The ruins of this celebrated mansion seem to justify the opinion expressed by Pynnar, that it was the fairest building he had seen, that is, in the counties of the plantation, for there are no existing remains of any house erected by the English or Scottish undertakers equal to it in architectural style. It received, however, from the second Lord Charlemont, the addition of a large gate-house with towers, and also of a strong keep or donjon. From the ancient maps of Ulster of Queen Elizabeth’s time, preserved in the State Paper Office, Castle-Caulfield appears to have been erected on the site of a more ancient castle or fort, called Fort O’Donallie, from the chief of the ancient Irish family of O’Donghaile or O’Donnelly, whose residence it was, previously to the confiscation of the northern counties; and the small lake in its vicinity was called Lough O’Donallie. This family of O’Donnelly were a distinguished branch of the Kinel-Owen, or northern Hy-Niall race, of which the O’Neills were the chiefs in the sixteenth century; and it was by one of the former that the celebrated Shane or John O’Neill, surnamed the proud, and who also bore the cognomen of Donghailach, or the Donnellian, was fostered, as appears from the following entry in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1531:-- “Ballydonnelly was assaulted by Niall Oge, the son of Art, who was the son of Con O’Neill. He demolished the castle, and having made a prisoner of the son of O’Neill, who was the foster-son of O’Donnelly, he carried him off, together with several horses and the other spoils of the place.” We have felt it necessary to state the preceding facts relative to the ancient history of Ballydonnelly, or Castle-Caulfield, as it is now denominated, because an error of Pynnar’s, in writing the ancient name as Ballydonnell--not Ballydonnelly, as it should have been--has been copied by Lodge, Archdall, and all subsequent writers; some of whom have fallen into a still more serious mistake, by translating the name as “the town of O’Donnell,” thus attributing the ancient possession of the locality to a family to whom it never belonged. That Ballydonnelly was truly, as we have stated, the ancient name of the place, and that it was the patrimonial residence of the chief of that ancient family, previously to the plantation of Ulster, must be sufficiently indicated by the authorities we have already adduced; but if any doubt on this fact could exist, it would be removed by the following passage in an unpublished Irish MS. Journal of the Rebellion of 1641, in our own possession, from which it appears that, as usual with the representatives of the dispossessed Irish families on the breaking out of that unhappy conflict, the chief of the O’Donnellys seized upon the Castle-Caulfield mansion as of right his own:-- “October 1641. Lord Caulfield’s castle in Ballydonnelly (_Baile I Donghoile_) was taken by Patrick Moder (the gloomy) O’Donnelly.”