Born 1550, son of Matthew O'Neill, Baron of Dungannon. Matthew's claim to be the legitimate eldest son of the ruling Conn O'Neill, first Earl of Tyrone, was disputed by the younger son Shane, who later had Matthew murdered. After Conn's death in 1559 Hugh was taken to England by Queen Elizabeth's lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, and educated as an English nobleman.

He returned In 1567, and served the queen so loyally that in 1585 the Irish parliament granted him the earldom of Tyrone. Yet his loyalty became suspect when he spared shipwrecked Spaniards who had survived the Armada's defeat in 1588, and when in 1590 he slew an informer according to Gaelic rather than Tudor law. Eventually he was forced to defend the Gaelic world he loved against English encroachment, and he came close to uniting the Irish in victory. He took the imposing title of 'The O'Neill' in 1593, and in 1595 went to war. He won a major victory .at the Yellow Ford Oll the river Blackwater in 1548, but was heavily defeated at Kinsale, far from his native Ulster, in 1601. He surrendered in 1603, and in 1607 he and many other UlsteI chiefs chose to exile themselves in Europe. He died in Rome in 1616.

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From the Appletree Press title: A Little History of Ireland, click here for more information or here to buy the book from Amazon. Also from Appletree: A Short History of Ireland, available from Amazon.com. Click here for more information.