Forthill Cemetary, GALWAY

Sir Richard Bingham Walked the Streets of Galway
-late 16th century (1588-1589)

The chain is always on the gate so that you might think that it is never open. However, during certain hours the chain is loosened to allow you to squeeze through the rusted iron and enter a walled cemetery called Forthill.
Across the street, machines scoop up huge piles of scrap metal between domed oil drums and hills of coal, the working port of Galway. Cars speed by, glimpsed through bars and the sound of boat horns can be heard in the distance. All that seems far away as you turn around and walk into the graveyard and into another era.
Here large stone tombs of merchant families are side by side with humble wooden crosses of Claddagh residents. Galway names are etched in varying clarity –Norman, English and more recently Irish. Much of the older stone marking the dead is broken. The letters on many cannot be made out. Sometimes a finger can decipher a name better than the eye. Moss covered shields and crests demonstrate family pride and importance.
There is no real path around the cemetery. The ground is wet and uneven. It wouldn’t take a large leap of imagination to envisage sinking into the ground to find yourself next to a corpse or skeleton. It is not a place to linger and I did not find the grave I was looking for, that of the so-called survivors of the Spanish Armada.
I did see, however, at the entrance near a 14th century chapel, a plaque erected in 2001 in honor of the 200 or so unfortunates from the Spanish Armada who survived shipwrecks and hunger only to be captured and executed. According to Thomas Hardiman’s History of Galway, many were beheaded near the Augustinian monastery on the hill amidst the murmurs and lamentations of the local people of Galway. The plaque, unveiled by the Spanish ambassador, gives thanks to those people for burying the Spaniards.
The Spaniards were unlucky. Not only were there reports from Clare, Connemara and Mayo but at least one vessel could be seen loundering in Galway Bay. The town was in the hands of Sir Richard Bingham, the English president of the province of Connaught. He was bad enough but the Lord Deputy Sir William Fitzwilliam had come up from Dublin and was relentless. He sent soldiers up an down the west coast with an order to seize all boats and cargo, catch and execute all Spaniards and use torture if necessary. He made deals with families in the outlaying county who had seamen as hostages. If they turned them into Galway, past transgressions would be forgiven.
The English authorities had been terrified on hearing that the 130 vessel Armada was headed to attack England and Ireland. They did not know that storms and scarcity of food and drinking water had crippled the force.
This same Sir Richard Bingham was also the bane of Grace O’Malley, Grainne Mhaol, the woman pirate of the 16th century. In 1588 (the time of the Armada) she would have been in her late 50s after living a varied and colorful life. Bingham took control four years earlier with the aim of wiping out all Irish laws and replacing them with an English system which did not acknowledge women’s rights and had a different system of succession and inheritance rights.
In one dispute Grainne was captured and due to be executed but in the end she was set free in return for turning in her son-in-law and all her horses and cattle, numbering over 1000. Bingham continued to make her life a misery with constant raids, often by Bingham’s brother John, and even tried to restrict her access to the sea. This was too much. She wrote a letter of complaint to the Queen of England, Elizabeth 1. When her son and brother were arrested, she took off to London to make a personal visit with the Queen. Elizabeth subsequently ordered Bingham to set her family members free.
The Galway of today. though never quiet, can not compete with the excitement and adventure of those few years in late 16th century. It is sad to think of all those brave characters dead and under the ground but it is perhaps that spirit that makes Galway the city it is today.