Cú Chonnacht Óg Mag Uidhir (c. 1570–1608) was the last Maguire chief of Fermanagh. A son of Cú Chonnacht Mag Uidhir (d. 1589) by his third wife, Mairghréag O’Neill, he was the half-brother of Hugh Maguire, and when Hugh was killed in 1600 he claimed the chiefship against Conchobhar Ruadh of the senior line. Tyrone favoured his rival, but Red Hugh O’Donnell settled the matter by proclaiming Cú Chonnacht chief at a banquet in front of both claimants.
He led the men of Fermanagh at Kinsale in 1601, where they suffered heavily, and came home to find Conchobhar Ruadh, now backed by the English, holding much of the country. After the Irish leaders submitted in 1603 he did the same, accepting terms that gave three of Fermanagh’s eight baronies to his rival.
In 1607 he went to the Spanish Netherlands, raised money, and bought or chartered a ship at Dunkirk. He sailed it to Rathmullan on Lough Swilly, where the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell and about a hundred followers came aboard, and on 4 September 1607 they left Ireland: the Flight of the Earls. The Maguires’ own chronicler, Tadhg Ó Cianáin, kept the record of their journey to Rome. Setting out from Rome for Spain the next summer, Cú Chonnacht fell ill of a fever and died at Genoa on 12 August 1608. (The list of chiefs in Geinealaighe Fearmanach places his death in 1609.)
Sources and further reading
- Vincent Morley, ‘Mág Uidhir (Maguire), Cú Chonnacht Óg (‘an Comharba’)’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy, 2009), doi.org/10.3318/dib.005370.v1
- Geinealaighe Fearmanach, ed. in Analecta Hibernica 3 (1931), and the Society’s family tree