Phelim Caoch Ó Neill

Phelim Caoch O'Neill (Irish: Feidhlimidh Caoch Ó Néill) (1517 to 1542) was a Prince of the Cenél nEógain.
The eldest son of King Conn Bacach O'Neill. Conn came from a long line of Ulster kings and was known throughout all the O'Neill provinces as "The O'Neill" or the most supreme among all the O'Neill Lords. Phelim's mother was Lady Alice Fitzgerald, the daughter of Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare. His father and maternal grandfather were probably the two most powerful men in Ireland in the 1540s.

Phelim Caoch (the blind) was a son of Conn O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, then The O'Neill, lord of Tir Eoghan. Phelim was raised in the Gaelic fashion at his father's principal residence, his castle at Dungannon, County Tyrone, and was groomed as his father's taniste to one day succeed as lord of Tir Eoghan himself. At the time of his birth, his uncle was The O'Neill, but in 1519, Phelim's father Conn Bacach assumed the title of The O'Neill, and the senior position among the three great O'Neill clans: Tir Eoghan, the Fews, and Clanaboy. The O'Neill was traditionally the supreme rí or provincial king of Ulster, with traditional authority over the uirríthe or subservient kings of the province. Phelim grew up learning the diplomacy and art of rule and war in Ulster. He took part in activities of his father's kingdom, including a stint as a hostage to the English just before his death. A part of Irish culture of that period was the custom of raiding. Raids against neighbouring lords for cattle was a primary past time for young noblemen. Especially in Ulster, cattle was main element of wealth. Thus the outcome of a raid weakened or promoted a junior Lord in the sixteenth century Ireland.

Phelim was married to Honora O'Neill, daughter of Sir Phelim O'Neill, lord Edenduffcarrick and the Clanaboy O'Neills. They had a son named Tirlough Brassileagh O'Neill. He gained this patrinomy based on being fostered by the Clan Brassill in southern Ulster, after the death of his father.

It was a longstanding vendetta with the chieftain of one of his fathers MacDonnell Galloglass septs that cost him his life. In early 1542 'The son of O'Neill (Felim Caech, son of Con, son of Con) was killed with one cast of a javelin by MacDonnell Gallowglagh" according to the entry recording his death in the Annals of the Four Masters of Ireland. He had been killed after a longstanding quarrel with his father's principal Galloglass commander Gillespic MacDonnell. Phelim Caoch was assassinated in the months just prior to his father's submission to King Henry VIII.

One is left to wonder what might have happened had Phelim lived. After Phelim's death, Conn Bacach had no nominated taniste and capriciously passed over the interests of his son Shane, a boy of only six or seven years old, by favoring a sixteen-year-old affiliated adoptee named Mathew Kelly, (known in Irish as 'Feardorcha') the son of Alison Kelly (né, Roth), the O'Neill's current mistress. Conn's decision to take Mathew Kelly when he travelled to London to be created Earl of Tyrone would be the source of a sixty-year feud within the O'Neill clan when Mathew was made Baron of Dungannon and nominated as Conn's successor in English law, setting aside the superior claims of his sons, Conn og, Shane and Toirhealbhach.

After Phelim Caoch's assassination Gillespic MacDonnell's galloglass sept became committed the adherents of Mathew (Feardorcha) and his descendants, and consistent supporters of English policy.