Maguire

The Maguires, Gaelic Mac Uidhir or son of Odhar, ruled Fermanagh in southern Ulster. They supplanted the O'Devine chiefs around 1264; Donn Carrach Maguire, who died in 1302, was the first of the line to rule the whole county. Chiefs were inaugurated on Cuilcagh or at Sciath Gabhra, later Lisnaskea, and held Enniskillen Castle on Lough Erne, where their large fleet policed the lake.

The Maguires remained independent through the later Middle Ages. In the Nine Years' War of 1594-1603 Hugh Maguire joined the Irish rebels, while his kinsman Connor Roe backed the English crown. Submission opened the way to Ulster's Plantation in 1609, which confiscated most of the county.

Bryan Maguire became Baron Maguire of Enniskillen in 1627, but his sons rose in the Confederate wars: the second baron was executed in 1645 and Rory Maguire killed in 1648. Roger Maguire sat in James II's Patriot Parliament in 1689.