Sullivan

The Sullivans, Gaelic Ó Súilleabháin, were a Munster clan claiming descent from the Eóganachta kings of Cashel. Driven from Tipperary by the Normans in the 1190s, they settled in Kerry and west Cork. Their branches included the O'Sullivan Beare, seated at Dunboy Castle on Bantry Bay.

With the MacCarthys and O'Donoghues they defeated the Norman FitzGeralds at Caisglin in 1261 and 1262, fixing the Gaelic frontier in the south-west. In 1587 Donal Cam became The O'Sullivan Beare with Dublin's backing.

He joined the Nine Years' War; after the defeat at Kinsale in 1601, his garrison was hanged when Dunboy fell in 1602. That winter he led a thousand soldiers and civilians on a three-hundred-mile march to the O'Rourkes in Leitrim, harried at every step. He went into exile in Spain and was stabbed to death in Madrid in 1618.