Qualla: Flight of the Earls https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Flight of the Earls https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls Flight of the Earls: Introduction https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls/ Photo credit Dhalamh, CC BY-SA 4.0. About a hundred people walked down to the shore at Rathmullan on the morning of 14 September 1607 and got into a ship. They carried with them, packed in trunks and in their heads, the political memory of an entire civilisation. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was sixty years old, recently a guest of King James, and one of the most formidable strategic minds Ireland had ever produced. Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, was thirty-two and the patriarch of the second great Ulster dynasty. With them were their wives, children, brothers, retainers, and a few bishops. They thought they were going to Spain. Storms drove them into France instead. None of them ever returned. The day they sailed is the day Irish historians, fairly or not, place at the end of Gaelic Ireland.

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Image: Dhalamh | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/gcf9-flight-of-the-earls-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Flight of the Earls: The Long War Behind Them https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls/ Photo credit After Frans Pourbus the Younger, Public domain. To understand why the earls fled, you have to follow them backwards into the Nine Years' War. From 1593 to 1603 Hugh O'Neill and Hugh Roe O'Donnell led a confederacy of Irish lords against the Tudor conquest. Their war was the most serious military challenge the Tudor state faced...

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Image: After Frans Pourbus the Younger | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/gcf9-flight-of-the-earls-the-long-war-behind-them.mp3 0:06 2 full Flight of the Earls: Generous Peace, Slow Strangulation https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls/ Photo credit anonymous, Public domain. The newly-crowned James VI and I gave the defeated lords surprisingly mild terms. Tyrone was pardoned and went hunting with the king. Rory was made Earl of Tyrconnell. They kept most of their lands and titles. But the peace came with a knife in it. English common law replaced the...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/gcf9-flight-of-the-earls-generous-peace-slow-strangulation.mp3 0:06 3 full Flight of the Earls: Why Rathmullan https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls/ Photo credit Andrés López Polanco, Public domain. Rathmullan sits halfway up the western shore of Lough Swilly, the long glacial fjord that cuts north into Donegal. It was Tyrconnell's own coast, accessible from the O'Donnell heartlands but quiet enough to load a ship without attracting English notice. A French vessel, possibly ...

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Image: Andrés López Polanco | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/gcf9-flight-of-the-earls-why-rathmullan.mp3 0:06 4 full Flight of the Earls: Rome, Fever, and Endings https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls/ Photo credit Peter1936F, CC BY-SA 4.0. They went on to Leuven in the Spanish Netherlands, where the earls' children were left at the Irish College of St Anthony. The adults trudged south through winter Europe and reached Rome on 29 April 1608. Pope Paul V granted them small pensions. Their apartments were shabby compa...

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Image: Peter1936F | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/gcf9-flight-of-the-earls-rome-fever-and-endings.mp3 0:06 5 full Flight of the Earls: What Sailed With Them https://qualla.com/flight-of-the-earls/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Whether the earls fled to evade arrest or simply chose the long shot of Spanish support over inevitable humiliation in London, historians still debate. What is not in dispute is the symbolic weight of that morning. The two greatest Gaelic dynasties in Ireland walked off their own...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/f/9/flight-of-the-earls-wp/gcf9-flight-of-the-earls-what-sailed-with-them.mp3 0:06 6 full