Medieval skeleton remains may reveal Ireland's 'Helen of Troy'

@RedBranch - Divorce actually meant annulment - there was no distinction then. Annulment was quite common amongst the Catholic upper classes and fairly easy to get.

Ironic that a site that may be connected with Hugh O'Neill may become a tourist attraction in the north.

ou are correct George I did confuse to historical events thank you

Seanome: I think you're conflating two (of the many) military disasters the Irish suffered. The folks at Kinsale were of course Spanish, not French. And they were infantry, they actually stayed, I think, eight weeks or so. The French Navy did arrive in big numbers almost 200 years later--at Bantry. Now that was the closest shave the English ever survived in Ireland. A successful landing and the entire country would have risen. I suspect you know all this and that it was just a typo on your part to write "French". I cannot understand why posters here are given no chance to edit a mistake.

O'neill and O'Donnell could not get their act together at Kinsale leaving the french navy scratching their heads and heading home a gholden oppurtunity missed by internal bickering.

I agree with George, that Hugh O'Neill was the primary hope in Ireland to defeating the designs of Tudor England on the country. The Earl of Tyrone and his very capable ally Hugh O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell provided the biggest threat to the colonialist power at that time. By the time of the battle of Kinsale, they were attracting widespread support from the rest of Gaelic Ireland and internationally from the King of Spain. The stage was set for a final showdown which unfortunately culminated in defeat near that Cork port.

Think about it 'ellenfromcork! Worked it out? Course you have!

Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone brought his old adversary Bagenal to battle at the Yellow Ford in Armagh on 14th August 1598. This turned out to be a catastrophic defeat for the English forces which lost around 1,500 men in dead and wounded. Bagenal himself was slain by a bullet in the head. It marked the high-water mark in the campaign of the Ulster Chieftains to free their territories and the rest of Ireland from English interference. Unfortunately their military fortunes received a severe blow at the battle of Kinsale in December 1601 from which they never recovered.

I guess at this stage I shouldn't even bother correcting Irishcentral, but I can't ignore the error in the headline. "Medieval skeleton"? A skeleton from the late 16th century is not medieval. As to Red Branch's question, O'Neill maintained that the Church (RC) authorities had instructed him to divorce wife #1. I think he was her cousin, that may have come into it. As to Marriage #3, I assume it was Anglican, since the Catholic Church in Dublin would have been persecuted by then. I am an admirer of O'Neill. He was Gaelic Ireland's last hope to stand free among the nations of the world. With his defeat and decision to leave Ireland an ancient civilization began its long slide to oblivion.

Maybe he practised the old Celtic laws in which divorce was possible.

@George, Right on with the questionable nature of Irish tourisn in the North, Come see where a sunken ship was built, where a civil war was fought and now the bones of some old dame, all lilting for the necrophile. Would some historian help me with the O'Neill's ability to divorce. Was this because the rules applying to Catholics simply did not appy in Ulster at the time?

The Irish historian C. P. Meehan cites an almost contemporary character description of Bagenal: He was in sooth, a greedy adventurer, restless, rapacious, unscrupulous; in a word, one who deemed it no sin or shame to aid in any process by which the rightful owner might be driven from his holding provided he got share of the spoil. (Meehan, 29-30) Bagenal is also given a certain literary immortality in Sir Walter Scott's romantic ballad Rokeby.

"I affected two other gentlewomen." What does that mean?

He's sort of a PG-13 Henry VIII.

"It is hoped that such a huge discovery will boost the number of tourist visitors to the site." Sad that the Irish view every element of their history in materialist terms of attracting tourist money, but I guess that's the way they are now. As to the story above, I am dubious about a lot of the details. For example, "She refused to give O'Neill her dowry" seems wrong, since the gift of the dowry was in the hands of her father or guardian rather than of her own control. Her father nay have been dead by then, but she still would not have controlled her dowry. The description of the woman as being in her late 40s rules out Mabel, because she was only a teenager when she ran off with O'Neill. And the article has her "dying in Dungannon in 1591", which is wrong, because while she did die young it was a number of years after her marriage to O'Neill.