Redmond O'Hanlon (outlaw)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Redmond O'Hanlon (c. 1640-April 25, 1681) was an Irish outlaw or rapparee during the 17th century.

Contents

[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 disposed 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 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 money 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 been custom, 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.

[edit] In popular culture

Redmond's popularity was immortalised in the pulp fiction of the era in addition to poems, ballads, and folktales which survive to the present day. In 1862 William Carleton published Redmond Count O'Hanlon; The Irish Rapparee, a novel loosely based upon the life of the the outlaw Count. Sir Walter Scott is alleged to have begun researching a novel of his own, but gave up after finding documentation too scanty.

[edit] References

  • Dunford, Stephen. The Irish Highwaymen. Dublin: Merlin Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1903582024

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../r/e/d/Redmond_O%27Hanlon_%28outlaw%29_ccfd.html"