Brian O'Neill

Sir Brian McPhelim Bacagh O'Neill (died 1574) was a lord of Lower Clandeboye, a Gaelic lordship in north-eastern Ireland during the Tudor period. Life O'Neill was the son of Phelim Bacagh O'Neill. In 1556 he became lord of Lower Clandeboye. O'Neill sided with the English government in Ireland to help bolster his position against the threat of Shane O'Neill of Tyrone to the west and a large influx of Scots in the Glens of Antrim to his north. In 1568, Brian McPhelim O'Neill would be knighted for his service to the Crown as part of William Piers' campaign against Shane O'Neill of Tyrone. O'Neill and his father-in-law, Brian Carragh O'Neill, would wage a private war against Shane O'Neill's successor, Turlough Luineach O'Neill. The government were not impressed and grew suspicious of O'Neill. In 1571, Sir Thomas Smith, Queen Elizabeth's principal Secretary of State, was able to get a grant for the entire territory of Clandeboye. While the Clandeboye O'Neill's had been established in that area for two centuries, it had once been part of the Earldom of Ulster, which upon the death of its last earl in the 15th-century passed into ownership of the Crown.