Patrick O'Neill

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Patrick O'Neill was a seventeenth century soldier and the first Count of Tyrone, originator of this line of Irish-Spanish Counts 1622 to 1888.

He was the grandson of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and the second son of Sean O'Neill, eldest son of Hugh. The O'Neills had fled Ireland in 1607 in the Flight of the Earls in a failed attempt to get continental help for renewing their their conflict with the Protestant English state in Ireland (see Nine Years War (Ireland). The O'Neills and other exile Gaelic Irish families established themselves in Spanish service, importing their former tenants and dependents from Ireland to serve in the Spanish army. Patrick O'Neill was born in Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium) in 1622 and given the courtesy title of Count of Tyrone in deference to his father's title which was taken upon the death of Hugh in Rome 1616.

At first under Papal protection, Patrick later served in the Irish units of the Spanish Army in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands against the Dutch Republic. However, with the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, he embarked for Ireland with his cousins: General Owen Roe O'Neill, Henry Rua, Bernard and Hugh Dubh O'Neill to fight for a Gaelic and Catholic restoration in Ireland in the service of The Irish Catholic Confederation. With the Cromwellian victory in the Irish Confederate Wars (1641-53), Patrick returned to the Netherlands and lived his life within the Spanish holdings there and Spain. He had an elder brother, Hugh Eugene who took the title 4th Earl of Tyrone and lived until 1660 in Spain. Patrick's descendants tried to move back to Ireland, but eventually became subjects of the French monarchy and moved to Martinique.