Early modern Duhallow, c.1534-1641

The crisis, decline and fall of Irish lordship

David Heffernan

In the sixteenth century the Duhallow region of north-west Co. Cork was one of the most indisputably Irish parts of Ireland. Characterized geographically by the mountainous boggy lands of Sliabh Luachra, the region was dominated by the lordships of the MacDonogh-MacCarthys, the MacAuliffes, the O’Callaghans and the O’Keeffes. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, these lordships had largely been dismantled and the region was increasingly dominated by New English settler families such as the Boyles, Percivals and Aldworths residing around new towns at Newmarket and Kanturk. This study charts the transformation of early modern Duhallow by examining the crisis of Irish lordship in the region under the Tudors and the decline and fall of the lordships during the early Stuart period. In doing so, it examines a microcosm of how Irish lordship was often destroyed not by direct conquest and colonization, but by a gradual process of economic, social and political erosion.

David Heffernan is a historian of Tudor and early Stuart Ireland. Previous books include Debating Tudor policy in sixteenth-century Ireland (2018) and Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, and the colonization of north-east Ulster, c.1573–6 (2018).