Shrule’s Contested Field1570 CE

Dateline

In 1570, the most revealing Irish conflict did not occur in the better-known war zone of Munster, but around Shrule, on the borderlands of Connacht. There, the government’s new provincial machinery collided with the military networks, lordly rivalries and local loyalties of the Burkes and their allies. The fighting was neither a simple English victory nor a straightforward Gaelic resistance: the army of Sir Edward Fitton, president of Connacht, included Irish allies, gallowglass companies and Galway’s forces, while those opposing him were led by another branch of the long-established Burke kindred. The year also brought a sharp confrontation in Thomond, an autumn royal expedition through Munster, and a widening international religious crisis. Together these episodes show how precarious crown authority remained beyond Dublin and the older English towns.

A Presidency Tested in Thomond

Fitton’s presidency was still new. Created in 1569, the Connacht presidency was intended to bring a large and politically diverse region under closer supervision through a resident president, council, courts, sheriffs and military force. Its reach extended into Thomond, roughly later County Clare, where the O’Brien earls possessed formidable local authority. In practice, imposing the new order required co-operation from magnates who had their own followers, castles and claims to obedience.

The Annals of the Four Masters, compiled later but preserving a detailed annalistic account of the year, place the first major crisis at Ennis about the feast of St Brigid, early in February. Fitton proclaimed a court there for the O’Briens and the inhabitants of Upper Connacht. Tadhg O’Brien, described as the first sheriff of Thomond, arranged food and drink for the president and his company at the Franciscan monastery. That practical detail matters. A court was not merely a legal sitting: it depended on provisions, accommodation, armed escorts and the willingness of local people to sustain an intrusive official presence.

Conor O’Brien, third earl of Thomond, was at Clare. When Fitton sent guards and horsemen to summon him, the encounter at the town gate turned violent. Conor seized Donnell O’Brien and other men inside the gate and had some of those outside killed; the survivors fled back to Fitton. As the president withdrew, he was guided through difficult country by Tadhg and Donough, sons of Murrough O’Brien, while the earl’s men pursued and skirmished with them. The episode exposed the limitations of official summonses in a lordship where kinship, armed followings and control of routes outweighed the paper authority of a presidency.

Sir Henry Sidney, lord justice, answered through alliance rather than direct conquest. He ordered Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond and a kinsman of Thomond, to intervene for the queen. Conor met Ormond and surrendered Clonroad, Claremore and Bunratty, together with prisoners. Yet the settlement did not settle him. The annals report that he later fled, travelled to France around the feast of St John, then went to England. A better-dated record establishes that he submitted to Elizabeth I at court on 1 November 1570. He returned to Ireland before the year ended, having agreed to preserve the peace and serve the crown. His escape and restoration show that submission could be a negotiated political relationship, not simply defeat.

The Field at Shrule

Fitton’s more substantial campaign came in summer. The annals date his siege of Sruthair, identified with Shrule, to 21 June. Shrule stood in a strategically sensitive district between Galway and Mayo, on approaches linking the lordships of Clanricarde and Mac William Íochtair. Fitton acted with Richard Burke, earl of Clanricarde, whose position as a crown-aligned magnate placed him against John Burke, Mac William Íochtair, leader among the Mayo Burkes. The dispute was thus connected to the crown’s advance, but it was also a contest within a powerful Anglo-Irish dynasty whose branches had long competed for lordship, land and military followings.

The host assembled against Shrule was strikingly mixed. Alongside Fitton’s captains and soldiers came the ordnance and forces of Galway, several companies of Irish mercenaries, gallowglasses of the MacSweenys and Clann Dubhghaill, men associated with the MacDonnells, and three hundred armoured horse. This was not an army divided neatly between “English” and “Irish”. It was a composite force organised through service, lordship and payment. Artillery, gunners, halberdiers and armoured foot represented forms of warfare increasingly important to the Tudor state, while gallowglasses, cavalry, bows, lances and battle-axes remained central to Irish campaigning.

John Burke called out the Lower Burkes, the descendants of Meyler Burke, Scottish and Irish hired soldiers, Clann Donnell gallowglasses and Murrough “of the Battle-axes” O’Flaherty. The annalistic narrative says that his mounted men dismounted and formed close infantry order before advancing on Fitton’s defended position. They endured fire from guns and arrows, drove back part of the opposing foot, and pursued the fugitives for about two miles. But Fitton and Clanricarde had held cavalry in reserve. Once the Burke force had passed it in pursuit, the horse attacked from the rear.

The result remained disputed even at the time. John Burke’s followers believed that they had won because they had scattered much of the enemy and cleared the field; Fitton and Clanricarde claimed the credit because they held the camp through the night, buried their dead and tended the wounded. The Annals name losses on both sides, including Patrick Cusack and Calvagh MacDonnell among the presidential army and Walter Burke, Randal MacDonnell and two Scottish constables among their opponents, while also reporting many further deaths. It is therefore safest to call Shrule a fiercely fought and inconclusive encounter with a tactical advantage for the government side, rather than to impose a decisive verdict that the evidence itself resists.

War, Food and Local Society

For people who did not command troops, the year’s campaigns meant demands that reached directly into household resources. The Ennis court required supplies; military hosts needed cattle, grain, drink, horses, fodder, labour and places to sleep. The Shrule campaign brought artillery and a large force across Connacht, while the opposing army had to recruit and feed its own mercenaries. Such pressures were intensified by cess, the compulsory maintenance of soldiers and horses, and by the taking of hostages, spoils and prisoners. These were not incidental hardships but the means through which war and government operated.

The pattern can also be seen in southern Ireland. The first Desmond rebellion, begun in 1569 under James fitz Maurice Fitzgerald, had survived the violent winter campaign of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Gilbert left Ireland in late January 1570 after a short Munster command marked by exceptionally ruthless tactics against people, livestock and places suspected of aiding the rebels. His departure did not end the war. Fitz Maurice remained at large, dependent on the mobility of his followers and on the hesitancy or covert sympathy of some local lords. In 1570 Warham St Leger tried to revive his English settlement and estate at Kerrycurrihy, County Cork, but warfare made it an expensive and insecure undertaking. Land, rents and settlement were inseparable from military control.

Ormond’s autumn hosting demonstrated the continuing pressure on Munster. The annals record that he crossed the Suir, marched through south Munster into Kerry, took and demolished Dún Loich on the River Laune, secured hostages and spoils, and returned without battle. The absence of a pitched fight did not make the expedition bloodless in consequence: demolition, hostage-taking and the seizure of goods were powerful statements of lordship. The annalist attributed the lack of resistance partly to the imprisonment in London of the earl of Desmond and his sons, and partly to the queen’s troops accompanying Ormond. Desmond’s detention deprived the wider Geraldine lordship of its recognised head, but it did not remove Fitz Maurice’s capacity to sustain resistance.

In Leinster, the after-effects of the Butler revolt were still being managed. Sir Edmund Butler and his brothers had tried to revive their rebellion in January 1570, but won little support. Edmund and Piers submitted to Ormond on 28 February. Later that year, while Ormond was campaigning in Thomond, the Dublin administration moved to imprison and try them for treason. This was an important reminder that the crown’s Irish allies were not a unified bloc: the Butler family’s internal quarrels had recently joined local grievances to the broader disorder of Munster and Leinster.

Religion and a Wider Crisis

On 25 February 1570 Pope Pius V issued Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Elizabeth I excommunicate and purporting to release her subjects from allegiance. This was not an Irish event in itself, and it should not be treated as the immediate cause of every Irish conflict that year. Yet it sharpened the international setting in which Irish affairs were understood. Fitz Maurice and his associates had already framed their opposition in defence of Roman Catholicism and had sought support from Spain and the papacy. The bull made English officials still more alert to the possibility that Irish rebellion could be connected to Catholic powers overseas.

At the same time, 1570 cannot be reduced to a contest of confessions. Conor O’Brien, a Catholic earl, made terms with Elizabeth; Ormond, also Catholic, served as a crucial royal commander; Burke fought Burke; and government armies relied heavily on Irish and Scottish soldiers. Allegiance was shaped by religion, but also by inheritance, local rivalries, rents, military employment and the defence of territorial authority.

The annals’ notices from Ulster reinforce that wider picture of a politically fragmented island. They record the treacherous killing of leading MacSweenys at Dún na Long in the presence of Turlough Luineach O’Neill, and the death of John MacNamara in eastern Clann Chuiléin, followed by the succession of Donnell Riabhach Mac Conmheadha. Such entries preserve a world in which the deaths, replacement and reputation of local leaders mattered profoundly. Learned Gaelic culture remained active enough to remember hospitality, prowess, genealogy and succession in careful detail, even while provincial presidencies sought to remake political life through sheriffs, courts and armed enforcement.

By the close of 1570, no single authority had mastered Ireland. The crown had extracted a submission from Thomond, held the ground after Shrule, and projected force in Munster. But each apparent success rested on bargains with local elites, expensive military mobilisation and a readiness to use coercion. The contested field at Shrule was therefore more than a regional battle. It was a compact image of Elizabethan Ireland: overlapping jurisdictions, changing military practice, enduring lordships and a state still struggling to turn claim into command.