The annals give O Neill the leading role in organising this defensive campaign, but as yet the O Neills were too occupied in the struggle against the MacLochlainns and the English colonists to rebuild the overlordship once wielded by the kings of Aileach. Instead, for most of the 13th century, the O Donnells claimed a certain authority over the Fir Manach. The first major challenge to O Donnell influence in Fir Manach came not from O Neill but from the Anglo-Normans. After the conquest of Connacht, both Tir Conaill and the kingdom of Lough Erne were claimed by the FitzGerald lords of Sligo. Although the Fermanagh area was never actually colonised in the medieval period, it would be a mistake to think it escaped the invaders� influence completely. In 1299 the FitzGerald claims passed into the hands of Richard de Burgh, the �Red Earl� of Ulster. Richard dominated the whole north of Ireland very much as the MacLochlainn kings of Aileach had done in the 12th cent. On the death of his grandson the �Brown Earl� in 1333, a local jury reported that like the other Irish chiefs in Ulster, the king of Fermanagh held his lands from de Burgh, by the service of maintaining 40 mercenary soldiers. A later revision of this statement, drawn up in 1342, adds that Fermanagh also paid the Earl an annual tribute of 80 cows.
The rulers of Fir Manach from whom this tribute was exacted were the earliest Maguire chiefs. The first king of this surname, Donn Carrach Maguire, appears in the annals in 1264, before he took power over the Seven Tuatha, and a contemporary poem mentions him as an enemy of Domhnall O Donnell, king of Tir Conaill. The Maguires came from the original homeland of the Fir Manach, between Enniskillen and Lisnaskea, and they were related to the old royal dynasty of � hEignigh. It seems quite possible that their justifiable claim to the kingdom of Lough Erne was sponsored by the Earls of Ulster. Certainly during the period of de Burgh rule, on the death of Donn Carrach in 1302 the throne passed peacefully to his son Fla Maguire, who in 1314 and 1315 was summoned with the other Irish chiefs to aid the King of England against the Scots. Fla Maguire was succeeded in 1327 by his son Ruaidhri, and in 1333 it is this Ruaidhri who is said to owe service to the Earl of Ulster for his land of Fermanagh. This calm succession from father to son is in marked contrast to the instability of the 13th century. Even after the de Burgh power waned in Ulster with the murder of the Brown Earl in 1333, the Maguire family retained unbroken control of the territories around Lough Erne for the next three centuries, bringing their subjects the all-too-rare blessings of continuity, peace and prosperity. ENDS |
