In 1740, the chief of the Clanaboy O'Neills, and his brothers, settled in Portugal, and the family became Portuguese peers. The chief in 1896, Jorge O'Neill, was interested in his Gaelic heritage; in that year, he wrote to the Ulster King of Arms and the Somerset Herald submitting proofs of his distant cousinhood to the Earls of Tyrone, and the Somerset Herald acknowledged his representation of the "Royal House of O'Neill", and registered his arms as those of O'Neill of Clanaboy. This collateral descent, however, does not give any claim to the Earlship of Tyrone.