Kildare (often known as Gearóid Óg), also seized the castle in 1523. Gearóid Óg, Lord Kildare, had succeeded his father as Lord Deputy of Ireland in September 1513, also succeeding his father as the Geraldine leader at the same time. After briefly taking Belfast Castle from Aodh Ó Néill (Hugh O'Neill), Lord of Clandeboye, in 1523, this Lord Kildare reported to King Henry VIII: 'I brake a castell of his, called Belfast, and burned 24 myle of his country [sic]'. Belfast Castle was briefly seized by English forces in 1552, when the castle was possibly rebuilt on the orders of Sir James Croft, who was the Lord Deputy of Ireland at the time. Another occasion when Belfast Castle was briefly seized from the Uí Néill of Clandeboye was in the 1570s, when English forces, initially under the command of The 1st Earl of Essex, occupied the castle for a few years during the short-lived Enterprise of Ulster. The English Crown finally seized Belfast Castle from the Uí Néill of Clandeboye during the Nine Years' War in the 1590s, when the castle was occupied by English troops. In June 1597, the forces of Shane McBrian O'Neill, Lord of Lower Clandeboye and son and successor of Sir Brian mac Feidhlimidh Ó Néill, forcibly took the castle back from English control, apparently putting to the sword most of the English garrison there. English forces, under the command of Sir John Chichester, soon marched north to retake Belfast Castle from the Uí Néill of Clandeboye, which they did in July 1597. Chichester reported back to his superiors that his forces had retaken the castle 'without anie loss to us, and put those wee found in yt to the sworde [sic]'. Chichester then placed Belfast Castle and its surrounding settlement under the command of Sir Ralph Lane, the Elizabethan adventurer. Lane, the then Muster Master-General, had previously served, over a decade earlier, as Governor of the ill-fated Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina. Sir John Chichester, who had been appointed as Governor of Carrickfergus Castle, soon fell out with the previously neutral MacDonnells of the Glens. In a battle fought in November 1597 against the MacDonnells at Altfrackyn (also known as Aldfreck), a townland just north of Ballycarry, the English were defeated, with 180 of their soldiers being killed. Chichester was killed by the MacDonnells during or immediately after this battle, possibly by