The
Flight of the Earls (
Irish Teitheadh na nIarlaí) refers to the departure from Ireland on 14 September 1607 of
Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and
Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell.
After their defeat at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, and the suppression of the Nine Years' War in Ulster in 1603, Tyrone and the Prince of Tyrconnell, Lord Tyrconnell's elder brother and predecessor, had been forced into exile in January 1602 by the victorious English government of Ireland under the leadership of the Lord Mountjoy. They retained their lands and titles, although with much diminished extent and authority. However, the countryside was laid bare in a campaign of destruction in 1602, and induced famine in 1603, in the same way that O'Neill had devastated Munster in 1600. O'Neill surrendered on favourable terms at Mellifont just as Queen Elizabeth was dying, and submitted to the crown.
When King James I took the throne in 1603 he quickly proceeded to issue pardons for the Irish lords and their rebel forces. As king of Scotland he had a better understanding of the advantages of working with local chiefs in the Scottish Highlands. However, as in other Irish lordships, the 1603 peace involved O'Neill losing substantial areas of land to his cousins and neighbours, who would be granted freeholds under the English system, instead of the looser arrangements under the former Brehon law system. This was not a new policy but was a well-understood and longstanding practice in the Tudor Reconquest of Ireland.
On 10 September 1602 the Prince of Tyrconnell had already died, allegedly assassinated, in Spain, and his brother succeeded him as 25th Chieftain of the O'Donnell clan. He was later granted the Earldom of Tyrconnell by King James I on 4 September 1603, and restored to a somewhat diminished scale of territories in Tyrconnell on 10 February 1604.
