Florence MacCarthy

Finnian or Fínghin mac Donnchadh Mac Cárthaigh (1560–1640), known to the English as Florence MacCarthy, was an Irish prince of the late 16th century and the last credible claimant to the MacCarthy Mór title before its suppression by English authority. MacCarthy's involvement in the Nine Years' War (1595–1603) led to his arrest by the crown government, and he spent the last 40 years of his life in custody in London. His lands were distributed among his relatives and English colonists.

MacCarthy was born in 1560 at Kilbrittain Castle near Kinsale in the province of Munster in Ireland, into the MacCarthy Reagh dynasty, rulers of Carbery, the son of Donogh MacCarthy Reagh, 11th Prince of Carbery. His grandfather was Donal MacCarthy Reagh, 9th Prince of Carbery.

The significance of MacCarthy's career lies in his command of territories in west Munster, at a time when the Tudor conquest of Ireland was underway. Southwest Munster was the area most open to Spanish intervention, which had been mooted from the late 1570s to aid Catholic rebellions in Ireland. The overlord of much of this area, but excluding Carbery, was the MacCarthy Mór of Desmond, whose lands were located in modern west Cork and Kerry. There were, in addition, three more princely branches of the MacCarthy dynasty, the MacCarthys of Muskerry, the MacCarthys of Duhallow, and finally the most wealthy: the MacCarthy Reagh of independent Carbery, of whom Florence's father had been a (semi-)sovereign prince. It was into a complex interplay between the crown government and these opposing branches that Florence found himself pitched.

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