Flight of the Earls: A Popular History

An accessible history of a tragic seventeenth-century journey by Irish leaders to request aid against the British. When some ninety-nine persons, led by Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, sailed from Ireland, it was destined to be the most momentous event in the history of the island. The flight paved the way for the plantation of Ulster which introduced into that province Scots Presbyterians, a sectarian division which still, after four hundred years, defies the best efforts of the British and Irish governments to resolve.