Redmond O'Hanlon (outlaw) facts for kids
Count Redmond O'Hanlon (Irish: Réamonn Ó hAnluain), (c. 1640 – 25 April 1681) was a 17th-century Irish tóraidhe or rapparee; an outlawed member of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland who still held to the code of conduct of the traditional chiefs of the Irish clans.
Historian John J. Marshall has called Redmond O'Hanlon Ireland's answer to Robin Hood and Rob Roy MacGregor. Stephen Dunford has further dubbed O'Hanlon, "The Irish Skanderbeg."
Family background
Although born in impoverished circumstances, Redmond was part of the Derbfine of the last O'Hanlon Chief of the Name, Lord of Airgíalla, and Master of Tandragee Castle.
During the Nine Years' War, Sir Oghie O'Hanlon had allied the Clan with Queen Elizabeth I of England against Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell. In 1606, Sir Oghie received his Clan's lands under the policy of Surrender and regrant. According to Royal decree, the family's manor was to be passed on to Sir Oghie's heirs under Primogeniture, rather than the Brehon Law policy of Tanistry.
Sir Oghie's grant was revoked, however, when his son and many other relations joined Sir Cahir O'Doherty's Rebellion in 1608. As a result, the O'Hanlon family was reduced to ruling a small portion of the clan's former homeland. The rest became the property of Sir Oliver St. John, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, who evicted the O'Hanlons from the best land on his estate, which was planted with Scottish and English Protestants. During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the O'Hanlon clan rose and attempted to retake their traditional lands in vain.
Sir Oghie's heirs lost what little land they still possessed following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. In accordance with the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652, the O'Hanlon family's remaining lands were confiscated and they were deported to Connaught.
Early life
Little is known of the childhood and upbringing of the famous outlaw. A very rare pamphlet on the life and death of Redmond O'Hanlon, dated 1st August 1681 and published in Dublin, 1682, states that "Redmond, son of Loghlin O'Hanlon, was born near Poyntzpass in the County of Armagh in the year 1640," but some of the later lives say he was born at the foot of Slieve Gullion, and local tradition confirms this. "It was his good fortune to be educated in an English school where he attained to such perfection in that language that it might have proved a great advantage to him in the afterlife." His linguistic accomplishments certainly did prove useful to him in the afterlife. He is represented as a most accomplished gentleman, equal to Ossory, who was accounted for manners and bearing the finest cavalier since Sir Philip Sidney. He was also an excellent actor and mimic, able to personate a King's officer, merchant or countryman, as the exigencies of the case required. In one of the contemporary pamphlets, there is given what is most evidently a fictitious account of his youth and early days in which he is represented as a being a footman for Sir George Acheson of Markethill, and while in the gentleman's employment practising himself in all the accounts of roguery. Cosgrave's account seems quite probable when he says – "Redmond once happened to be at the killing of a gentleman in a quarrel, and flying for safety, stayed abroad for a long time, still refusing to come to a trial, till he was outlawed, which put him into his shifts." It is likely that O'Hanlon fled to France and there joined the Army where he acquired which he so often turned to good use in his after-career, and also was able to speak French like a native, Gaelic and English being equally at his command.
It is not known when he returned to Ireland, but Stephen Dunford suggests it was around 1660, as part of the Restoration of King Charles II to the Irish throne. Like all the other Ulster landowners who had been dispossessed for supporting King Charles I during the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, Clan O'Hanlon soon realized that there would be no restoration of their property by the new King. In response, Redmond took to the hills around Slieve Gullion and became an outlaw, or rapparee.
According to Stephen Dunford, "He is likely to have seen himself as one of the chieftains of the clan and therefore honour-bound to exact justice."
Outlaw
Although Redmond O'Hanlon has often been compared to a real-life Robin Hood, he has much more in common with Rob Roy MacGregor.
Like many Irish and Scottish clan chiefs of the same era, O'Hanlon operated an extralegal Watch over the Anglo-Irish landlords and Ulster Scots merchants of Armagh, Tyrone, and Down. In return for an annual fee, O'Hanlon retrieved cattle and horses stolen from landlords under his Watch and paid in full for what could not be restored. Peddlers and merchants who placed themselves under the Count's Watch were provided with a written pass, which was to be shown to highwaymen wishing to rob them. The protection money O'Hanlon received, which Protestant landlords and settlers in Ireland referred to as "black rent", was used to pay O'Hanlon's many spies and to feed his clansmen and their families.
Anyone who robbed travellers who carried the Count's passes or rustled livestock from herds under his Watch were forced to return the stolen money or merchandise and were fined for the first two offences. Anyone who did so a third time was killed. O'Hanlon is described as scrupulously adhering to his word once it was given.
In 1674 the authorities in Dublin Castle put a price on Redmond O'Hanlon and several other known outlaws. In 1676, the price was increased, with posters advertising for his capture, dead or alive.
A 1681 pamphlet describes his character:
"Necessity first prompted him to evil courses and success hardened him in them; he did not rob to maintain his own prodigality, but to gratify his spies and pensioners: Temperance, Liberality, and Reservedness were the three qualities that preserved him; none but they of the House where he was knew till the next morning where he lay all night; he allowed his followers to stuff themselves with meat and good liquor, but confined himself to milk and water; he thought it better thrift to disperse his money among his Receivers and Intelligencers, than to carry it in a purse, or hide it in a hole; he prolonged his life by a general distrust."
Assassination
On 25 April 1681, Count Redmond O'Hanlon was fatally shot by Art MacCall O'Hanlon near Hilltown, County Down. According to the most popular account, the murder took place while the Count was sleeping.
Art McCall O'Hanlon received a full pardon and one hundred pounds from the Lord Deputy for murdering his foster brother.
Family
According to tradition, the O'Hanlon and Conyngham families travelled to Ballynabeck, exhumed the Count's remains, and buried them in a family plot in Conwal Parish Church cemetery in Letterkenny, County Donegal. The site, near the Vestry door, is marked by a flat gravestone inscribed with the O'Hanlon coat of arms.
The inscription reads:
"The five sons of Redmond Hanlen, Mercht. in Letterkenny: John, the firstborn, Alexander, Francis, John and Redmond. Also here lieth the body of William, the son of the aforesaid Redmond Hanlen who departed this life the 27th ...1708, aged ...3 years ...months and 14 days. Also the remains of David Conyngham, Gent., and Cath., his wife, daughter to Redmond Hanlen. They were esteemed more for goodness of heart than for affluence of fortune. Died lamented here on ...December 1752, 72 years old. She 21st August, 1775, aged 80."
Folklore
- Redmond O'Hanlon's popularity was immortalised in the pulp fiction of the era in addition to folktales which survive to the present day. The legends focus upon his ability to humiliate the Anglo-Irish gentry and the redcoats.
- In local Irish folklore, ghost stories about sightings of Redmond O'Hanlon riding on horseback are still commonly told in County Armagh.
