Boyne; and afterwards commanded an Irish regiment in the French service, and died in 1704.
Daniel O’Neill (c. 1612–1664), son of Conn MacNeill MacFagartach O’Neill, a member of the Clanaboy branch of the family, whose wife was a sister of Owen Roe, was prominent in the Civil Wars. He spent much of his early life at the court of Charles I., and became a Protestant. He commanded a troop of horse in Scotland in 1639; was involved in army plots in 1641, for which he was committed to the Tower, but escaped abroad; and on the outbreak of the Civil War returned to England and served with Prince Rupert, being present at Marston Moor, the second battle of Newbury and Naseby. He then went to Ireland to negotiate between Ormonde and his uncle, Owen Roe O’Neill. He was made a major-general in 1649, and but for his Protestantism would have succeeded Owen Roe as chief of the O’Neills. He joined Charles II. at the Hague, and took part in the expedition to Scotland and the Scotch invasion of England in 1652. At the Restoration he received many marks of favour from the king, including grants of land and lucrative monopolies. He died in 1664.
Hugh O’Neill (d. c. 1660), son of Owen Roe’s brother Art Oge, and therefore known as Hugh Mac Art, had served with some distinction in Spain before he accompanied his uncle, Owen Roe, to Ireland in 1642. In 1646 he was made a major-general of the forces commanded by Owen Roe; and after the death of the latter he successfully defended Clonmel in 1650 against Cromwell, on whom he inflicted the latter’s most severe defeat in Ireland. In the following year he so stubbornly resisted Ireton’s attack on Limerick that he was excepted from the benefit of the capitulation, and, after being condemned to death and reprieved, was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London. Released in 1652 on the representation of the Spanish ambassador that O’Neill was a Spanish subject, he repaired to Spain, whence he wrote to Charles II. in 1660 claiming the earldom of Tyrone. He probably died in Spain, but the date of his death is unknown.
The Clanaboy (or Clandeboye) branch of the O’Neills descended from the ancient kings through Neill Mor O’Neill, lord of Clanaboy in the time of Henry VIII., ancestor (as mentioned above) of the Portuguese O’Neills. Neill Mor’s great-great-grandson, Henry O’Neill, was created baronet of Killeleagh in 1666. His son, Sir Neill O’Neill fought for James II. in Ireland, and died of wounds received at the battle of the Boyne. Through an elder line from Neill Mor was descended Brian Mac Phelim O’Neill, who was treacherously seized in 1573 by the earl of Essex, whom he was hospitably entertaining, and executed together with his wife and brother, some two hundred of his clan being at the same time massacred by the orders of Essex. (See Essex, Walter Devereux, 1st earl of.) Sir Brian Mac Phelim’s son, Shane Mac Brian O’Neill, was the last lord of Clanaboy, and from him the family castle of Edenduffcarrick, on the shore of Lough Neagh in Co. Antrim, was named Shane’s Castle. He joined the rebellion of his kinsman Hugh, earl of Tyrone, but submitted in 1586.
In the 18th century the commanding importance of the O’Neills in Irish history had come to an end. But John O’Neill (1740–1798), who represented Randalstown in the Irish parliament 1761–1783, and the county of Antrim from the latter year till his death, took an active part in debate on the popular side, being a strong supporter of Catholic emancipation. He was one of the delegates in 1789 from the Irish parliament to George, prince of Wales, requesting him to assume the regency as a matter of right. In 1793 he was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Baron O’Neill of Shane’s Castle, and in 1795 was created a viscount. In defending the town of Antrim against the rebels in 1798 O’Neill received wounds from which he died on the 18th of June, being succeeded as Viscount O’Neill by his son Charles Henry St John (1779–1841), who in 1800 was created Earl O’Neill. Dying unmarried, when the earldom therefore became extinct, Charles was succeeded as Viscount O’Neill by his brother John Bruce Richard (1780–1855), a general in the British army; on whose death without issue in 1855 the male line in the United Kingdom became extinct. The estates then devolved on William Chichester, great-grandson of Arthur Chichester and his wife Mary, only child and heiress of Henry (d. 1721), eldest son of John O’Neill of Shane’s Castle.
William Chichester (1813–1883), 1st Baron O’Neill, a clergyman, on succeeding to the estates as heir-general, assumed by royal licence the surname and arms of O’Neill; and in 1868 was created Baron O’Neill of Shane’s Castle. On his death in 1883 he was succeeded by his son Edward, 2nd Baron O’Neill (b. 1839), who was member of parliament for Co. Antrim 1863–1880, and who married in 1873 Louisa, daughter of the 11th earl of Dundonald.
For the history of the ancient Irish kings of the Hy Neill see: The Book of Leinster, edited with introduction by R. Atkinson (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1880); The Annals of Ulster, edited by W. M. Hennessy and B. MacCarthy (4 vols., Dublin, 1887–1901); The Annals of Loch Cé, edited by W. M. Hennessy (Rolls Series, London, 1871). For the later period see: P. W. Joyce, A Short History of Ireland (London, 1893), and A Social History of Ancient Ireland (2 vols., London, 1903); The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters, edited by J. O’Donovan (7 vols., Dublin, 1851); Sir J. T. Gilbert, History of the Viceroys of Ireland (Dublin, 1865), and, especially for Owen Roe O’Neill, Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, 1641–1652 (Irish Archaeol. Soc., 3 vols., Dublin, 1879); also History of the Irish Confederation and the War in Ireland (Dublin, 1882); John O’Hart, Irish Pedigrees (Dublin, 1881); The Montgomery MSS., “The Flight of the Earls, 1607” (p. 767), edited by George Hill (Belfast, 1878); Thomas Carte, History of the Life of James, Duke of Ormonde (3 vols., London, 1735); C. P. Meehan, Fate and Fortunes of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donel, Earl of Tyrconnel (Dublin, 1886); Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, with an Account of the Earlier History (3 vols., London, 1885–1890); J. F. Taylor, Owen Roe O’Neill (London, 1896); John Mitchell, Life and Times of Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, with an Account of his Predecessors, Con, Shane, Turlough (Dublin, 1846); L. O’Clery, Life of Hugh Roe O’Donnell (Dublin, 1893). For the O’Neills of the 18th century, and especially the 1st Viscount O’Neill, see The Charlemont Papers, and F. Hardy, Memoirs of J. Caulfield, Earl of Charlemont (2 vols., London, 1812). The O’Neills of Ulster: Their History and Genealogy, by Thomas Mathews (3 vols., Dublin, 1907), an ill-arranged and uncritical work, has little historical value, but contains a mass of traditional and legendary lore, and a number of translations of ancient poems, and genealogical tables of doubtful authority. (R. J. M.)
O’NEILL, ELIZA (1791–1872), Irish actress, was the daughter of an actor and stage manager. Her first appearance on the stage was made at the Crow Street theatre in 1811 as the Widow Cheerly in The Soldier’s Daughter, and after several years in Ireland she came to London and made an immediate success as Juliet at Covent Garden in 1814. For five years she was
the favourite of the town in comedy as well as tragedy, but in
the latter she particularly excelled, being frequently compared,
not to her disadvantage, with Mrs Siddons. In 1819 she married
William Wrixon Becher, an Irish M.P. who was created a
baronet in 1831. She never returned to the stage, and died on
the 29th of October 1872.
ONEONTA, a city in the township of the same name, in the south-central part of Otsego county, New York, U.S.A., on the N. side of the Susquehanna river, about 82 m. S.W. of Albany. Pop. (1880) 3002, (1890) 6272, (1900) 7147, of whom 456 were foreign-born, (1910, U.S. census) 9491. The city lies about 1100 ft. above sea-level. It is served by the Ulster & Delaware, by the Susquehanna division of the Delaware & Hudson, and by the Oneonta & Mohawk Valley (electric) railways. In Oneonta are a state normal school (1889), a state armoury, and the Aurelia Fox Memorial Hospital. The city is situated in a good agricultural region. The principal manufactures are machine-shop products (the Delaware & Hudson has repair and machine shops at Oneonta), knit goods, silk goods, lumber and planing mill products, &c. The first settlement was made about 1780. The township was erected in 1830 from parts of Milford and Otego. Oneonta was known as Milfordville until 1830, when it received its present name. It was first incorporated as a village in 1848, and was chartered as a city in 1908, the charter coming into effect on the 1st of January 1909. The name “Oneonta” is derived from Onahrenton or Onarenta, the Indian name of a creek flowing through the city.
See Edwin F. Bacon, Otsego County, N.Y. (Oneonta, 1902); and Dudley M. Campbell, A History of Oneonta (Oneonta, 1906).
