O’Neill’s Dungannon Proclamation is striking because it framed armed resistance as loyalty to Charles I and protection for English and Scottish subjects, even as events produced displacement and violence. The article suggests that this language was neither simply empty nor fully effective: it expressed a constitutional world in which opposition to Dublin’s administration could coexist with allegiance to the crown. Its contrast with the later forged Newry commission also shows how political claims gained force amid uncertainty and competing information. How should historians weigh proclaimed intentions against actions when interpreting why participants joined, supported, resisted, or feared the 1641 rising?