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Clan MacDowall

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Irish History

of Doyle Family


The dark foreigners

One clue to the ancient roots of the proud clan of Doyle can be found in the original Gaelic form of the name, ‘Ó Dubhghaill’.

The name indicates ‘dark foreigner’, with ‘dubh’ signifying dark, or black, and ‘ghaill’, or ‘gall’, indicating foreigner.

It was indeed as ‘dark foreigners’ that the ancestors of the Doyles of today first arrived on the Emerald Isle, but this was at a period so far back through the dim mists of time that they eventually became as proudly ‘native Irish’ as the native Irish they first encountered.

They certainly did not come bearing gifts, but fire and sword, as they pillaged the island from end to end leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.

For these ancestors of the Doyles were the fierce Scandinavian sea rovers more commonly known as Vikings.

Mainly of Norwegian origin, it was in the closing years of the eighth century A.D. that their sinister longboats first appeared off Irish shores, and the monastery of St. Patrick’s Island, near Skerries in present day Co. Dublin was looted and burned to the ground.

Raids continued along the coastline until they made their first forays inland in 836 A.D., while a year later a Viking fleet of 60 vessels sailed into the River Boyne.

An indication of the terror they brought can be found in one contemporary account of their depredations and desecrations.

It lamented how ‘the pagans desecrated the sanctuaries of God, and poured out the blood of saints upon the altar, laid waste the house of our hope, trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the street.’

By 841 A.D. the Vikings, or Ostmen as they were also known, had established a number of strongholds on the island, but their raids began to ease off before returning with a terrifying and bloody vengeance in about 914 A.D.

They met with a determined resistance from the native Irish, most notably in the form of the forces of the powerful confederation of clans known as the southern Uí Neill.

The Irish suffered a resounding defeat at the battle of Dublin in 919 A.D., and it was not until just over thirty years later that the raids gradually came to an end.

By this time the Viking ancestors of the Doyles of today had established permanent settlements in Ireland, part-icularly in Dublin and other coastal areas such as present day Waterford, Wexford, Carlingford, and Strangford – indeed the names of the latter four stem from the Old Norse language of the Scandinavians.

Interestingly the present day county of Wexford is where many Doyles of today can be found.

Having put aside the broadsword and battleaxe in favour of the more peaceful pursuit of trade, the Ostmen contributed significantly to Ireland’s fortunes by, for example, establishing Dublin as a main European trading port.

By the late tenth and early eleventh centuries Ireland was the scene of vicious inter-clan rivalry as successive clan chiefs fought for supremacy over their rivals.

By 1002 A.D. Brian Boruma, better known to posterity as Brian Boru, had achieved the prize of the High Kingship of Ireland – but there were still rival chieftains, and not least the Ostmen, to deal with.

Resenting Brian Boru’s High Kingship, a number of chieftains, particularly those of the province of Leinster, found common cause with the Ostmen, and the two sides met in final and bloody confrontation at the battle of Clontarf, about four miles north of Dublin, on Good Friday, 1014.

Boru proved victorious, but the annals speak of great slaughter on the day, with the dead piled high on the field of battle, including three of his sons.

The king had little time to celebrate his victory – being killed in his tent by a party of fleeing Vikings, but not before felling most of them with his great two-handed sword.

‘Ó Dubhghaill’ had been the nickname given by the Irish to those ‘dark foreigners’ who had first arrived on the island with fire and sword, but those who chose to settle on the island rapidly assimilated the Irish way of life.

‘Ó Dubhghaills’, or Doyles as they would become, were also to be found in later centuries in the form of the name of MacDughaill, or MacDowell.

These ‘Doyles’ had first come to Ireland from the Western Isles of Scotland in about the middle of the thirteenth century as ‘galloglasses’, or mercenary soldiers, in the service of clans such as the O’ Connors.

Originally settled in the area of present day Co. Roscommon, they later settled in Ulster and, in common with their ‘Doyle’ counterparts who had first arrived in Ireland centuries before, they were of Scandinavian stock.

Whatever their origins, the Irish clans found common cause in the late twelfth century and the centuries following in resisting yet another powerful invader.

Twelfth century Ireland was far from being a unified nation, split up as it was into territories ruled over by ambitious chieftains who ruled as kings in their own right.

In a series of bloody conflicts one chieftain, or king, would occasionally gain the upper hand over his rivals, and by 1156 the most powerful was Muirchertach MacLochlainn, king of the powerful O’Neills.

The equally powerful Rory O’Connor, king of the province of Connacht, opposed him but he increased his power and influence by allying himself with Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster.

MacLochlainn and MacMurrough were aware that the main key to the kingdom of Ireland was the thriving trading port of Dublin that had been established by the Ostmen.

Dublin was taken by the combined forces of the Leinster and Connacht kings, but when MacLochlainn died the Dubliners rose up in revolt and overthrew the unpopular MacMurrough.

A triumphant Rory O’Connor entered Dublin and was later inaugurated as Ard Rí, but the proud Dermott MacMurrough refused to accept defeat.

He appealed for help from England’s Henry II in unseating O’Connor – an act that was to radically affect the future course of Ireland’s fortunes in general and those of clans such as the Doyles in particular.

Conquest and rebellion

The English monarch, who had already had his own avaricious eyes on Ireland, agreed to help MacMurrough, but distanced himself from direct action by delegating his Norman subjects in Wales with the task.

These ambitious and battle-hardened barons and knights had first settled in Wales following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and, with an eye on rich booty, plunder, and lands, were only too eager to obey their sovereign’s wishes and furnish MacMurrough with aid.

MacMurrough crossed the Irish Sea to Bristol, where he rallied powerful barons such as Robert Fitzstephen and Maurice Fitzgerald to his cause, along with Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke.

The mighty Norman war machine soon moved into action, and so fierce and disciplined was their onslaught on the forces of Rory O’ Connor and his allies that by 1171 they had re-captured Dublin, in the name of MacMurrough, and other strategically important territories.

Henry II began to take cold feet over the venture, realising that he may have created a rival in the form of a separate Norman kingdom in Ireland.

Accordingly, he landed on the island, near Waterford, at the head of a large army in October of 1171 with the aim of curbing the power of his Cambro-Norman barons.

Protracted war between the king and his barons was averted, however, when they submitted to the royal will, promising homage and allegiance in return for holding the territories they had conquered in the king’s name.

Henry also received the submission and homage of many of the Irish chieftains, tired as they were with internecine warfare and also perhaps realising that as long as they were rivals and not united they were no match for the powerful forces the English Crown could muster.

English dominion over Ireland was ratified through the Treaty of Windsor of 1175, under the terms of which Rory O’Connor, for example, was allowed to rule territory unoccupied by the Normans in the role of a vassal of the king.

Over succeeding centuries the Crown’s grip on the island intensified to the extent that three separate Irelands were created.

These were the territories of the privileged and powerful Anglo-Norman barons and their retainers, the Ireland of the disaffected Gaelic-Irish who held lands unoccupied by the original invaders and the Pale – comprised of Dublin itself and a substantial area of its environs ruled over by an English elite.

It was a recipe for frequent rebellion, one of the bloodiest of which erupted in 1641 in the form of a rebellion by Catholic landowners such as the Doyles against the English Crown’s policy of settling, or ‘planting’ loyal Protestants on Irish land.

This policy had started during the reign from 1491 to 1547 of Henry VIII, whose Reformation effectively outlawed the established Roman Catholic faith throughout his dominions.

This settlement of loyal Protestants in Ireland continued throughout the subsequent reigns of Elizabeth I, James I (James VI of Scotland), and Charles I.

In the insurrection that exploded in 1641, at least 2,000 Protestant settlers were massacred at the hands of Catholic landowners and their native Irish peasantry, while thousands more were stripped of their belongings and driven from their lands.

Terrible as the atrocities were against the Protestant settlers, subsequent accounts became greatly exaggerated, serving to fuel a burning desire on the part of Protestants for revenge against the rebels.

Tragically for Ireland, this revenge became directed not only against the rebels, but Irish Catholics such as the Doyles in general.

The English Civil War intervened to prevent immediate action against the rebels, but following the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the consolidation of the power of the English Protestant, Oliver Cromwell, the time was ripe for revenge.

The Lord Protector, as he was named, descended on Ireland at the head of a 20,000-strong army that landed at Ringford, near Dublin, in August of 1649.

The consequences of this Cromwellian conquest still resonate throughout the island today.

Cromwell had three main aims: to quash all forms of rebellion, to ‘remove’ all Catholic landowners who had taken part in the rebellion, and to convert the native Irish to the Protestant faith.

An early warning of the terrors that were in store for the native Catholic Irish came when the northeastern town of Drogheda was stormed and taken in September and between 2,000 and 4,000 of its inhabitants killed, including priests who were summarily put to the sword.

Sir Arthur Aston, who had refused to surrender the town, was captured and brutally clubbed to death with his wooden leg – the blood-crazed Cromwellian troopers having mistakenly believed he had stuffed it with gold pieces.

The defenders of Drogheda’s St. Peter’s Church, who had also refused to surrender, were burned to death as they huddled for refuge in the steeple and the church was deliberately torched.

A similar fate awaited Wexford, on the southeast coast, and a main base of the Doyles.

At least 1,500 of its inhabitants were slaughtered, including 200 defenceless women, despite their pathetic pleas for mercy.

Three hundred other inhabitants of the town drowned when their overladen boats sank as they desperately tried to flee to safety, while a group of Franciscan friars were massacred in their church – some as they knelt before the altar.

The Wexford massacre is commemorated today in the form of a statue and plaque at the town’s Bull Ring.

Cromwell soon held Ireland in a grip of iron, allowing him to implement what amounted to a policy of ethnic cleansing.

His troopers were given free rein to hunt down and kill priests, while Catholic estates, such as Doyle estates in Wexford, were confiscated.

Catholic landowners in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster were grudgingly given pathetically small estates west of the river Shannon – where they were hemmed in by colonies of Cromwellian soldiers.

Following the devastations that came in the wake of the Cromwellian invasion, the final death knell of the ancient Gaelic order of proud Irish clans such as the Doyles was sounded.

This was in the form of what is known in Ireland as Cogadh an Dá Rí, or The War of the Two Kings.

Also known as the Williamite War in Ireland or the Jacobite War in Ireland, it was sparked off in 1688 when the Stuart monarch James II (James VII of Scotland) was deposed and fled into exile in France.

The Protestant William of Orange and his wife Mary were invited to take up the thrones of Scotland, Ireland, and England – but James still had significant support in Ireland.

His supporters were known as Jacobites, and among them were several Doyles.

Following the arrival in England of William and Mary from Holland, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell and James’s Lord Deputy in Ireland, assembled an army loyal to the Stuart cause.

The aim was to garrison and fortify the island in the name of James and quell any resistance.

Londonderry, or Derry, proved loyal to the cause of William of Orange, or William III as he had become, and managed to hold out against a siege that was not lifted until July 28, 1689.

James, with the support of troops and money supplied by Louis XIV of France, had landed at Kinsale in March of 1689 and joined forces with his Irish supporters.

A series of military encounters followed, culminating in James’s defeat by an army commanded by William at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1689.

James fled again into French exile, never to return, while another significant Jacobite defeat occurred in July of 1691 at the battle of Aughrim – with about half their army killed on the field, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The Williamite forces besieged Limerick and the Jacobites were forced into surrender in September of 1691.

A peace treaty known as the Treaty of Limerick followed, under which those Jacobites willing to swear an oath of loyalty to William were allowed to remain in their native land.

Those reluctant to do so were allowed to seek exile on foreign shores – but their ancient homelands were lost to them forever.

It was at this stage that some Doyles, but by no means all, and in common with other Catholic families, converted to the Protestant faith in a desperate bid to retain what lands and privileges remained.

A further flight overseas occurred following an abortive rebellion in 1798, while Doyles were among the many thousands of Irish who were forced to seek a new life many thousands of miles from their native land during the famine known as The Great Hunger, caused by a failure of the potato crop between 1845 and 1849.

But in many cases Ireland’s loss of sons and daughters such as the Doyles was to the gain of those equally proud nations in which they settled.

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Family History Mini Book


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The Crests

of Clan MacDowall

Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall (Garthland, co. Wigton)
Clan MacDowall (Fife)
Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall
Clan MacDowall (Reg. Ulster's Office)
Dougall family
Dougall family
Dowell family
MacDowell family
MacDowell family

22 Clan MacDowall

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Spellings

of Doyle

Doyle
Ó Dubhghaill
Ó Dúill
O'Doyle
Doyel
Dougall
Dowell
MacDowell
MacDoughall
MacDowel
Ó Dubhghaill
Ó Dúill
O'Doyle
Doyel
Dougall
Dowell
MacDowall
MacDowell
MacDoughall
MacDowel