After the murder of the Brown Earl, William de Burgh, in 1333, the main de Burgh lineage that had led the Anglo-Norman conquest of Munster in 1192 and subsequently inherited the earldom of Ulster in 1264 came to a very sudden end. However, Richard de Burgh, who had led the invasion of Connaught in 1235, had many descendants who settled in Galway and Mayo. Over the centuries they had dominated politics in Connaught, where they soon assimilated with the local Gaelic families. By the time Sir Henry Sidney arrived in Ireland as Lord Deputy in 1566, there were two leading de Burgh families in Connaught, now more commonly known as the Burkes; the Galway earls of Clanricarde, and the MacWilliam of Mayo. The title Clanricarde derives from the Irish for ‘Richard’s family’, reflecting the fact that they traced their lineage to Richard de Burgh who first conquered Connaught in 1235. Earlier generations of the Galway Burkes had also used the title Mac William Uachtar (meaning Upper MacWilliam) to differentiate themselves from another branch known as the Mac William Íochtar (Lower MacWilliam), who held much of Mayo. By the 16th century, the head of the Galway Burkes had adopted the title Clanricarde, while the head of the Mayo Burkes used the term MacWilliam. The relationship between the two Burke families was not always amicable, but the degree to which they both had assimilated with the local Gaelic families is fascinating. For example, they had long abandoned the traditional English law of primogeniture (i.e. inheritance to the eldest male heir) in favour of the ancient Irish tradition of rotating succession. Therefore, the titles of Clanricarde and MacWilliam had both followed the Gaelic tradition of rotating around the respective families. Furthermore, both families had embedded themselves with the local Gaelic families through marriage and were more familiar with the Irish language and Latin than with English.

Initially, the Tudor policy in the west of Ireland attempted to introduce the policy of ‘surrender and regrant’. At this time in south Galway, Ulick na gCeann Burke was the (12th) chief Clanricarde. In 1543, he was bestowed the formal title of 1st earl of Clanricarde by the king. Here we see a rare example of the ‘surrender and regrant’ policy, otherwise aimed at the Gaelic families, being used to bring an old English family into the reformed administration of Ireland by the ‘new’ English. In Mayo, however, the MacWilliam Burkes had rejected such royal overtures.

In 1569, the English government in Ireland established a Presidency Council to administer local government in Connaught. This included Thomond to the south (modern-day county Clare), which would later revert to Munster. The aim was similar to the presidency of Munster, initiated by Sir Henry Sidney three years earlier. It would be headed by a president, an English man appointed by the crown, to ‘preside’ over the Connaught lords (both Gaelic and old English) and have full judicial powers in the region. The president would have a standing army and would also be assisted by a council, including a chief justice and a second justice for the province. There were also new administrative posts, such as a water bailiff who was to have two boats to control the River Shannon and keep it safe from thieves and rebels. In this way, justice, military organisation and taxation would be administered centrally by the president of the Connaught, which in time would be implemented locally through newly established counties in the region.

However, Connaught was not Munster. Throughout the west, where English administration had been virtually absent, justice, military organisation and taxation were controlled locally by the respective chiefs, such as the Clanricarde and MacWilliam Burkes. The new model now proposed to remove these powers from the families and bring them under the direct authority of the government’s administration. However, in Connaught, there was one significant disadvantage that did not exist in Munster, in that there were few towns that could provide the urban infrastructure to underpin the proposed administrative reforms. Galway was the only city, and towns such as Athenry were small and sparsely distributed throughout the province. Indeed, in Mayo there were no towns that could have accommodated the proposed administrative infrastructure envisaged for the region. So, when it came to selecting a seat for the new presidency to reside, the government chose the royal castle at Athlone on the banks of the River Shannon, which was about as far east in the west you could go and still be in the ‘west’. Despite this, Athlone was strategically located on the main route from the seat of government in Dublin to the west of Ireland, and the River Shannon was a major north-south routeway that also defined the eastern extent of Connaught. A castle had first been constructed here around 1129 by Toirrdelbach Ua Conchobhair. Today, there are the remains of a castle built here in the wake of King John’s visit to Ireland in 1210, and it had been one of a series of royal castles designed to maintain the crown’s interests west of the Shannon throughout the 13th century.

In 1566, Sir Henry Sidney, the newly appointed lord deputy, ordered a bridge to be constructed across the Shannon at Athlone. The town had been without a bridge for some time, and some of Sidney’s own baggage was lost when his servants tried to cross the ford. The surviving accounts provide a fascinating snapshot of the skilled labour required to build a bridge in the 16th century. These included 58 carpenters, a shipwright, 3 lime burners, 4 charcoal burners, 2 smiths, a baker, a brewer and nearly 250 masons. This bridge survived until the 1840s, and it became a symbol of the Tudor policy of taking a more direct interest in the English administration of the west.

The first president was Sir Edward Fitton, a close ally of Sir Henry Sidney, and he was officially posted in December 1569. He arrived in Athlone shortly after Sidney’s new bridge across the Shannon was completed. His job was to establish the new civil, military and judicial administration throughout the province, which began with the formal shiring of counties Galway and Roscommon, as well as Clare (still called Thomond), and would mark the beginning of local government at a county level with which we are familiar today. Almost immediately, Fitton met with local resistance, in particular from John and Ulick Burke, the sons of the earl of Clanricarde, sometimes known simply as the Mac an Iarlas (the sons of the earl). In 1572, Fitton watched from the walls of Athlone castle, paralysed with fear, as a large force of soldiers under the command of James fitzMaurice fitzGerald of Munster burned the surrounding town. FitzMaurice had come to Connaught to gather support for his revolt in Munster and had encouraged the Mac an Iarlas to rise up against the English government in the west. In truth, they needed little encouragement. By 1573, the presidency project in Connaught was suspended, and FitzMaurice’s revolt had already resulted in the temporary suspension of the presidency underway in Munster. 

In late 1575, Sir Henry Sidney returned to Ireland as lord deputy, having been recalled to England four years earlier. He immediately began plans to revive the presidencies in both Munster and Connaught. In the west, this began with a meeting convened by Sidney in Galway in March 1576, to which all the leading English and Gaelic families throughout the province were invited. At this meeting he was approached and impressed by the MacWilliam from Mayo, Shane MacOliverus Burke, who he described as ‘wanting the English tongue, yet understanding the Latin’. Four years earlier, in 1571, Shane MacOliverus Burke had been elected as the MacWilliam of the Mayo Burkes. Sidney used the occasion of this meeting in Galway to confer a knighthood on Shane, and initiated plans for the shiring of the rest of Connaught, namely Mayo and Sligo.

At this time, John and Ulick Burke, sons of the earl of Clanricarde, who had been imprisoned in Dublin, were released on condition that would they not to return to Connaught. In June 1576, they broke their parole, and in Gaelic attire, traveled home to undermine Sidney’s plans to revive the presidency in Connaught. With 2000 Scottish mercenaries hired in from Ulster, they coordinated a rebellion west of the Shannon. The man Sidney engaged to quash the revolt was Sir Nicholas Malby, who was appointed as the provincial military governor and based at Athlone. Born in England about 1530, Malby’s origins are obscure. In 1556, he expressed an interest in taking part in the Plantation of Laois, but this never materialised. A few years later, he was found guilty of counterfeiting coinage and narrowly escaped execution. After serving in France and Spain, he returned to England and was dispatched to Ireland in the service of Sir Henry Sidney. Initially, he served as constable of Carrickfergus Castle in 1567 to restrain the Scots of Antrim after the death of Shane O’Neill. In the spring of 1571, he visited England, where he advocated colonising the north of Ireland with Englishmen to prevent the growth of a Scottish power. However, the eventual Plantation of Ulster was some years away, and destiny would, instead, bring him to the west of Ireland in September 1576 in the company of Henry Sidney. Malby’s latest job was to crush the Mac an Iarlas brothers and force their Scottish mercenaries back to Ulster. In this, he was ruthless.

While Malby confronted the rebellious Mac an Iarlas, Sidney traveled to Galway. Here he provided reassurance to the townspeople that the latest rebellion was under control. He also used it as an occasion to convene a meeting of the leading families in the region to secure their loyalty and ensure that they would not take sides with the Mac an Iarla brothers. He later wrote that ‘There came to me also a most famous feminine sea captain called Grany Imallye’, who offered her services to the government, including three galley ships and 200 fighting men. This was Granuaile, or Grace O’Malley, and she represented the seafaring O’Malley family of west Mayo. He concluded that she was ‘a notorious woman in all the coast of Ireland’, adding that ‘she brought with her her husband’ almost forgetting to name him. In fact, her husband was Richard-an-Iarainn Burke, one of the senior Burkes in Mayo. He was tánaiste or successor to the MacWilliam title, currently held by Shane MacOliverus Burke. This was the line of succession as prescribed under Gaelic tradition, but Richard was concerned that the English law of primogeniture would be enforced by the government and prevent him from succeeding to the title. For the time being, however, Richard-an-Iarainn and his wife Grace had submitted to lord deputy and committed not to join the Mac an Iarla revolt.

In March 1577, the Mac an Iarlas had surrendered, and the presidency of Connaught was back on track. With peace restored to Connaught, Nicholas Malby decided it was time to establish roots in the west. In that year, he was granted Roscommon Castle, a day’s ride from the presidential seat at Athlone (which the queen was adamant would stay in government hands). Roscommon castle had originally been built in the 1270s, in the aftermath of the death of Feidlim Ua Conchobair, in order to consolidate the crown holdings in east Roscommon. By the 14th century, the crown had relinquished direct control of the region and had handed the keys of the castle over to the O’Conors, who continued to reside here until 1569, when they agreed to hand it back to the crown. Malby now embarked on an ambitious programme to modernise the castle by creating a large Tudor house within its great walls. In 1578, Malby was given a lease of the nearby ruins of the Dominican priory, founded by Feidlim Ua Conchobair in 1253, where his tomb can still be seen.

In 1579, Malby was formally appointed president of Connaught, having effectively carried-out the functions of the office in all but name over the previous three years. In October that year, he had served briefly in Munster to command the government forces at the outbreak of the Desmond Rebellion, fearful that it would extend north into Connaught. Perhaps surprisingly, there had been little reaction in the west to the Munster revolt, but there had been one exception. Early in 1580, Richard-an-Iarainn Burke and his wife Grace O’Malley, with an alliance of families in west Mayo, used the Desmond rebellion to create instability in Mayo. Malby reacted with the ruthlessness for which he was famous, and on 17th February he established a garrison at Burrishoole abbey, a Dominican friary on the shores of Clew Bay, close to Richard and Grace’s home at Rockfleet Castle, forcing Richard to flee to the islands in the bay. On taking the post, queen Elizabeth had given him instructions to plan and build a walled town in each county within Connaught. While at Burrishoole, he actively considered the location here as a suitable place for a town to serve Mayo, but this was not to be. In the days that followed, a terrible snowstorm prevented Richard from coming back to the mainland, and Malby returned for home, leaving a garrison to fortify the abbey. Later that summer, Malby would witness the defeat of the English army at the Battle of Glenmalure, at the outset of the Baltinglass Rebellion.

In November that year, Shane MacOliverus Burke, the MacWilliam, died. Many years earlier, Richard had been elected tánaiste or successor to the MacWilliam chieftainship of the Mayo Burkes, but he feared that the title, under English law, would pass to Shane’s brother, Richard MacOliverus. Without delay, Richard-an-Iarainn Burke and Grace O’Malley mustered all their resources to take the title MacWilliam title by force. Malby once again marched to Mayo to confront both Richard-an-Iarainn and Richard MacOliverus. At a meeting between the two sides at Strade Abbey, he made an unusual concession. Malby agreed that Richard-an-Iarainn should succeed to the title of MacWilliam and appointed his contender, Richard MacOliverus, as sheriff for the county. This arrangement flew in the face of English law, but it did achieve stability in the region for the next few years. In 1582, after a gathering convened in Galway of the leading families in Connaught, Malby wrote of one of his guests: ‘among them Grany O’Malley is one and thinketh herself to be no small lady’. Ironically, following the death of her husband in April 1583, Grace O’Malley spent the rest of her life ensuring that their son, Tiobóid na Long, would succeed his father under English law as head of the Mayo Burkes. Malby died in 1584 and was replaced by Richard Bingham from Dorset, whose approach to dealing with Connaught was rarely compromising and often violent.