Brian O'Rourke

Sir Brian na Murra O'Rourke (1566?-1591) was hereditary lord of West Breifne (modern County Leitrim) in Ireland.

O'Rourke claimed descent from one of the ancient kings of Ireland, and was remarked upon as a handsome and unusually learned Gaelic chieftain. He assumed leadership of his family in the mid-1560's, having assassinated his elder brothers, but his territory of west Breifne soon came under the administration of the newly created Presidency of Connaught.

In time, O'Rourke began to unsettle the English administrators whose responsibility it was to deal with him. In the mid-1570's the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, described him as the proudest man he had dealt with in Ireland. Similarly, the president of Connaught, Sir Nicholas Malby, put him down as, "the proudest man this day living on the earth". A decade later Sir Edward Waterhouse thought of him as, "being somewhat learned but of an nsolent and proud nature and no further obedient than is constrained by her Majesty's forces".

For a long time O'Rourke was willing to deal with the government, and in an agreement concluded with Malby in 1577, he recognised the sovereignty of the Irish crown under Elizabeth I of England. His allegiance was called in question within two years, during the Desmond Rebellions in Munster, when he rose out in defiance of the Connaught presidency. At the time, it was suspected his actions were induced by an involvement with the Old-English family of the Dillons in adjacent west Meath, who were engaged in an effort to spread their influence and possessions in the northern midlands, rather than by sympathy with the rebel Geraldine cause.

Sir Richard Bingham took up the presidency of Connaught in 1584, when Sir John Perrot was appointed lord deputy of Ireland. O'Rourke immediately complained of harrassment by the new president in the spring and summer of that year, and in September Bingham was ordered by his superior in Dublin Castle to temporise and refrain from making expeditions into Breifne. The fact was that Breifne, although part of the province of Connaught, was not subject to a crown sheriff, and O'Rourke was happy to maintain his freedom of action.

In preparation for the Composition of Connaught, whereby the lords of that province were to enter an agreement with the government to regularise their standing, O'Rourke surrendered his lordship in 1585, whereupon he was to receive a regrant of his lands by knights service in return for a chief horse and an engraved gold token to be presented to the lord deputy each year at midsummer. However, O'Rourke declined to accept the letters patent that established this bargain.

By May 1586 the tension with the president had mounted, and O'Rourke brought charges against him before the council at Dublin, which were dismissed as vexatious. Bingham believed that Perrot had been behind this attempt on his authority, but there was little he could do before his recall to England for service in the Lowlands in 1587; upon the president's departure (he was to return within a year), Perrot reduced O'Rourke's annual composition dues from £270 to £160 and, while permitting him to levy certain illegal exactions, appointed the Lord of West Breifne sheriff of Leitrim for a term of two years.

O'Rourke remained unhappy with interference in his territories, and was also content to be described as a leading Catholic lord. In 1588, after Perrot's departure, he assisted at least eighty survivors of the Spanish Armada - including Francesco de Cuellar - to depart the country, and was regarded as friendly to future receptions of Spanish forces. Although not proclaimed as a rebel, he put up a forcible resistance to the presidency - again under Binghams's command - and would not be bridled.

O'Rourke's demands grew along with the violence on the borders of west Breifne. In peace talks in 1589, he did accept the terms of a crown tribute that had been agreed by his grandfather, but resisted the composition agreed in 1585 and refused to allow the formation of a crown adminstration in the newly formed County Leitrim. Instead, he sought appointment as seneschal under the direct authority of the Dublin government, leaving him independent of Bingham. He also sought safe possession of his lands within and without the county, a safe-conduct for life, and a guarantee of freedom from harrassment by the president's forces of any merchants entering his territory. In return, the only pledge he was willing to give was his sword. A member of the Dublin council, Robert Dillon of the west Meath family, advised him to stay out without compromise, and accordingly O'Rourke declined a safe-conduct.

Under the government of Perrot's successor as lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, pressure was increased on the territories bordering the province of Ulster. Thus, in the spring of 1590, Bingham's forces occupied west Breifne and O'Rourke fled; later that year the adjacent territory of Monaghan was seized by the crown after the execution at law of the resident lord, Hugh Roe MacMahon.

O'Rourke fetched up in Scotland in February 1591, with "six fair Irish hobbies and four great dogs to be presented to the king". He was seeking not only asylum but also the opportunity to recruit mercenaries to contest the occupation of his territories. In consultation with the English ambassador, King James VI denied him an audience, and Queen Elizabeth (relying ia. on the Treaty of Berwick 1586) made a strong request for his delivery into her custody. The matter was put to the Scottish privy council, which readily ordered - in the face of some objections - the arrest and delivery to English crown forces of the rebel Irish lord. Elizabeth's councillors had explicitly held out the prospect of clemency for O'Rourke, and certain Scots councillors agreed to the extradition, in the supposed expectation that his life would be spared. The expectation was to be disappointed, an experience the king himself was to suffer in the years afterward, when reciprocal extraditions of Bothwellites were denied by the English.

O'Rourke was arrested in Glasgow, where the chief traffic was with Ireland. The townsmen sought a stay on his delivery into custody, fearing for their Irish trade, and meeting no sympathy, cursed the king's officers as knights of Elizabeth and cried out that the king had been bought with English angels (a reference to the pension the king received from England). Several of O'Rourke's creditors feared that his debts would never be paid, but the English ambassador later made a contribution of £47. O'Rourke was removed from Glasgow in the afternoon of April 3 1591 in the midst of a riot. Two ships on the west coast were looted and some of their crews killed by Irishmen, citing O'Rourke's treatment as the reason, and guards had to be mounted on all vessels sailing to Ireland.

O'Rourke was transferred to the Tower of London, where he was kept in close custody. The legal arguments began. Although treason trials in the Tudor period had more to do with political theatre than the administration of justice, the matter was not a foregone conclusion. It was a serious question whether O'Rourke could be tried in England for treason committed in Ireland. The judges delivered a mixed, preliminary opinion that it could be done under a treason statute enacted under King Henry VIII.

Meanwhile, articles had been framed at Dublin against O'Rourke with the curiously reluctant aid of Bingham (ironically, he complained of being bullied into testifying), and there was also an indictment laid by a jury in Sligo. These matters were transferred to England, where the grand jury of Middlesex found evidence of various offences of treason, the most substantial of which concerned the assistance given to Armada survivors, the attempt to raise mercenaries in Scotland, and various armed raids made by O'Rourke into Sligo and Roscommon. There was one further charge that related to an odd incident, which occurred in 1589, when a representation of the queen (whether a wood-carving or painting is not known) was said to have been tied to a horse's tail at O'Rourke's command and dragged in the mud; this was referred to as the treason of the image, but it has been suggested that it was merely a new year's ritual, deliberately misconstrued by government supporters - either way, the evidence for this incident was unreliable.

O'Rourke was arraigned on the 28th of October 1591, when the indictment was translated for him by an Irishman; one observer says he declined to plead, but the record states that a plea of not guilty was entered (probably at the direction fo the court). The defendant was asked how he wished to be tried and responded that he would only submit to trial by jury if he were given a week to examine the evidence, allowed a good legal advocate, and if the queen herself sat in judgment. The judge, by interpreter, declined these requests and explained that the jury would try him anyway. O'Rourke responded, "If they thought good, let it be so". The trial proceeded and O'Rourke was convicted and sentenced to death.

On the 3rd of November 1591 O'Rourke was drawn to Tyburn. On the scaffold he scoffed at Miler Magrath, archbishop of Cashel, who had requested in Irish that the condemned man repent his sins. In response, Magrath was abused with being a man of uncertain faith and credit and a depraved life who had broken his vow by abjuring the rule of the Franciscans. O'Rourke then suffered execution of sentence by hanging and quartering. In his essay on customs, Francis Bacon refers to an Irish rebel hanged at London, who requested that the sentence be carried out, not with a rope halter, but with a willow withe - a common instrument amongst the Irish: it may be O'Rourke to whom Bacon was referring.

O'Rourke's experience as a rebel Irish lord is not remarkable in itself. What is remarkable is the combination of procedures used in his downfall: first, the campaign conducted under Fitzwilliam to bring pressure to bear on the borders of Ulster; and then the co-operation of the Scottish king with the English, resulting in the first extradition within Britain and a trial for treason committed "beyond the seas". His treason was also used as evidence against John Perrot later in the year, which also resulted in conviction and allowed the continued pursuit of an aggressive policy against the lords of Ulster, resulting in the Nine Years War. In the end, O'Rourke had fallen prey to forces that were moving to establish the polity of Britain, of which James VI became the first leader little more than a decade later.

O'Rourke married Lady Burke, and then Elenora, daughter of the 15th Earl of Desmond. Among his children were two sons, Brian Og (his tanist) and Teig, who succeeded him. O'Rourke's seignory was confiscated and later given to Teig in the next reign, but in principle Leitrim remained part of the Connacht composition on Bingham's insistence and did not suffer as radical a land settlement as Monaghan.