5/24/2023 0 Comments Irish battle axeBoth sides gathered to their side a large contingent of lesser magnates and their armies. It appears that for political (and possibly for personal) reasons the Lord Deputy was eager to help O’Kelly weaken the prestige of Clanrickarde. Since the city had a royal charter (from 1484), as the Crown’s representative in Ireland, Kildare was forced to act. Burke appears to have also taken up with O’Kelly’s wife, and there may have been ill-feeling between the Lord Deputy and Burke because of the latter’s treatment of Gearóid Mór’s daughter. The Irish sources attest that O’Kelly complained of this to the Lord Deputy. In 1503 Ulick Burke attacked and destroyed the castles of O’Kelly, Lord of Hymany, at Monivea (Muine Mheá), Garbally (Gallach) and Castleblakeney (Garbhdhoire). The Burkes of Mayo, on the other hand, joined forces with Kildare with a view to suppressing their dangerous neighbour. But Ulick Burke resisted all attempts to have his power subordinated by the Earl of Kildare, forming an alliance with O’Brien of Thomond and the magnates of Munster. He had tried to persuade Ulick to acknowledge his authority by giving him his daughter Estacia in marriage. The King’s Deputy, Gerald, Earl of Kildare (Gearóid Mór), became concerned that Ulick Burke’s attempt to gain supremacy in Connacht could simultaneously threaten the Crown’s interests in that province and his claim to be the paramount magnate in Ireland. Although both families were of Norman stock, the western de Burghs (or Burkes) were integrated into the Gaelic world, whereas the Fitzgeralds of the Pale, though Gaelicised, retained cultural, social and political links to England. He also pursued his family’s interests at the expense of the towns of Galway and Athenry, two urban centres in Connacht which, despite their remoteness from the Pale, were notable for their loyalty to Crown government in Ireland. He had become The Clanrickarde in the year 1485, and sought to establish his authority over all Connacht, including Co Mayo, where the other branch of the great De Burgo (Burke) family held power. Ulick Finn, as Burke was called, was an aggressive local magnate. The major contemporary sources for this battle are the Gaelic Irish annals and a sixteenth-century manuscript written in the Pale known as “the Book of Howth”. The cause was a dispute between Maelsechlainn mac Tadhg Ó Cellaigh, King of Ui Maine and Clanricarde. The Battle of Knockdoe took place on 19 August 1504 at Knockdoe, in the Parish of Lackagh, Co Galway, between two Anglo-Irish lords-Gerald FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Ulick Fionn Burke, Lord of Clanricarde - along with their respective Irish allies.
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