The Installation Of County Wicklow  -  By Mattie Lennon When you think of the County Wicklow ("The garden of Ireland") it conjures up images of Glendalough, the Sugar Loaf, Lacken and the Blessington Lakes. If you are old enough pictures of "The Battle of Baltinglass" and referees locked in car-boots may spring to mind but do you ever think of the origins of the county? The first counties were erected in Ireland in 1210. The mountainous area that is now County Wicklow (the last county to be formed) held out for almost four hundred years. This was due to two clans, the descendents of whom are very much in evidence in the County Wicklow of today. The Clan O'Byrne, it is said, are descended from Heremon, a leader of a Spanish Colony which established itself in Ireland about 1,000 B.C. The O'Byrnes and O'Tooles occupied large tracts of land in what is now County Kildare. They were driven into the mountains as a result of the Norman invasion. The two clans forged alliances through intermarriage and soon declared war on the new inhabitants, the Anglo-Normans. In 1173 Strongbow, as Lieutenant of Henry 11 in Ireland, attempted to grant to Abbot Thomas O'Toole of Glendalough; "......the entire Abbacy and personalities of Glendalough with all their appurtenances of lands and dignities in that perpetual free gift..."  Historians claim that the reason Abbot O'Toole declined the offer was that the area was part of the unconquered lands of the O'Tooles and that by taking it he would have been recognising the authority of Strongbow. The clans stood their ground through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the 1390's the Earl of Ormond and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Roger Mortimer, took the O'Byrne castle at Wicklow town, but the O'Tooles stepped in, counter attached and spiked sixty English heads on the gates of the O'Toole castle at Powerscourt. In 1398 the two clans marched against the English and killed the Lord Lieutenant. O Byrne country remained dangerous territory for the English and in 1414 Lord Furnival was highly praised for marching an army through the region without casualty. By the sixteenth century two branches of the O'Byrnes occupied what is now east and west Wicklow. By the mid 1500's a number of alliances had been formed between Gaelic chieftains and English Noblemen. The powers-that-were saw this as a dangerous situation and Earl St.Ledger, the new Lord Deputy aimed to rectify it. He sought to set up a system whereby the chieftains would take their lands and hold them on letters patent from the English King, instead of the Irish system where their clansmen elected the chieftains. Thadeus O Byrne, chief of the clan, signed a treaty in 1535 in which he swore to be a loyal subject and undertook not to support any Irishman against the King. He also requested that his territory be shired; "the Byrnes of the mountains, in the thirty fourth of Henry the Eight (1542), desired that their country might be shire-ground and called the County of Wicklow. The clan rejected the plans of Thadeus; and what did they do? They did what Wicklow people always did when their representatives stepped out of line. They elected a new clan leader. It would appear that the clans quietened down for a while and in the 1550's the authorities in Dublin remarked on the good behaviour of the O'Byrnes. By 1578 there were plans once again to shire Wicklow and Sir William Drury, the lord Justice defined the county boundry but; " finding that there were not sufficient, and fewer gent. To be shriffes, nor freeholders to make a jury for her Majiestie' the matter was let drop".  It was  also in 1578 that  Sir Henry Harrington was appointed seneschal. (Amn't I glad I wasn't around at the time; because being a ballad-writer or scribbler of any sort was almost as hazardous as playing football for Rathnew, judging by the instructions given to Sir Henry for his rule of the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles: "Fyrst that you cause proclamacion to be made that no idele persone, vagabonde or masterlesse man, barde rymoure, or any other notorious or detected malefactor do haunte, remaine,or abyde within the limits and bondes of your authoritee". It goes on to give him permission to administer; "....sharp correction as you shall in good discreation appoint" and that it would be lawful: " .....for you be vertue of this commission to execute him marshally".) I digress. Sir Henry Harrington got his come-uppance. He was defeated in 1599 by  Phelim and Redmond O'Byrne ( sons of Fiach MacHugh who was beheaded in 1597) at Deputy's Pass, between Rathdrum and Wicklow. .........Four years later in 1603 Wicklow was declared a County!    If you would like to contact me with your views, news, comments or general observations on Wicklow life please do so and lets keep Wicklow talking!  My email address is:- lennonmatthew@hotmail.com