, Sir Henry O'Neill of Killeleagh and the Earl of Westmeath) together with numerous Catholic members of Ormond's extended family (including Edward Butler, 2nd Viscount Galmoy and Piers Butler, 1st Viscount Ikerrin). All of these prominent Catholic nobles, who had served either the king or the Irish Confederates during the 1640s, quickly made their peace with Cromwell and were rewarded accordingly during the 1650s. Nevertheless at the Restoration they too were restored to their estates by Charles II.
Irish Protestants also changed sides, some with alarming regularity. Consider the example of Murrough O'Brien, 6th Baron of Inchiquin, who was motivated during the 1640s almost exclusively by 'tribal' ambitions and was prepared to offer his services to whoever was in a position to protect the Protestant ascendancy in Munster. Another Munsterman, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, who had initially served the Royalists, joined the Parliamentarians in 1647 but then played a key role in the restoration of Charles II in 1660 (in return he was created Earl of Orrey and Lord President of Munster). Clearly then, amid this sea of ex-Cromwellian 'collaborators' and 'traitors', Antrim hardly stood out.
But how typical was Antrim's survival in a British context? In Scotland by the mid-1650s General George Monck succeeded in winning the support of the Highland chiefs who, in return for certain privileges, agreed to support the new regime. For example, Antrim's Catholic kinsman, Angus, Laird of Glengarry, who had fought for the Irish Confederates during the later 1640s and then raised men in the Isles for the Scottish Royalists, made his peace with the Protector in June 1655 – albeit after his castle was burned. Yet he was still raised to the peerage, as Lord MacDonnell and Aros, at the Restoration.
English Catholics were also prepared to hedge their bets in order to survive. One of the best known was Sir Kenelm Digby, a cosmopolitan Catholic royalist who, after returning to England in 1654, became a confidant of Cromwell and acted as his agent in France and Spain. Despite this, Digby was well received at the Restoration and continued to hold office as Henrietta Maria's chancellor. Most celebrated of all, the devoutly Catholic (and Royalist) Marquis of Worcester solicited Cromwellian employment in 1656, modestly boasting: 'I am able to do his highness (i.e. Cromwell) more service than any one subject of his three nations'. At the Restoration he nevertheless recovered his extensive estates in Wales virtually intact. Therefore, set in the context of the three kingdoms, Antrim's 'treachery' to the Stuart cause and his rather elastic views on loyalty and patriotism were not unusual.
What really singled the Marquis of Antrim out, and made him a more remarkable and influential figure, was not his ability to change his loyalties, which was what most political figures were obliged to do; nor his complex career, which, by and large, was moulded by immediate pressures or needs; nor yet his faith, for other Irish and British Catholics managed to survive and prosper amid all the wars and revolutions. It was the milieu in which he operated. For although none of the other collaborators whose careers have been recounted above changed their political colours as often as Antrim, so none of them exercised their power in such a fickle and remote area of the Stuart state.
Though the Restoration may well have signalled the end of the Gaelic world as Antrim had known it, and marked a hardening of attitudes towards Irish Catholics, it did not alter the political geography of Antrim's world. The continuities and constants were the same in the 1660s as they had been in the 1630s: Antrim's extensive empire, still united by the sea rather than the land, remained as close to Western Scotland and as remote from the seats of Stuart power; the 'MacDonnell archipelago' continued to be cemented primarily by clan and religious loyalties and ties of kinship. For as long as this state of affairs lasted, the presence of Antrim and trimmers like him would always be essential on Britain's Celtic Fringe.
In its early yeas, the course of Charles II's government was just as unpredictable and turbulent as that of his father. There were republican risings in England, a Covenanter rebellion in Scotland, and a Cromwellian plot to seize Dublin in Ireland. In the absence of an army to coerce the population and without the support of local power-brokers in peripheral areas the king was practically helpless. Thus Charles II, like Oliver Cromwell and Charles I before him, found it so hard to rule 'the dark corners' of the land that, for all his misgivings and scruples, he too needed Antrim.
For Further Reading: Aidan Clarke, 'The earl of Antrim and the first Bishops' War' in Irish Sword, 6, no. 23 (1963); George Hill, An historical account of the MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873; reprinted by Eric E. Honeyford and Sons Ltd., Belfast, 1978); John Lowe, 'The earl of Antrim and Irish aid to Montrose in 1644' in Irish Sword, 4, no. 16 (1960); Jane Ohlmeyer, 'The "Antrim Plot" of 1641 – a myth?' in Historical Journal, 35, no.4 (1992); David Stevenson, Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates: Scottish-Irish Relations in the mid-seventeenth Century (Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 1981).
• Jane Ohlmeyer is currently Visiting Lecturer in History at the University of California. Her book Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609-1683, is published this month by Cambridge University Press.

Arrogant, condescending, crafty, calculating, childish, fickle, reedy, haughty, headstrong, indiscreet, impatient, importuning, interfering, loudmouthed, manipulative, myopic, perfidious, pretentious, self-centred, uncooperative and whining: these are merely a selection of the adjectives used by his contemporaries and by later historians to describe the personality of Randal MacDonnell, 2nd Earl and 1st Marquis of Antrim.
The criticisms started at the top. Two of Ireland's lords lieutenant, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and James Butler, Duke of Ormond, were his most vocal and malevolent critics. The former, who disliked Antrim's character and religion and questioned his competence and loyalty, denigrated and ridiculed Antrim at every opportunity. Many members of both the Protestant and Catholic Irish communities also shared Strafford's contempt for Antrim.
The marquis' abysmal reputation among his contemporaries – and subsequently – is largely the product of his disloyalty and treachery to the Stuart cause during the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. But to what extent did he deserve this appalling press? For whom was he a 'patriot'? What did concepts such as 'patriotism' or 'treason' actually mean to Irish and British Catholics amid the warfare and political instability of the mid-seventeenth century? Why were 'traitors' and 'collaborators' tolerated in Cromwellian and Stuart Britain?
Randal MacDonnell, born in 1609, was the eldest legitimate son of Sir Randal MacDonnell, later 1st Earl of Antrim, and Alice O'Neill, daughter of Hugh O'Neill, 3rd Earl of Tyrone, and was heir to a vast estate of roughly 340,000 acres in County Antrim. Antrim enjoyed an illustrious pedigree. His Irish grandfathers – Sorley Boy MacDonnell and Hugh, Earl of Tyrone – had been great Gaelic warlords who had dominated affairs in Ulster, and for a time in all Ireland, during much of the later sixteenth century.
On the Scottish side he was descended from Somerland, first Lord of the Isles, through his son Domhnall, the eponymous ancestor of the Clan Donald, and thus related to the MacDonalds of Dunnyveg and the Glens, of Clanranald, of Glengarry, of Keppoch and of Sleat. Moreover he was recognised by his Scottish kinsmen as 'leader of the hosts' and their 'helping warrior' against the aggression of neighbouring Clan Campbell (led by the earls of Argyll) who had already laid claim to the hereditary lands of Clan Donald in the Western Isles.
In Ireland Antrim was chief of the Irish MacDonnells and, thanks to the discerning marriages of his siblings, he was related to the leading Old English families in the Pale and to the native Irish ones in Munster, in Connaught and above all in Ulster. In addition, the presence of his illegitimate brothers and exiled cousins in Flanders ensured that his ties with Catholic Europe were particularly strong. This heterogeneous, human pool from which Antrim was able to draw supporters (and sailors too) thus extended from the Hebrides in the north-west to Flanders in the south-east.
The geographical setting of Antrim's world was of paramount importance in his life. In the early modern period distance was 'public enemy number one' and the marquis' territorial and political base was far from the centre of government: his traditional world stretched from the Hebridean islands of Uist, Skye, Rhum and Canna in the north, to Kintyre and Jura in the east and to County Antrim in the west, encompassing some of the most remote and inaccessible regions of Stuart Scotland and Ireland. Indeed Antrim's empire was almost totally inaccessible by land. Though there were 'several high ways' linking Glenarm with the more northerly towns of County Antrim, overland travel was almost impossible without a guide since 'the lower ways are deep clay, and the upper ways great and steep hills'. But one could travel easily between the outposts of Antrim's world by sea. Thus the North Channel between Torr Head and Kintyre was only twelve miles wide and on a fine day could be crossed in a matter of hours (while, by contrast, the journey to London – via Dublin – could take between seven and ten days even in good weather). It was the sea, not the land, which united the Marquis of Antrim's archipelago.
This physical proximity between Ulster and Western Scotland also facilitated social interaction at every level. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, Gaelic Ireland and Gaelic Scotland were parts of the same ethos and had formed a single cultural, linguistic and even political entity since earliest times. The location of Antrim's power base on the periphery of Britain, which was a particularly 'high risk' area during the early modern period, and the cultural homogeneity of his followers, made him an especially valuable asset to all other political figures.
For this reason Charles I insisted in 1627 that Lord Dunluce (as Antrim was known before the death of his father in 1656) be brought to Londoe where he remained for the next eleven years. During this time he pursued, without success, some of the most eligible young ladies at court until in 1635 he finally wed Katherine Villiers, widow of the infamous Duke of Buckingham, who was not only a rich Catholic heiress in her own right but as a favourite of both the king and queen, one of the most important women at the Caroline court. As a result Antrim's power and influence suddenly spread far beyond the Celtic Fringe. For, despite the fact that he was a Catholic, 'Irish Scot' of Gaelic extraction, he now became – thanks to his marriage to an influential English noblewoman – a man of all three of the Stuart kingdoms.
Where then did such a man's true loyalty lie? The overriding constant in Antrim's life was his 'tribal' ambition to use every artifice available to him in order to preserve intact (and, where possible, to extend) his inheritance and that of his clan. He was determined to consolidate further the MacDonnell foothold in East Ulster; to regain the forfeited Scottish lands of Clan Donald (Kintyre and Jura) which were controlled by the earls of Argyll; and, in addition, to keep his corner of Stuart Britain and Ireland Catholic. But Antrim's Scottish ancestry, his Irish upbringing and his resolve to uphold these Gaelic values created a personal dilemma for him. For he also hoped to secure political power in Protestant England and favour at the Caroline court. In short, he sincerely wanted to succeed in, and to be accepted by, two very different worlds; to be both lauded by Gaelic bards and painted by Van Dyck. Antrim's divided loyalties, occasionally amounting almost to an identity crisis, go a long way towards explaining the inconsistent and chameleon-like behaviour excoriated by his contemporaries particularly during the 1640s.
During the 1630s, however, there was no conflict of loyalty and Antrim’s extensive contacts throughout the three kingdoms enabled him to serve the Stuarts as well as himself and his clan. In 1638 he offered to rally the MacDonnells on both sides of the North Channel as bulwarks against the rebellious Covenanters in Western Scotland. Eager to find a speedy and cheap solution to his Scottish problems, Charles I accepted. In the event, Antrim's army never left Ireland; yet the abortive expedition was not without its significance.
In Scotland, Argyll, one of the most important and powerful Scottish nobles who had previously resisted joining the Covenanters, now openly sided with their cause. In England, the king's willingness to conspire with an 'Irish papist' against his Protestant subjects (even if only Scottish ones) did little either to dispel the rumours of popish plots which were circulating in London, or to inspire confidence in a monarch reputed to have been brainwashed by a Catholic coterie at his court. While in Ireland, the divisions and animosities aroused by Antrim's proposed invasion served, on the one hand, to divide the country's meagre resources at a time when a united and concerted effort might have produced very dramatic results in all three kingdoms. On the other, it generated negative and hostile feelings towards Charles I at all levels of society. Strafford was particularly horrified that the king was prepared to arm a Catholic army 'of naked and inexperienced Irishmen' or 'as many O's and Mac's as would startle a whole council board' and 'in the great part the sons of habituated traitors'. Even worse in Strafford's eyes was the fact that this army was to be led by a papist 'of the race of O'Neale, and upon my knowledge the great admirer of his grandfather Tyrone'.
Despite Strafford's caustic scepticism, Antrim continued to support Charles with pristine loyalty and in May 1641 was prepared to rally the 'new Irish army' (which had been raised by Strafford in 1640 to fight in Scotland) and to use it against the king's rebellious English Parliament if the occasion arose. In the event Antrim's grand strategy to solve his royal master's British problems was frustrated by the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641. The insurrection, led by many of his friends and kinsmen, exacerbated Antrim's personal dilemma, for, while he wanted to see 'the free exercise of the Roman religion, which I am devoted to and am engaged to maintain in duty to God and respect of my future happiness and salvation', he was nevertheless, for the time being at least, totally dedicated to the king's service.
As a result he threw himself into the Royalist war-effort. Between the spring of 1642 and the spring of 1644 Antrim hatched at least three separate plots with Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria, which involved raising and sending an Irish army against the Scottish rebels. The first ended in disaster after Antrim's design was made public; yet its political and military ramifications ran deep. In Scotland news that the royal couple had been conspiring against the Covenanters was decisive in convincing moderate politicians to ally with Parliament and to sign the 'Solemn League and Covenant' (September 1643). Moreover the Covenanters now agreed to send an army of 21,000 men into England to fight for Parliament against the king (they played a key part in the parliamentary victory at Marston Moor, July 1644, when the king's Northern army was smashed).
In the event, the only conspiracy to reach fruition occurred in 1644 when nearly 2,000 Irish veterans were dispatched to serve in Scotland under the Royalist commander there – the Marquis of Montrose. The invasion by Antrim's 'idolatrous butchers' (as one Covenanter called them) in the summer of 1644 had an immediate and dramatic impact on British politics. The Edinburgh parliament adjourned and sent an army of 6,000 Covenanters under Argyll to put the Irish to the sword. But Argyll met with little success, for 1644-45 was the Royalists' annus mirabilis in Scotland and Antrim's troops played an important role in Montrose's victories at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, lnverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth. The invasion also impinged significantly on English affairs. Argyll's pursuit of Montrose immediately reduced the pressure on the Royalist army in the north of England and thus gave a breathing space to the king's forces after Marston Moor. Moreover Montrose's continued victories in Scotland resulted in the removal of regiment after regiment of the Covenanting army from English soil and also prevented a second Scottish army of invasion from crossing the border. Ultimately, of course, Antrim's brigade did not prevent Charles' defeat in the first English Civil War; but they did offer the king (as the Duchess of Buckingham astutely observed) 'most hopes to bring him with honour out of his misfortunes'.
And Antrim also gained: the presence of his personal army in Scotland temporarily ousted Argyll from the Western Isles, re-established MacDonnell hegemony there, and forced part of the Scottish army of occupation which had ensconced itself in his County Antrim estates over the summer of 1642 back across the North Channel into Scotland. However sending an army to fight in Scotland was one thing: supporting and supplying it was quite another. The Irish confederate government, which had largely financed the original expedition, refused to help him further; Charles I, after Marston Moor, was unable to help him; and so in desperation the marquis decided to approach the great continental, Catholic powers of France and Spain for arms, munitions and shipping. This decision to turn to the Continent for aid was highly significant because, for Antrim at least, it transformed the 'War of the Three Kingdoms' into a 'War of the Five Kingdoms'.
In a brilliant move, the marquis offered the Spanish governor-general in Brussels 2,000 of his Irish and Scottish dependents for service in Flanders. Desperate for Catholic cannon-fodder, Spain accepted. In return for Antrim's veterans, the Spanish administration in Flanders supplied Antrim with the arms and ammunition he so desperately needed, together with two fully armed Dunkirk frigates (each worth about £2,000). Encouraged by this success, Antrim tried his luck again the following year and in the autumn of 1646 he offered to send 1,200 troops from Kintyre in Scotland to Flanders in return for further financial assistance. Once again the Spanish governor-general accepted. But on this occasion, in the hope of securing yet better conditions, Antrim also touted the same mercenaries to the French crown.
Ironically, however, Antrim's eagerness to become a military entrepreneur in Flanders and France and to flex, as chief of the MacDonnells, his military muscles, undermined his devotion to the Royalist cause and from this point onwards (1645-46) one can see his loyalty to the Stuart crown beginning to waver. Thus when Charles I, after handing himself over to the Scots near Newark on May 5th, 1646, ordered Antrim's Irish brigade to disband, the marquis not only- refused to surrender but mooted a design to raise an army of 30,000 men with which he hoped first to reduce Scotland and then to march into England and to free the king. Antrim's recalcitrance in Scotland therefore seriously threatened any chance of securing a peace between the king and the English and Scottish parliaments.
In Ireland, Antrim also blatantly defied the king's authority and from January 1647 he threw in his lot with the Irish Confederates. He led the opposition to any permanent peace settlement with Ormond (and thus the king); he attempted to undermine Ormond's Irish power base; and he became one of the most active and vocal supporters of Archbishop Rinuccini, the papal nuncio who had recently arrived in Ireland determined to promote the Catholic cause over that of the king. As a result Antrim helped to ensure that the king received no Irish aid. While at the same time his firm adherence to Rinuccini's party contributed to the total destabilisation of Irish politics and further divided the already fragmented Irish Catholic party which, as a result, collapsed during the winter of 1648-49.
Even though the Confederation foundered, Antrim managed to survive the English invasion of Ireland in August 1649 because, desperate for a new benefactor and protector, he quickly changed sides yet again. First he liaised with prominent Cromwellians; then he demonstrated his willingness to serve the new regime by securing the surrender of New Ross, a key port in County Wexford, and by persuading his followers in Ulster and elsewhere to abandon the Royalist cause. Next he spread the rumour that the commander-in-chief of the king's army in Ireland, Lord Inchiquin, had also sold out to the Commonwealth, which (true or false) further weakened the Irish Royalist war-effort.
By siding with the Cromwellians, Antrim had for once apparently picked the winning side and although he was still classed as an 'Irish papist', he enjoyed Cromwellian favour, protection and indeed a government pension throughout the 1650s. However the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the spring of 1660 overturned this comfortable modus vivendi. In an effort to find a niche for himself in the new Royalist world order, Antrim hurried to London where he was immediately imprisoned in the Tower.
However, after investigating Antrim's sullied political track-record for five years, the Restoration government finally pardoned him and in December 1665 restored him to his property in East Ulster. His restoration was largely due to the influence of his important friends at court – especially Henrietta Maria; to the harangues of his London creditors who were owed around £30,000 from the 1650s; and to the corruption of high-powered government officials who, in return for hefty bribes, were prepared to pull strings on Antrim's behalf. Nevertheless the marquis' restoration was extraordinary and everyone could see it. The publication of a pamphlet, entitled Murder Will Out, drew public attention to the grievances of his political enemies and to the career of 'a rebel upon record, and so lately and clearly proved one'. But eventually the storm abated and Antrim survived with his land and power intact until, in 1683, he died in bed.
So for whom was Antrim a patriot? Between 1658 and 1645, he indeed seems to have served the Stuart cause with unswerving loyalty both in Scotland and Ireland. However after the winter of 1645-46 he openly and deliberately defied orders given to him by the royal family. Moreover throughout the later 1640s, through hatred of the Marquis of Ormond, he not only tried to sabotage Royalist schemes to win the war in Ireland and Britain for the king, but also joined forces first with the papal nuncio and then with the English Parliament, both avowed enemies of Charles I. Little wonder that he quickly 'gained the reputation of pulling down the side he is on, or, in the words of another contemporary, behaved like a spider who went about 'making poison out of everything' alienating and infecting 'the greater part of the kingdom'.
Because Antrim failed to serve his sovereign as a 'loyal' subject should, he was tarred a 'traitor', while his willingness to collaborate with the king's enemies conveyed the image of a 'chief for sale'. However concepts such as 'treachery' and 'patriotism' meant little in the early modern Gaelic world, where a man's first loyalty was to his family and kinsmen, then to his religion, and only finally to his sovereign and country. Although since the Reformation the MacDonnells, like many others in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, had been forced to compromise and negotiate in order to survive at all, sooner or later a choice between the old faith and the new became inevitable. For Antrim's grandfather, Hugh O'Neill, it had been the Nine Years' War (1594-1603), for many members of the Old English and Gaelic Irish it had been 1641-42; and so by holding out until 1646 Antrim had in fact remained 'loyal' to the crown for longer than the majority of his Catholic compatriots.
Antrim, however, was not alone in doing whatever was necessary in order to protect his personal, patriarchal interests. Many other Irish Catholics were in similar straits. Here the list is seemingly endless and includes many of Antrim's own kinsmen (such as his nephew, Lord Dunsany, Sir Henry O'Neill of Killeleagh and the Earl of Westmeath) together with numerous Catholic members of Ormond's extended family (including Edward Butler, 2nd Viscount Galmoy and Piers Butler, 1st Viscount Ikerrin). All of these prominent Catholic nobles, who had served either the king or the Irish Confederates during the 1640s, quickly made their peace with Cromwell and were rewarded accordingly during the 1650s. Nevertheless at the Restoration they too were restored to their estates by Charles II.
Irish Protestants also changed sides, some with alarming regularity. Consider the example of Murrough O'Brien, 6th Baron of Inchiquin, who was motivated during the 1640s almost exclusively by 'tribal' ambitions and was prepared to offer his services to whoever was in a position to protect the Protestant ascendancy in Munster. Another Munsterman, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, who had initially served the Royalists, joined the Parliamentarians in 1647 but then played a key role in the restoration of Charles II in 1660 (in return he was created Earl of Orrey and Lord President of Munster). Clearly then, amid this sea of ex-Cromwellian 'collaborators' and 'traitors', Antrim hardly stood out.
But how typical was Antrim's survival in a British context? In Scotland by the mid-1650s General George Monck succeeded in winning the support of the Highland chiefs who, in return for certain privileges, agreed to support the new regime. For example, Antrim's Catholic kinsman, Angus, Laird of Glengarry, who had fought for the Irish Confederates during the later 1640s and then raised men in the Isles for the Scottish Royalists, made his peace with the Protector in June 1655 – albeit after his castle was burned. Yet he was still raised to the peerage, as Lord MacDonnell and Aros, at the Restoration.
English Catholics were also prepared to hedge their bets in order to survive. One of the best known was Sir Kenelm Digby, a cosmopolitan Catholic royalist who, after returning to England in 1654, became a confidant of Cromwell and acted as his agent in France and Spain. Despite this, Digby was well received at the Restoration and continued to hold office as Henrietta Maria's chancellor. Most celebrated of all, the devoutly Catholic (and Royalist) Marquis of Worcester solicited Cromwellian employment in 1656, modestly boasting: 'I am able to do his highness (i.e. Cromwell) more service than any one subject of his three nations'. At the Restoration he nevertheless recovered his extensive estates in Wales virtually intact. Therefore, set in the context of the three kingdoms, Antrim's 'treachery' to the Stuart cause and his rather elastic views on loyalty and patriotism were not unusual.
What really singled the Marquis of Antrim out, and made him a more remarkable and influential figure, was not his ability to change his loyalties, which was what most political figures were obliged to do; nor his complex career, which, by and large, was moulded by immediate pressures or needs; nor yet his faith, for other Irish and British Catholics managed to survive and prosper amid all the wars and revolutions. It was the milieu in which he operated. For although none of the other collaborators whose careers have been recounted above changed their political colours as often as Antrim, so none of them exercised their power in such a fickle and remote area of the Stuart state.
Though the Restoration may well have signalled the end of the Gaelic world as Antrim had known it, and marked a hardening of attitudes towards Irish Catholics, it did not alter the political geography of Antrim's world. The continuities and constants were the same in the 1660s as they had been in the 1630s: Antrim's extensive empire, still united by the sea rather than the land, remained as close to Western Scotland and as remote from the seats of Stuart power; the 'MacDonnell archipelago' continued to be cemented primarily by clan and religious loyalties and ties of kinship. For as long as this state of affairs lasted, the presence of Antrim and trimmers like him would always be essential on Britain's Celtic Fringe.
In its early yeas, the course of Charles II's government was just as unpredictable and turbulent as that of his father. There were republican risings in England, a Covenanter rebellion in Scotland, and a Cromwellian plot to seize Dublin in Ireland. In the absence of an army to coerce the population and without the support of local power-brokers in peripheral areas the king was practically helpless. Thus Charles II, like Oliver Cromwell and Charles I before him, found it so hard to rule 'the dark corners' of the land that, for all his misgivings and scruples, he too needed Antrim.
For Further Reading: Aidan Clarke, 'The earl of Antrim and the first Bishops' War' in Irish Sword, 6, no. 23 (1963); George Hill, An historical account of the MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873; reprinted by Eric E. Honeyford and Sons Ltd., Belfast, 1978); John Lowe, 'The earl of Antrim and Irish aid to Montrose in 1644' in Irish Sword, 4, no. 16 (1960); Jane Ohlmeyer, 'The "Antrim Plot" of 1641 – a myth?' in Historical Journal, 35, no.4 (1992); David Stevenson, Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates: Scottish-Irish Relations in the mid-seventeenth Century (Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 1981).
• Jane Ohlmeyer is currently Visiting Lecturer in History at the University of California. Her book Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609-1683, is published this month by Cambridge University Press.