‘To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumely to God. . . the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice’ said John Knox in 1558. He had of course, Mary, Queen of Scots in mind, but the polemic as badly timed as, in the following year, Protestant Elizabeth ascended the English throne.
Knox spoke for many men – then and now – but Elizabeth and Mary were by no mean the only strong women in positions of authority throughout Europe. Grace (or Grainne} O’Malley is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as a ‘chieftain’s wife and pirate’. It is of course the latter career designation that attracts the eye, but the wives of clan chiefs and lords were often more than capable of running the family business when the men were posted missing.
The O’Malley family base was in Mayo. By the time Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney (who created the Irish county system) visited her in 1577 she had already outlived one husband (an O’Flaherty) and was described by Sidney as a most famous femynyne sea captain’. Her second husband was a Burke, and Sidney sardonically noted who was the dominant force in the marriage: when they met, O’Malley ‘brought with her husband, for she was as well by sea as by land well more than Mrs Mate with him’.
Grace had a fleet of several galleys and several hundred men to sail them. Piracy was undoubtedly part of the O’Malley family income, but the family was hardly unique; similar families with similar bases had been raiding up and down the west coast of Britain. from as far north as Barra, for centuries. Much of the piratical activity would amount in daily practice to a tax on passing boats, but Grace was clearly not a woman to be trifled with.
Neither was Elizabeth to be trifled with, as the kings of Europe were learning. The two came together when O’Malley’s son (by her second husband). Theobald Burke was arrested under suspicion of rebellious activity. Grace (who had herself been jailed for two years not long before) went to London and pleaded her case with Elizabeth, as one abused woman to another. The meeting was a great success. Not only was Theobald’s release granted, Grace also pointed out that as a widow, under the ancient Irish laws she had no claim on her late husband’s land; she asked that Elizabeth grant her this maintenance under English common law, and Elizabeth agreed.
What Happened Next
Elizabeth’s administrators in Ireland dragged their heels in carrying out their orders, so Grace made a quick return visit in 1595 to complain, after which it all went smoothly for her. Our knowledge of Grace is derived almost entirely from English historical records. Contemporary Irish historians had no interest in her, and many of the stories subsequently told about her in Ireland (and about the meeting with Elizabeth) are clearly much later fantasies. The DNB gives Grace’s dates as f. 1577-1597 and she may have outlived Elizabeth, who died in 1603. Theobald, whose pleasing nickname was ‘Tibbot of the Ships’, fought for Elizabeth against the Spanish at Kinsale in 1599, and became 1st Viscount Mayo in 1627.