A brief history of the MacDonogh Family Name

BLAZON: Per chevron invected or and vert, in chief two lions passant guardant gules in base a boar passant argent armed and bristled of the first langued of the third.

CREST: A dexter arm eract couped at the elbow vested azure cuffed argent holding in the hand a sword erect entwined with a lizard all proper.

MOTTO: 'Virtutis gloria merces'.

Chiefly Pretensions

Chiefs of the Macdonogh clan, Clann Donnchaddha, one of the oldest families in Ireland and one whose lineage is among the most ancient in Christendom, have for 500 years styled themselves ‘Mór’. It is a form of noble title, like ‘lord’. And those who consider themselves heirs to it jealously adopt it. But what does it signify, and why should any non-partisan observer take it seriously?

Ireland never had a formal clan system quite like Scotland’s. Instead, a more disparate arrangement of ‘septs’ formed the Gaelic order, headed by duly inaugurated ‘Chiefs of the Name’, such as O’Connor, O’Brien, O’Neill, and so forth. These chiefs were generally appointed by ‘tanistry’, an election-based process among the extended kin group or derbfhine, although the feudal system of primogeniture (or succession of the eldest son) had made some headway in Gaelic areas even before the Tudor wars.

When the Gaelic order came to collapse in the sixteenth and especially seventeenth centuries, chiefdom as a real political institution ceased to exist, despite the fact that a small number of families have continued to claim their titles in the centuries that followed. In 1944, attempting to regularise the situation, Edward MacLysaght, Chief Herald of Ireland, introduced a system of ‘courtesy recognition’ of Chiefs, based upon their ability to prove primogenitural descent from the last inaugurated chief. This was not a perfect system, but at least it distinguished some Irish claimants with properly documented pedigrees. The difficulty was twofold. Most Irish clans endured such fracture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that they have lost their records together with their castles. The prohibition of education to those remaining Catholic under the penal laws focussed their minds on the immediate issues of survival and less on the grander matters of pedigree. Lastly, descent through primogeniture was not practised by more than a tiny number of exiled clans, whose power bases had been set up in France, Italy, Portugal or Spain after the ‘Flight of the Earls’.

Nevertheless, there are some twenty recognised chiefs in Ireland today.

Macdonogh Mór is not yet one of them. Though the MacDonogh-MacCarthys had used this title sporadically from about 1500 as rulers of Duhallow (and they are indicated as such on John Speed’s map of Munster dated 1642), it was not until they found common cause with the Macdonoghs of Corran & Tirerill in the Paris of the Louis XIV, that septs separated by 500 years of divergence, combined forces and decided on tanistry to elect their new chief. The suffix, or ‘title’ of Mór (most probably copied from that of their kinsman and ally MacCarthy Mór) has become the style used by the chiefs of the re-combined septs to this day.

The Macdonoghs are of the Race of Conn, of Milesian stock. An early progenitor, Dermott of that Race, during the period known in England as the Roman Occupation and in Ireland as the Golden Age, is said to have hunted a wild boar around the whole of the island. His boar is celebrated in our arms and legends. The boar has long been the symbol of Clann Donnchadha.

A Prince Dermot of Moylurg, of the O’Connor line and whose descendent chief is styled O’Connor Don, founded a clan in his own right. Dermot MacDermot[1] has traced his clan’s discrete emergence from the O’Connor strain to Eochaidh Mugmedon in the 4th century. There are hints that its origins go beyond him to the 2nd century ad.

In turn, their ‘cadet’ sept, the Macdonoghs, coalesced into a discrete Gaelic identity around the turn of the first millennium. There is good deductive evidence that that Macdonoghs were distinct from MacDermots in Sligo from around 1000 ad. By the time of the Norman Conquest of England, they were already a powerful family controlling perhaps a dozen lordships in Clare, Roscommon and Sligo.

Over the years the Macdonoghs built or supported a number of convents, and provided quite a few members of the clergy: priests, monks, abbots, and probably a couple of bishops. The Dominican Friar Bryan Macdonogh rebuilt the famous Sligo Abbey in 1416. Ballymote Abbey was built by the Macdonogh sept for the Third Order Franciscans, as well as Ballindoon Abbey on Lough Arrow. Macdonoghs have been buried on the grounds of the latter for the last thousand years.

In Ireland, being chief is not a matter of simple ruthlessness, like some criminal extortionist mafioso. The old Brehon laws were scrupulously observed, and formed the basis of a chief’s legitimacy. A proven descent from the ancient high kings must be incontrovertible. According to the historian James C. MacDonogh (d. 1960), Clan Donnchaddha finds its crowned roots with Federach “the Just”, High King of Ireland around 75 ad.

The Macdonogh family were far from insignificant in mediæval Sligo. Our arms were granted in 1350 and Terence O’Rourke, who shows the armorial bearings of “Sligo Chiefs” in 1390, lists Macdonogh among just six names. By then, the Macdonoghs were visible to the chroniclers as the Lords of Tirerill and Corran in south-eastern Co. Sligo, where their castles, notably Ballymote, are a stone testament. Certainly, the records show, as Dermot MacDermot notes, that from the twelfth century “they… continued to be recorded as chiefs in the province [of Connacht], until the last pages of Gaelic history were written in the 17th century.”

The first clan chief (whom we might call ‘Donogh MacDermot’) led his kin, soldiery and servants south away from Sligo with infantry advances and by boat downstream along the Shannon, aiming for Limerick. Through a combination of cattle raids and colonial expansion, the strategy translated into new territories. Indigenous warlords one by one submitted to the Macdonoghs. Many baronies were added to their already extensive territories in Counties Sligo and Roscommon over the first century of the new millennium.

But even as warlike a clan as this was unable to prevent the inexorable attenuation of power, and the family became too dispersed and too powerful to remain a single sept. In time it divided into three constituents, the original princely line of the Macdonoghs of Corran & Tirerill, the McDonoghs of Galway (sometimes known as the merchant sept, and who today are still one of the largest landowners in that westerly county), and the noble Corkmen that scholars call MacDonogh-MacCarthy.

Some Cork partisans have assumed that the MacDonogh-MacCarthys are of MacCarthy extraction. This is not exactly the case.

The facts, as far as we can tell, are these. When, in the twelfth century, the marauding Macdonogh tribe arrived in Munster, they immediately encountered the MacCarthys. This great noble house descends from Carthagh, the builder and King of Cashel, and in the twelfth century was allied to the O’Callaghans and the O’Sullivans. It was a very powerful Eoghanacht (or Owenian) dynasty. The Owenians, warring against the Dál gCais (or Dalcassians), were a loose alliance of great families whose greatest members were the O’Neils and the O’Briens. These factional wars and battles were essentially a power struggle between Cashel and Armagh, and were based on the disputed High Kingship, a kind of imperium or overkingship which carried the power to bind all Irishmen with the authority of law ~ the Lex Patricii. The Macdonoghs of Sligo and Roscommon were instinctively Dalcassian in their tastes and friendships, but at the southernmost limit of their baronies, in Lixnaw, (in modern Co. Limerick), their energies were adsorbed in defending their clansmen from the constant punitive raids from their Munster and Owenian neighbours.

The Macdonoghs would hardly confront head-on such a powerful and entrenched opposition. If an armed neutrality, even peace, were to be obtained, then an exchange of hostages, combined with a strategic marriage into the MacCarthy dynasty was the traditional and obvious answer.

Munster historians have noticed the fact that Carthagh (who was burned alive in 1045 AD) had a grandfather called Donogh, and have made a chauvinistic attempt to prove that the Macdonoghs of Duhallow are a cadet of MacCarthy. This is a false provenance. Donogh has never been an uncommon name in Ireland. It was the traditional name for any male child who had the good fortune to be born on a Sunday[2] and earn an additional blessing from Our Lord.

In fact the King of Connacht, Turlough O’Connor, wanted a divided Munster, and fostered a partition of the battling factions by encouraging alliances. In 1118, the province was divided between the O’Briens in Thomond and the Owenians in Desmond, (South Munster), which division marks the true beginning of MacCarthy power. But it also marks the date of the remarkable pact between the MacCarthys of Desmond and the Macdonoghs of Lixnaw, and in the exchange of sons and a suite of strategic marriages. The old enemies had more to lose than gain by going again to war.

The Macdonoghs allied with some permanence into the MacCarthys at the beginning of the twelfth century. The exact date is not known. But as early as 1128 AD the irrepressible O’Connors invaded Cor, abetted and supported by the O’Briens. It was at this time that Macdonogh sought and gained the protection of the King of Desmond and, together with O’Keefe and other nobles, went against the invaders. Thanks to Macdonogh’s special standing astride the Dalcassian/Owenian divide, the invaders parted in peace, but left Ruaidhri (Rory) O’Connor with Lixnaw, the Macdonogh barony that became a bone of contention with the O’Connors right until the Kilkenny Confederacy disastrously engaged with the Lord Protector. In fact, Macdonogh, while acknowledging the suzerainty of MacCarthy of Desmond, also submitted to the White Rod of Tordghealbhach, son of Rory O’Connor, thus continuing a long established policy of having a foot in both camps.

In 1128 ad a Macdonogh chief, now styled MacDonogh-MacCarthy, brought Fionghuine O’Keefe and others in a great fleet to North Kerry, where they pursued the invader O’Connor into Iveagh, whence he was banished to Connacht.

The simplistic assumption that Macdonogh, or MacDonogh-MacCarthy, must be of MacCarthy origin, as if the name were that of some double-barrelled Englishman, has led some genealogists to claim that the Duhallow MacDonogh-MacCarthys were descended from Diarmuid (ie, Dermot), son of Cormac Fionn Mac Carthy Mór, whose grandson was Donnchadh (ie, Donogh) na Sgoile and whose grandson in turn was the Donogh Og who died in 1501. In fact, these names are all from Macdonogh genealogy, and remember again and again the great Donogh MacDermot who was the fons et origo of the Connacht Dalcassians from whose loins came the Macdonogh houses of Tirerill, Corran, Lixnaw, Toomuir and Ballymote. The Lords of Duhallow gratefully accepted the suzerainty of MacCarthy Mór, King of Desmond. That is why the name MacDonogh-MacCarthy came to describe the clan: the second name showing submission to their de facto king. In turn they themselves were overlords of three other clans, the MacAuliffes, the O’Callaghans and the O’Keefes, who paid certain dues, or sorrens. Similar dues (which were not onerous) were paid to the MacCarthy Mór out of Duhallow.

But in many ways the Cork sept became the most splendid exemplars of Macdonogh greatness. Sir Warham St. Leger, in a tract sent to Lord Burleigh in 1588, gave a description of Macdonogh Mór.

…the countrey of MacDonochoe (called Duallo), … hath within it three other countries. O’Chalachan’s countrey, McAulief’s countrey and O’Keif’s countrey. He claimeth in these countries the gevinge of the Rodd to the chieffe Lords at their first entrie, who by receivinge a whit wande at his handes, for which they are to paie him a certain dutie, are thereby declared from thenceforthe to be Lords of those countreis. He claymeth also that they are to rise out with him when he makes warre; to maintaine for him seaven and twentie Galleglasses, besides to finde him for a certen tyme, when he cometh to their countries.

All of these clans could claim an unbroken line to Eoghan Mór, the son of Olioll Olum (who flourished around 150 ad). As early Irish genealogists had traced this Oioll Olum back a further fifty-seven generations to Heber, the eldest son of Milesius[3], this gave the Dalcassian Macdonoghs the benefit of Owenian credentials and ancestry, which is why they had captained their people under the urging of the O’Briens in the twelfth century, bringing an armed neutrality to the border areas of Duhallow and Lixnaw.

The Plantagenet lions in our coat-of-arms date from the Norman (or ‘old English’) invasion. This Anglo-Norman incursion, which began in 1169 AD, was progressively the object of attention of the Irish knights. In the skirmishes and confusion of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Macdonoghs, (or MacDonogh-MacCarthys) retook the adjacent barony to Lixnaw from its occupying Norman, or Geraldine, incumbent. The escutcheon witnesses a marriage to an armigerous daughter of the White Knight. FitzGerald support helped obtain the submission of the incumbent Gaelic lord, McAuliffe. This was the barony of Duhallow, and it was here that the Macdonoghs were to build their castles of Curragh (Kanturk), Castlecor, Lohort and Dromiscane (Cullen). Finally it was the setting for their renaissance masterpiece Macdonogh Court, commonly called Kanturk Castle.

The barony of Lixnaw fell to an opportunistic raid by a sept of the O’Connors, which led to counter attack and punitive raids for a further five hundred years. The Macdonoghs continued to pretend to the barony of Lixnaw until their breath was finally stilled at the battle of Knockniclashy, in 1652. This battle marks the end of Macdonogh greatness, and such remnants as survived the wrath of the Lord Protector fled to join their compatriots in Paris.

Oliver Cromwell confiscated their lands in County Sligo for his troops in lieu of wages. “About 1653, large tracts of the best land in Co. Sligo …were divided amongst the disbanded Cromwellian officers and soldiers…. Within a few years the old Sligo families, the O’Connors, O’Harts, O’Dowds, O’Garas, Macdonoghs and some of the O’Haras were dispossessed. Their places were taken by the settlers, the Coopers, Woods, Percevals, Wynnes, Irwins, Ormsbys, Croftons and Gores whose descendants have figured prominently in the affairs of the county.”[4]

The struggle for the lordship of Duhallow ended when, in 1614, Dermod MacOwen, descendent of Eoghan MacDonogh-MacCarthy, surrendered his Irish title and one year later was regranted the title in English law. Succession was confined to his immediate family and heirs in direct descent, in the feudal fashion, and the Macdonogh chiefly title becomes hereditary in English eyes from this point. Naturally this discriminated against the MacCarthys of the Desmond line, but as it turned out Macdonogh possession was doomed. Dermod’s successors became embroiled in the disastrous troubles of 1641 – 1652 (the wars of the Confederacy of Kilkenny) and when Cromwell’s evil work was done, the estates were in the hands of Philip Perceval, to whom they had been mortgaged and who was encouraged to foreclose.

Dermod ‘MacOwen’ claimed that his rival Cormac Macdonogh (of Curragh) was descended from the elder but illegitimate offspring of their common ancestor. Dermod was one of the four Gaelic chieftains who petitioned the Pope to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I, and was an ally of Florence MacCarthy who was accused of treason by the English. This great plea was signed at Kanturk Castle, in March 1600, at the annual sorrens the Macdonoghs were obliged by fealty and tradition to give for their overlords. Their famous guests included the great Hugh O’Neil also signed the letter. It is not conceivable that such an event took place in a building site, and thus we know that Kanturk was functioning as a residence at the opening of the seventeenth century. The question of the ‘blue glass roof’ remains an enigma, but the view of those who subscribe to the theory that the house was a working palace for almost 50 years believe that a temporary roof of oilskins or boards had been erected pending the delivery of the notorious glass pantiles that had been ordered from Venice, but which never saw their destiny realised, having been wrecked by that Macdonogh Mór who was forced to hand the keys to Mr Perceval the banker.

The McDonoghs of Galway continued in Ireland, as splendidly as merchants could in difficult times, they sought to import Spanish and French wines and export ‘wild geese’ ~ mainly Irishmen of means ~ to France, Bordeaux, Flanders, Spain and Portugal. They probably exported the odd convict to Virginia and (after the War of Independence) to Australia. They may now be the greatest landowners in that county.

Sadly the two noble branches, MacDonogh-MacCarthy of Duhallow and Macdonogh of Corran & Tirerill, no longer exist as independently viable septs (though they have many kinsmen all over the world). During the seventeenth centuries these two bellicose, highly partisan and Jacobite Irish noble families were particularly afflicted by English monarchs, settlers, planters, roundheads and (to be fair) internecine rivalry. They regrouped in Paris, Connacht and Munster men alike, calling their elected leader by the relatively new style of Macdonogh Mór, presumably a political gesture favouring neither faction.

By the 1650s, the more fortunate of the dispossessed Macdonoghs, both Connacht and Munster septs, found refuge in Paris, where they were teased as bélitres and lodged in Île de la Cité. Paris had long been important to the Catholic Irish.

King James II, deposed in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1688, was lent a château by the French king, at St Germain-en-Laye. There he prayed, openly for  the first time as a Catholic, for the restoration of the Stuart line in Britain. He plotted to return via Ireland ~ a dream in which he was universally supported by Irish nobles and which led inexorably to his (and their) final defeat at the Battle of the Boyne. Many great Irish families remained in their new home in France. There, today, you will find the ducs de MacCarthy, the ducs de Magenta (MacMahon), and many more noble ‘geese’. The ‘Baron du Hallo’, casually thought to be a satirical figure but actually a transliteration translation of ‘Lord of Duhallow’, took a house in the rue de Seine, the Hotel de Mirabeau[5], just across the river from the king’s palace of the Louvre.

Despite vigorous attempts at the Court of Common Pleas and appeals to their majesties Charles II and James II of England, the Macdonoghs never had their great estates returned to them. By the time of the protestant accession of William (and later Mary), it was time to try force. The Undertakers and protestant planters had hunted such Macdonoghs that survived in Connacht to near extinction[6]. The  Munster-based MacDonogh-MacCarthys had gambled their remaining Irish assets on the Confederation of Kilkenny, and on their defeat the Cromwellians forced the sale of their remaining lands in Ireland. With half a dozen castles to maintain, and with a palace at Kanturk, the family had become fatally over-mortgaged and the bankers[7] were gathering around the dying fire. The great family who from time immemorial had ruled Duhallow was now attaindered and driven from its ancestral territories.

The power of the Irish chiefs was broken forever and foreigners settled the clan lands. The old Gaelic customs and traditions which had been in use since ‘time out of mind’ were pushed aside, and with cruel penal laws the persecution of the Catholic population was unremitting.

In Paris, however, a different tune was finding voice. The cavalier Duke of York’s mercenaries, long based in France, had offered commissions to young Catholic noblemen who could bear arms, and thus had been born the Irish Brigade. The Macdonoghs of Paris, as we shall call them, were to boast over forty members of this famous regiment.

With the Restoration hopes rose again. One promising young advocate became a go-between for the Irish in Paris and the Court of Common Pleas in London. This talented and socially gifted young man energetically lobbied the agencies of state on behalf of his clan.

Not enough is known[8] about the birth and early years of Councillor Terence Macdonogh, the famous and respected advocate (and the only Catholic lawyer admitted to the bar in his time) who eventually became a member of King James’ Irish Parliament in 1689. Our earliest records suggest he was born in Sligo, and soon after relocated to Paris.

Under Charles II the return of Irish properties whose lands had been confiscated by the Regicide Cromwell was considered carefully by the courts, and enacted on some occasions to ‘good’ Irishmen, usually in the Gaeltacht on poor substitute land. Those Irish who had fought the Tudors and Stuarts  ~ the ‘guilty’ Irish ~ were less generously treated.

James II, in his turn, looked unlikely to go much further than his father, but suddenly, in 1688, he was usurped in a coup d’état ~ the Glorious Revolution ~ and sought refuge in Catholic France with the Sun King.

Terence Macdonogh immediately offered his sword to the Stuart king at St Germain-en-Laye, and with many other Irish nobles, volunteered his life and his men as the core of a Jacobite expeditionary force, to be swelled both by men-at-arms and huddled wretches the moment they stepped ashore in Ireland. Ireland would be the back door to England for the return of a Catholic king to his rightful throne. For the embattled bélitres, the chance to return in dignity to that country of fading memory and constant dreams was now a reality.

It did not take long before Captain Terence Macdonogh was leading a company of the Irish Brigade into Ireland itself, flying the Catholic king’s standard. He quickly found himself close to the great Irish champion Sarsfield. At the end of the Siege of Limerick he witnessed as a lawyer General Sarsfield’s signature to King William’s Treaty ~ which guaranteed justice and property rights for Irish Catholics. No-one guessed how quickly this Royal Treaty would be violated.

James’s war never had a chance of success. After his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, the king fled back to Paris. Lt-Col Terence Macdonogh (for his rise in the Catholic army had been fast) now decided to remain in Ireland. He served in James II’s Irish parliament at Chichester House in Dublin, and attended the brief revival of the Catholic rite at Christ Church cathedral. Despite the dishonourable revocation of the terms agreed by King William at Limerick, he was admitted to the Dublin Bar. He died in 1713 a revered statesman and was buried with the ancient chiefs of his clan at Balindoon Abbey.

The descendents of the Great Councillor revived the title ‘Mór’. This reflects the tanist succession of Terence to the chieftaincy and the pivotal role he played between the Gaelic and English regimes that have governed Ireland.

At his death Macdonogh, the ‘Great Councillor’ (generally referred to in Irish as Toirdhealbheach Og or Toirdhealbheadh Caech) was paid the enormous tribute of having his ‘Lamentations’ for the Violation of the Treaty of Limerick set to music by none other than the greatest Irish composer O’Carolan.[9]

Inside the ruins of Ballindoon Priory, a fourteenth-century Dominican abbey, there is an interesting monument (1737) to Terence Macdonogh. The abbey lies in a most beautiful setting on the shores of Lough Arrow (Co Sligo) and was built in 1507 for the Dominicans by the Macdonogh clan who had a castle nearby. This church was built in an unusual Middle English style. Councillor Macdonogh’s Tomb is in the nave[10].

By the end of the seventeenth century, Terence Macdonogh had established a seat at Portumna, in Galway, called Wilmont Park, on lands both purchased and leased from the marquises of Clanrickarde. There his issue remained, landowners and military men ~ the Irish Hussars gave them many a commission ~ until the primordial forces of the Great War again exhausted the noble line, leaving it to be carried forward by a serving officer in the Royal Engineers, the author’s grandfather. 

Wilmont Park, together with some farmland in Co. Clare, was sold after the First World War, leaving this part of the family no foot on the ground in modern Ireland. Happily Wilmont has become again the property of a Macdonogh, though not ~ as far as we can tell ~ a direct relation. Terence’s descendants, through a strange set of circumstances, have found themselves in England.

Some members of clan remained behind in the civilised environs of Paris, until their house there was disposed of in the Napoleonic period[11].

As to their military instincts, Dermot MacDermot notes, “The Macdonoghs were a warlike sept. They fought against O’Rourkes, O’Donnells, O’Connors and the MacDermots of Moylurg, and most of all amongst themselves.” Terence O’Rorke speaks of “the characteristic courage of the Macdonoghs.” This is reflected in our motto: “Virtutis gloria merces” (“Glory is the Reward of Valour”).

O’Rourke reports a noteworthy exemplar of this motto. Brian Macdonogh raged against the Cromwellians at Knockniclashy (1652) and having been wounded in several places, “fought furiously, moving about on his knees, after the lower limbs were broken with the pikes” until he was finally dispatched with cold steel, because his foes wanted to spare him the gallows.

The Macdonoghs never had their great estates returned to them. But the re-settled clan has made several successful returns to Irish public life. Between the Wars a Macdonogh was a member of the Dàil.

A warlike tribe, the Macdonoghs, but one that has believed in its causes and Irish destiny. Each generation of Macdonogh, since Terence’s return, has at the least had a degree or a commission. During the terrible years of famine, Macdonogh ~ one of the few Catholic landowners in the whole of Ireland ~ was famous for giving his countrymen the practical means of survival, and for two years called no rents or had them much reduced.

Overseas, members of the clan have distinguished themselves in many ways ~ an admiral, a general, even a director of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. A playwright, several engineers and an oboist. The post office railway under London is due in great part to the efforts of Col Michael Macdonogh during and following the First World War.

Other “fighter” Macdonoghs (it is said, though not without dissent) include Commodore Thomas Macdonogh, the hero of the Battle of Lake Champlain; and the poet-patriot Thomas MacDonagh[12], who was executed by the British for espousing Irish independence in 1916.

Since Terence’s line was redirected to England in 1914, each succeeding generation has sought means  of returning home and giving this rare name the chance to grow on native soil. Somewhere in the blazing lights and energy of modern Dublin, or perhaps beyond the Pale in the soft and moist west, history’s siren song plays longingly in our ears.

We will return. As free and educated men, informed by and proud of our past, bent on a constructive and European future, we will serve our old people again, in whatever calling they suggest to us.

But what a terrible and bloody past it has been ~ not one that should ever flicker out of our collective memory. And that little badge of distinction, Mór, so hard won and serving such purpose for so many years, should not go extinct either. Of course, such badges are anachronistic in our technological age. But History is ‘philosophy with examples’ (as Heroditus tells us), not ‘an obsession with the rear-view mirror’ (as Bill Gates would have it). And as a country without its traditions and purpose is a poorer place, so is the family hearth.

Jeremy Macdonogh

November 2001