UA NÉILL (Ó NÉILL)him against the justiciar’s army, enabling de Lacy to
negotiate the restoration of his title. Ua Néill was less
successful in 1225 when he invaded Connacht in sup-
port of one side in a succession dispute among the Ua
Conchobair kings. At his death in 1230, he was
described in the annals as “king of Conchobar’s Prov-
ince,” that is, of the whole of Ulster and not just Tír
nEógain, “a prince eligible de jurefor the kingship of
Ireland.”
Áed’s son and heir Domnall was killed within a few
years by Domnall Mac Lochlainn, last of his line to
hold the kingship of Tír nEógain. In 1241, Áed’s
nephew Brian Ua Néill allied with Máel Sechlainn
UaDomnaill, king of Tír Conaill, to defeat and kill
Domnall Mac Lochlainn and ten of his closest kinsmen.
After Hugh de Lacy’s death in 1243, the earldom of
Ulster was taken into the hands of royal administrators,
and Brian Ua Néill began raiding to reconquer eastern
Ulster from the Anglo-Normans. At a meeting in 1258 at
Cáel Uisce near Belleek, County Fermanagh,attended
by Áed Ua Conchobair, son of the king of Connacht,
and Tadc Ua Briain, son of the king of Thomond (north
Munster), Brian was acknowledged “king of the Irish
of Ireland.” In 1260, Áed Ua Conchobair brought a
force to join Ua Néill in an allied attack on the Ulster
colonists, but they were defeated outside Downpatrick.
Ua Néill was killed, his head cut off and sent to King
Henry III in England.
The next three kings of Tír nEógain were descen-
dants of Áed Méith, who had come to an arrangement
with the new earls of Ulster, Walter de Burgh or Burke
(d. 1271), created earl in 1263, and his son Richard de
Burgh, “the Red Earl” (d. 1326). Áed Buide (“the
Yellow-haired”), son of Domnall son of Áed Méith,
married Earl Walter’s kinswoman, Eleanor de Nangle,
in 1263, and allied with the Anglo-Normans to defeat
and kill Domnall Óc Ua Domnaill, king of Tír Conaill,
who invaded Tír nEógain in 1281. After Áed Buide’s
death in 1283, Brian Ua Néill’s son Domnall seized
the kingship, but was deposed by the earl in 1286, in
favor of Áed Buide’s brother Niall Cúlánach (“of the
long back hair”). Domnall persisted, killing Niall
Cúlánach in 1291 and killing the earl’s next appointee,
Brian son of Áed Buide, in 1296, after which the earl
left Domnall in the kingship, perhaps because Henry
son of Brian son of Áed Buide was still too young to
be king. A grant of land by the earl to Henry Ua Néill
in 1312 may signal the rising power of his potential
rival that induced Domnall Ua Néill to associate him-
self with King Robert the Bruce of Scotland and his
brother Edward just after their victory against the
English at Bannockburn in 1314. From the first landing
of Edward Bruce with an invading army of Scots at
Larne, County Antrim, in 1315, to his eventual defeat
and death in 1318, Domnall Ua Néill was his closest
ally, and the ravaging of eastern Ulster by the Scottish
army during those three years significantly under-
mined the wealth and power of Earl Richard de Burgh.
De Burgh expelled Domnall in 1319 in favor of the
descendants of Áed Buide, led by Henry Ua Néill, but
Domnall had recovered power at least partially before
his death in 1325. When the next de Burgh earl of
Ulster, William “the Brown Earl,” was assassinated by
his own Anglo-Norman vassals in 1333, inquisitions
record that Tír nEógain was shared between Henry Ua
Néill and Domnall’s son Áed Remar (“the Fat”), who
were jointly responsible for paying rent for the king-
ship of Tír nEógain and supporting a quota of the earl’s
mercenary soldiers billeted on their territory. In prac-
tice, we are told, Henry supported his share of the
soldiers and paid the whole of the rent hoping to be
acknowledged as sole lord of Tír nEógain.
However, Henry had joined the Anglo-Norman
rebellion against Earl William, and in 1344 the justi-
ciar, Ralph d’Ufford, deposed him in favor of Áed
Remar, Domnall’s son, who adopted the title “King of
the Irish of Ulster.” By a peace treaty in 1338, Henry
and his descendants were granted a stretch of war-
ravaged land in south county Antrim, where they estab-
lished a separate lordship as the Clann Áeda Buide,
“the descendants of Áed Buide,” later known as the
O’Neills of Clandeboye.
The earldom of Ulster passed through Earl William’s
daughter, Elizabeth, to her husband, Prince Lionel of
Clarence, and then to his son-in-law, Edmund Mortimer,
all absentees. The resulting power vacuum in the north
was filled by the rise of Áed Remar (1325–1364), his
son Niall Mór (“the Elder,” 1364–1397), and his grand-
son Niall Óc (“the Younger,” 1397–1403). They not
only won the submission of the other chiefs in their
province, but took over the Ulster earls’ custom of bil-
leting a quota of mercenary soldiers, in their case the
Mac Domnaill galloglass (heavy-armored foot soldiers
imported from the Western Isles of Scotland), on each
of the territories subject to them, a custom known as
the “bonaght of Ulster” (from buannacht, “military bil-
leting”). Their attempts to overrun remaining English
settlements on the coast of County Down were, how-
ever, unsuccessful.Alliance with the Earls of Kildare
The fifteenth century began with a civil war between
Niall Óc’s son Eogan and his nephew Domnall (reigned
1404–1432), the first lord to be called by the English
“the Great O’Neill,” to distinguish the ruler of Tír
nEógain from the Ua Néill Buide, or lord of Clandeboye.
This war allowed Ua Domnaill of Tír Conaill and Ua
Néill Buide to build up significant overlordships of