In the opening stages of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which began on 23 October 1641, Sir Phelim O'Neill seized Dungannon in one of the earliest acts of the uprising. The rebellion had been planned as a swift coup d'état by Irish gentry and military officers seeking to end English domination of Ireland, restore lands confiscated through the plantations, and secure Irish control over the country's government. Although the rebels failed in their primary objective of taking Dublin Castle, O'Neill rapidly overran most of Ulster, the region most affected by recent land confiscations.
Following the capture of Dungannon, O'Neill issued the Proclamation of Dungannon, in which the rebels set out their aims and proclaimed their loyalty to Charles I. O'Neill claimed they had been ordered to rise by the King, and later produced a forged commission in support of this claim. The town and its castle, formerly the heartland of the O'Neill dynasty and granted to Sir Arthur Chichester after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, thus became the symbolic seat of the new rebellion. Many Royalist Anglo-Irish Catholics responded to the proclamation by joining the uprising, which subsequently spread throughout Ireland.
Having rapidly overrun much of Ulster, Sir Phelim O'Neill used the captured town of Dungannon as the platform from which to issue his famous proclamation, asserting that the rebels acted on the authority of King Charles I himself and producing a forged royal commission in support of this bold and consequential claim.
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