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Glenomallun’s lands, as he has been so long away. He would
be ready to transact and agree for his lands upon reasonable
considerations. 134
This, however, was not to be. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering his
personal networks and distinguished military career, Sir Dermot was in
contact with leading men in Co. Clare regarding foreign military service.
In 1633 Boetius Clanchy, scion of the Mac Fhlannchadha lineage from
Corcomroe wrote to ‘Baron Quirshe of Glenimulloon’ recommending the
bearer of the letter, Rossie O’Loughlin, as a potential recruit for service on
the continent. 135 The émigré Irish strategy of advancing military careers in
the service of France and Spain was already well established by the 1630s and
demand for manpower in Europe was great due to the Thirty Years War.
In 1634, having failed to reach ‘reasonable considerations’ with Sir
Barnaby O’Brien on the purchase of his ancestral lands Sir Dermot, as one
of a handful of MPs of Gaelic stock, was summoned to attend the Dublin
parliament. 136 Sir Dermot was unable to attend on account of ill health. 137
Many Irish nobles serving on the Continent maintained the practice of
keeping genealogies and identified closely with their Irish lands, irrespective
of decades of service abroad. When Sir Dermot died in 1639 his
epitaph noted that he ‘was exiled when a boy from my own country’ and
that, first and foremost, he was ‘Baron de Glenomallun’, his other titles of
secondary importance. 138
134 Ibid.
135 Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, of the reign of Charles I, 1633–1647, (London,
1901), p. 18. In a petition by Albert Baron Gleanomalun in 1640, the only surviving son of
Sir Dermot, it was stated that Sir Dermot was active in sending intelligence about England
and Ireland to King Phillip III of Spain in the 1610s, and that he ‘caused many men to come
from Ireland to these States; and upon different occasions he drew others of his nation in
great numbers from Holland, by command of the Lady Infanta’. Brendan Jennings (ed) Wild
Geese in Spanish Flanders 1582–1700, p.313.
136 Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, of the reign of Charles I, 1633–1647, pp 18, 59–
60. Wentworth summoned a Parliament in 1633 which lasted until 1635. Initially the Catholic
interest was placated with the promises of ‘Graces’ or concessions, but difficulty arose when
the conditions of the Graces were changed and Parliament passed an act establishing a
Commission for Defective Title under which each land grant made in the previous sixty
years was to be examined. Edmund Curtis, A History of Ireland, pp.240–241.
137 See the claim of Sir Dermod O’Malun, baron of Gleanomalun, to sit in Irish parliament
and the reference therein which stated: ‘he would if his health did permit’ (The National
Archives, Kew, SP 7/25, ff 295, 296). Amongst the published papers of the Earl of Strafford
is a list of the delegates of the 1634 Irish Parliament and that ‘Lord of Glean Molune and
Cuerchy’ was noted as absent. William Knowler, The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters and Dispatches,
with an Essay towards his Life by Sir George Radcliffe: From the Originals in the Possession of
his Great Grandson the Right Honourable Thomas Earl of Malton, Knight of the Bath, Vol.1.,
William Bowyer printer (London, 1739) p. 283. As early as 1614 Sir Dermot was described as
‘infirm and in danger of death on account of his advanced age’. Brendan Jennings (ed.) Wild
Geese in Spanish Flanders 1582–1700, p. 143.
138 Gráinne Henry, The Irish Military Community in Spanish Flanders, 1586–1621, p.86. Sir
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