- 4/20/2025
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00:00Castles are our most dramatic landmarks from the Middle Ages, built as monuments to domination
00:09and power. Scattered all over the Irish landscape, these ancient buildings with their soaring
00:16walls and great towers leave you with no doubt about their military and defensive purpose.
00:20I just hope we brought a ladder. The Anglo-Norman aristocrats who invaded Ireland in the 12th
00:27century built their castles to control and intimidate the unruly Irish. As English rule
00:35was consolidated, the castles served as administrative centres, garrisons and jails, as well as lavish
00:42homes for the English lords. In this series, I'll be telling you stories about dramatic
00:50sieges, bloody battles, lavish lifestyles, ghostly presences, warring families and feudal
00:59lords. After all, the history of Irish castles is the history of Ireland itself.
01:12The Anglo-Norman invasion of the 12th century saw Ireland quickly overrun by King Henry's
01:20powerful knights, with their superior hardware and military expertise.
01:26These men are seen as an elite. It requires a lot of skill and a lot of training.
01:32But they were the ultimate fighting machine. Like gladiators, almost.
01:39The conquerors took control all along the east coast and as far west as the Shannon. Parcelling
01:45out the land into huge estates where English rule was law and taxes paid to the crown.
01:51Basically, administration is growing. Lords want more officials working for them. They need
01:56to be housed. So castles become more complex, residentially, defensively and in terms of display.
02:02Ireland experienced its first ever building boom. The Irish had never seen anything like
02:08these impressive newfangled structures. But while conquering Ireland was one thing, keeping
02:13and controlling it was another.
02:16The Irish fight back begins in the 13th century. It accelerates in the 14th century, partly as a
02:23consequence of the Black Death and the Bruce Wars, which affected the Anglo-Norman colony to
02:31a greater extent than the native Irish. So thereafter, from the 14th century up to the Tudor period,
02:40the Irish were in the ascendancy.
02:44The colonies borders began to shrink substantially. So what you ended up with was the pale. You had
02:50areas around the urban centres, like around Waterford, you had the great earldoms.
02:56But around that there's a sea of Irishness. There's a sea of Gaelic land, land law and tradition
03:04and literature, which doesn't come into contact with it at all. It's two separate societies which
03:10live side by side.
03:14In a colonial sense, the Norman invasion failed. Many of the Anglo-Norman families went over
03:20to the Gaelic side. They became Gaelicised.
03:24By the 14th century, a new type of castle was beginning to appear on the Irish landscape.
03:29The Tower House was based on a Norman design, but it was typically Irish. And we'd end up
03:34with almost 3,000 of these around the country. The Tower Houses were the residencies of the
03:39lords of Ireland at the period, both Gaelic and Anglo-Norman. Basically, everybody seems
03:44to have built the Irish. They were well-heeled at the time, but the big difference was that
03:46they were built by both the wealthy Irish chieftains and the English lords.
03:49In the 15th and 16th century, when you have a new period of castle building in Ireland,
03:55what are being built are the Tower Houses, which are the fortified residences of the lords
04:01of Ireland at the period, both Gaelic and Anglo-Norman. Basically, everybody seems to have built
04:09a Tower House in late medieval Ireland. We have possibly up to 3,000 Tower Houses, maybe
04:15much more, being built in the Irish landscape between about 1380 and the mid-17th century.
04:26Tower Houses built by the Irish clans. The land was good, and there were in striking distance
04:31of extended lands in Leinster called the Pale, so raiding and plundering was the order of
04:36the day.
04:44Lep Castle is a typical Tower House, built by the warring O'Carrolls to run their mini-empire
04:49and defend themselves against the English.
04:52This is an early 16th century Tower House, built by the O'Carrolls of Ely. The central part
05:01is the Tower, obviously, and then on each side you have 18th century additions. So this
05:09was an important stronghold for the O'Carrolls. You have to remember that not only are these
05:14residences, there are also defensive structures as well.
05:18The politics of the time was you had to defend, first of all, you had to defend yourself.
05:24And this castle, Lep, was impregnable before the advent of Canon. It could not be taken.
05:30They're not the countryside, particularly here in the Midlands, where in Tipperary and Limerick
05:35alone there are thousands of them.
05:37Well, Tower Houses, they're usually indicative of a breakdown of central authority. The taxman
05:44doesn't like Tower Houses. Anywhere where there's strong government, you have big castles belonging,
05:49you know, like King John's castle in Limerick. But where the king's writ doesn't run, and
05:55everybody is allure unto himself, like the Irish chieftains, and then like the Anglo-Norman
06:01lords who'd sort of gone native, the Tower House, this personal one-off family castle, becomes
06:07very characteristic.
06:12The medieval Tower House, with its smaller proportions, still works as a home. Restoring
06:19it, traditional musician Sean Ryan has lived in Lep Castle for over 20 years.
06:24How are you doing? How are you, Sean? I knocked the door.
06:29So when you arrived, Sean, in 1991, what was here?
06:32Well, absolutely nothing. Nothing. Gaping cold here. The last family here, the Derbys,
06:39they were burned out in 1922. Why were they burned out?
06:42He had a bad reputation in the area as a landlord, and in 1922, a local battalion of the Irregulars
06:49came and they lit a match and set fire to the house.
06:54Why did you buy it? What was the attraction for you?
06:57A little fit of madness, I suppose. Yeah.
07:03I love a staircase where you come up on your hands and knees.
07:06You can see why they built the castle here with that view. I mean, you can literally see
07:10everything's coming at you. Oh, yes, indeed, yeah.
07:13It's known as Aconcon, on the Plain of the Hounds.
07:16In the middle 1400s, this was a town. It was called Ballycaro, or Ballycaroool.
07:21It had a license for cattle market, a whole lot. You know, so it was always an important place.
07:26We were saying they were a particularly bloody clan. They fought with everybody.
07:30They fought with everybody, yeah. Fought among themselves as well.
07:33With a history of bloody feuds and gruesome murders, it's hardly surprising that Lep Castle
07:37has a reputation for hauntings and ghostly apparitions.
07:42Now, so this is known as the Bloody Chapel.
07:46This is the Bloody Chapel? The Bloody Chapel, yeah.
07:48I'm guessing this isn't going to have a happy ending, Sean, but how does the room end up with a name,
07:52like the Bloody Chapel?
07:54Well, because of the many documented happenings up here.
07:59And when you say happenings, when you say happenings, you mean murders?
08:03Murders. Absolutely, yeah.
08:04Right.
08:06The entrance to the Oubliette was just here.
08:09The Oubliette, what's an Oubliette?
08:11Oubliette, um, it seemed, I don't speak French, but it comes from the French, meaning to forget,
08:17once you went down there, there was no coming out.
08:20So you were brought up here and pushed down there?
08:22And put down there, yeah, pushed down.
08:24Still there and still open.
08:26It's still, that's the opening.
08:28When somebody very important might be down there, they would open the hatch and come up and have a fine banquet here
08:33when you're starving to death below.
08:35And just to remind us, you live here.
08:41I live here, yeah.
08:45Way back in the 1500s, the Ocarrals were quite often at war with the butlers of Ormond.
08:53And the Ocarrals invited mercenaries down from north of Sligo, the sub-tribe of the O'Neills, the northern Maclachans.
09:01So it's said that 29 of them came.
09:04But anyway, after the campaign, they invited the Maclachans, 29 of them, back here.
09:09And the story is that they poisoned the wine and killed all 29 of them, rather than pay them.
09:16There you go, there's thanks for you.
09:22By the 15th century, the Irish had taken the art of castle building and made it their own.
09:27Outside the Pale, their tower houses were the seats of power for the Irish clans, from where they ran their mini-empires.
09:34And these new castles, built on a smaller scale than the original Anglo-Norman structures, are still being used as homes today,
09:41for those of a very particular temperament.
09:44I think you have to be a certain type of person to want to live in a castle.
09:48I mean, I wouldn't say that you have to be mad.
09:50I think you'd have to have, though, how would you put it, a romantic temperament.
09:55You know, you have to be interested in history and the past, rather than the present and the future.
10:00I mean, they're difficult to do up, you know.
10:02You can't just add nice, comfortable extensions.
10:04They're impossible to keep warm.
10:06And you probably spend most of your day just running up and down the stairs, dusting.
10:13The Americans just love a castle.
10:15Ballet teacher Rebecca Armstrong fell for the mystique of Clenoni Castle in County Offaly,
10:20built around 1500 by the MacLachlan clan.
10:23She is happy to adapt it to 21st century living.
10:28My surroundings have always been very important to me.
10:31They have to be aesthetic and they have to be different.
10:35I had seen it many times crossing on the way to Clermont Noyes.
10:41But the one day I saw a for sale sign and I thought,
10:44well, that gives me license to jump over the gate and have a real look around.
10:50And when I came inside and I saw all the little tiny rooms inside the walls,
10:56I thought, I must have this.
10:59In the fortified medieval towers, they were all built very similarly.
11:08And generally, to the left of the front door, there would be a guard room.
11:13So if you come through here, the guard would be the first person to catch you
11:18and he'd attack you with a sword before you even got to the stairs.
11:22Also, there's a murder hole just above us here.
11:25So it was a bit of a double whammy.
11:27Renovating a castle is an enormous undertaking,
11:30with very strict rules about conservation.
11:34From the beginning, we all agreed, the heritage offices and myself,
11:38that we wanted to leave it looking as much like a ruin as possible.
11:42Because once you start tarting them up, there's just, it's an impossible line to draw.
11:48It's almost sculpting when you have to replace a stone and make it look like it's never been away.
11:54Because you can't put screws in the walls, you can't do anything like that.
11:59So we could take this out and we could even remove the staircase
12:03and we could turn it back into a ruin in about a week's time.
12:07But while you and I like to entertain at home in the good room, which is usually downstairs,
12:12in a keep like Clenoni, the better rooms are upstairs.
12:15In order to get to the first floor, you had to be a member of the aristocracy.
12:20You had to be of equal station to the laird of the castle.
12:23So everything was done to impress.
12:26This is why we have all of our really good stuff on this level.
12:31And as you go up the tower, everything gets posher and posher.
12:36So I bet you can't wait to see the top floor.
12:43This is my favourite room.
12:45It's now my bedroom.
12:47But up until this year, for fundraising purposes, it was the dance class.
12:54Well, my favourite thing is the fireplace, which is actually a power shower.
12:59And I had some little boys staying here and boys aren't fond of taking baths and showers,
13:03but they couldn't wait to take a shower in the fireplace so they could go home and tell their friends,
13:08we stayed in a castle and we showered in a fireplace.
13:12Living in a castle only works for people whose aesthetics are more important than the practicalities.
13:21And it's fine for me because I'm on my own and I live rather simply and I don't eat a lot.
13:27So it works for me.
13:30I love getting up in the morning and looking out over the view.
13:33It sets up my day very nicely.
13:36Closer to Dublin, English control was maintained by great families like the Fitzgeralds of Kildare,
13:45who by the 16th century were the leading power in the country.
13:4850 years after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, the castle was built here by Maurice Fitzgeralds.
13:57Now the Fitzgeralds were to become one of the most important families in all of the Pale.
14:01They were the governors of Ireland. They were the earls of Kildare.
14:04Maynooth Castle was described as one of the most lavish earl's houses in all of Ireland and England.
14:10All power, all tax, all administration centred round Maynooth Castle, which was big enough what you see today,
14:17but all that's left I think is the gatehouse tower and the solar tower.
14:21The main keep, which was enormous and probably something along the lines perhaps of Trim Castle,
14:26was blown up in the Confederate wars.
14:30By 1500 the power of the earls was so great that in reality the castle was the centre of political power in Ireland.
14:38But fortunes changed fast and just 35 years later six of the Fitzgeralds were in the Tower of London,
14:46about to be executed for treason.
14:49Gareth O. Fitzgerald was the Lord Deputy of Ireland as well as sitting in the Council of State, the Parliament of the time.
14:56The council allowed the Anglo-Irish some control over their affairs and in the 1530s the council met,
15:02not in Dublin Castle, but in St Mary's Abbey over the Liffey on the north side.
15:07Now, what do you think of this place?
15:10Well this really is a hidden gem isn't it?
15:12It is a hidden gem and it's a direct connection to the great Cistercian Foundation of St Mary's,
15:17which started here in 1139.
15:20And this beautiful room with its groin vaulted roof and ribbing dates back to the 1180s.
15:28So why did this room play such an important part in the downfall of the Fitzgeralds?
15:32Well, the Fitzgeralds had been the most powerful noble family in Ireland.
15:36And of course, if you're that powerful, you actually can run into problems
15:40because Henry VIII, the King of England, was starting to grow suspicious of them.
15:44Because they were off doing their own thing?
15:46He might have thought they were taking the other side as it were against them.
15:50Yeah.
15:51They had probably backed the wrong side during various wars for kingly succession in England.
15:57And Henry doesn't forget, does he?
15:58And Henry had a very good memory, an extremely good memory.
16:01Gareth Ogue, who was then the head of the family, if you like,
16:08and the Lord Deputy of Ireland, was called over to London for a meeting.
16:12To answer.
16:13To answer charges that might be put to him.
16:15But he was put into the Tower of London.
16:18Now, that was translated back home as into the Tower of London and the head off.
16:24There was no way of corroborating that.
16:26So his son, who is now the acting Lord Deputy in Ireland...
16:29Thinks his father's been murdered.
16:30Thinks his father has been murdered in the Tower of London.
16:33So he just rides from his sumptuous castle in Maynooth.
16:38And he comes into the Council of State, which are meeting here in this room,
16:41all sitting there waiting in anticipation for a meeting that he's going to chair.
16:45And he just charges into the room, full of temper and bangs his sword of state onto the table.
16:52And basically says, I'm at war with Henry VIII.
16:55And just storms out.
16:57I love the fact that it's also the Chinese whispers and paranoia.
17:00I love that.
17:02You know, and he's running a war on the basis of it.
17:07With the citizens against him, Thomas had to force his way into the city by cutting off the water supply.
17:12Laying siege to Dublin Castle with his soldiers and counties.
17:16However, they had little effect on the sturdy walls.
17:20Thomas attacked the outer gate, New Gate as it's called, at Corn Market there at James Street.
17:29His cannons were too small to make much impression on the gate.
17:33So he moved his attack to Ship Street.
17:35And that was the nearest any attacker ever got to Dublin Castle and the city walls.
17:39And he failed.
17:40Ship Street?
17:41Ship Street.
17:42God, he got close, didn't he?
17:43He got very close.
17:44How long would it have been from start to finish, his attempt to take Dublin?
17:48Oh, a couple of days.
17:49Is that all it was?
17:50Oh, that's all.
17:51Yeah, yeah, that's all.
17:52The rebellion was a massive miscalculation.
17:54And the citizens of Dublin, hearing that Henry was sending an army to regain control, turned against the besiegers, slaughtering them themselves or else handing them over to the castle.
18:08By winter, most of Thomas' supporters were deserting him.
18:11And in March, the English army made their move on his key fortress at Maynooth.
18:15After burning down the town, they attacked the castle.
18:18And after a ten-day siege, during which the castle was bombarded using the latest and heavy siege guns, the castle was breached.
18:25The garrison was captured and put to death here at the castle gate.
18:29Silken Thomas and his five uncles were taken to the Tower of London and executed as traitors.
18:34Henry VIII's decision to separate from his first wife, Catherine, meant that he had to split with Rome and the Catholic Church.
18:49The English Parliament went along with his plans, and they passed laws making allegiance to the Pope an act of treason.
18:55The Reformation had begun, and that was to have a profound effect on Ireland.
18:59You see, the Irish people had two choices.
19:01You either go along with the scheme, or you rebel.
19:05Not surprisingly, they chose the latter.
19:10Henry VIII was a volatile ruler.
19:12After ordering the beheading of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, the Boleyn family fell out of favour.
19:17Well, Anne Boleyn was accused by the King of various treasonable offences,
19:22including sleeping with her brother and various other men to cheat on the King as a treason.
19:29And so eventually she was put to death, as everyone knows.
19:33And the effect on the Boleyn clan was catastrophic.
19:36Her brother was also executed.
19:38And her family fell out of favour, which could be extremely dangerous in the Tudor court.
19:44So what you see them doing is simply keeping a low profile, essentially going into hiding.
19:50Two of her cousins fled to Ireland to lie low, and it seems they found their way to Clannone.
19:56There were two ladies, Mary and Elizabeth Boleyn, heads intact, and they were sent here for safety.
20:03Because it really was, at that time, quite dangerous to be a Boleyn.
20:07To be tainted means you are not allowed to speak to them or of them.
20:14These ladies lived a very long life.
20:18They never married.
20:20And when the one died, they say the other jumped from the tower.
20:24Because of the suicide, they couldn't be buried in a consecrated grave.
20:28So they were put in the stone quarry together, because they wanted to be together.
20:34I think these ladies probably had a very isolated life.
20:37And in that sense, I think it was very sad.
20:40You can be privileged and poor at the same time.
20:43And I do think their lives were difficult from that point of view.
20:48And I can certainly understand how the one sister did not want to go on alone.
20:53The Irish fight back of the 15th and 16th centuries saw a second wave of building across the country,
21:01as the Irish chieftains developed their own unique style of castle.
21:05These tower houses allowed them attack as well as defend themselves from the forces of the crown.
21:10And when the Reformation threw Protestant versus Catholic into the mix,
21:14the politics of Ireland became even more fraught.
21:17But taking on the English required a fighting force,
21:20and the Irish struggled to match the numbers or skills of the invaders.
21:24The Irish don't have standing armies.
21:27Standing armies is something that we associate really with the 18th,
21:30particularly the 19th and 20th centuries.
21:32These are big, large, full-time armies.
21:34You have conscription or you have full-time professional armies.
21:37At this time, armies are raised when they're needed.
21:44I thought mercenaries were a reasonably recent development.
21:47You know, soldiers that you'd find fighting in Sarajevo, Kosovo and Africa.
21:52It was news to me that the Irish paid soldiers to help them fight the English as far back as the 14th and 15th centuries.
21:59And back in those days, the best and most efficient mercenaries were called Gallo Glasses,
22:04and they came from Scotland.
22:06And you didn't mess with these boys.
22:09Well, the term Gallo Glass is a corruption of Gallo Ogli,
22:13which just means the foreign young men.
22:16They were the descendants of the Vikings who had settled in that area.
22:21Now, they were very well trained.
22:24They were very well armed.
22:25They had their own leaders.
22:27They would have been armoured as well.
22:29These mercenaries came down into Ireland,
22:31and they formed the shock troops of the Irish lords of medieval Ireland.
22:38Women had Gallo Glass as part of their dowries,
22:42so if a woman got married, she could bring mercenary soldiers with her,
22:46and very importantly under Irish law, a woman could control her dowry.
22:50So that means when she went to her new husband,
22:53she may have 100 or so mercenary soldiers at her beck and call,
22:57which could be hugely important for her husband,
23:00but which also meant that her husband wasn't going to cross her.
23:03So you have women who are extremely politically powerful.
23:10So what's so distinctive about the Gallo Glass and Davis?
23:13What makes her stand out from the rest of them?
23:15Well, if you're going to pick just one thing that was distinctive about the Gallo Glass,
23:18you'd be looking at the axe in particular.
23:20It's a special type of axe called the Sparth axe.
23:23It had a long, straight, razor sharp edge, as sharp as a shoemaker's knife,
23:29according to Richard Stanihurst, who was a contemporary Dubliner at the time.
23:33The sword was essentially a sidearm in this particular case.
23:37For many warriors, of course, it would have been the main arm.
23:39Double-edged and light.
23:41It was very effective for the hit-and-run warfare that was endemic in Gaelic Ireland
23:46back then in the 15th and 16th centuries.
23:48So would they have carried the two of those side by side?
23:51Not necessarily.
23:52Swords were expensive items, even for Gallo Glasses,
23:54and some of them may have used the Schien as their main secondary weapon instead,
23:58which was the Irish traditional fighting knife.
24:01Single-edged, but pointed, you know, a very acute point,
24:04which could have been used, perhaps, to break through the small, you know,
24:06weaker links in armour.
24:08It's a nasty weapon, isn't it?
24:09Yeah, it is. It's very, very nasty indeed.
24:11We think it may have origins going back to the 13th, 14th century, even earlier maybe,
24:15but they were used as late as the 17th century.
24:18Some references even talk about them being thrown in combat.
24:20So tell me about the chainmail, David.
24:22I mean, what's it made up of?
24:24It's basically a shirt made out of 30,000 individual male links.
24:28The estimation is that, for example, you know, in terms of labour and expense,
24:32about, say, a workshop of six people would have produced maybe two of these shirts in a single month.
24:3830,000 links in each of them.
24:40On the North Antrim coast, Dunloose must be one of the most spectacular castles in Ireland.
24:48Originally built by the Anglo-Normans, it was soon in the hands of the MacDonalds,
24:52a clan of fierce gallo-glasses from Scotland, renowned for their Viking ancestry.
24:58Hector MacDonald, whose father was the 13th Earl of Antrim,
25:06is part of a lineage stretching back to the wild MacDonald clan.
25:10You moved backwards and forwards between here and Scotland.
25:13You were speaking the same language.
25:15You moved by boat.
25:18Moving by land, anywhere, was a torture.
25:21You know, because there weren't any proper roads.
25:23It took you forever.
25:24You got bogged down.
25:25You died of disease.
25:27The MacDonalds weren't just mercenaries.
25:29They became agents, hiring gallo-glasses out to other families.
25:33The MacDonalds were trying to control the Antrim coast
25:37because they were involved in this export-import business,
25:41just bringing in these fighting men, as they were required,
25:44by native families, and sometimes by the English, to fight for them.
25:48And it was a fairly sort of straightforward deal, you know, you installed.
25:52And that's one of the reasons why you find MacDonalds all over Ireland,
25:56is that they were there as representatives of the family,
25:59and the local chieftain would say,
26:01OK, I need some fighting men next year.
26:03And they say, OK, we'll get them.
26:05The locals hated it because they had to house these people.
26:17So each family living on the chieftain's property or territory
26:22would find themselves landed with one of these gallaglass families,
26:27who probably ate them out of house and home, I'm sure.
26:30And that was how the system worked.
26:33So it certainly was a sort of disintegration of the Norman world.
26:38Sorley Bowie MacDonald was the Scotch chieftain
26:41who first came across the sea to Antrim,
26:43establishing the clan as a powerful and independent presence
26:46on the wild northern coast.
26:48The first major figure here at Don Luce is Sorley Bowie,
26:52Sorley Bowie, which is Bowie meaning yellow.
26:56So you can imagine him having...
26:58I imagine him having long blonde hair.
27:00And what the Viking ancestry has got,
27:03then blonde hair's not really a surprise.
27:07I think he was a proper noble barbarian,
27:10if I can put it like that.
27:12He was very much a man of his type.
27:14He would have spoken Irish
27:16because that was the proper language of the time.
27:18Ugallic was a dialect.
27:22Sorley established and consolidated
27:25the MacDonald's territory.
27:28There were constant battles with the O'Neill clan
27:30right through Sorley Bowie's reign
27:33and, of course, with the English
27:35as and when it suited them.
27:39Some of the English monarchs weren't that interested in Ireland.
27:42You know, I mean, for years you could be left alone
27:44to get on with things and run your own little kingdom.
27:47Others, however, felt that they needed to assert themselves.
27:50And Elizabeth I was one of them.
27:55Sorley Bowie was...
27:56Well, he was a continuous thorn in her side.
27:58He was wild.
27:59He was unruly.
28:00He was proud, independent.
28:02A bit like her, really.
28:03And the 16th century would be marked by an ongoing feud
28:06between their two forces.
28:08Ireland was just very, very difficult to capture as a whole unit.
28:14I mean, the Anglo-Normans had failed to do it.
28:16The Romans didn't come to Ireland
28:17because I think the Romans looked at the place and said,
28:20no, we wouldn't be able to take it all.
28:23It's not worth the investment.
28:25But Elizabeth was determined to bring the whole of Ireland together
28:30as a kingdom operating under English law.
28:36Elizabeth saw the MacDonalds as renegades
28:38and in 1573 she sent the Earl of Essex to bring Sorley Bowie to heel.
28:43There was an occasion he knew that he was going to be attacked by the English
28:46and it was Lord Essex who was one of Queen Elizabeth's sort of fancy boys.
28:52Sorley Bowie made the mistake of thinking he was going to come up country across land
28:57and so he moved all the women and children onto Rathlin,
29:03the island off the coast, so as to keep them safe, basically.
29:06He hadn't thought of what Essex actually did
29:09was he got a couple of frigates.
29:11So he just landed on Rathlin and had a glorious time
29:15and they killed every last person on it
29:17and they were all women and babies, you know.
29:19It was a pretty sort of disgraceful bit of behaviour.
29:24And Sorley Bowie is supposed to be standing on a cliff
29:27watching this happening to all the unprotected womenfolk and their children.
29:35When Elizabeth I came to power, she had many problems facing her in Ireland.
29:39The Irish had resisted the Reformation and all attempts to force them to embrace Protestantism
29:44and were becoming increasingly resentful of her attempts to rule by force.
29:48Most of the aristocracy who were here, be they native Irish or old English, remained Catholic,
29:59which put them at odds with the crown.
30:03By the end of the 17th century, all of those families had had their lands and wealth confiscated.
30:09Rebellion was on the cards and the instigator would be one of the other wild men from Ulster, Hugh O'Neill.
30:16And to further enrage Elizabeth, he looked to Catholic Spain for assistance.
30:20Many of the lords in Ireland began to look at rebelling.
30:27They looked to O'Neill, who was considered one of the most charismatic characters of the day,
30:33as well as being an extremely astute politician and a tactician.
30:38They looked to him for leadership and he actually led the rebellion against the crown.
30:43This whole period is called the Nine Years' War.
30:47Queen Elizabeth looked to the first Earl of Essex's son,
30:49the second Earl of Essex, Robert Devereaux, to quell the rebellion.
30:53Essex led the largest force ever sent to Ireland.
30:5616,000 men landed in Dublin with orders to put an end to the insurrection.
31:01Caire Castle in Tipperary would be at the centre of the drama.
31:05This imposing fortress was so well defended it had never been attacked.
31:10But the Siege of 1599 would put all of that to the test.
31:17Built on an island on the river shore, Caire Castle didn't need a moat.
31:21I mean, the river itself kept the enemy out.
31:24In fact, there was so little room on the island for attackers, it was almost impossible to storm.
31:29So, Caire Castle, with its stout towers and thick curtain walls, quickly gained a reputation for being impregnable.
31:37They had some wonderful defences.
31:41And the first of them we have here, right over the door or gate here, a machicolation.
31:46Now, that comes from the French, machicoli, meaning, roughly meaning, for my pigeon French, a neck crusher.
31:51Maché means to crush, and call is the back of your neck.
31:54And that's exactly what happened, okay?
31:56You'll find them dotted all the way along the outside of castle walls.
32:00For maximum effect, they're placed over a door, such as the one here, or at the corner.
32:05Now, jutting out here, a medieval toilet.
32:07This is known as a garderobe, okay?
32:09A garderobe in French means a wardrobe, or a closet for clothes.
32:12But all the waste came down. It gathered here at the bottom.
32:15They cleaned it out, we believe, only once every year.
32:17They discovered after a short period of time, not alone did all that waste give off a dreadful smell, okay?
32:23It gave off a gas called ammonia, which is still used, I believe, in dry cleaning today.
32:27And all that ammonia would percolate right up through the building.
32:30The ladies, especially, would hang their garments up there at night when they went to sleep.
32:33And, of course, as the French say, voila, all the bugs and the lice and the creepy crawly were killed dead.
32:40Now, we're standing in the trapping area at Keir Castle, okay?
32:45Very affectionately named because, of course, the people who were caught here had absolutely nowhere to go.
32:50They kept the portcullis up and they allowed the troops to dash in here.
32:53You might think that was a terribly stupid thing to do.
32:56The troops, of course, suddenly discovered they couldn't go any further because there was a heavy wooden door here.
33:01And, of course, in the five seconds it takes to realise they've made a serious mistake, the portcullis was dropped behind them.
33:07Instead of heading north to deal with Hugh O'Neill, Essex decided first to march southwards.
33:15So, Essex and his army marched into Clonmel, which is ten miles from Keir.
33:20Also arriving in Clonmel, by boat, was his heavy artillery, a cannon and a culver.
33:26So, the first job was to try and get that heavy artillery from Clonmel to Keir.
33:31Now, that was no easy feat, you see, because, remember, they had no horses and carts to do all the heavy work.
33:36So, that meant they had to drag everything by hand.
33:39Now, that's ten miles. That must have been grey crack.
33:44Though the castle was part of the estate of the loyal Lord Keir,
33:48at the time of the rebellion, it was in the hands of his brother, James Galdie, and he supported the rebellion.
33:54He refused to surrender the castle to the Crown forces.
33:59Lord Keir was sent forward to parley with his brother,
34:03and according to the eyewitnesses of the time, they actually insulted each other in both English and Irish.
34:12James Galdie refused to surrender the castle,
34:15and eventually, it was felt necessary to turn the attention of the cannon at Culverin against its walls.
34:26The cannon and Culverin, the two heavy artillery pieces used during the siege,
34:30but never been used here in Keir, and it was to prove highly effective.
34:36The inhabitants of the castle, about 80 of them were killed when they sallied forth during the siege.
34:44James Galdie, Lord Keir's brother, escaped with some of his followers by swimming underneath a mill wheel and across the river to safety.
34:52However, those remaining insides surrendered the castle to the Crown forces and to the Earl of Essex.
35:00Not before quite a lot of damage had been caused to the eastern walls of the castle.
35:04Now we have a little reminder of that three day siege.
35:07If you look up here, three quarters way up the inner wall of the guardrabe,
35:10to this day, about 414 years ago, you'll see there that cannon ball lodged in the wall.
35:15Other than his success at Keir, Essex's campaign in Ireland was a disaster.
35:21He lost thousands of troops, both in battle and through dysentery and typhoid.
35:26However, his biggest mistake was accepting a truce with O'Neill, without Elizabeth's permission.
35:31He did, if you like, damp down the embers of rebellion in Munster, which that wasn't enough and his campaign was certainly by Elizabeth.
35:43Ultimately he lost his head on account of it because she considered it a grave disappointment for all the resources
35:49and she poured in on all the hopes she'd pinned on Essex. The war wasn't over.
35:56O'Neill had been in constant communication with the Spanish and two years later in 1601, several thousand Spanish troops joined O'Neill at Kinsale.
36:04With a new threat from the combined Spanish and Irish team, it was time for Elizabeth to put her best squad in the field,
36:10sending Lord Mountjoy as captain of a new English team.
36:13O'Neill marched on the English lines and he did so in the night march.
36:19By the time dawn broke over the area where he had hoped to arrive, they'd got lost.
36:25Mountjoy saw his opportunity. He sends his cavalry to attack them, they scatter them and it's all over in half an hour.
36:34The defeat at Kinsale saw the end of the campaign against English control that had marked the previous 70 years.
36:40When many of the old Irish leaders sailed away from Ireland forever in the Flight of the Earls,
36:45the days of the independent Irish kings and lords had come to an end.
36:50The Flight of the Earls is a pivotal event in Irish history. By fleeing, their lands are liable to be confiscated,
36:56they have left native society leaderless and it presents James, the new king, with the opportunity for one of his visionary schemes,
37:06which is a British project, the plantation of Ulster.
37:12One of the Irish lords who stayed, pledging allegiance to the crown, was Sorley Boy's successor, Randall MacDonald.
37:19So Randall went down the road to Carrickfergus and suggested that he might surrender.
37:25And they went through the usual procedure, which was the one of surrender and re-grant,
37:32which meant that if you came in as a tribal lord, you then were given back the entire tribal territory as your own property.
37:44You actually turned yourself into a big-scale landowner by surrendering to the English.
37:51333,000 acres stretching the whole way from land to Coleraine,
37:56and everybody else's rights to the territory were wiped out in the process.
38:01When the time came, he then bought a peerage. He was not given a peerage.
38:08It was the price he paid. There had been various rebellions and so on.
38:11It was the price he paid for being an acceptable member of society.
38:16In a move to ingratiate the MacDonalds with the aristocracy,
38:19Randall sent his son, Randall Oak, to the court of King James to find a wife.
38:24There he met Catherine Manners, the young widow of the Duke of Buckingham.
38:28The two fell in love, and much to the disapproval of the court, were married.
38:36She left a comfortable life in London, her position in the court of the king,
38:40a life of finery and privilege,
38:42to come and live in what must have seemed like one of the wildest castles in Ireland.
38:47And all it seemed for love.
38:50She brought an enormous number of her personal possessions out of the houses
38:55which her husband, her first husband, had had in England,
38:58including something like three-quarters of a mile of tapestries.
39:01I mean, an enormous amount.
39:02More than you could ever put up in a house like Dunluce.
39:05I mean, they must have been stuffed into the attics or something like that.
39:10You can only imagine what Lady Catherine must have thought of her new home
39:13and her new Irish neighbours.
39:15There are many colourful myths about her time here.
39:18The story goes that on a wild November night, 1639,
39:22a banquet taking place, a wild storm brewing outside,
39:26and while the guests are sitting at dinner, there's a crash.
39:31Catherine comes rushing back in and apologises profusely to her guests,
39:36saying that there would be no pudding.
39:38She was too well-mannered to inform her guests that the kitchen
39:42had just fallen into the sea, taking most of the staff with it.
39:45There's absolutely no evidence that anything fell off at the time.
39:48I mean, what you see, I mean, the castle looks a ruin
39:51because after they were kicked out,
39:53Cromwell put a lot of his unpaid soldiers on the land
39:57and they, understandably, asset-stripped the place.
40:00So they pulled anything out that was of any value whatsoever,
40:04including all the cut stone and so on, and left it as a wreck.
40:08And that's the way it got to the state it is.
40:12When civil war broke out in England, Catherine and Randall's Catholicism
40:19saw them on the losing side.
40:21By now bankrupt, they were forced to leave Dunlews for Waterford,
40:24where Randall turned his talent for survival to privateering
40:27in the Bristol Channel and then helping King James escape from England.
40:30Catherine, however, didn't survive the tumultuous times.
40:33My good woman died in the city of Waterford of a flux upon a Saturday
40:39between 7 and 8 o'clock in the morning, being the third day of November, 1649,
40:45and in the same year that King Charles I was beheaded by the Parliament of England
40:49before his own court gate at Whitehall.
40:53At that time, General Cromwell did lay out leaguer to Duncannon,
40:57but shortly after he did raise the siege.
41:00I beg all those that shall happen to look upon this book
41:03to be pleased to say three Aves for the soul of the Duchess of Buckingham.
41:08And, you know, it makes me want to cry, that.
41:11I mean, it's the words of somebody who really loved his wife.
41:17The end of the 16th century and the flight of the Earls
41:21saw the Irish noblemen scattered around Europe.
41:24It seemed that our invaders were in the ascendancy
41:27as both English language and law finally prevailed.
41:30However, peace wouldn't last very long.
41:33The 17th century would see Ireland both ravaged by rebellion
41:37and become the battleground for English and European wars.
41:41It would be our bloodiest century ever,
41:43and Irish castles would remain centre stage throughout it.
41:47There's no one reason why without that.
41:48Let's head into the walls.
41:49Let's head into the footsteps of English.
41:50Get out of the安排!
41:51It's a secret.
41:52We're in thegement of Engenberg,
41:53and we're going to get out of sight in the啦.
41:54Where did you become the law?
41:55Now let's go.
41:56I'm sorry.
41:57Let's head into our floors.
41:58All right.
42:00When I was out of sight,
42:01I could add the link in the context of the night!
42:02What I was in the book?
42:04I'm in the book,
42:05I can't see you now in the book.
42:06So I was in the book.
42:07Transcription by CastingWords
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