After the siege of Dunboy Castle, in 1602, Sir George Carew relates having sent some companies of foot soldiers to MacCarthy’s Castle of Dundaniel, to remain there until the army was leaving Munster.
Eight years later the estate was purchased by the East India Company for the sum of £7,000. They constructed a dock, where they built two ships, and colonised three villages with some three hundred English settlers.
They garrisoned the castle with “four light horse, six corslets, and ten muskets, trained at the Company’s charge.”
But this form of industrious innovation was not at all to the liking of the native inhabitants, and they so harassed the company’s workers that they were obliged to appeal to the Government for protection in 1613. This does not appear to have been accorded, as a second petition in the same year asks for leave to place three or four pieces of ordnance in the castle for defence against the “wylde Irish.”
The Company, still receiving no Government aid, relinquished their enterprise. In the “Castle Garden” slag, like the refuse of ironworks is still found, which is most likely the remains of the East India Company’s industry.
After this the MacCarthys seem to have again taken possession of the castle, and a scion of the old house, named Teige O’Connor, occupied Dundaniel upon the breaking out of hostilities in 1642.
This O’Connor seems to have been a man of unqualified barbarity. A MS. in Trinity College records a most unwarrantable attack by him on five peaceful fishermen who were whipping the rivers near the stronghold. By his orders they were seized by some of the garrison and carried within the castle. Four of them were hanged at once, and the fifth offered £10 for his life. This was accepted, and some of them accompanied him to his house to receive it. Upon finding where he kept his money, they seized the whole of it, amounting to £35, and then hanged the unfortunate owner.
John Langton, writing to the Earl of Cork, gives a most graphic description of the assault upon Dundaniel Castle on the 20th of April, 1642, when the English forces marched from Bandon under the command of Lord Kinalmeaky and Captain Aderly of Innishannon.
It appears a party of rebels had seized some cattle and brutally killed four children and wounded a fifth, who were minding them near the town. The distracted parents traced the crime to the garrison of Dundaniel Castle, “neere the ould iron worke.” So horse and foot marched out, recovered the cattle save one animal, and attacked the castle.
Three of the besiegers were killed and six wounded by shot and stone from the fortress, but the musketeers posted themselves round the castle and on the neighbouring hill, and kept up a fire of small shot so that each of the defenders who looked out was killed.