IN HER BOOK Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, Barbara Sjoholm explains that “to be a pirate [as a woman] is to assert that whatever you fancy belongs to you.” This maxim, written to describe sixteenth-century pirate Grace O’Malley, also applies to Grace’s adversary: Queen Elizabeth I. Although she never sailed much farther from home than downriver from Greenwich, Elizabeth lived her life and ruled her country in a very piratical fashion, trusting herself above all others and expanding her empire by any means necessary—including dubiously legal ones. She condemned piracy publicly to appease Spain, but privately she supported a fleet of “sea dogs”: pirates she employed to steal Spanish treasure, horn in on the slave market, and defend England from her enemies. Besides these sea dogs, Queen Elizabeth tangled with at least two women pirates—one for her and one against her. The English pirate loyal to the queen was Lady Mary Killigrew, and the Irish pirate who struck terror into English hearts was Grace O’Malley.
Elizabeth, one of England’s most famous rulers, took a long and winding road to the throne. Daughter of King Henry VIII and the beheaded Anne Boleyn, she was declared illegitimate and removed from the line of succession due to the annulment of her parents’ marriage. While her half sister, Mary Tudor, was on the throne, Elizabeth was imprisoned. As a Protestant, she was seen as a threat to Mary’s Catholic rule. Mary, despite a famous false pregnancy (possibly an ovarian cyst or tumor, which could mimic the symptoms of pregnancy), died without producing an heir. This allowed Elizabeth back in line, and at age twenty-five, she was crowned Elizabeth I of England.
At the time of her coronation, the mighty British Empire was barely even a figment of her (or anyone’s) imagination. After a series of short reigns, England was in desperate need of some stability. The country was broke, torn apart by religious discord, did not have any colonies at this time, and was desperately trying to avoid war with Spain, which it could not possibly afford or survive. In short, England was weak. The country needed a strong ruler to restock the treasury, improve defenses, and expand holdings. In Elizabeth I, England got just that.
Elizabeth understood the adage “You have to spend money to make money,” and so she asked Parliament for it often. Her father had used Parliament to bring about the Protestant Reformation in England, but Elizabeth felt that she herself could make the reforms England needed without parliamentary help—if they would just give her the money she needed. According to historian and professor Johann Sommerville, kings and queens were expected to run the country with funds raised by customs and other day-to-day means. Wars and more extraordinary ventures were supposed to be paid for with taxes, which Parliament was hesitant to provide. During parliamentary sessions, they frequently discussed when Elizabeth might marry and produce an heir, much to Elizabeth’s irritation. She felt it was not for the government to decide when and whom she should wed. As long as she remained single, she and Parliament remained at odds, which meant that Elizabeth had to find other ways of getting as much money as she wanted.
And who better to provide a little income for Queen Elizabeth than pirates? The shrewd queen understood that Spain regularly shipped tons of treasure from the New World back to Europe and that those slow Spanish galleons could be taken for England’s gain. She enlisted the help of a group of expert sailors—privateers—with their own ships to steal Spanish treasure.
Elizabeth’s privateers were called her sea dogs. These men gave her the cash to improve England. Their constant attacks on Spain and Spanish treasure ships kept Spain on the defensive and pushed back their eventual attack on England, buying Elizabeth time to fortify her defenses. By some estimates, the sea dogs’ interference delayed the Spanish invasion by twenty years. Perhaps their greatest achievement, however, was their instrumental role in the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada, which is called the greatest English naval victory ever.
King Philip II of Spain, a Catholic monarch, was weary of Protestant England’s attacks on Spain’s commerce and was concerned about England’s support of the Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands. He planned to conquer England to establish Catholic supremacy and take out an enemy that could threaten his own power. Philip amassed a huge fleet of 130 ships, which included 2,500 guns, 8,000 sailors, and nearly 20,000 soldiers. The idea was to take the English Channel and march an army into England by way of Flanders. The English fleet (thanks to the privateers) was better armed and faster than the Spanish fleet, but Spain’s infantry was vastly superior. Philip planned to board the English ships and engage them in hand-to-hand combat if necessary. He was confident that England would be defeated.
On July 21, 1588, the Invincible Armada sailed in range of the English’s long-range cannons. For the next week, Spain advanced on England but took serious losses from the English bombardment. By the time they arrived in Calais on July 27, the Spanish knew they would not win control of the channel. Another plan had to be hatched.
While Spain was regrouping, the English sent flaming ships into the now-crowded Calais harbor just after midnight, forcing the Spanish to scuttle all plans other than a hasty escape. The armada broke formation and retreated to Gravelines, a small Flemish port in the Spanish Netherlands. England followed them and fought the Battle of Gravelines, a decisive victory for England that sent the defeated Spanish Armada limping home to Spain around Scotland and Ireland. The return voyage was rough, and many more men and ships were lost during the journey. By the time the remnants of the armada made it back to Spain, about half the fleet and some fifteen thousand men had been lost. This astonishing victory for England established Elizabeth as a monarch to be reckoned with and put England on the map as a rising world power to watch.
How did she pull it off? The English victory was due partly to a key participant in the Battle of Gravelines: Sir Francis Drake, one of Queen Elizabeth’s most famous sea dogs. He was a cousin of another sea dog, Sir John Hawkins, who got him into the business. Drake’s fame would eventually surpass Hawkins’s, though, as he rose from his sea dog beginnings to become the first man to circumnavigate the world. Drake was initially a slave trader, but after an attack by Spaniards in present-day Mexico, he became devoted to Spanish destruction. He carried out a successful raid on the Spanish stronghold Nombre de Dios, and he took many Spanish treasure ships, including the massive prize ship Señora de la Concepción, which earned him his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth. He will always be fondly remembered in England, but in Spain he was called “El Dragón.” His work in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, as well as his navigational success, paint him as an English war hero, but it must be remembered that he got his start as one of Queen Elizabeth’s pet pirates.
Like Drake, Sir John Hawkins began as a sailor who decided to make his fortune in the slave trade. Hawkins has the dubious honor of being considered the first Englishman to make a profitable triangular trade run. The triangle trade was, as the name implies, a three-stop route: a ship picked up slaves in Africa, traded the slaves in the New World for goods, and then returned to Europe to sell the goods for money. Sir John made a tidy profit for England and his investors with his slave trading, which made Queen Elizabeth very happy. In the eighteenth century, triangle trade would contribute to the rise of piracy in the Caribbean and lead to piracy’s Golden Age, so in a way Hawkins is the grandfather of the Golden Age of piracy.
Besides achieving slaving success, Hawkins was also a master shipbuilder. He joined the navy board in 1578, ten years before the defeat of the Spanish Armada at Gravelines, and made improvements in ship design that helped launch England as a world power. Before this time, naval battles were fought by ships ramming one another, with the victor boarding the loser’s ship and continuing to fight hand to hand. Galleons were designed to prevail in these types of fights, as they were short and wide with castle-like structures at the fore and aft. They were slow and hard to maneuver, but speed and agility were not high priorities in a ramming battle.
Hawkins saw that, with the advent of long-range cannons, this mode of fighting would not last long. He made changes to the galleon’s design to give England’s ships the advantage in long-range artillery battles. He lowered the fore and aft castles, which made the ship more stable, and he lengthened and narrowed the hulls, which allowed the cannons to have maximum impact and made the ships much faster and easier to maneuver. Without his foresight and skill, the Battle of Gravelines might have ended differently. While Elizabeth must have been sorry to lose Hawkins as a sea dog, he served her even better as a shipbuilder and navy administrator. She knighted him in 1588.
Besides Queen Elizabeth’s most famous and successful sea dogs, there were many other pirates in her employ, some of whom were women. Officially, she could not endorse piracy, and she passed several laws that made it harder to be a pirate, but privately she depended on their financial support. One family, the Killigrews, made pirating a family business, and not one but two women were involved. Lady Elizabeth and Lady Mary Killigrew, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, were part of a pirate operation that ran for many years out of Cornwall during the 1500s.
Confusion exists about which woman was responsible for what piratical act given the fact that both women had the surname Killigrew by marriage. Many sources combine both women into one. It appears that the mother-in-law was the lesser pirate of the two, while the daughter-in-law was responsible for most of the more legendary acts in the stories. Elizabeth Killigrew, née Trewinnard, was Sir John Killigrew IV’s mother. Sir John was the vice admiral of Cornwall, a blood relative of Queen Elizabeth’s minister William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and a pirate. Philip Gosse, author of The History of Piracy, calls the family a “veritable oligarchy of corsair capitalists.” They did not often go out on pirate raids themselves, but they ran every other aspect of the business. Need a ship? Talk to the Killigrews. Have an official who needs to be bribed? Killigrews can help you with that. Payment dispute with the crew? Killigrews to the rescue. From their home at Arwenack House, the family ensured that stolen goods were properly assessed (with the crown getting its share, of course) and that the lucrative business of pirating for the queen went smoothly. Their illustrious pedigree and fine house made an excellent front for their shady dealings—nobody suspected that the sweet lady and noble lord were notorious outlaws.
Mary Wolverston, daughter of “gentleman pirate” Philip Wolverston, married Sir John Killigrew IV after the death of her first husband. There are no details on how the pair met, or how she made the nearly four-hundred-mile journey from her childhood home in Suffolk to coastal Cornwall. It seems possible that they met through Mary’s father’s piratical dealings. The couple had five children together.
Given that Sir John was the vice admiral of Cornwall, as well as the royal governor of Pendennis Castle (a nearby fortress built by Henry VIII), he had many responsibilities. According to some sources, Mary used this fact to her advantage and went on some pirate forays while her husband was away. While Sir John appreciated the business aspects of pirating, he did not feel the need to be personally involved. His wife preferred a more hands-on approach and enjoyed going out on raids. The couple hid the stolen goods in their home and paid handsome bribes to make sure officials looked the other way. Pirates who worked for the Killigrews knew they would be looked after by the family, occasionally even sharing meals that were served by the Killigrew women in the main house. When a pirate had an official ship on his tail, he knew to sail right to Arwenack House, where Sir John would row out to the official and offer him a fine hunting trip on land for a few days, courtesy of the Killigrews. The official was satisfied, and the pirate could unload his cargo in safety once the law had moved on. The system operated smoothly, and everyone got what they wanted . . . especially the Killigrew family.
With so many officials in their pockets, the Killigrews got away with some rather egregious behavior. Eventually, they grew so bold that their exploits could not go unpunished. Interestingly enough, it was allegedly an act of Lady Mary’s that brought the law down on them at last.
In 1582 or 1583, depending on the source, a Hanseatic ship sailed into the Falmouth harbor right in front of Arwenack House. (The Hanseatic League was a confederation of towns that stretched from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea during the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries.) Due to foul weather, the vessel was forced to drop anchor and send two men ashore to obtain shelter for the crew to weather the storm. These two men, named Philip de Orozo and Juan de Charis in some versions of the story, explained their situation to the kindly lady of the house at Arwenack, who served them tea in front of a cozy fireplace. She explained to them that the ship would be safe in the harbor until the storm blew over and that the crew ought to ride out the storm at a guest house in nearby Penryn. The gentlemen, reassured by the woman and the knowledge that the Hanseatic League and England were at peace, took her up on her offer.
As soon as they were out the door, Lady Mary checked out the ship and decided she wanted it for herself. Nearly sixty years old at this point, she was still young enough for an adventurous caper. She gathered a crew including two of her household servants and sailed out to the ship in the night, muffling their oars with cloth. They climbed aboard the ship, murdered the remaining crew, and loaded the treasure into the boats they had sailed out on. A few of the Killigrew pirates took control of the Hanseatic ship and sailed away with it—to Ireland, according to some sources. When de Orozo and de Charis returned after the skies cleared, only seagulls marked the spot where their 144-ton ship had been.
The furious men registered their complaint with the Commission for Piracy in Cornwall, which was run by Lady Mary’s son. Unsurprisingly, the commission was unable to find the culprit. Still upset and unwilling to let it go, de Orozo and de Charis pursued their claim to the highest level in London, where it eventually arrived on the desk of Queen Elizabeth herself. The queen was now in a pickle. She could not ignore the overwhelming evidence (and that Mary’s own son had presided over the previous trial) without looking like a fool and possibly provoking hostilities with the Hanseatic League, but she did not want to lose the Killigrews as allies. Could she balance the two interests?
Lady Mary and her two household servants were put on trial for piracy. They were all found guilty and sentenced to death. Lady Mary, however, was given a reprieve at the last minute. Some sources say that her wealthy and well-connected husband secured her release, but the most popular theory is that Queen Elizabeth pardoned her. If the queen did issue the pardon, she seems to have done so in grateful recognition for the Killigrews’ pirating services in the past and a hope that Lady Mary would remain available for the queen’s needs in the future. After all, Elizabeth seemed smart enough to know not to bite the hand that fed her.
Lady Mary’s pardon was not unexpected, all things considered, but another female pirate—this time on the enemy side—was also a recipient of a pardon from good Queen Bess. She is a legendary figure in Ireland, celebrated in song and story but nearly forgotten by history. If not for the English records of her deeds, it would be nearly impossible to authenticate her existence. Her name was Gráinne Ní Mháille, and she was the pirate queen of Ireland.
She is a known pirate, but her deeds were documented mostly through legends. Stories abound about her life, particularly about her childhood. She was born into a family of seafaring chieftains, the O’Malleys, to Dudara and Margaret O’Malley, around 1530. She was most likely born on the mainland in County Mayo but probably spent much of her childhood on Clare Island in Clew Bay, where her family had a castle. The O’Malleys were a wealthy fishing clan who also occasionally did some raiding and unauthorized taxing on the side. From a young age, Gráinne—anglicized to Grace—showed the desire and aptitude to follow her father out to sea.
In some stories, Grace has a brother who has no interest in sailing, but in other versions he is not mentioned. No matter how many siblings Grace had, it was unheard of for a girl to follow in her father’s footsteps instead of her mother’s. Although pre-Christian Ireland gave women a fair amount of freedom and power, Christianity had stamped out that early equality and ensured that women were kept at home. At most other times in Irish history, Grace would have been confined to home and hearth.
Luckily for Grace, she was born in the sixteenth century. At this time, Ireland was still ruled by chieftains and warring clans instead of a central government. The political situation had been unchanged for thousands of years, but modernization, in the form of the Renaissance on mainland Europe, was barreling on full steam ahead, and Ireland’s provincial ways stood no chance against progress. The stripping of Ireland’s identity by the English provided Grace the opportunity to step into the disintegrating power structure and claim a large chunk of power for herself.
During any century, she would have needed to be a formidable sailor to survive the dangerous waters off the Irish coast, with enough grit and determination to convince her father she was strong enough to take on the seafaring life. To go to sea was no task for the weakhearted, but young Grace proved her mettle many times as a girl, according to legend. One story tells of a band of eagles that was terrorizing livestock on O’Malley land. Grace, barely taller than the eagles, attacked the birds, killing most of them and scaring the rest away. She did not escape this battle unscathed, though; an eagle clawed at her forehead, leaving large scars she would bear for the rest of her life.
Another tale explains that her parents told her she was not allowed to go to sea because she was a girl. Undaunted, Grace chopped off all her hair, disguised herself as a boy, and joined her father’s crew nevertheless. It seems unlikely that her father would not recognize his own daughter, even with short hair, but this story’s popularity remains high. One of the many names by which Grace is known is Granuaile, which roughly translates to “bald Grace.”
A third legend from her childhood takes place after she was already a member of her father’s crew. During an attack by the English on their ship, Grace saw that her father was in trouble. She disobeyed his order to stay belowdecks and dashed into the middle of the fray. She leaped onto the back of her father’s attacker and beat him until he relented. She not only survived that attack but saved her father’s life as well.
Despite her passion for the sea, she was still the daughter of a chieftain, and she had duties to fulfill on land. At age sixteen, she was married in a politically advantageous match to Donal O’Flaherty, heir to the chieftain of a powerful neighboring clan. The O’Flahertys were a rowdy bunch, so feared by ordinary folk that it was common to hear this refrain in Galway churches: “From the ferocious O’Flahertys the Good Lord deliver us.” Grace, with her fierce spirit, was probably not intimidated by her husband’s wild nature. She bore him three children, two sons and a daughter.
Donal’s nickname was “Donal of the Battles,” which seems apt because he loved fighting. While he was waging battles and wasting resources, the people of his clan were starving. Desperate, they appealed to his wife, Grace, for help in feeding their families. Legally, as a woman she could not usurp her husband’s role as chieftain, but the clan was all too happy to acknowledge her as the leader in spirit if not in name as long as she saved their children from starvation.
Eventually Grace and Donal might have fought over her assumption of his leadership role, but he was killed before the issue could come to a head. A story details how Donal led his men into battle for a castle that had once been his own but had since been taken over by an enemy clan. This castle, called Cock’s Castle, was an island fortress. When Donal was killed in battle, Grace rallied her late husband’s troops and staged a retaliatory attack on the castle, retaking it for the O’Flahertys, which Donal had been unable to do. She fought with such bravery and ferocity that the fortress was unofficially rechristened “Hen’s Castle.”
Despite her clear, demonstrated ability to lead her husband’s clan in both battle and peacetime, Irish law prohibited her from ascending to the chieftain position in name. A cousin of Donal’s was chosen to replace him. Grace was not going to sink into the role of meek widow when she had been so good at being chieftain, so she decided she was through with the O’Flaherty clan and taking orders from others. From now on, Grace would be ruled by no one but herself. She returned home to Clare Island, but she did not go alone. A group of O’Flaherty men who were loyal to her wanted to continue serving under her rather than Donal’s replacement, and they followed her back to Clew Bay. Once she was safely back at home, she gathered some more men, ultimately amassing a crew of around two hundred, took possession of a few of her father’s ships, and launched her career as a pirate.
Grace was quite successful in a very short time, due to her excellent sailing skills and her unmatched knowledge of the Irish coast. She sailed in Irish galley ships, which were controlled by both oars and a single sail. Grace was said to have used an Irish bìrlinn, which resembled a Viking longship in construction. Such ships were highly maneuverable and fast when rowed, which gave them an advantage in the plenteous bays and islands of western Ireland. Commonly, these ships had eight to twelve oars, but Grace was rumored to have at least one ship with thirty oars. Like many pirates both before and after her, she was able to use geography to both hide from her victims and escape them after she’d taken what she wanted, be it silk, wine, or silver. English, Scottish, and other European ships had no hope of following her into the maze of small islands and coves along the coast. Maps did not cover Grace’s Ireland. To stop her, someone would have to be able to find her. For a while, nobody could.
Eventually, strategic pursuits caused Grace to marry a second time. The man she chose was Richard Bourke (also called Burke), a Connacht chieftain who was in line for the Mac Williamship, the most powerful ruling office in the area. He owned a large fleet of trading vessels and, even more important, Rockfleet Castle. This fortress was better situated to shelter her fleet and crews than her own home base of Clare Island. According to most sources, Grace set out to marry Richard for “one year certain,” an odd convention left over from Brehon law. The ancient native civil law code of Ireland, Brehon law was popular in the Middle Ages and on its way out by Grace’s time, with large chunks of it being outlawed during the Tudor conquest of Ireland. Under this law, during the first year of marriage, either party could withdraw if it wished and the marriage would be considered officially annulled. Legend has it that Grace waited until she had sufficient control of the castle and then coaxed Richard to go out. She locked the castle gate and shouted out from the battlements as he rode home, “Richard Bourke, I dismiss you!” which was enough to end their marriage. However, the pair continued to present themselves as man and wife and worked together on piratical ventures after this, which suggests that Grace may have kicked Richard out but eventually took him back and did not formally end their marriage. Grace and Richard had a son together, Tibbott-ne-long.
When an English representative visited the western Irish coast in 1576, Grace pledged her services to him, saying that her husband would do essentially whatever she told him to do, which prompted the visitor to proclaim that Grace was “a notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland.” Why she chose to offer herself to the English when she had been devoted to stealing from them is curious. Nonetheless, Sir Henry Sidney knighted Richard before returning home, making Grace Lady Bourke.
Another popular legend about Grace’s bravery comes from this period. She was sailing with Richard and her crew when she gave birth to her last son, whom she named Tibbott-ne-long (Theobald or “Toby of the Ships”). The day after he was born, their ship was attacked by the ferocious Algerian corsairs. Her men were unable to hold them off, so Grace, who was resting belowdecks, was summoned. According to the story, she cursed, “May you be seven times worse in one year, seeing you can’t manage for even one day without me,” and ran up to join the battle. Her disheveled appearance so alarmed the corsairs that she turned the tide of the battle and fought off the enemy. Presumably she returned to her bedroom afterward, grumbling all the while and hanging a DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door.
In 1577 she was captured for the first time by the Earl of Desmond while raiding his land. She was sent to Dublin Castle, where she was jailed for eighteen months. She was eventually released as a bargaining chip to quell her husband’s rebellion, but after her release both Richard and Grace remained as piratical as ever.
The fortuitous timing and location of Grace’s birth was a gift that had allowed her to rise to power, but that gift came with an expiration date, and since her birth, the clock had been ticking. Her luck ran out when Queen Elizabeth sent a new governor to Ireland, Richard Bingham, in 1583—the same year Grace’s second husband, Richard Bourke, died.
Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had first had the idea of making Ireland an English colony, and Elizabeth was determined to make her father’s dream a reality. Bingham, cunning and ruthless, was a part of the plan to beat the chieftains into submissive English subjects. He particularly hated Grace and the freewheeling Irish spirit for which she stood. Grace apparently returned the sentiment, conducting three rebellion plots against him before she was captured by Bingham. He was only too happy to hang her, but she was saved at the last minute by a Mayo chieftain who traded some hostages in exchange for her life, a testament to how much she was respected by the chieftains in the area. But Bingham would not be denied revenge on Grace. He confiscated her cattle and horse herds and kidnapped two of her sons: Owen O’Flaherty from her first marriage and Tibbott-ne-long from her second. Owen died in Bingham’s custody—some accounts say that he was murdered by Bingham’s men. Grace knew that this time there would be no last-minute escape. The time had come for her to appeal to the highest power she could think of—a fellow queen.
In 1593 Grace sent a letter directly to Queen Elizabeth, requesting that her son Tibbott be released. She did not attempt to hide her piratical past, but she did try to paint it in a sympathetic light, claiming that circumstances forced her to take arms to maintain her family and her people. Grace asked that Tibbott and her other remaining son, Murrough, be able to hold their lands under English rather than Irish law. This was a savvy move designed to protect them against the change she knew was coming. Claims under Irish law would be nearly worthless once England’s capture of Ireland was complete. If Elizabeth would grant this, Grace would devote her life to sailing against Queen Elizabeth’s enemies, answering only to the queen herself, which conveniently cut Bingham out of the equation. She sent this missive to England, then waited for a reply.
Queen Elizabeth was intrigued by this pirate queen who had appealed to her so boldly, despite her obvious past acts against England. She sent a list of eighteen interrogatories to Grace, which the pirate queen answered shrewdly. Grace offered the least objectionable parts of her life and career to Queen Elizabeth and painted a pretty picture of a smart and remarkable woman, much like the Queen of England herself. Meanwhile, Bingham upped the stakes and charged Tibbott with treason. If he were tried, he would almost certainly be hanged. Grace had already lost one son to Bingham and would not lose another. She could wait no longer, and in July 1593 she set sail to England carrying the answers to the interrogatories, determined to meet with Queen Elizabeth in person. This was an extremely bold move—especially for a well-known pirate. England’s ports were adorned with the rotting carcasses of hanged criminals, including pirates. If she went to England, Grace knew she might not come back alive. But her love for Tibbott (and her fleet) was stronger than her love of her own safety. She would speak to the Queen and bring her son home, or die trying.
Against Bingham’s wishes, the Queen granted Grace an audience in the fall of 1593. The exact details of what transpired when queen met queen are lost forever to history. Legends abound regarding what each woman wore, who was taller than whom, and what happened when a courtier offered Grace a fancy lace handkerchief. (The story goes that Grace wiped her nose with it and then tossed it in the fire, to the horror of the lady. Grace explained that in Ireland, trash was trash despite the value of the piece of cloth.) A woodcut of the two queens is thought to possibly depict their meeting, but only the two women present know for sure what happened. Many sources claim that the conversation took place in Latin since Grace spoke no English and Elizabeth spoke no Irish, but it is clear from her letters that Grace did in fact speak English, so they may well have spoken English at the meeting. Grace’s boldness and Elizabeth’s unique sense of humor must have made for a lively discussion.
Whatever these two women—whose lives were starkly different but also fundamentally the same—discussed, Grace was allowed to return home and her son Tibbott was freed. She was also allowed to resume her pirating, this time with Queen Elizabeth’s blessing. Bingham was instructed to provide Grace with some kind of pension to maintain her in her old age, much to his outrage. He tried to protest and outright disobeyed the Queen’s orders by posting troops on Grace’s lands and ordering her to feed them, but he was eventually recalled back to England in disgrace. These two women who had made their way to the top of the man’s world and become leaders of their people were able to come together and, for a time, set their world right.
The meeting with Queen Elizabeth—and her victory for her son—is the dramatic climax of Grace’s story. She returned home and went right back to pirating, even fighting an English warship. However, her eye was always on her own legacy and the legacy of her son, and so when Tibbott was passed over for the Mac Williamship, Grace hung up her Irish flag and installed Tibbott in command of her ships, instructing him to sail for Her Majesty. During the Battle of Kinsale, the final battle of the Nine Years’ War, which ensured England’s conquest of Ireland, Tibbott fought on the English side. In 1603 Tibbott was knighted. Eventually he would become the Viscount Mayo. Also in 1603, Grace died of old age, at home in Rockfleet Castle. Queen Elizabeth, coincidentally, died that same year. Grace is said to be buried on Clare Island, at an abbey beside her beloved sea.
This tidbit about Tibbott’s defection is perhaps part of why most Irish historians do not fondly remember, and sometimes go so far as to ignore, Grace O’Malley. Although she did sail against the English for most of her career, when it was convenient to do so she changed her allegiance. She put her family first and would do anything to ensure their safety, even betray an old alliance. She was not a woman who fit neatly into a mold of a heroine or patriot. Grace O’Malley was loyal, first and foremost, to her own self and her own freedom, like Jeanne de Clisson before her, another woman who looms larger in folklore than in official history. The inability to easily categorize Grace leaves a sour taste in many Irish historians’ mouths.
Yet despite her lack of coverage in conventional historical channels, something about her life burns brightly enough that her legends have endured for so long. Perhaps it is due to her Irish heritage: Ireland is a land of poets and balladeers, and they would be loath to let such a tempting subject slip away uncelebrated in song and story. That might explain Grace’s fame compared to that of the English Killigrews. It is true that the Killigrew women worked more behind the scenes than in the spotlight, but their presence in pirate lore is tiny next to Grace’s.
That fact also might be due to the Killigrews’ lack of a diligent biographer. More official information has come to light about Grace O’Malley in large part due to the tireless scholarly work of Anne Chambers and her seminal book about Grace, Granuaile. With a sympathetic advocate to tell her story, how could Grace fail to attract some notoriety? In the past few decades, a number of plays about Grace have been performed all over the world, and there is even a Granuaile Heritage Center in County Mayo. Interest in this pirate’s life has never been higher. Her legend continues to inspire women today, just as it must have inspired the pirate women who came after her, during piracy’s most infamous and celebrated epoch: the Golden Age.