to bririg them to Carrick:fergui;, Then for nearly twenty years the fortress of Doe was ignored 'Until the yea~·s 1684/5 when a battalion of Lord 1Mountjoy's regiment t;ad quarters · there (5:1). The offiC'ers stationed there :were Major Gustavus Hamilton, Captain .John Hamilton and Ensign Thomas Pigott. Early in the Revolutionary W:ar Doe Castle was held by a Williamite named Matthew Babbington (54) who was outlawed by the Jacobite Parliament of .1689 and who withdrew with bis family and supporters to Derry iwhen the army of .. lames 11 came nort1iward. After Babbington's withdr.awal Donogh Og, son of Colonel Miles MacSweeney, took over the castle and "offered his services to .James 11. He prom.ised lo raise a regiment amongst his followers if granted .a. commission. It was refused him, if you please, because he could not speak the Bearla. 'Methought,' says MacSweeqey 'that this war is being waged to drive the Be.aria. and all that it stands fOr <iut of Ireland.' Nevertheless, he joined tl:c forces of James, fought at the Boyne and Aughrim apd went •with Sarsfield to France to where he rose to a high 1rank in that nation." .'\Maci;;weeney · !Was the best sw<>rdsrnan in the France of his day. He is said to have fought no fewer than in 35 duels and was victorious in every one of tihem. His ·custom was to engage .lifs opp'.}nent's rush in a favourabie moment and seize the ·blade of his enemy's sword in his right hand, while with his own sw.ord lwld in his left htmd he rnn his !IRQ, en.e'iliy through the bocly. Such was the girip in MacSweeney's hand that, once he caught his encrr.y's swordblade, his enemy cJuld do nothing." · "When engaged in J::,b thirtyfifth duel he rushed in as usuul, seized his opponent's blade and dispatched him." "Little will it .gain you to win this victory,' says Ms dying enemy," for the sword you seized was poisoned.' " "And within three hours the brave 1Mac Sweeney was dead" (55}. This traclition is substantiated by the .Wi!liamite Outlawry Lists of_ 1B9l, which has ".Oonogh Og. Mac Sweeney of Castledoe, A·rmige10" as the third important Jacobite in County Don-· egal. (56). The M.acSweeney Doe pedigree recorded in O'Donovan's Ordnance Survey Letters shows that this Jacobite nobleman was ihe grandfather of the itinerant Dunfanaghy tinsmith, Eam-0n Mac Swyne, whom John O'Donovan met in a fisherman'.; cabin at Downin.gs in the year. 1835 (57). The tinker was, I beieve, in turn, the grandfatber of the famous piper, Torlogh Mac Sweeney. The h~story of Doe Castle, as a fortress, faded out with the seventeenth century. It shared the f.ate of most of our Irish castles for the Williamite War showed h_ow untenable they were in the face ()f powerful armament and the lo~g · peace wl:ich followed the war drove the occupants into the .comfort.able big houses . which became the fasl:ionable type of dwelling in the eighteenth cent.ury. By the midrlle Of thnt
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