O'Neill

The Ó Néill of Tír Eoghain was the most powerful Gaelic dynasty of late medieval Ireland and the dominant political force in Ulster from the 10th century until 1607. Their inauguration site at Tullyhogue Fort outside Cookstown was the central political theatre of the Ulster lordship; the seat of Shane O'Neill, of Hugh O'Neill, and of the chiefs who ruled half the province as effectively a sovereign state through the Tudor century.

Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone (c.1550–1616), is the central figure. Raised partly at the English court, granted the earldom of Tyrone by Elizabeth in 1587, he then led the Nine Years' War (1594–1603) — the largest and longest-fought Irish rebellion against the Tudor crown. The campaigns at Yellow Ford (1598) and Moyry Pass were Gaelic Ireland's high tactical watermark; Spanish help at Kinsale in 1601 ended in disaster; the surrender at Mellifont in March 1603 came six days after Elizabeth's death — too late to bargain for terms with a queen who would not have given them. Hugh kept his title and lands but lived under English supervision in Dungannon.

Four years later, in September 1607, Hugh O'Neill, Rory O'Donnell of Tyrconnell and ninety of their nobility sailed from Rathmullan in Lough Swilly for the Continent — what tradition has called The Flight of the Earls. None ever returned. Hugh died in Rome in 1616, and is buried at San Pietro in Montorio. The earldom was forfeited; the Plantation of Ulster began three years later. The end of Gaelic Ireland is generally dated, with little dispute, to that month at Rathmullan.