Seamus Hennessey (1617-) was an Irish Confederate military commander who led a band of rapparees in southern Ireland during the Eleven Years' War.
Biography[]
Hennessey in 1642
Seamus Hennessey was born to a Gaelic Irish family in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland in 1617. The son of a minor squire, he was raised a devout Roman Catholic and participated in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. In 1642, he attended the Irish Catholic Confederation's court in Kilkenny before, in September of that year, deciding to form his own army to push the Protestant Roundheads out of his native county and the whole of Desmond.
Hennessey made the acquaintance of Confederate leaders like Richard Butler, 3rd Viscount Mountgarret, Theobald Taaffe, 1st Earl of Carlingford, and James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven during his travels, and he recruited poor peasants from villages like Sligo, Tuam, and Cashel. His first battle was fought against a party of Anglo-Irish deserters at the Battle of Ballinaculla on 13 September 1642, after which his fame began to grow. As his party grew in strength to over 50, he began a series of daring forays into Parliamentarian-controlled County Cork; on 20 September, he burned the village of Killarney and sacked its population. However, Hennessey grew clumsy and veered too close to Cork, enabling a Parliamentarian force to destroy his command and take Hennessey prisoner at the Battle of Rossadrehid on 25 September. Hennessey escaped at Lisnagaul on 26 September, and he promptly raised a new army from scratch, intent on continuing his war in the south.
Hennessey in uniform
Over the next several months, Hennessey frequently raised large parties, ravaged both Parliamentarian-controlled Munster and Covenanter-controlled Ulster, and was eventually overpowered and captured by Protestant armies before escaping from imprisonment and raising new forces. The slippery Hennessey later launched daring raids across the Irish Sea into Scotland and Parliamentarian-ruled Wales, sacking defenseless villages and bringing their goods back to Ireland for sale. Viscount Mountgarret later requested Hennessey's help with his military campaigns, including the First Siege of Belfast. Hennessey was captured by the Covenanters during the Second Siege of Belfast, but he escaped from prison and, while deprived of his old sword, gun, and pike, he rebuilt both his effects and his party from scratch and continued his guerrilla wars against the Protestants.
Hennessey favored the radical Owen Roe O'Neill as commander of the Confederate armies over Garret Barry, causing a deterioration in relations with the latter general.