Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Donnell, Manus
O'DONNELL, MANUS (d. 1564), lord of Tyrconnel, eldest son of Hugh Duv O'Donnell, had apparently attained the age of manhood in 1510, in which year he was appointed deputy-governor of Tyrconnel during his father's two years' absence on a pilgrimage to Rome. He established a reputation for military ability, which subsequent events confirmed, in defending his country from the attacks of the O'Neills. His father's ill-health after his return placed the government of the country mainly in the hands of Manus, and he took an active personal share in the almost continuous warfare that prevailed with his neighbours.
Manus's predominance aroused the jealousy of his brothers, who raised a faction, supported by their father at the instigation of his mistress, against him. The quarrel reached a climax in 1531. At Hugh O'Donnell's request Maguire interposed in the interests of peace, and attacked Manus and his sons, who were encamped in the barony of Raphoe. The attack failed, but it forced Manus into an alliance with his former foe, O'Neill, with whose assistance he succeeded in re-establishing his authority in Tyrconnel. His alliance with O'Neill naturally attracted the attention of the English government, and Sir William Skeffington [q. v.] talked of the necessity of interfering, but nothing was done; and Hugh O'Donnell having died on 5 July 1537, Manus was inaugurated, ‘ad saxum juxta ecclesiam de Kilmacrenan,’ O'Donnell in his place ‘by the successors of St. Columbkille, with the permission and by the advice of the nobles of Tirconnell, both lay and ecclesiastical.’ Shortly after his inauguration he wrote to Lord Leonard Grey protesting his loyalty, explaining his quarrel with his father, and promising to do ‘as good service as ever my fader dud to the uttermost of my power.’ But his marriage early in the next year with the Lady Eleanor Fitzgerald, sister of ‘Silken Thomas’ and widow of Mac Carthy Reagh, and a rumour that he and O'Neill had entered into a league to restore the young heir to the earldom of Kildare, did not give much hope that he would redeem his promise. Grey failed to induce him to surrender the young Gerald, and in August 1539 O'Donnell and O'Neill invaded the Pale with an immense army. The two chiefs were on their way homewards laden with plunder, and had already reached Bellahoe, the ford which separates Meath from Monaghan, when they were overtaken and utterly routed by the lord-deputy. In the following year O'Donnell, O'Neill, and O'Brien combined to overrun the Pale, but their plot was frustrated by the vigilance of lord-justice Sir William Brereton; and O'Donnell, who about this time was compelled to turn his arms against his own brothers, John of Lurg, Egneghan, and Donough, of whom he hanged the first, and placed the latter two in strict confinement, found plenty to occupy his attention at home.
In July 1541 he expressed a wish to ‘intercommon’ with the lord-deputy, Sir Anthony St. Leger, whom he promised to meet at the beginning of August in O'Reilly's country (co. Cavan). He kept his promise, ‘and, after long communycacion had upon dyvers articles,’ ‘he bothe condescendid and indentid to be your Majesties true, faythefull subjecte,’ promising to renounce the primacy and authority of the pope, to attend parliament, to receive and hold his lands from the king, and to take such title as it pleased the king to confer on him. He expressed a wish to be created Earl of Sligo, evidently in the hope that, if his wish were granted, it would establish his claim to the overlordship of lower Connaught; for ever since his inauguration not a year had elapsed without one, and sometimes even two expeditions for the purpose of collecting ‘his full tribute and hostages’ from the inhabitants (see Wood-Martin's Hist. of Sligo, i. 279, for the curious conditions on which he granted the ‘bardachd’ or wardenship of Sligo to Teige, son of Cathal Oge O'Conor. O'Conor Sligo had acknowledged his suzerainty in 1539). His wish was not gratified, though Henry offered to create him earl of Tyrconnel; but his submission was hailed with satisfaction by the government as the beginning of a new era in Ireland, and the support which he rendered St. Leger against O'Neill in the autumn of 1541 confirmed the good impression he had created. His request in May 1542 to be excused from personal attendance on parliament ‘tum ob distanciam (haut mediocrem) locorum, in quibus agitur parliamentum, adde iter esse minime tutum,’ raised some doubts as to his loyalty. But these proved unfounded. He sent his eldest son, Calvagh [q. v.], to excuse his conduct, and to promise that he would repair as soon as possible to England. Early in the following year rumours were current of an alliance between him and Argyll; and though St. Leger was inclined to place some credence in them, he thought it prudent, considering the prospect of a war with France and Scotland, to restrict himself to a ‘sharp message’ requiring ‘to knowe his resolute mynde, as well for his repaire unto me, as also for the delyvery of his brethren, whiche he hathe long kepte in captyvite very cruelly.’ But O'Donnell seems to have had no intention of behaving disloyally. He had promised to be in Dublin at midsummer, and he kept his word, somewhat to St. Leger's astonishment. He brought his brothers Egneghan and Donough in chains with him; but his appearance was very gratifying to St. Leger, who reported him to be ‘a sober man, and one that in his wordis moche deasyreth cyvile ordre,’ who, ‘yf he may be assueredly won to your Majestie, as I think he is, is more to be estemed than manny others of this lande, that I have sene.’ At St. Leger's request, he consented to release his brothers, and to restore them to their position and lands. While O'Donnell was in Dublin, Tyrone also came thither, and St. Leger seized the opportunity to settle certain long-continued disputes between them arising out of the lordship of Inishowen. In order to strike at what was supposed to be the real cause of the constant quarrels between them, the authority of each was confined to the strict limits of their respective counties. And at the same time, ‘cum indecorum sit patre vivente filium usurpare castrum suum,’ Hugh O'Donnell, O'Donnell's son by his wife, Judith O'Neill, the sister of Tyrone, was ordered to surrender the castle of Lifford. This, however, Hugh, at the instigation, it was supposed, of his uncle, refused to do; but in 1544 Manus, with the assistance of Calvagh and a number of English soldiers, wrested the castle from him.
But whether it was that Calvagh was dissatisfied at not having the castle of Lifford assigned to him, or whether he was jealous of the influence of Hugh, he subsequently in 1548 took up arms against his father, but, with his ally O'Cahan, was defeated by Manus at Strath-bo-Fiaich, near Ballybofey. Sir Edward Bellingham in 1549, and St. Leger in 1551, interfered in the interests of peace; but in 1555 Manus was defeated and taken prisoner by Calvagh at Rossreagh. He appears to have been placed under easy restraint, and to have assisted Calvagh with his advice against Shane O'Neill in 1557; but his confinement offended the clan, and, though he never recovered his authority, he was shortly afterwards liberated. He died at his castle of Lifford, at a very advanced age, on 9 Feb. 1563–4, and was interred in the monastery of St. Francis at Donegal. According to the ‘Four Masters,’ he was ‘a man who never suffered the chiefs who were in his neighbourhood or vicinity to encroach upon any of his superabundant possessions, even to the time of his decease and infirmity; a fierce, obdurate, wrathful, and combative man towards his enemies and opponents, until he had made them obedient to his jurisdiction; and a mild, friendly, benign, amicable, bountiful, and hospitable man towards the learned, the destitute, the poets and ollavs, towards the orders and the church, as is evident from the old people and historians; a learned man, skilled in many arts, gifted with a profound intellect, and the knowledge of every science.’
Manus O'Donnell's name is chiefly associated with the castle of Portnatrynod (Port-na-dtri-namhad), situated on the Tyrone side of the river Finn, opposite Lifford, close to the present town of Strabane. The castle, begun and completed by him in 1527, was intended as a frontier fortress against the inroads of O'Neill, who unsuccessfully tried to prevent its erection. It was there that Manus resided during the lifetime of his father, and it was there that, under his direction, was completed in 1532 the compilation of the voluminous ‘Life of St. Columbkille,’ in Irish, now preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Rawlinson, B. 514), of which a Latin abstract by Colgan was published at Louvain in 1647. The best description of the manuscript is in Reeves's ‘Adamnan's Life of Columba.’ Coloured facsimiles of its pages are given in the ‘Historical Manuscripts of Ireland,’ vol. ii. The colophon states that it was Manus who dictated it out of his own mouth with great labour—in love and friendship for his illustrious saint, relative, and patron, to whom he was devotedly attached.
Manus O'Donnell married either four or five times. His first wife was Joan, daughter of O'Reilly, by whom he had Calvagh, his eldest son (noticed separately), and two daughters—Rose, who was married to Niall Conallagh O'Neill, and Margaret, married to Shane O'Neill [q. v.] By his second wife, Judith, sister of Con Bacach O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, he had three sons: Hugh, the father of Hugh Roe and Rory O'Donnell (both separately noticed); Cahir, and Manus. In 1538 he married Eleanor, daughter of Gerald, earl of Kildare and widow of Mac Carthy Reagh, who appears to have left him after a short time. A fourth wife, Margaret, daughter of Angus Mac Donnell of Isla, is recorded to have died on 19 Dec. 1544. A fifth wife, but in what order is uncertain, is said to have been a daughter of Maguire of Fermanagh. [State Papers, Ireland, Henry VIII, printed; Ware's Rerum Hibernicarum Annales; Annals of the Four Masters, ed. O'Donovan; Cal. Carew MSS.; Annals of Loch Cé, ed. Hennessy; Irish genealogies in Harl. MS. 1425.]