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The O'Higgins Clan

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The O'Higgins Clan claim descendant from Uigín (Ó hUigín) who was the grandson of the Irish King, Niall of Tara (357-405AD). While Uigín's relations fought to take the throne of Ireland, he and his descendants developed into a separate but related sept of the Southern O'Neil Clan. We know from the Annals of Ireland that around the late 5th century the number of bards and poets in the patronage of the Royal Gaelic Clans of Ireland became so numerous that it was decided that only a small number of families would be allowed to act as bards, poets or scribes to the Kings and the O'Higgins were one such family. One of the earliest of the O’Higgins poets from Sligo that we know of was Tadhg Mór O’Higgins who died in 1315. Donnell O’Higgins who died in 1501 was the “Chief Preceptor of the schools of Ireland in poetry”. [1] Another was Tadhg Dall O’Higgins who had his tongue cut out and died in 1595 in revenge as a result of a satire he had composed against the O’Hara’s of Cashel Carragh, in the Parish of Kilmacteige. His son, Tadhg Óg, who was 12 years old when his father was killed by the O’Hara’s, inherited his father’s lands and titles continuing as a poet until his death. [2] In fact over the centuries the O'Higgins have produced more poets than any other hereditary bardic family in Ireland.

As members of the Gaelic aristocracy The O’Higgins’ suffered under more than one English regime in Ireland. For example, in 1414 John Stanley, the Deputy of the King of England, arrived in Ireland, a man whom we are told “gave neither mercy nor protection to clergy, laity, or men of science, but subjected as many of them as he came upon to cold, hardship, and famine”. [3] It was he who plundered Niall, the son of Hugh O’Higgins, at Uisneach, near modern day Mullingar in Westmeath. However, Henry Dalton, a Gaelic-Norman Lord, then “plundered James Tuite and the King's people, and gave the O'Higgins out of the preys then acquired a cow for each and every cow taken from them, and afterwards escorted them to Connaught. The O'Higgins, with Niall, then satirized John Stanley, who lived after this satire but five weeks, for he died of the virulence of the lampoons. This was the second poetical miracle performed by this Niall O’Higgins, the first being the discomfiture of the Clann-Conway the night they plundered Niall at Cladann; and the second, the death of John Stanley.” [4]

By the mid 16th century the O'Higgins were well established at a number of seats in southern Sligo such as Achonry, Kilmacteige and Ballynary not to mention at Kilbeg in Co. Westmeath. However, by the end of the Cromwellian plantations in 1654, due to their loyalty to the Catholic faith and their country the O'Higgins had lost all of their lands in Sligo [5] and Westmeath and many fled to main land Europe where they entered the service of Catholic monarchs there. Those who remained in Ireland were forced to work as labourers and tenant farmers under the new English aristocracy. It was around this time that some members of the family began to drop the "O" from their name and were called just "Higgins" instead. By 1720 Charles Higgins the Baron of Ballynary (Sligo) and his family who were now landless, moved to Summerhill in Co. Meath where he and his descendants became tenant farmers and labourers for the next 250 years. However, Charles second son, Ambrose (1720-1801), [6] became the King of Spain's Vice-Roy in Peru, being elevated to the Spanish titles of Barón de Ballinar and Marquis de Osorno. And it was Ambrose's son, Bernardo (1778-1842), who became the first Head of State of the Republic of Chile.

The Chief of the Clan in early Gaelic times would have been appointed from within a close circle of male relatives after an incumbant's death, however, after the Norman invasion into Ireland in the 12th century the leadership of several Gaelic Clans passed through the senior male line, as was the custom in England. The main O'Higgins family of Ballynary in Sligo have, despite dispossession and transplantation to Summerhill in County Meath, maintained the succession of their titles and position to the present day and the Hon. Thomas O'Higgins, NSC, who is styled Lord of Ballynary is recognised by the O'Higgins Clan today as their Chief.

References

  1. The Annals of the Four Masters, Book V
  2. Entry in the records of the Chief Herald’s Office reports the first recorded use of the O’Higgins Arms at the funeral of Tadhg Óg ca. 1638.
  3. Annals of the Four Masters, Book IV.
  4. Ibid.
  5. O’Rorke, T. (1889) “The History of Sligo Town and County Vol. II – Conclusion” (Dublin: Duffy & Company).
  6. The National Genealogical Office (Dublin) MS 165. pp. 396-399.

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