Though not a baron of parliament, he was allowed to sit in the Parliament of Ireland held by St. Leger in Dublin in 1541, and in 1543 he obtained a grant of the lordship of St. Molyns to himself and his heirs, 'without any division or partition to be made therein between his kinsmen', on condition of building himself a house or mansion at Pollmounty, of maintaining the accustomed fairs there, and of exercising a vigilant watch over the pass. In 1544 he furnished nineteen kern (soldiers), under the command of Captain Edmond Mac Cahir Kavanagh, to the Irish contingent employed at the siege of Boulogne; and in the following year he defeated his rival, Gerald Mac Cahir Kavanagh, with great slaughter, in the neighbourhood of Hacketstown.