Fiach mac Aodha Ó Broin (anglicised as Feagh or Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne) (1534 – 8 May, 1597) was Chief of the Name of Clann Uí Bhroin (Clan O'Byrne) and Lord of Ranelagh during the Elizabethan wars against the Irish clans. Arms Background During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, the O'Byrnes controlled territory in the Wicklow mountains south of Dublin, covering about . The fastness of the Ranelagh O'Byrnes lay toward the south, at Ballinacor in Glenmalure, where they maintained a fort near to a ford with a bridge and a castle at Drumkitt (now encompassed within Ballinacor House). The territory included the oak wood of Shillelagh and part of Co. Wexford. The Kiltimon, Downs, Cloneroe and Newrath branches of the clan were generally loyal to the Crown, having benefited under English law by primogeniture and the system of 'surrender and regrant'. The Ranelagh O'Byrnes were unsubmissive and were reckoned capable of fielding one hundred expert swordsmen, posing a constant threat to Tudor authority within the Pale through raids on the lowlands, which weighed in the balance of power between the Butler (Ormond) and Fitzgerald (Kildare) dynasties in Leinster. The O'Byrne territory had been under the nominal authority of a sheriff, but in 1562 the task of bringing order to the border area was given to an English captain. So varied were the local allegiances, and so difficult did the territory prove to police, that little was achieved by the crown government and during the rest of the queen's reign (to 1603) the O'Byrnes proved adept at securing official pardons. Early career In 1569 the Ranelagh O'Byrnes, under the leadership of Fiach's father, Hugh, had given help to the rebels during the Desmond Rebellions. Fiach (in Irish, the raven) assisted the escape of the imprisoned Edmund Butler, when the latter fell from a rope while climbing from the battlements of Dublin Castle. Thereafter he proved wily and skilful, and ultimately betrayed an ambition to undermine Tudor authority in Ireland. In 1572, Fiach was charged with complicity in the murder of Robert Browne of Mulcranan, son-in-law of the seneschal of County Wexford, Sir Nicholas White. The crown commander in Wicklow led a punitive expedition from Newcastle near Bray, seizing a mountain man and forcing him at the peril of his life to lead the crown troops into the heart of O'Byrne territory, where sixteen villages were burned and hundreds