Carrickfergus History

After the evacuation of the country by the Scots, Carrickfergus again reverted to its former possessors; but the desultory warfare carried on at intervals for successive ages in the north of Ireland, during which its strength and situation rendered it the centre of operations, subjected it to many severe calamities. In 1333, William, Earl of Ulster, was assassinated here by his own servants; and his countess, with her infant daughter, fleeing into England, the O'Nials, the original lords of the soil, immediately succeeded in expelling the English settlers, and for a time retained possession of the place. In 1386 the town was burned by the Scots; and in 1400 it was again destroyed by the combined forces of the Scots and Irish. In 1481 a commission was granted to the mayor and others, to enter into a league with the Earl of Ross, Lord of the Isles, who had usurped the sovereignty of the Hebrides from the Scottish crown.

In 1497 the town and neighbourhood were visited by famine; and in 1504 it was resolved that none but an Englishman should be entrusted with the custody of its castle, or with that of Green Castle, in the county of Down. The town continued for many years to be a strong hold of the English, and even when the English Government was so reduced as to be scarcely able to maintain a standing army of 140 horse within the English pale, the castle still remained in their possession. In 1573 the corporation addressed a remonstrance to the Lord-Deputy Fitzwilliam, representing that one-third of the town was then in ruins; and, in the summer of the same year, it was still further desolated by fire. In this state it remained for many years, though the Earl of Essex landed here with his train, on taking possession of the government of Ulster, to which he had been appointed; and though Sir Henry Sidney, the succeeding lord-deputy, gave the English council a forcible representation of its deplorable condition, in the account of his northern expedition, two years afterwards.

The particular events by which it was reduced to this state of desolation are detailed in a "Discourse of Knockfergus," preserved among the Cottonian manuscripts in the British Museum, in which its calamities are ascribed to an early quarrel with Bryan Balloughe, chieftain of the adjoining territory of Claneboy, whose son and successor continued to harass the inhabitants till they were compelled to purchase peace by consenting to pay an annual tribute; to the repeated devastating incursions of the Scots; to the continued depredations of the O'Nials and Mac Donnels, and to various other causes. The Lord-Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, made great efforts for the improvement and security of the town, but so greatly were the resources of the townsmen reduced that, in 1581, Lord Grey, then deputy, found it necessary to issue an express edict prohibiting them from paying to the Irish lord of the country the tribute hitherto paid to the successors of Bryan Balloughe, and called, in that document, "Breyne Balaf's Eric."