Fínghin mac Donncha Mac Carthaig, 1560–1640 (anglicised Florence MacCarthy), was an Irish prince of the late 16th century and the last credible claimant to the Mac Carthaig Mór title before its suppression by English authority. Mac Carthaig's involvement in the Nine Years' War (1595–1603) led to his arrest by the Crown, and he spent the last 40 years of his life in custody in London. His lands were distributed among his relatives and English colonists. Early life Mac Carthaig 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, 15th Prince of Carbery. His grandfather was Donal MacCarthy Reagh, 12th Prince of Carbery. The significance of Mac Carthaig'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. The Mac Carthaig Reagh branch established itself as loyal to the crown during the Desmond Rebellions (1569–73 and 1579–83), to assert their independence from their nominal overlords, the Earl of Desmond and the Mac Carthaig Mór, both of whom had joined the rebellion. Mac Carthaig's father, Donnchadh Mac Carthaig Reagh, served the crown faithfully and reported that he had mobilised his men to drive the rebel Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond out of his territory during the Second Desmond Rebellion. When his father died in 1581, Mac Carthaig, by then in his late teens or early twenties, led around 300 men in the English service with the assistance of an English captain, William Stanley, and his lieutenant, Jacques de Franceschi, under the overall command of the Earl of Ormonde. They drove Desmond's remaining followers out of MacCarthy territory, 'into his own