Scholarly attention to the Irish Catholic experience on the Continent in the early Stuart era is increasing.Footnote ¹ Interest in Irish pilgrimage to continental sanctuaries in the early modern period is one facet of that broader historiographical trend. However the surviving evidence tends to favour the travels of those of higher social standing, and it is their experience which has received attention.Footnote ² The present text, by contrast, arose from the journey to Rome of two brothers, soldiers who had been serving in the Irish regiment in Flanders. Having visited the Marian shrine of Loreto (north-east of Rome) on the way, while in Rome they made a petition to be employed in the papal military service. Their request is at several levels. Irish participation in Spanish military forces both in Flanders and Spain in the early seventeenth century has been of interest to scholars in recent decades; Irish involvement with the papal military forces in the same period is less well noted.Footnote ³ Early modern soldiers regularly faced unemployment arising from a cessation of hostilities; in the case of two soldiers in the Spanish Netherlands, this document throws light on the need to find a new employer, and on strategies adopted to that end. Further, in presenting themselves to the Pope as a prospective employer, the petition illustrates how Irish soldier exiles fashioned an assertive Catholic identity for themselves, in which the family’s experience of religious persecution in their homeland was linked with subsequent military service against heretics on the Continent. Hence the significance of the text presented here. The brothers’ army career was outlined, with referees indicated, and some possible openings in the papal forces were suggested. These professional elements were integrated into a family narrative of persecution for the Catholic faith, and personal religious devotion, with a view to making an informed request for employment in papal service.

In English documents of the early modern era, Irish family names allowed for great variations in spelling. Thus while a precise identification is impossible, the ‘William Shagnes’ of the present petition may be identified with the family name O’Shaughnessy, associated with the area of Gort in south Co. Galway. No date is given in the text, but an approximation may be inferred. At the time of writing, William and his brother James had served for seventeen years in the Catholic army in Flanders. Due to a period of peace their services were no longer required. This cessation may be identified with the Twelve Years Truce between the Dutch and the Spanish imperial armies, which began in early April 1609. On this reckoning it was probable that they commenced service some time before 1592.

In the wake of the truce in Flanders, they travelled to Rome as pilgrims, and en route while in Italy made the customary visit to the sanctuary of the Holy House at Loreto, near Macerata. Loreto was one of the main pilgrimage destinations in the Catholic world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Footnote ⁴ The O’Shaughnessy brothers’ presence was part of a pattern of Irish interest in the sanctuary, generally connected with a journey to Rome. Details are scarce, but some references to individual pilgrims have survived. Some came as a result of a vow they had made. As he was fleeing by sea from religious persecution in Scotland in autumn 1586, Edmund MacGauran (1548-1593), then bishop of Ardagh, and his retinue had two encounters with pirates; they made a vow to Our Lady of Loreto; in thanksgiving for having escaped, the bishop visited the shrine, probably early in 1587, and left a written account detailing the circumstances of his flight.Footnote ⁵ In October 1597, as part of a group setting out from the English College, Rome, on the return journey to England, the Irish layman Henry Piers visited Loreto; the Ulster earls and their entourage stopped there in spring 1608;Footnote ⁶ other pilgrims included the Galway merchant Valentine Blake in 1616, and Richard Nugent, earl of Westmeath (1583-1642) in 1635.Footnote ⁷

The journey from Flanders may have taken up to three months; given the date of the cessation (April 1609), a time not earlier than June 1609 may be posited for the brothers’ arrival in Rome.Footnote ⁸ In deciding to visit Rome the O’Shaughnessys were following Irish military precedent, for already from the early 1590s Irish soldiers serving in Flanders had been going on pilgrimage there. Some of these stayed at the English Hospice, which had been incorporated into the Venerable English College, implying that these soldiers could use the English language.Footnote ⁹ While in the city, it was customary that pilgrims made a general confession; given that soldiers from Flanders stayed at the English College, it was possible that some confessed to the priests, diocesan and Jesuit, associated with that college. Englishmen also served as confessors in St Peter’s, members of a Jesuit community known as the ‘penitenzieri’, composed of men drawn from various countries, a body dedicated specifically to hear confessions for the various linguistic groups. Thereafter the pilgrim visited the seven ancient churches of Rome, a devotion known as the Sette Chiese: in this sense the petitioner refers to visiting ‘the holly churchs of Rome’.Footnote ¹⁰

The dating of 1609 for the brothers’ visit to Rome is supported by the reference to the killing of O’Shaughnessys under Queen Elizabeth ‘six yeares since’, that is, toward the end of the Nine Years War. Further corroboration of this dating derives from the petitioner’s statement that they had an offer of work as soldiers in Poland, referring to Swedish recruitment of mercenaries from the Stuart realms in 1609 for the Polish-Swedish war (1600-1612).Footnote ¹¹

During their sojourn in Rome, they requested employment as soldiers in papal service. Given that the brothers had been serving in the Spanish Netherlands, where the colonel of the Irish regiment was Henry O’Neill, it was probable that while in Rome they had contact with the recently arrived Ulster exile group. The O’Shaughnessys came to the city little more than a year after the northern earls made their triumphant entry in May 1608, followed by the signal honour at the Corpus Christi procession some weeks later, where they were chosen to carry the canopy.Footnote ¹² Given these contemporary marks of papal favour to the Irish exiles, the soldiers were emboldened to present their suit, and may have been facilitated in doing so by a Rome-based cleric, probably in Tyrone’s circle.

This inference is strengthened when the content of their petition (supplica) to the pope (Paul V, reigned 1605-21) is considered. The text indicates that they had informed themselves of the various branches within the military in the Papal States. Thus they suggested that they might serve in the ‘Pontificiall Galleria’, denoting the military corps of several hundred soldiers attached to the fleet based at Civitavecchia. By the end of the sixteenth century, the papal marine force was assuming ‘the definite characteristic of a permanent naval squadron’, comprising five ships.Footnote ¹³ Alternatively they noted the possibility of serving in one of the papal garrisons — in addition to Rome, considerable numbers of troops were stationed in Ferrara, in Civitavecchia and in Castelfranco Emilia, and there were smaller garrisons in many provincial cities.Footnote ¹⁴

The petitioner and his brother claimed to have the status of gentlemen in Ireland, and to be ‘lords of certain lands’ there. This assertion implies that they were members of the Gaelic lordly family of that name. The O’Shaughnessys were the traditional chiefs of the territory of Kinelea, in Kiltartan barony, Co. Galway, south-east of Galway city. Their lands had been incorporated into the Clanricard lordship since the fourteenth century. However the family profited from the extension of crown influence with the establishment of the Connacht presidency in 1569 to assert their independence from Clanricard dominance. They wanted to hold their lands directly from the crown. One William O’Shaughnessy was the eldest legitimate son of Sir Roger O’Shaughnessy (d.1569). This William was killed in 1579. His brother Dermot, third legitimate son of Sir Roger, was recognized as chief of the sept by the crown in 1594.Footnote ¹⁵ On the death of Dermot in 1606, his son Roger (?1580-1650) became the head of the family recognized by the crown, and inherited 12,600 acres. He was knighted in 1617. While seeking to integrate himself with the emerging English-style administration based in Dublin, Sir Roger also maintained elements of Gaelic lordship, for in 1617 he was named as a possible patron of a traditional Gaelic poetic contest.Footnote ¹⁶

As was customary in the local Gaelic polities, struggles between branches of the O’Shaughnessy clan contributed to the emergence of the dominant family by the end of the sixteenth century; it was probable that this conflict also led to the departure of the two brothers featured in the petition to follow military service on the Continent. These tensions continued into the 1620s: in 1622 Sir Roger’s cousin, another William O’Shaughnessy, challenged the knight’s entitlement to the property; a subsequent royal inquiry found for Sir Roger. In the petition, however, the petitioner to the pope was silent on this internecine strife. Rather he attributes the brothers’ exile to religious persecution, thus presenting a family narrative more in line with the expectations of potential patrons on the Continent.

The author of the present petition may possibly be identified with this claimant of 1622. The brothers who made the petition may have been sons of the William who died in 1579, which would explain their claim to be landed gentlemen in Ireland. With the death of their father, and the crown’s recognition of their uncle as lord of the territory, the prospects of these youths in Ireland were bleak, and so they enlisted in military service in the Spanish Netherlands. By 1586 James ‘Shaghanes’ and William ‘O’Shaughnessy’ were both serving in an independent company there; James was in that of George Barnwall, and William was probably serving in the same company: one William ‘Sachnez’ was a soldier under Barnewall in Flanders in 1603. In February of that year William received permission to travel via Spain to Ireland. The two brothers serving together fits the migration pattern of family and kin relationships in the Irish companies in the Spanish Netherlands.Footnote ¹⁷

Similarly there are further references in the years 1606-11 to an Irish soldier by name of William O’Shaughnessy (with variants in the spelling of the family name) serving in the Spanish Netherlands. In August 1606 William ‘Sagnes’ was in the Irish infantry, and had already been serving in Flanders and elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁸ Some time between October 1608, and June 1609, William ‘Saughnes’, together with Edmond M’Gennis, were transported as prisoners from England (where they had been apprehended, and had come to the attention of the Privy Council, ‘being restrained there for matters of suspicion’) to Ireland.Footnote ¹⁹ In June 1611 one William ‘Oscachnati’ received a licence to return to Ireland, and by the end of September he had rejoined his unit in Flanders.Footnote ²⁰ It is not possible to say with certainty that these entries refer to one and the same man. However, they indicate that in the first decade of the seventeenth century military service in Flanders was interspersed with visits to Ireland.

This pattern of migration to the Continent with occasional return journeys to Ireland is reflected in the provenance of the petition below. It is an English translation of an original written probably in Latin. The papal document was seized when William was apprehended, either in Ireland, or while travelling via England, at some time between the second half of 1609, and the opening of the Irish parliament in spring 1613; in this way it came to the attention of the Irish authorities. Government officials then ordered a translation into English, and it is this translation which has survived.

It was customary for petitioners to engage the professional service of a Roman curial scribe to draw up the petition in the correct form and language. It is probable that two copies of the original were created. William O’Shaughnessy kept one, and it was this document which the authorities discovered when he was arrested; presumably another copy was submitted to the papal curia in Rome. However no evidence has emerged that either William or his brother ever entered papal service.

It has not been possible to locate the Latin original of which the present text is a translation. For the early seventeenth-century, petitions to the pope are conserved in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, in the series ‘Registri delle suppliche’ (Reg. suppl.).Footnote ²¹ One manuscript volume of this series contains on average three hundred folios, each recto or verso containing about three petitions. For each of the years 1609-12 there are about 24 volumes; there are no indices to the materials in this series.

It is worth considering the domestic context in Ireland of the translation of this document into English. The translation emerged against the backdrop of intense government preoccupation with the perceived danger to its authority in the ecclesiastical sphere during the first decade of the reign of James I. This threat was exemplified by the recusant revolt in the old-established towns on the death of Elizabeth I in March 1603.Footnote ²² In the following years a series of government measures ensued, aimed at stemming the return of continentally-trained clergy, and at enforcing the conformity of leading urban citizens. Lord Deputy Chichester began his tenure in 1605 with a proclamation banning seminary priests, issued in November, and a campaign to enforce the attendance of leading citizens at church services, by means of mandates; however pressure from London, fearful of renewed disturbance in Ireland, led to the suspension of this campaign in summer 1607.Footnote ²³

Concern regarding recusancy intensified again in the early 1610s. In 1611 the lord deputy renewed the proclamation of 1605, directed against those who sheltered seminary priests. Further, attention was given to ensure the return of an increased number of Anglicans to the forthcoming parliament.Footnote ²⁴ From 1611, a range of measures indicated a fresh government commitment to an assertive religious policy: the royal appointment of Andrew Knox (1559-1633) as bishop of Raphoe (in north-west Ulster) in 1611, a prelate with a vigorous profile in combating recusants while bishop of the Isles in Scotland; proceedings in the court of castle chamber against jurors who refused to indict recusants for non-attendance at church; and the execution of two Ulster clerics in Dublin in February 1612.Footnote ²⁵

It is within this context of intense coercion on grounds of religion that government preparations took place for further anti-recusant legislation to be presented in the parliament which opened in May 1613.Footnote ²⁶ The collection of documents, in which the current translation is to be found, may be ascribed to this preparatory phase of government activity. Precisely the prospect of such measures led to the fractious atmosphere in which the parliament opened; the opposition thus generated led the government to desist from promoting this legislation.Footnote ²⁷ The present text survives as part of a series reflecting Catholic life in Ireland in the early seventeenth century, including presence in centres on the Continent, ranging from 1605 to 1613, and with several indications of the collection’s origin with Sir Arthur Chichester arising from his official role as lord deputy. These papers are bound in a volume conserved in Trinity College Dublin, with reference TCD Ms 567. Apart from one item, the final date of the series is November 1613; the majority are copies.Footnote ²⁸ The present translation is in the same hand as the preceding and subsequent texts, indicating that they were part of a sequence of documents which were transcribed and inserted, probably under Chichester’s direction.

It is noteworthy that the Latin original of the papal petition was not transcribed and conserved; it was the English translation which was deemed useful in furthering government policy, at a time when it was seeking to promote an assertive response to recusancy within a parliamentary setting. Due to lack of documentation, it is not possible to indicate with precision how the current petition, and other materials within the collection, were used by crown officials at that time; however the compilation may be linked to the preparation of drafts of anti-recusant legislation to be presented at the parliament, aimed at controlling the Catholic clergy; it may have been intended that the materials would serve those government-linked parliamentarians in proposing the legislation. The petition presented here could provide evidence of a military dimension to the recusant threat, of particular contemporary interest in view of the menacing international situation.

As a contemporary English translation of a papal petition by an Irish soldier, the text is possibly unique; the petition in its Latin original may have been the only one of its kind which was available to officials in Dublin at that time. The Latin document came to government attention within a context of surveillance of Irish contacts with Catholic Europe; however only a small proportion of the correspondence and other written materials discovered by officials was noted in government reports, much less judged worthy of translation. Exceptionally a petition by Irishmen, seeking military employment in papal service, was deemed of interest for inclusion in a collection compiled to provide evidence of the danger posed by recusancy in the early 1610s. There was heightened international tension in these years, with a threatened break between England and Spain, with renewed speculation of Tyrone’s return to Ireland with a Spanish force, and with increased official sensitivity to Irish participation in Catholic military forces on the Continent. These preoccupations account for official interest in this papal petition, and its translation and insertion in a dossier prepared with a view to framing a government response to the perceived recusant threat.

About the time of this request, one contemporary estimate suggested that there were approximately three thousand Irish soldiers in the service of the Spanish crown in Flanders and Spain.Footnote ²⁹ The text illustrates how soldiers needed to be active and alert in seeking fresh livelihood, once peace rendered their employment superfluous. On the evidence of the petition, the two brothers kept authenticated copies of testimonials from leading figures in the Spanish Netherlands, and from various military commanders with whom they served.Footnote ³⁰ With the onset of peace in Flanders in early 1609, many soldiers there were in search of further employment; some were being recruited as mercenaries in Swedish service in Poland. Although offered work in the Baltic, the O’Shaughnessy brothers declined; they may have been dissuaded by the prospect of fighting for a Lutheran prince; instead, they decided to travel from Flanders to Rome at their own expense, where their visit combined piety and the search for further professional opportunity in the papal forces.Footnote ³¹ In addition to outlining an individual military career, the document broadens our understanding of the identities of Irish exiles on the Continent, in complementing clerical testimonies by offering a soldier’s voice.Footnote ³² Thus the text exemplifies how military exiles constructed a suitably contemporary Catholic identity for themselves, in which internecine struggles for position in their ancestral locality were elided; by contrast, a family background as victims of religious persecution in Ireland was presented, which served to link their Irish origins with their current situation as soldiers in Catholic Europe.

Transcription of Trinity College Dublin, MS 567

[f. 58r]

O Shaghnes his peticon translated.

To the hollines of our Lo:

Connaught

By Willm Shaghnes and James his brother

Moste blessed father

Willm Shaghnes and James his brother, both Irishe gentlemen and lords of certayne lands within the said Isle, being comme in the habite of Pilgrims, to visit the mosteFootnote ³³ hollye howse of Lorecto and the holly churchs of Rome, doe desire to kisse the moste holly feete of your blessednes and to receave your holly benediction that therewith they maye returne contented and humbly to beseech your hollynes (as hereby they likewise doe) that for soe much as they are deprived of theire goods and countrye for the defence of the holly Catholique fayth in Ireland, and have for the space of seaventeene yeares served against the Heretiques of Flanders, wherein they have val[i]ently behaved themselves as appeares by the testimonnyes of the Archduke AlbertFootnote ³⁴ and the Admirall of AragonFootnote ³⁵ and all the Masters of the CampeFootnote ³⁶ Corronnells and Cap[t]ens of that Army; all which they will shewe unto yourFootnote ³⁷ hollines v[e]rie authentically approved, and for asmuch asFootnote ³⁸ likeFootnote ³⁹ good Catholiques they will stedfastly p[ro]ceavde in the service of God against the Heretiques as valliant souldiours nowe that they have allready lost theire lands [fo. 58v] and livings and that the Queene of England sixe yeares since did cause theire father and foure sonnes togeather allsoe with a hundred and fifty others to be beheaded for confessinge the Bishop of Rome to be the head of the ChurchFootnote ⁴⁰, they doe beseech your hollynesFootnote ⁴¹ nowe that the warres doe fayle in Flaunders, and for that they are desirous, yet further to ynnable or make themselves remargin[c]able and fa[ ]iresFootnote ⁴² in the ser[v]ice of the hollye church, that the same (that is to say his hollines) wilbe pleased to ymploy or ingadge them where best pleased him eyther in service in the Pontificiall Gallarie with some intertaynment or else in some garrison for that they are resolved even untoFootnote ⁴³ the death to beare themselves religiously devouted towards the holly Church of Rome, And further they humbly beseech your hollynes to cause their services to be perused and seene, as they appeare by many letters pattents, and whether they be noble gentlemen and excellent souldiours whoe hath bene lately offered place in Pla:Footnote ⁴⁴ and would not accept thereof, because thereis noe present warrent there, and have allreaddy obtayned leave of the Archduke to depurte and beinge come hitherFootnote ⁴⁵ privately; are notwithstandinge ready at your hollines commaundement[e] as moste faythfull [ ]Footnote ⁴⁶ or subiects. Theis doe further humbly pray your hollynes to appoint or assigne them a certaine day for audience, to make further declaracon of theire desires; for the whole wilbe receaved or allowed of by God grace [ ]Footnote ⁴⁷