The Chief of the Name MacCarthy Reagh

To understand how a traditional Irish Chief is chosen, it is important first to understand that Gaelic Ireland possessed its own native aristocratic and political order, developed independently of the English peerage.

Long before Ireland was governed through English institutions, the island was organized into kingdoms, principalities, lordships, and territories ruled by native dynasties. Families such as the O’Neills, O’Donnells, O’Briens, MacCarthys, O’Sullivans, O’Connors, and many others were not simply surnames in the modern sense. They were ruling houses whose chiefs exercised political, judicial, military, and social authority within Gaelic society.

The roots of this aristocratic tradition reach back well over a thousand years, while the genealogical traditions of many Irish dynasties extend considerably further into the ancient past. This system developed before England had emerged as a unified kingdom and continued to function for centuries alongside—and frequently in resistance to—Norman and English institutions.

In large parts of Ireland, particularly in the west and south, the native Gaelic aristocratic order remained a political reality into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The MacCarthy Reagh dynasty was one of these houses. A branch of the wider MacCarthy dynasty of Munster, the MacCarthy Reaghs ruled the Principality of Carbery in southwest Ireland for centuries. They maintained their own succession, territories, subordinate lordships, military organization, household, and court according to the political traditions of Gaelic Ireland.



Gaelic Succession Was Not English Primogeniture

One of the most important differences between Gaelic and later English aristocratic practice was the manner in which succession took place.

Under English primogeniture, a dignity or estate normally descended automatically to the eldest son. Gaelic Ireland followed a fundamentally different principle, commonly described as tanistry.

The chiefship belonged not merely to an individual but to the ruling kindred as a continuing corporate family. A successor had to belong to the appropriate dynastic bloodline, but hereditary descent alone did not necessarily make the eldest son Chief. The ruling family itself had a role in determining which eligible member of the dynasty would succeed.

Central to this system was the dearbhfhine.

The dearbhfhine was the close dynastic kin-group through which succession to chiefly and royal office was traditionally regulated. Its precise composition developed over the long history of Irish law, but the essential principle remained that the office of Chief was not simply the private property of its last holder. It existed within the wider hereditary structure of the ruling family.

Gaelic succession therefore combined two principles: hereditary eligibility and recognition by the dynasty.

A claimant had to possess the necessary descent, but the appropriate body of dynastic kinsmen also had to recognize him as the person entitled to exercise the chiefship.

This system served an important political purpose. It helped ensure that the leader of a dynasty was capable of exercising authority, prevented the survival of the chiefship from depending exclusively upon a single eldest-son line, and reflected the Gaelic understanding that a Chief represented the wider kindred rather than merely inheriting the personal property of his predecessor.



The Dearbhfhine Survived an Interregnum

This distinction is especially important in understanding the restoration of the MacCarthy Reagh chiefship.

The death of the last actively recognized Chief did not, within the traditional dynastic structure, mean that the dearbhfhine itself ceased to exist.

The chiefship and the dearbhfhine were related but distinct institutions. A Chief was the elected head of the ruling kindred; the dearbhfhine was the hereditary body of dynastic kinsmen from which, and through which, succession was determined.

Accordingly, the absence of a Chief created an interregnum, but it did not extinguish the hereditary family structure capable of ending that interregnum.

The hereditary dearbhfhine of the MacCarthy Reagh house was never formally dissolved. Its constituent lines continued through their descendants even after the old Gaelic political order had ceased to exercise territorial government.

The modern restoration therefore did not involve creating a new electoral body and then using it to manufacture a new chiefship. Rather, the surviving hereditary branches of the historic dearbhfhine were identified and brought together in order to exercise their traditional role in the succession.

Evan Patrick McCarthy was himself a member of that hereditary dearbhfhine, descending in the male line from the MacCarthy Reagh dynasty and, according to the documented and certified pedigree of the House, from Finghin MacCarthy Reagh, the 20th Chief of the Name, through the Drinagh branch.

It was therefore the hereditary dynastic body to which he already belonged that convened to consider the restoration of the chiefship.



The Restoration of the MacCarthy Reagh Chiefship

When the question arose of restoring an active head to the House of MacCarthy Reagh, the chiefship was not treated as something that an individual could simply assume by declaration.

Such a process would have been contrary to the very Gaelic tradition being restored.

Instead, the hereditary dearbhfhine was convened.

The surviving branches entitled to participate were approached as members of the continuing dynastic body, and the question before them was whether the long interregnum should be brought to an end and, if so, which eligible member of the House should succeed as Chief.

On 13 August 2025, the election was conducted. On 14 August 2025, the succession of Evan Patrick McCarthy was unanimously ratified by the participating hereditary dearbhfhine.

He consequently became Chief of the Name MacCarthy Reagh and Head of the House.

His succession therefore rests upon two complementary foundations of the traditional Gaelic system: hereditary descent from the chiefly dynasty and election and recognition by the hereditary dearbhfhine.

This is an important distinction.

The restoration was not an attempt to invent a new title, nor was it based upon the assumption that the chiefship automatically descended according to English primogeniture. It was an effort to preserve the constitutional logic of the older Gaelic institution: the ruling dynasty continued during the vacancy, the hereditary dearbhfhine remained the body competent within that tradition to determine the succession, and that body ultimately elected and recognized its Chief.



What Happened to the Gaelic Chiefs?

The expansion of English authority increasingly brought native Irish institutions into conflict with English law. From the Tudor period onward, the Crown sought to replace Gaelic systems of landholding, government, and succession with English legal forms, including hereditary succession by primogeniture.

This process did not erase the Gaelic aristocracy overnight.

Native chiefs and lords continued to exercise authority throughout much of Ireland during the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth. The old order was progressively dismantled through conquest, confiscation, plantation, the replacement of traditional forms of tenure, and the political upheavals of the seventeenth century.

What ultimately disappeared was principally the political framework within which the Gaelic aristocracy had governed.

The dynasties themselves did not simply vanish.

Their descendants continued. Their genealogies continued. Their identities, histories, traditions, and relationships continued. In some cases, so too did the internal understanding of succession within the families themselves.

This is why it is misleading to understand the Gaelic aristocracy simply as an Irish version of the British peerage. It was an older and fundamentally different social and political system, indigenous to Ireland and rooted in its own law and customs.

A modern Gaelic Chief does not thereby become a government official, acquire sovereignty over Irish territory, or exercise the powers once possessed by medieval rulers. The significance of the office today is dynastic, historical, cultural, and familial. The political world in which the Princes of Carbery once governed no longer exists, nor is the purpose of the modern chiefship to recreate it. Instead, the Chief's office preserves a living connection with an indigenous Irish institution whose history stretches back centuries before the destruction of the Gaelic political order. It serves principally today as an office of stewardship: preserving the history and genealogy of the MacCarthy Reagh clan; encouraging scholarship concerning Gaelic Ireland and Carbery; maintaining traditional offices and ceremonies where they remain meaningful; strengthening relationships among related clans and historic Irish families; and turning the inheritance of an ancient ruling house toward charitable, cultural, and educational purposes.