'Goeth over onely to obtaine breeding’: William O’Neylon’s certificate of passage to Spain, 1652 (original) (raw)
2018, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, vol. 58, pp 95-110
This paper presents legal documents concerning William O’Neylon, including a certificate seeking leave to travel to Spain and a last testament. This is the only survival of such a certificate for county Clare from the Interregnum. It merits attention because of the extraneous circumstance of its issuance. The certificate was issued in 1652 at a volatile period when the county had just succumbed to the Cromwellian forces, and the general population was exhausted after a decade of war and privation. It also occurred at the onset of he Cromwellian regime’s infamous policy of transplanting Catholic gentry suspected of Confederate activity to poorer lands in Clare and Connacht. The survival of this certificate adds to our understanding of the activity of an aristocratic Gaelic family in Clare. It also castes light on one of county Clare’s most (in)famous women of the seventeenth century, thrice married Máire Ruadh, ancestor of the Dromoland O’Briens.
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