Bunnamairge in 1621. Shortly before his death he completed the castle at Glenarm.
Prior to his marriage with the daughter of O'Neill, MacDonnell was the father of three sons, all of whom were probably illegitimate. One, known as Morrishe or Maurice MacDonnell, was hanged at Coleraine in 1643 for his share in the rebellion of 1641 another, Francis Macdonnell, O.S.F., was an ecclesiastic, and the third was James.
By his wife Aellis, Elice, or Alice, third daughter of Hugh O'Neill [q. v.], he had two sons, Randal [q. v.] created Marquis of Antrim, who got the baronies of Dunluce and Kilconway with the castle of Dunluce, and Alexander, who succeeded to the earldom and the barony of Glenarm, and six daughters, to each of whom he bequeathed 2,800l., viz. Anne, who was married first to Christopher Nugent, viscount Delvin, and secondly to William Fleming, nineteenth baron Slane; Mary, who was married first to Lucas, second viscount Dillon, and secondly to Oliver Plunket, sixth lord Louth; Sarah, who was married first to Neal Oge O'Neill of Killelagh, in co. Antrim, secondly to Sir Charles O'Conor Sligo, and thirdly to Donal MacCarthy Mor; Catherine, who was married to Edward Plunket of Castlecor, co. Meath; Rose, who was married to Colonel Lord George Gordon, brother of the Duke of Sutherland, who came to Ulster in 1642 as an officer in Major-general Monro's army, and to whose assistance the Marquis of Antrim owed his escape from prison at Carrickfergus in 1643; and Elice.
[The Rev. George Hill's MacDonnells of Antrim; Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, vol. i.; Ulster Journal of Archaeology, vol. v.; Russell and Prendergast's Cal. of Irish State Papers; Strafford's Letters; Erck's Repertory; Morrin's Cal. Patent Rolls, Charles I; Meenan's Franciscan Monasteries and Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel.]
MACDONNELL, RANDAL, Viscount Dunluce, second Earl and first Marquis of Antrim (1609–1683), eldest son of Sir Randal MacDonnell, viscount Dunluce and first earl of Antrim [q. v.], was born in 1609. He was 'bred the highland way,' and till he was seven or eight years old 'wore neither hat, cap, nor shoe, nor stocking.' At his birth he was assigned in wardship, in the event of his father's death, to James Hamilton, first earl of Abercorn, his father agreeing, under a penalty of 3,000l., that he should in due time marry the Lady Lucy Hamilton. But afterwards matching him to a daughter of the Duke of Lennox, he was in 1627 compelled to discharge his bond. Having spent some time travelling on the continent, Dunluce was on his return in 1634 introduced at court. There he became enamoured of Katherine Manners, widow of the Duke of Buckingham, and in April 1635 induced that lady, much to the king's disgust, to become his wife. At court he lived in magnificent style and contracted enormous debts (Hill, MacDonnells, App. p. xix).
On the outbreak of the rebellion in Scotland he, at his own urgent request, was authorised in June 1639 to raise forces to attack the Earl of Argyll in his own country. But he miscalculated his ability, and the design miscarried. After the pacification of Berwick he attended the king for a time at Oxford, but on 17 June 1640 he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. In Dublin he resided in Lord Ely's house, which he appears to have leased till the outbreak of the rebellion in October 1641, when he removed to the residence of his brother-in-law, Lord Slane, at Slane's Castle in co. Meath. By taking this step he gave rise to a rumour that he sympathised with the rebels, and feeling it necessary to dissociate himself from Lord Slane, who had thrown in his lot with the catholic nobility and gentry of the pale, he removed to Maddenstown, near Kildare, the residence of the Earl of Castlehaven. He remained there till after the battle of Kilrush on 15 April 1642, when, taking advantage of a passage recently opened into the north by the capture of Newry, he sent his wife to England, and repaired to Dunluce, where he arrived on 28 April. At Money more, on his way northward, he had an interview with Sir Phelim O'Neill [q. v.], by whom he is improbably said to have been influenced in his political views.
Shortly after his arrival in the north he was able, by his influence with his kinsman Alaster MacColl MacDonnell [see Macdonald or Macdonnell, Alexander or Alaster], who commanded the army besieging Coleraine, to revictual that city. But he was shortly afterwards, in May 1642, treacherously taken prisoner in his own castle of Dunluce by Major-general Robert Monro [q. v.], and confined in Lord Chichester's house of Joymount in Carrickfergus, to gratify, it is said by Carte, Antrim's hereditary enemy, Argyll, but more probably because, being a Roman catholic, he was naturallv suspected to be also a rebel. About six months afterwards he succeeded by an ingenious stratagem (Baillie, Letters, i. 366) in effecting his escape into the northern parts of England, and proceeding to York, where the queen then was, he suggested the idea of raising a force to co-operate with the Marquis of Montrose in Scotland. But being shortly afterwards
