Origin of the Surname
The Ua Neill family were the first Irish dynasty to develop a surname, literally "grandson of Niall." This derived from Niall Glundub, or "Black-knee," king of the northern Uf Neill territory of Cenel nEogain, then comprising the area covered by the modern counties of Derry, Tyrone, and north Armagh. In 916, Niall Glundub succeeded Flann Sinna, king of the southern Uf Neill, as high king of Tara by agreement of both northern, and southern Uf Neill, ending a long period of interdynastic rivalry. He led their united forces against renewed Viking incursions along the southern and eastern coasts of Ireland, but was slain in battle by the Dublin Norse in 919.
Silver signet ring with the arms of O’Neill attached to a silver chain.
Niall was succeeded as high king by Flann Sinna’s son, Donnchad, and as king of Cenel nEogain by his own son, Muirchertach na Cochall Craicinn, "of the Leather Cloaks." Muirchertach continued to battle against the Norse invaders. Although initially opposing the rule of the high king Donnchad, he eventually made common cause with him His nickname "of the Leather Cloaks" was traditionally said to be earned by a winter campaign in 941, when he brought his leather-clad soldiers on a circuit of southern Ireland, capturing Cellachan, "king of Cashel" (over king of Munster), and forcing him to submit to Donnchad. Before he could succeed Donnchad as high king, Muirchertach was killed by a Norse army near Clonkeen, County Louth, in 943.
The surname Ua Neill first emerged with Muirchertach’s son, Domnall of Armagh, otherwise "Domnall Ua Neill." Domnall succeeded his father as king of Cenel nEogain, but only won recognition as high king of Ireland in 956, after an interregnum, 944-956, when two long-excluded branches of the northern and southern Ui Neill, the Cenel Conaill and the Sil nAedo Slaine respectively, fought unsuccessfully for supremacy. Domnall (d. 980) was the last of his line to hold high kingship. He was succeeded in Cenel nEogain by two sons. The first, Aed Craeibe Telcha, or "of Crewe Hill, County Antrim," was named after the battle in which he was killed in 1004 while attempting to assert lordship over the Ulaid. His brother, Flaithbertach an Trostain Ua Neill (1004-1036), "of the pilgrim’s staff," was so called because he transferred his kingship to his son Aed in 1030 and went on pilgrimage to Rome. Aed died in 1033, and although the aged Flaithbertach resumed kingship for a further three years, his death in 1036 was followed by a succession struggle among different branches of the Cenel nEogain dynasty, leading to the rise of a collateral kindred, the Mac Lochlainn kings of Cenel nEogain, two of whom successively claimed to be high kings of Ireland "with opposition."
The Medieval Lords of Tir nEogain (Tyrone)
The Ua Neill family went through a period of obscurity until the fall of the high king Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn in 1166. The next high king, Ruaidri Ua Conchobair of Connacht, divided Cenel nEogain in two in 1167, giving the northern half to Niall, son of Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, and the southern half to Aed Ua Neill, an Macaem Toinlesc, "the lazy-rumped lad," traditionally so called because as a boy he had failed to stand up respectfully when Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn entered the house where he was staying. Aed Ua Neill was opposed and eventually killed by the sons of Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn near Armagh in 1177. His brief reign had nevertheless restored the claims of the Ua Neill line, and in 1199 his son Aed Meith, "Aed of Omeath" (County Louth), began a long and militarily successful career as ruler of the Cenel nEogain.
The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland began in 1169, leading to the conquest and settlement of Ulaid by John de Courcy in 1177. Aed Meith’s first recorded exploit was an attack on the Anglo-Norman port of Larne, County Antrim, which forced de Courcy to retreat from his own invasion of Tir nEogain, the land ruled by the Cenel nEogain. Thereafter, Aed headed an alliance of Tir nEogain with Tir Conaill (most of modern County Donegal) under Ua Domnaill, and Fir Manach (County Fermanagh) under Ua hEignig. He came to terms with John de Courcy, lord of Ulster, and afterward with Hugh de Lacy, who replaced de Courcy and was created first earl of Ulster in 1205. When de Lacy rebelled and his castle of Carrickfergus was besieged by King John in 1210, Aed refused to yield hostages to the English king, and succeeded in destroying the Anglo-Norman castles with which John’s chief governor ringed Ulster subsequently between 1211 and 1214. However the pipe roll of John for 1211 and 1212 shows Ua Neill paid a fine of at least 293 cows to obtain pardon for rebellion, and a further 321 cows or more as rent for the kingship of Tir nEogain. When the exiled Earl Hugh returned from 1222 to 1224 to win back his earldom by force, Aed Ua Neill supported him against the justiciar’s army, enabling de Lacy to negotiate the restoration of his title. Ua Neill was less successful in 1225 when he invaded Connacht in support of one side in a succession dispute among the Ua Conchobair kings. At his death in 1230, he was described in the annals as "king of Conchobar’s Province," that is, of the whole of Ulster and not just Tfr nEogain, "a prince eligible de jure for the kingship of Ireland."
Aed’s son and heir Domnall was killed within a few years by Domnall Mac Lochlainn, last of his line to hold the kingship of Tfr nEogain. In 1241, Aed’s nephew Brian Ua Neill allied with Mael Sechlainn Ua Domnaill, king of Tfr Conaill, to defeat and kill Domnall Mac Lochlainn and ten of his closest kinsmen. After Hugh de Lacy’s death in 1243, the earldom of Ulster was taken into the hands of royal administrators, and Brian Ua Neill began raiding to reconquer eastern Ulster from the Anglo-Normans. At a meeting in 1258 at Cael Uisce near Belleek, County Fermanagh, attended by Aed Ua Conchobair, son of the king of Connacht, and Tadc Ua Briain, son of the king of Thomond (north Munster), Brian was acknowledged "king of the Irish of Ireland." In 1260, Aed Ua Conchobair brought a force to join Ua Neill in an allied attack on the Ulster colonists, but they were defeated outside Downpatrick. Ua Neill was killed, his head cut off and sent to King Henry III in England.
The next three kings of Tfr nEogain were descendants of Aed Meith, who had come to an arrangement with the new earls of Ulster, Walter de Burgh or Burke (d. 1271), created earl in 1263, and his son Richard de Burgh, "the Red Earl" (d. 1326). Aed Buide ("the Yellow-haired"), son of Domnall son of Aed Meith, married Earl Walter’s kinswoman, Eleanor de Nangle, in 1263, and allied with the Anglo-Normans to defeat and kill Domnall Oc Ua Domnaill, king of Tfr Conaill, who invaded Tfr nEogain in 1281. After Aed Buide’s death in 1283, Brian Ua Neill’s son Domnall seized the kingship, but was deposed by the earl in 1286, in favor of Aed Buide’s brother Niall Culanach ("of the long back hair"). Domnall persisted, killing Niall Culanach in 1291 and killing the earl’s next appointee, Brian son of Aed Buide, in 1296, after which the earl left Domnall in the kingship, perhaps because Henry son of Brian son of Aed Buide was still too young to be king. A grant of land by the earl to Henry Ua Neill in 1312 may signal the rising power of his potential rival that induced Domnall Ua Neill to associate himself with King Robert the Bruce of Scotland and his brother Edward just after their victory against the English at Bannockburn in 1314. From the first landing of Edward Bruce with an invading army of Scots at Larne, County Antrim, in 1315, to his eventual defeat and death in 1318, Domnall Ua Neill was his closest ally, and the ravaging of eastern Ulster by the Scottish army during those three years significantly undermined the wealth and power of Earl Richard de Burgh.
De Burgh expelled Domnall in 1319 in favor of the descendants of Aed Buide, led by Henry Ua Neill, but Domnall had recovered power at least partially before his death in 1325. When the next de Burgh earl of Ulster, William "the Brown Earl," was assassinated by his own Anglo-Norman vassals in 1333, inquisitions record that Tfr nEogain was shared between Henry Ua Neill and Domnall’s son Aed Remar ("the Fat"), who were jointly responsible for paying rent for the kingship of Tfr nEogain and supporting a quota of the earl’s mercenary soldiers billeted on their territory. In practice, we are told, Henry supported his share of the soldiers and paid the whole of the rent hoping to be acknowledged as sole lord of Tfr nEogain.
However, Henry had joined the Anglo-Norman rebellion against Earl William, and in 1344 the justiciar, Ralph d’Ufford, deposed him in favor of Aed Remar, Domnall’s son, who adopted the title "King of the Irish of Ulster." By a peace treaty in 1338, Henry and his descendants were granted a stretch of war-ravaged land in south county Antrim, where they established a separate lordship as the Clann Aeda Buide, "the descendants of Aed Buide," later known as the O’Neills of Clandeboye.
The earldom of Ulster passed through Earl William’s daughter, Elizabeth, to her husband, Prince Lionel of Clarence, and then to his son-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, all absentees. The resulting power vacuum in the north was filled by the rise of Aed Remar (1325-1364), his son Niall Mor ("the Elder," 1364-1397), and his grandson Niall Oc ("the Younger," 1397-1403). They not only won the submission of the other chiefs in their province, but took over the Ulster earls’ custom of billeting a quota of mercenary soldiers, in their case the Mac Domnaill galloglass (heavy-armored foot soldiers imported from the Western Isles of Scotland), on each of the territories subject to them, a custom known as the "bonaght of Ulster" (from buannacht, "military billeting"). Their attempts to overrun remaining English settlements on the coast of County Down were, however, unsuccessful.
Alliance with the Earls of Kildare
The fifteenth century began with a civil war between Niall Oc’s son Eogan and his nephew Domnall (reigned 1404-1432), the first lord to be called by the English "the Great O’Neill," to distinguish the ruler of Tfr nEogain from the Ua Neill Buide, or lord of Clandeboye. This war allowed Ua Domnaill of Tfr Conaill and Ua Neill Buide to build up significant overlordships of their own on either side of Tir nEogain. To counter the threat they posed, Eogan Ua Neill (reigned 1432-1455) and his son Henry (1455-1489) increasingly used alliances with the Anglo-Irish earls of Ormond and Kildare, who sent troops from the Pale area to help quell the rebellions of Ua Domnaill and of junior members of the Ua Neill dynasty inside Tir nEogain itself. Thus reinforced, Eogan and his son Henry managed intermittently to dominate an area equivalent to the nine counties of modern Ulster, including their newly acquired overlordship of Ua Raigillig’s territory of East Breifne (County Cavan). This close association with the earls gradually developed into dependency. Henry’s son Conn Mor (1483-1493) and the latter’s son Conn Bacach ("the Lame," 1519-1559) respectively married Eleanor the sister, and Alice the daughter, of Gerald Mor Fitzgerald, eighth earl of Kildare (d. 1513). Ua Neill of Tir nEogain lent important political support to the house of Kildare both before and after the rebellion of Silken Thomas, the tenth earl, in 1534. It was to win Ua Neill back to the government’s side that Conn Bacach was created first earl of Tyrone in 1542.
