MacDermot, Brian (d. 1592), lord of Moylurg in north Roscommon and patron of the Annals of Loch Cé, was the son of Ruaidhri MacDermot (d. 1568), lord of Moylurg, and Sadhb, daughter of Richard Óg Mac William, lord of Clanricard. Brian's father, Ruaidhri, was inaugurated as MacDermot in 1549 at a time when the lordship of Moylurg was riven with family feuding.
Throughout the 1550s and early 1560s, Brian was regularly recorded in the annals assisting his father's efforts to consolidate his control in Moylurg and to assert his authority over neighbouring lordships in east Mayo and south Sligo. While Ruaidhri was successful in the latter, his attempts at the former were less impressive and he failed to secure the succession of his son Brian as his heir. Ruaidhri's death in 1568 coincided with the increased interest of the Tudor state in Connacht, and Brian seized the opportunity to win crown support for his side in the family feud. The first president of Connacht, Sir Edward Fitton (qv) (1527–79), clashed with the chief of the MacDermots but appointed Brian as seneschal of Moylurg in 1571 in an attempt to weaken the ruling MacDermot's control. Brian maintained his cooperative attitude with Fitton's successor, Sir Nicholas Malby (qv), and in 1578 he attended a meeting of the Great Council in Dublin along with another crown protégé from north Connacht, Sir Donal O'Connor Sligo (qv). He also signed the Composition Book of Connacht and was present at the 1585 parliament in Dublin before he was finally inaugurated as chief of the MacDermots later in the same year. Brian died in 1592 just before the outbreak of serious military conflict in the north-west, but in the last two years of his life his relations with Tudor administrators were increasingly under strain. In 1590 he was temporarily imprisoned by John Bingham, the sheriff of Sligo, who suspected him of support for the attacks of Brian O'Rourke (qv) on the Bingham strongholds in north Connacht.
Brian MacDermot's political career had much in common with that of other leaders of Gaelic Ireland in the late sixteenth century, and he shared with many of them a pragmatic recognition of the local and family advantages to be gained from cooperation with crown representatives. The most interesting aspect of his life, however, was not his efforts to survive politically but his patronage of the annals now known as the Annals of Loch Cé. This important compilation of records was copied for him in the 1580s. In addition, he wrote some of the entries in the manuscript in his own hand. While other Gaelic lords and their wives offered patronage to annalists and poets, it was very unusual for a chieftain to pen entries himself. MacDermot was innovative not just in his contribution to the Annals of Loch Cé but also in the unusually long and personal obits that he wrote for his father (1568) and for his friend and brother-in-law Calbhach O'Connor Sligo (1581).
MacDermot's education and interest in preserving and continuing the annalistic record for his region may have had its origins in the literary patronage of his parents, who hosted a number of festivals for bards and other scholars in the family home in Carrick MacDermot on Lough Kee in the 1540s. Both he and his father also held the title of ‘superior’ (probably involving temporal rather than spiritual responsibilities) of the premonstratensian monastery on Lough Kee, a position that may also have enhanced their awareness of the manuscripts associated with the monastery.
MacDermot's contacts with the English administration encouraged other innovations. He refashioned the castle at Carrick MacDermot in the 1570s, making it sufficiently impressive for the third president of Connacht, Sir Richard Bingham (qv), to stay there in 1585. Like other Gaelic lords, he also imported a range of items from the continent, including paper and wine.
MacDermot was married to Maedhbh O'Connor Sligo, with whose family he was closely allied throughout his life. Their son, Brian Óg MacDermot (d. 1637), inherited his father's lands but did not succeed to the position of head of the MacDermots until 1603. He received a grant of most of his father's property in 1617. Brian Óg seems also to have continued the family literary tradition. He retained custody of the manuscript of the Annals of Loch Cé compiled for his father, and his annalistic obit noted his patronage of poets and scholars. He is also credited with a brief intervention in the early seventeenth century ‘Iomarbhágh na bhfileadh’ (Contention of the bards). Brian Óg married Mary, a daughter of the earl of Clanricard, and died in January 1637 in Athlone, where he was attending a meeting in connection with the proposed plantation of Connacht.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).