le/Columba (521-597). Colmcille founded many important monasteries in Ireland and Britain, including Durrow in the Irish midlands and Iona on an island off the west of Scotland. The claim that he founded Derry is less certain, although that monastery definitely belonged to the federation of Columban churches which looked to Colmcille as their spiritual founder and leader. The monastery of Derry would have been quite small at the beginning. The location of the first church was probably where the beautiful little Church of Ireland Chapel of St Augustine stands today. During the later middle ages the old monastery of Derry evolved into an Augustinian congregation. The church of that monastery survived up to the seventeenth century and was used, as their first place of worship, by the London colonists who came here to build the walled city.
St Columba's 'Long Tower' is another very important Derry church. It was the first Catholic church erected in the city after the momentous events of the reformation and plantation. It is decorated in a brilliant neo-Renaissance style. Built originally in 1784, St Columba's occupies the precincts of another of Derryls famous medieval churches the Tempull Mor or Great Church. This was built in the 1160's at a time when a reasonably large township had grown up around the ancient monastery. The Tempull Mor served as the cathedral of the Diocese of Derry throughout the middle ages. Like the distinctively Irish round tower of the same period (hence 'Long Tower'), which stood nearby, all traces of the Tempull Mor disappeared in the seventeenth century.
Although the Vikings certainly sailed up the loughs and rivers of this area, the monastery of Derry escaped the worst effects of their raids. Derry's medieval heydays were in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the local Mac Lochlainn dynasty moved into the settlement. Under their patronage, Derry prospered: the population grew; the monastery and its school thrived; and prestigious buildings were erected. With the decline of the Mac Lochlainns, some of whom claimed to be kings of all Ireland, Derry also sank into unimportance.
The famous skeleton on the city's coat-of-arms is said to depict the association with another aristocratic family, the Norman de Burgos, who built their great fortress at Greencastle at the entrance to Lough Foyle. They briefly owned part of Derry in the early fourteenth century and may well have been planning to build a new town there. Instead, the settlement declined in significance. When the local O'Doherty family built a castle in Derry for their overlords the O'Donnells, probably around 1500, it may well have been thought that a new beginning was about to be made. The recently-built O'Doherty Tower is a modern attempt to commemorate that medieval association.
Throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I's military leaders tried to conquer the province of Ulster, the only part of Ireland still outside English control. The English first came to Derry in 1566 but the garrison established there at that time lasted only a few years. A second, more successful garrison returned in 1600 during the 'Nine Years War' against the Gaelic O'Neill and O'Donnell earls. On this occasion the English managed to hold on to Derry and, when the war came to an end in 1603, a small trading settlement was established and given the legal status of city. In 1608 this 'infant city' was attacked by Sir Cahir O'Doherty (a previous supporter of the English in Ulster), and the settlement was virtually wiped out.
This attack came about shortly after the so-called 'flight of the earls' when the O'Neill and O'Donnell chieftains, together with their principal supporters, fled to the continent, leaving Gaelic Ulster leaderless. The new king in London, James I, decided on a revolutionary plan designed once and for all to subordinate Ulster. The 'Plantations in Ulster' required the colonising of the area by loyal English and Scottish migrants who were to be predominantly Protestant in religion, unlike the Catholic Irish. One p