Clandeboye

Clandeboye was a Gaelic kingdom by Belfast Lough in southern Antrim and northern Down. Its O'Neill rulers descended from Hugh Boy, a thirteenth-century king of Tyrone; their branch lost that kingship to a rival line.

After the Norman Earldom of Ulster collapsed in the fourteenth century, the O'Neills took its eastern lands. By 1347 Muirchertach Ceannfada ruled Clandeboye, first under Tyrone, then autonomously. During the Ulster plantations its last chief Conn O'Neill was forced to surrender two-thirds of his lands to Hugh Montgomery and James Hamilton; he died poor in 1618, and Hamilton became Viscount Claneboye in 1622.