In June 1541, the citizens of Dublin lit bonfires in the city streets and cannon were fired in salute to celebrate the passing of the Crown Act of Ireland at a session of the Irish parliament. The kings of England had previously ruled as lords of Ireland, but this new legislation changed that status for centuries to come. Ireland was now a sovereign kingdom that would be ruled directly by the kings, and queens, of England. It marked a major shift in how Ireland would be governed. More importantly, this new government was not satisfied to rule just a portion of Ireland, as it had for centuries. The aim would now be to conquer and anglicize all of Ireland. The first step towards achieving this was the Crown Act, the long title of which was ‘An Act that the King of England, his Heirs and Successors, be Kings of Ireland’, and it cleverly recognised all Irish subjects as equal before the law of their king of England. This was an attempt to assimilate the leading Gaelic families into the English administration of Ireland. In return for rejecting the pope and recognising the rule of English law and its government of Ireland, the leading Gaelic families would first have to surrender their lands, and then they would receive their lands back as an official gift of the English crown, with certain conditions. They would also receive English-style titles. In time, of course, it was hoped that the Gaelic families who agreed to these terms would also abandon their traditional customs, costume and language. This had already been attempted and failed before, for example under the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. 

What made the latest attempt different was the recognition that the Gaelic chiefs had equal status under English law, but only if they accepted that law. As part of this, the Gaelic chiefs had to be encouraged to accept the long-established English law of primogeniture, whereby lands would be passed from father to his eldest son. This was at odds with the long-accepted Gaelic tradition of inheritance, which had steadfastly refused to accept the English one since the Anglo-Normans first arrived in 1169. The Gaelic system of inheritance, which had its origins centuries before 1169, was quite different. It was equally skewed in favour of the male line, but it was based on a line of succession that included the wider family or kin-group. In theory, it required consensus among the wider family, and for those who ruled a region, it required buy-in from many dependent families. Of course, when consensus could not be reached, which was very frequently the case, the matter would be settled through a show of force. From an English perspective, this was an obstacle to bringing peace and prosperity to Ireland. From a Gaelic perspective, memories of the English War of the Roses simply highlighted the fact that the premise of primogeniture was no guarantee that succession and inheritance could be unchallenged. 

Embedded in the process of ‘surrender and regrant’ was an acknowledgement that it required negotiation, which in turn recognised the need for compromise and concession in order to persuade the Gaelic chiefs of its merits. The champion of this new policy was Anthony St Leger, who arrived as Lord Deputy in August 1540. Hailing from Kent, he was already familiar with Ireland and he also had significant administrative and emissarial experience. He was of the view that military coercion by itself would not succeed in bringing long-term stability to the Gaelic areas of the country. He argued that providing secure ownership of land was the solution to achieving long-term peace, and central to this view was the English law of primogeniture.

One of the first experiments in persuading the Gaelic chiefs to accept the English model under this new scheme was made in Ulster. Conn mac Cuinn Ó Néill, better known as Conn Bacach, was the son of Conn Mór O'Neill and Eleanor fitzGerald, sister of the 8th earl of Kildare. His father had proved a useful ally to the 8th earl, and in time Conn Bacach himself proved a useful ally to the 9th earl of Kildare. In a ceremony to mark Gerald fitzGerald’s royal appointment as Lord Deputy in 1532, it was Conn Bacach Ó Néill who carried the sword of state at the head of the procession at Christ Church in Dublin. During the rebellion of ‘Silken’ Thomas, Conn Bacach contributed by creating unrest in south Ulster to distract crown forces, but he quickly realised that the rebellion was doomed to failure. With the passing of the Crown Act of Ireland, he seised the opportunity that it presented to make his position in Ulster secure. His decision to negotiate terms under the ‘surrender and regrant’ scheme was helped by a swift military campaign led by Anthony St Leger, who devastated his lands. In the negotiations that followed, Conn Bacach was offered a new title, earl of Tyrone, an anglicisation of Tír Eoghain, a region that comprised much of central Ulster. This new title was bestowed on Conn Bacach at a prestigious ceremony at Greenwich before Henry VIII in 1542. As part of the agreement, and in keeping with the English law of primogeniture, Conn Bacach nominated his eldest son Feardocha, as his heir, and as part of the bargain Feardocha conferred with another new title, Baron of Dungannon. The fact that Feardocha was the son of a woman that wasn’t Conn Bacach’s wife, did not seem to present an issue at the time, but, in due course, this would become a significant problem.

An important part of the process of ‘surrender and regrant’ was an agreement by the Gaelic chiefs that any disputes they had with rival families would be arbitrated by the crown. Previously, of course, this had been settled among the chiefs themselves with aggression and violence, and was understandably seen by the English as a key reason for the lack of stability in these areas. Central to this was the premise that, under the new agreement, Conn Bacach as earl of Tyrone, no longer had to claim authority over his followers by right of Gaelic law under the Ó Néill chieftainship. Now, as the earl of Tyrone, Ó Néill’s followers were also subject to the king of England, and any disagreements or disputes would come under the jurisdiction of the crown and be adjudicated under English law. While in theory arbitration might be a useful way of settling inter-family disputes and assist in stabalising the relationships between neighbours, there was no mechanism to resolve clashes that arose within families, and these invariably arose out of rivalry over succession and inheritance. Conn Bacach already had many enemies in Ulster, but the new agreement with the English crown created enemies out of some of his former allies. Indeed, the man most effected by Conn Bacach’s settlement was his tánaiste, his nephew Niall Connallach. This Irish term is used today to describe the government post of deputy prime minister, but its older use was to describe the heir or successor of the king or chief. Under the old Gaelic system, Niall Connallach was the appointed successor to his uncle Conn Bacach as chief of the family (indeed, Conn Bacach had succeeded to the chieftainship on the death of his own uncle). In this way, the chieftainship rotated through the extended family. Of course, as we have seen, the purpose of the English law that Conn Bacach had signed up to was to eradicate this ancient tradition.

However, the man who would undermine Conn Bacach more than anyone else was his own son. Shane was one of Conn Bacach’s younger sons. Under traditional Gaelic law, he might have had a legitimate claim to chieftainship, if he could win the support of the wider family. However, under the title of primogeniture, unless all his older brothers died without heirs, he had no right whatsoever, and this was copper-fastened when Conn Bacach officially nominated his eldest son Feardocha as his successor as part of the surrender and regrant settlement. Indeed, Shane is likely to have been underage when this settlement was agreed in 1542. By 1552, only tens years after Conn Bacach had accepted the English title and everything it brought, his sons were in open conflict over who should succeed to the head of the family. In the bitter and violent conflict that followed, Conn Bacach was forced to flee. Remarkably, the son who came out on top was his youngest, Shane. Indeed, one of the arguments that he used to justify his claim was the fact that his step-brother Feardocha had been born outside marriage, and under English law would have been considered illegitimate. Ironically, under Gaelic tradition this would not have created a legal obstacle, but Shane was deliberately using English legal precedence to undermine the agreement that his father had made with the crown.

There were also other significant factors that had a destablising effect specific to Ulster. The MacDonalds of the Western Isles of Scotland initially came to Ulster in small numbers as mercenaries. When the MacDonalds were displaced from their homeland, they began to arrive in large numbers, with a view to settling down and finding a new home in Ulster. They settled in the glens of Antrim, within sight of their native lands, but their presence here destabilised the politics of the overall region and was equally of concern to the English government in Ireland. By 1550, they reacted by strengthening the garrison at Carrickfergus Castle and establishing new military bases in south Ulster. 

Some years previous, around 1539, a then little-known English man named Nicholas Bagenal fled to Ireland after killing a man in Staffordshire. In Ireland, he sought refuge with Conn Bacach in Ulster, beyond the reach of English law and prosecution. In 1542, Conn Bacach, now earl of Tyrone, successfully petitioned the king to pardon Bagenal. This allowed Nicholas to return to England and he soon entered military service in France, where he probably served alongside a large contingent of Ulster soldiers provided by Conn Bacach in 1545. When Nicholas Bagenal returned to Irish shores in 1547, he arrived as the newly appointed Marshal of the army in Ireland. He was one of a small number of military men granted lands in south Ulster, where they were delegated to stem the Scottish incursions into the region and ensure that, like the forces of Edward Bruce over two hundred years earlier, the MacDonalds didn’t move south into Meath and Leinster. The leader of this military presence in Ulster was Nicholas Bagenal, who in 1552 was granted the confiscated lands of the recently dissolved Cistercian abbey at Newry, which had been founded in 1153 and colonised by monks from Mellifont. This renewed English military presence in Ulster, instead of promoting law and order, had the opposite effect. It aroused apprehension that an English plantation, which was already being proposed in the Gaelic parts of Leinster, was also imminent in east Ulster. The widespread Gaelic suspicion of the English military presence in the region also extended to Conn Bacach himself, as the main ally of the English in Ulster. Ironically, it was his own son Shane who capitalised on this mistrust among the Gaelic chiefs, and by forming an alliance with the Scots, he made a bid to take the Ó Néill chieftainship.

In 1558, Shane had his stepbrother Feardocha assassinated, thereby removing the official legal heir to the earldom, at least under English law. A year later, Conn Bacach died in the house of the Bishop of Meath, where he fled after his eldest son’s murder. Shane wasted no time in making his way to Tullaghoge, the traditional inauguration site of the Ó Néill chiefs, and previously the kings of Tír Eoghain (Tyrone). In so doing, Shane was making a clear statement to all the local Gaelic families – Ulster was saying no to the English law of inheritance. His defiance exposed the primary weakness in the English policy of ‘surrender and regrant’; it simply did not recognise the depth of Gaelic tradition surrounding succession. However, while Shane had used traditional methods to become chief of the Ó Néill, he now entered negotiations with the English government to succeed to his father’s title as earl of Tyrone. Initially, the English officials procrastinated as they made plans to remove Shane by military force. When this failed, the government agreed to bring Shane to London to negotiate directly with Queen Elizabeth I. On the 6th January, 1562, Shane appeared before the queen. He stood before her in his native costume and made his submission in Irish. This was a sign of the defiant position he would take during the negotiations that followed. Perhaps not surprisingly, these talks failed, and Shane returned to Ulster without the title earl of Tyrone.

Despite the failure of the negotiations in London, discussions between the two sides continued, and in September 1563, a treaty was negotiated at Drumcree between Shane and Sir Thomas Cusack, an elderly official in the English government of Ireland, who many years earlier had led the campaign to introduce the Crown Act to Ireland. Despite this, the government showed no signs of conferring Shane with the title of earl of Tyrone, and he was now forced to take control of his own destiny. If he was going to secure his position as the most powerful chief in Ulster, he would have to do so according to traditional methods. In 1564, he marched west and devastated the O’Donnell’s of neighbouring Tír Conaill (Donegal), leaving his own garrisons in the chief castles. In 1565, he turned his attention to the Scottish MacDonalds in east Ulster. This was prompted by the recent arrival in Antrim of a large force of Scottish soldiers under James MacDonald of Dunyveg on Islay. This Scottish army was advancing south through County Down, where Shane’s army cut them off and forced them back to the Antrim coast. He captured James MacDonald and forced the surrender of their Antrim castles, including the well-known cliff-top fortress at Dunluce. He then began to settle the parts of Antrim known as the Glens and the Route, which had been occupied by the Scots for many decades. He replaced them with his own followers and placed garrisons to protect them, thereby copying the English tactic recently used in Leinster.

In theory, the defeat of the Scots was mutually beneficial to Shane and the English government, but it proved to have the opposite effect. His overwhelming military success sent alarm bells ringing in Dublin and London. In 1567, the English government prepared for a major military campaign to remove Shane. In the end, their preparations were not necessary. In May that year, when Shane attempted to confront the O’Donnell’s of neighbouring Tír Conaill, his army was unexpectedly defeated at what has become known as the Battle of Farsetmore. Forced to retreat into the rising tide of Lough Swilly near Letterkenny, a larger number of Shane’s army drowned. The fatality of the changing tide at Farsetmore was symbolic of Shane’s precarious situation within the whirlpool of Ulster politics. Later that month, when Shane arrived in Antrim to begin talks with the MacDonalds, after two days of negotiations, the Scots cut his throat. Presumably they sensed Shane’s sudden weakness, no doubt they wanted avenge their humiliating defeat a year earlier. Shane was buried in the ruins of a nearby abbey, but four days later his body was exhumed by English soldiers stationed at Carrickfergus Castle. His head was removed and sent to Dublin Castle where it was displayed over the gate.

Ultimately, the rise and fall of both Conn Bacach, earl of Tyrone, and his son Shane Ó Néill are emblematic of the failure of the English policy of ‘surrender and regrant’ across Ireland. While many Gaelic chiefs were attracted by the terms of the settlements being offered, the new arrangements invariably created rifts within the wider family. Furthermore, these tensions could easily revert to open hostility and, in turn, spill over across the wider region, especially when external factors, such as the presence of unruly Scots or an English garrison, changed the dynamics of the local politics.