Humphrey Willis

Humphrey Willis was an English-born soldier who settled in Ireland in the sixteenth century. Willis was appointed Sheriff of County Donegal and County Fermanagh by the Lord Deputy of Ireland William FitzWilliam.^[1] He enforced his authority in the area with a detachment of the Irish Army. Willis was noted as a fluent speaker of Irish.

The son of Humphrey Willis (1589/90-1618) by his wife Martha Drury (related to the Popham family of Huntworth), Willis was probably born at Woolavington, Somerset, of which place his father was recorded as 'gentleman'.^[2][3]

Willis' appointment in Donegal antagonised the local Gaelic lords the O'Donnells who had traditionally enjoyed a close relationship with the Crown. Following his escape from his imprisonment in Dublin Castle, the young heir to the O'Donnell leadership Hugh Roe O'Donnell drove Willis out of Donegal, one of the actions that anticipated the coming Tyrone's Rebellion. In 1593 Willis had a new role as Sheriff of Fermanagh. Again he clashed with a local Gaelic lord Hugh Maguire who drove him out of the area. Maguire entered into open rebellion in the crown on two occasions. On the second he laid siege to Enniskillen, triggering the outbreak of fighting that became Tyrone's Rebellion.

He served as part of Sir Henry Docwra's expedition to Derry in 1600, where he liaised with local Gaelic figures who wished to ally themselves with the Crown against Hugh Roe O'Donnell and his ally Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. He wrote several works: The Power of the Committee of Som. (1646), Times Whirligig (1646/7), and England's Changeling (1659).^[4]

George Willis, who discovered the Florencecourt Yew, was a descendant.^[5]

References

Bibliography

• McGurk, John. Sir Henry Docwra, 1564-1631: Derry's Second Founder. Four Courts Press, 2006.
• Morgan, Christopher. William Cecil, Ireland, and the Tudor State. Oxford University Press, 2012.