Redmond O'Hanlon (outlaw)
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Redmond O'Hanlon was an Irish outlaw or rapparee during the 17th century.
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[edit] Early life
The author of an anonymous pamphlet gives his birthdate as c.1640, but researcher Stephen Dunford writes that 1620 is more likely. The pamphleteer gives his birthplace as Poyntzpass, County Armagh. Redmond O'Hanlon was the son of Loughlin O'Hanlon, rightful heir to the castle at Tandragee. As a young man he was sent for a "proper" education in England and later worked as a footboy to Sir George Acheson of Markethill, but was dismissed for stealing horses.
[edit] Rebel and Confederate soldier
After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, he joined the Irish Catholic rebel forces. He served under Owen Roe O'Neill at the Irish victory at the Battle of Benburb in 1646 but fled to France after the defeat of the Irish Confederation in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland 1649-53. O'Hanlon's family lands were confiscated under the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652. He spent several years in exile as an officer with the French army and was awarded the title of Count of the French Empire. It is not known when he returned to Ireland, but Dunford suggests that is was around 1660, after the Restoration of King Charles II of England. After realizing that there would be no restitution of his family's lands, he took to the hills around Slieve Gullion and became a notorious highwayman or rapparee as they were known then. Many other dispossed Irishmen flocked to his banner.
[edit] Rapparee
Although Redmond has often been compared to a real-life Robin Hood, the truth is more complex. Protestant landlords, militia officers, and even Anglican ministers and Catholic priests would work as informal members of the O'Hanlon gang, giving him information and casing sites for him to rob. He would also force the landlords and merchants of northern Ireland to pay protection money. If they paid, it was said that they would not even need to bar their doors, as no one would dare to rob them. A letter from the era states that the criminal activities of the outlaw Count were bringing in more mony than the King's revenue collectors.
In 1674 the colonial authorities in Dublin put a price on his head with posters advertising for his capture, dead or alive. But according to the letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett, the Colonial militia sent after the O'Hanlon gang spent more time sacking and pillaging the peasantry than actively searching for the Count. But after the murder of prominent landlord Henry St. John on September 9, 1679, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, was determined to bring O'Hanlon down.
[edit] Death
Count Redmond O'Hanlon was murdered in his sleep by his foster brother and close associate Art MacCall O'Hanlon at Eight Mile Bridge near Hilltown, County Down on April 25, 1681. Art received a full pardon and two hundred pounds from the Duke of Ormond for murdering his leader. Lieutenant William Lucas, the militia officer who had recruited Art and arranged the killing, received a substantial promotion. As had become the custom in British ruled Ireland, there were gruesome displays of his body parts including his head which was placed on a spike over Downpatrick jail. According to legend, Redmond O'Hanlon's mother travelled to Downpatrick and composed a caoine (in English "keen" or lament) upon seeing her son's head spiked over the jail. His remains are said to lie in a family plot in the Church of Ireland cemetery in Letterkenny County Donegal. Redmond's popularity was immortalised in the pulp fiction of the era and in poems, ballads, and folktales which survive to the present day.
[edit] References
- Stephen Dunford, "The Irish Highwaymen," Copyright 2001.
