Grace O'Malley, Pirate Queen
Grainne Mhaol and the Coming of the English 1565-1577
At a time when all she knew was being obliterated in the path of a huge English push for power in her land, O'Malley knew only one response - face like with like.
By the age of 35 Grainne Mhaol had amassed a fortune running her fleet of pirate vessels from remote islands off Ireland’s western shore. Along the way she had learnt much, and especially from her last lover Hugh DeLacey, whose news of the growing strength of Queen Elizabeth’s hold over the country must have shocked even her.
Hitherto the English to Grainne had simply represented rich pickings on the open sea. They ‘belonged’ to the east, and apart from their nearby strongholds of Galway and Limerick, they had scarcely impinged on her own world, a maritime one stretching from Spain and Portugal to the Baltic. DeLacey’s opinion, formed from his privileged Norman ancestry and position, would have alerted her to some hard political truths, and the realization that sooner rather than later these strange tongued foreigners would be on her doorstep. Given her past dealings with their kind it could only mean trouble.
But Hugh’s murder at the hands of a local clan wishing to ingratiate themselves with these new overlords meant some business had to be attended to first. Stung with grief as Grainne must have been she wasted no time in exacting her revenge. While the O’Mahony leadership was on a religious retreat, Grainne personally led a small unit to apprehend them. Taking them back to one of her fortresses, she tortured them, and by her own hand then killed them. It was justice in the ancient style of the Gael, and it was to be the last time Grainne could operate with such freedom. Her infamy had brought her to the attention of an enemy much mightier than those she had faced before. The English had arrived in Grainne’s world, and nothing would ever be the same again.
A Marriage of Convenience
One thing she had learnt was simple – these strangers were powerful and dealt only with powerful people themselves. If she was to avoid liquidation she needed to consolidate. Her first step was to secure the area around Clew Bay where she was vulnerable to a mainland attack. The solution she arrived at was pragmatic, and showed both her political intelligence and sheer nerve. Rockfleet castle represented the perfect place to base her fleet and army, the only problem being that it was the seat of a powerful Connemara clan, the Bourkes. She promptly married their leader Richard “in Iron” Bourke, moved everything to Rockfleet and then, with incredible cheek, divorced him. But events were moving faster than Grainne had appreciated and a reassessment was needed, this realization only being reinforced when she discovered she was pregnant with Bourke’s child. Not only that but the child was delivered on board her ship while it was being attacked by Barbery pirates, a traumatic experience she was lucky to survive and which probably heightened her sense of vulnerability. On her return she took up with Bourke again and together they managed to get Richard elected second-in-command and heir to the chief of the MacWilliam clan, the largest landowners in the district. Now the English would have an army to reckon with when they crossed paths.
The End Game Approaches
But if Grainne was gearing for war, the MacWilliam chief thought otherwise. To her and Richard’s horror he did a deal with the English, submitting to their Queen and giving her titular ownership of all the clan’s estates. Then, within a year the inevitable happened. Sir Henry Sidney, Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy, arrived in Galway and summonsed Grainne and Richard to submit to his authority.
The waiting was finally over. A battle, the likes of which a younger Grainne could never even have conceived, was about to unfold. The stakes would not just include her life, but the very existence of all that she had once innocently presumed to be permanent. A new, and terrible, day was dawning either way. She shrugged and set out to meet it.
Sources:
"Granuaile: Ireland's Pirate Queen - Grace O'Malley c. 1530-1603."Author: Anne Chambers Publishers: Wolfhound Press 1982 ISBN: 0836279139
