THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND

A HISTORY FOR THE TIMES

BY

JAMES GODKIN

AUTHOR OF 'IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES'

LATE IRISH CORRESPONDENT OF 'THE TIMES'

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1870

LONDON: PRINTED BY

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

AND PARLIAMENT STREET

PREFACE.

It would be difficult to name any subject so much discussed during the last half century as 'the condition of Ireland.' There was an endless diversity of opinion; but in one thing all writers and speakers agreed: the condition was morbid. Ireland was always sick, always under medical treatment, always subject to enquiries as to the nature of her maladies, and the remedies likely to effect a cure. The royal commissions and parliamentary committees that sat upon her case were innumerable, and their reports would fill a library. Still the nature of the disease, or the complication of diseases, was a mystery. Sundry 'boons' were prescribed, by way of experiment; but, though recommended as perfect cures, they did the patient no good. She was either very low and weak, or so dangerously strong and violent that she had to be put under restraint. Whenever this crisis arrived, she arrested the special attention of the state doctors. Consultations were held, and it was solemnly determined that something should be done. Another effort should be made to discover the fons malorum, and dry it up if possible.

A diseased nation, subject to paroxysms of insanity, and requiring 30,000 keepers, was a dangerous neighbour, as well as a serious financial burden. Yet many contended that all such attempts were useless. It was like trying different kinds of soap to whiten the skin of a negro. The patient was incurable. Her ailment was nothing but natural perversity, aggravated by religious delusions; and the root of her disorder could never be known till she was subjected to a post mortem examination, for which it was hoped emigration, and the help of improving landlords, would soon afford an opportunity. In the meantime, the strait waistcoat must be put on, to keep the patient from doing mischief.

But at length a great physician arose, who declared that this state of things should not continue; the honour, if not the safety, of England demanded that the treatment should be reversed. Mr. Gladstone understands the case of Ireland, and he has courage to apply the proper remedies. Yet the British public do not understand it so well; and he will need all the force of public opinion to sustain him and his cabinet in the work of national regeneration which they have undertaken. It is not enough for a good physician to examine the symptoms of his patient. He must have a full and faithful history of the case. He must know how the disease originated, and how it was treated. If injuries were inflicted, he must know under what circumstances, how they affected the nervous system, and whether there may not be surrounding influences which prevent the restoration of health, or some nuisance that poisons the atmosphere.

Such a history of the case of Ireland the author has endeavoured to give in the following pages. It it is no perfunctory service. He resolved to do it years ago, when he finished his work on the Irish Church Establishment, and it has been delayed only in consequence of illness and other engagements. He does not boast of any extraordinary qualifications for the work. But he claims the advantage of having studied the subject long and earnestly, as one in which he has been interested from his youth. He has written the history of the country more or less fully three times. During his thirty years' connexion with the press, it has been his duty to examine and discuss everything that appeared before the public upon Irish questions, and it has always been his habit to bring the light of history to bear upon the topics of the day. Twenty years ago he was an active member of the Irish Tenant League, which held great county meetings in most parts of the island; and was enthusiastically supported by the tenant farmers, adopting resolutions and petitions on the land question almost identical with those passed by similar meetings at the present time. Then Mr. Sharman Crawford was the only landlord who joined in the movement; now many of the largest proprietors take their stand on the tenant-right platform. And after a generation of sectarian division and religious dissension in Ulster, stimulated by the landed gentry, for political purposes, the Catholic priests and the Presbyterian clergy have again united to advocate the demands of the people for the legal protection of their industry and their property.

There is scarcely a county in Ireland which the author of this volume has not traversed more than once, having always an eye to the condition of the population, their mode of living, and the relations of the different classes. During the past year, as special commissioner of the Irish Times, he went through the greater part of Ulster, and portions of the south, in order to ascertain the feelings of the farmers and the working classes, on the great question which is about to engage the attention of Parliament.

The result of his historical studies and personal enquiries is this:—All the maladies of Ireland, which perplex statesmen and economists, have arisen from injuries inflicted by England in the wars which she waged to get possession of the Irish land. Ireland has been irreconcilable, not because she was conquered by England, not even because she was persecuted, but because she was robbed of her inheritance. If England had done everything she has done against the Irish nation, omitting the confiscations, the past would have been forgotten and condoned long ago, and the two nations would have been one people. Even the religious wars resolve themselves into efforts to retain the land, or to recover the forfeited estates. And the banished chiefs never could have rallied the nation to arms, as they so often did against overwhelming odds, if the people had not been involved in the ruin of their lords. All that is really important in the history of the country for the last three centuries is, the fighting of the two nations for the possession of the soil. The Reformation was in reality nothing but a special form of the land war. The oath of supremacy was simply a lever for evicting the owners of the land. The process was simple. The king demanded spiritual allegiance; refusal was high treason; the punishment of high treason was forfeiture of estates, with death or banishment to the recusants. Any other law they might have obeyed, and retained their inheritance. This law fixed its iron grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible, without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable. Hence Protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an instrument of spoliation.

The agrarian wars were kept up from generation to generation, Ireland always making desperate efforts to get back her inheritance, but always crushed to the earth, a victim of famine and the sword, by the power of England.

The history of these wars, then, is the history of the case of the Irish patient. Its main facts are embodied in the general history of the country. But they have recently been brought out more distinctly by authors who have devoted years to the examination of the original state papers, in which the actors themselves described their exploits and recorded their motives and feelings with startling frankness. When a task of this kind has been performed by a capable and conscientious historian, it would be a work of supererogation for another enquirer to undergo the wearisome toil, even if he could. I have, therefore, for the purpose of my argument, freely availed myself of the materials given to the public by Mr. Froude, the Rev. C.P. Meehan, and Mr. Prendergast, not, however, without asking their permission, which was in each case most readily and kindly granted.

The ancient state of Ireland, and especially of Ulster, is so little known in England, that I was glad to have the facts vouched for by so high an authority as Mr. Froude, and a writer so full of the instinctive pride of the dominant nation; the more so as I have often been obliged to dissent from his views, and to appeal against his judgments. Beguiled by the beauty of his descriptions, I am afraid I have drawn too largely on his pages, in proving and illustrating my case; but I feel confident that no one will read these extracts without more eagerly desiring to possess the volumes of his great work from which they are taken.

I have similar acknowledgments to make to Father Meehan and Mr. Prendergast, both of whom are preparing new editions of their most valuable works. The royal charters, and other documents connected with the Plantation of Ulster, are printed in the 'Concise View of the Irish Society,' compiled from their records, and published by their authority in 1832. Whenever I have been indebted to other writers, I have acknowledged my obligation in the course of the work. In preparing it, I have had but one object constantly in view: to present to the public a careful collection and an impartial statement of facts on the state of Ireland, for the right government of which the British people are now more than ever responsible. I shall be thankful if my labours should contribute in any measure, however humble, to the new conquest of Ireland 'by justice' of which Mr. Bright has spoken. His language is suggestive. It is late (happily not 'too late') to commence the reign of justice. But the nation is not to be despised which requires nothing more than that to win its heart, while its spirit could not be conquered by centuries of injustice. Nor should it be forgotten by the people of England that some atonement is due for past wrongs, not the least of which is the vilification and distrust from which the Irish people have suffered so much. 'The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?' Some manifestation of Christian magnanimity just now would greatly help the work of national reconciliation. The time is favourable. The Government enjoys the prestige of an unparalleled success. The only Prime Minister that ever dared to do full justice to Ireland, is the most powerful that England has had for nearly a century. He has in his Cabinet the only Chief Secretary of Ireland that ever thoroughly sympathised with the nation, not excepting Lord Morpeth; the great tribune of the English people, who has been one of the most eloquent advocates of Ireland; an Ex-Viceroy who has pronounced it felony for the Irish landlords to avail themselves of their legal rights, although he put down a rebellion which that felony mainly provoked; another Ex-Governor, who was one of the most earnest and conscientious that ever filled the viceregal throne, and who returned to Parliament to be one of the ablest champions of the country he had ruled so well; not to mention other members of commanding ability, who are solemnly pledged to the policy of justice. In these facts there is great promise. He understands little of 'the signs of the times,' who does not see the dangers that hang on the non-fulfilment of this promise.

J.G.

LONDON: January 20, 1870.

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTION [1]

II. THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS [29]

III. SHANE O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER [33]

IV. EXTERMINATING WARS [71]

V. AN IRISH CRUSADE [88]

VI. THE LAST OF THE IRISH PRINCES [97]

VII. GOVERNMENT APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE [114]

VIII. THE CASE OF THE FUGITIVE EARLS [120]

IX. THE CONFISCATION OF ULSTER [138]

X. THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER [152]

XI. THE REBELLION OF 1641 [185]

XII. THE PURITAN PLANTATION [215]

XIII. THE PENAL CODE. A NEW SYSTEM OF LAND WAR [234]

XIV. ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [248]

XV. POVERTY AND COERCION [271]

XVI. THE FAMINE [289]

XVII. TENANT-RIGHT IN ULSTER [303]

XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN [313]

XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM [328]

XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH [346]

XXI. FARNEY—MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES' [356]

XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY [381]

XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING—GEASHILL [387]

XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES [401]

XXV. CONCLUSION—AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN [424]

THE

LAND-WAR IN IRELAND.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

As the hour approaches when the legislature must deal with the Irish Land question, and settle it, like the Irish Church question, once for all, attempts are redoubled to frighten the public with the difficulties of the task. The alarmists conjure up gigantic apparitions more formidable than those which encountered Bunyan's Pilgrim. Monstrous figures frown along the gloomy avenue that, leads up to the Egyptian temple in which the divinity, PROPERTY, dwells in mysterious darkness. To enter the sanctuary, we are solemnly assured, requires all the cardinal virtues in their highest state of development—the firmest faith, the most vivid hope, and the charity that never faileth. But this is not the only country that has had a land question to settle. Almost every nation in Europe has done for itself what England is now palled upon to do for Ireland. In fact, it is a necessary process in the transition from feudalism to constitutional self-government. Feudalism gave the land to a few whom it made princes and lords, having forcibly taken it from the many, whom it made subjects and serfs. The land is the natural basis of society. The Normans made it the artificial basis of a class. Society in nearly every other country has reverted back to its original foundations, and so remains firm and strong without dangerous rents or fissures. No doubt, the operation is difficult and critical. But what has been done once may be done again; and as it was England that kept Irish society so long rocking on its smaller end, it is her duty now to lend all her strength to help to seat it on its own broad foundations. Giving up the Viceroy's dreams that the glorious mission of Ireland was to be a kitchen garden, a dairy, a larder for England, we must come frankly to the conclusion that the national life of the Irish people, without distinction of creed or party, increases in vigour with their intelligence, and is now invincible. Let the imperial legislature put an end for ever to such an unnatural state of things—thus only can they secure the harmonious working and cordial Union of the two nations united together in one State—thus only can they insure for the landlords themselves all the power and all the influence that can be retained by them in consistency with the industrial rights and political freedom of the cultivators of the soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element.

It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors, even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr. Lingard, 'the Saxon was no better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian. They refused to return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof. The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted defilement from his lips.'

It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong. The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which he administered so unmercifully to the Briton. His Teutonic blood saved him from no humiliation or insult. The Normans seized all the lands, all the castles, all the pleasant mansions, all the churches and monasteries. Even the Saxon saints were flung down out of their shrines and trampled in the dust under the iron heel of the Christian conqueror. Everything Saxon was vile, and the word 'Englishry' implied as much contempt and scorn as the word 'Irishry' in a later age. In fact, the subjugated Saxons gradually became infected with all the vices and addicted to all the social disorders that prevailed among the Irish in the same age; only in Ireland the anarchy endured much longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and antagonistic. Perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading effects of conquest on the noble Saxon race to be found in history, is the language in which Giraldus Cambrensis, the reviler of the Irish Celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the Welsh. 'Who dare,' he says, 'compare the English, the most degraded of all races under heaven, with the Welsh? In their own country they are the serfs, the veriest slaves of the Normans. In ours whom else have we for our herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers, skinners, cleaners of our dog kennels, ay, even of our privies, but Englishmen? Not to mention their original treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them they turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are to this day given to treachery and murder.' The lying Saxon was, according to this authority, a proverbial expression.

The Saxon writers lamented their miserable subjection in a monotonous wail for many generations. So late as the seventeenth century an English author speaks in terms of compassion of the disinherited and despoiled families who had sunk into the condition of artisans, peasants, and paupers. 'This,' says M. Thierry, 'is the last sorrowful glance cast back through the mist of ages on that great event which established in England a race of kings, nobles, and warriors of foreign extraction. The reader must figure to himself, not a mere change of political rule, not the triumph of one of two competitors, but the intrusion of a nation into the bosom of another people which it came to destroy, and the scattered fragments of which it retained as an integral portion of the new system of society, in the status merely of personal property, or, to use the stronger language of records and deeds, a clothing of the soil. He must not picture to himself on the one hand the king and despot; on the other simply his subjects, high and low, rich and poor, all inhabiting England, and consequently all English. He must bear in mind that there were two distinct nations—the old Anglo-Saxon race and the Norman invaders, dwelling intermingled on the same soil; or, rather, he might contemplate two countries—the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy and exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax—the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles—the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles—that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and envy—not the envy of the poor at the sight of opulence and men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, although justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but entertain on looking upon the spoilers. Lastly, to complete the picture, these two countries are in some sort interwoven with each other—they meet at every point, and yet they are more distinct, more completely separated, than if the ocean rolled between them.'

Does not this picture look very like Ireland? To make it more like, let us imagine that the Norman king had lived in Paris, and kept a viceroy in London—that the English parliament were subordinate to the French parliament, composed exclusively of Normans, and governed by Norman undertakers for the benefit of the dominant State—that the whole of the English land was held by ten thousand Norman proprietors, many of them absentees—that all the offices of the government, in every department, were in the hands of Normans—that, differing in religion with the English nation, the French, being only a tenth of the population, had got possession of all the national churches and church property, while the poor natives supported a numerous hierarchy by voluntary contributions—that the Anglo-Norman parliament was bribed and coerced to abolish itself, forming a union of England with France, in which the English members were as one to six. Imagine that in consequence of rebellions the land of England had been confiscated three or four times, after desolating wars and famines, so that all the native proprietors were expelled, and the land was parcelled out to French soldiers and adventurers on condition that the foreign 'planters' should assist in keeping down 'the mere English' by force of arms. Imagine that the English, being crushed by a cruel penal code for a century, were allowed to reoccupy the soil as mere tenants-at-will, under the absolute power of their French landlords. If all this be imagined by English legislators and English writers, they will be better able to understand the Irish land question, and to comprehend the nature of 'Irish difficulties,' as well as the justice of feeble, insincere, and baffled statesmen in casting the blame of Irish misery and disorder on the unruly and barbarous nature of Irishmen. They will recollect that the aristocracy of Ireland are the high-spirited descendants of conquerors, with the instinct of conquest still in their blood. The parliament which enacted the Irish land laws was a parliament composed almost exclusively of men of this dominant race. They made all political power dependent on the ownership of land, thus creating for themselves a monopoly which it is not in human nature to surrender without a struggle.

The possession of this monopoly, however, fully accounts for two things—the difficulty which the landlords feel in admitting the justice of the tenant's claims for the legal recognition of the value which his labour has added to the soil, and the extreme repugnance with which they regard any legislation on the subject. Besides, the want of sympathy with the people, of earnestness and courage in meeting the realities of the case, is conspicuous in all attempts of the kind during the last half-century. Those attempts have been evasive, feeble, abortive—concessions to the demand that something must be done, but so managed that nothing should be done to weaken the power of the eight thousand proprietors over the mass of the nation dependent on the land for their existence. Hence has arisen a great amount of jealousy, distrust, and irritability in the landlord class towards the tenantry and their advocates.

The Irish race, to adopt Thierry's language, are full of 'malignant envy' towards the lords of the soil; not because they are rich, but because they have the people so completely in their power, so entirely at their mercy for all that man holds most dear. The tenants feel bitterly when they think that they have no legal right to live on their native land. They have read the history of our dreadful civil wars, famines, and confiscations. They know that by the old law of Ireland, and by custom from times far beyond the reach of authentic history, the clans and tribes of the Celtic people occupied certain districts with which their names are still associated, and that the land was inalienably theirs. Rent or tribute they paid, indeed, to their princes, and if they failed the chiefs came with armed followers and helped themselves, driving away cows, sheep, and horses sufficient to meet their demand, or more if they were unscrupulous, which was 'distress' with a vengeance. But the eviction of the people even for non-payment of rent, and putting other people in their place, were things never heard of among the Irish under their own rulers. The chief had his own mensal lands, as well as his tribute, and these he might forfeit. But as the clansmen could not control his acts, they could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations.

History, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the government in the reign of James I.—and James himself in repeated proclamations—assured the people who occupied the lands of O'Neill and O'Donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected in all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they did. Yet they were nearly all removed to make way for the English and Scotch settlers.

Thus, historical investigators have been digging around the foundations of Irish landlordism. They declare that those foundations were cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open from which that blood issued so profusely. The facts of the conquest and confiscation were hinted at by the Devon Commissioners as accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the Irish land question, and writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating influences still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and fostering mutual distrust between them. But the time for evasion and timidity has passed. We must now honestly and courageously face the stern realities of this case. Among these realities is a firm conviction in the minds of many landlords that they are in no sense trustees for the community, but that they have an absolute power over their estates—that they can, if they like, strip the land clean of its human clothing, and clothe it with sheep or cattle instead, or lay it bare and desolate, let it lapse into a wilderness, or sow it with salt. That is in reality the terrific power secured to them by the present land code, to be executed through the Queen's writ and by the Queen's troops—a power which could not stand a day if England did not sustain it by overwhelming military force.

Another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate conviction in the tenants' mind that the absolute power of the landlord was originally a usurpation effected by the sword. Right or wrong, they believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation of the natural rights of the people whom Providence placed in this country. With bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any divine right to root a nation out of its own land. Painful as this state of feeling is, there is no use in denying that it exists. Here, then, is the deep radical difference that is to be removed. Here are the two conflicting forces which are to be reconciled. This is the real Irish land question. All other points are minor and of easy adjustment. The people say, and, I believe, sincerely, that they are willing to pay a fair rent, according to a public valuation—not a rent imposed arbitrarily by one of the interested parties, which might be raised so as to ruin the occupier. The feelings of these two parties often clash so violently, there is such instinctive distrust between them, the peace and prosperity of the country depend so much on their coming to terms and putting an end to their long-standing feud, that it is still more imperatively necessary than in the Church question, that a third party, independent, impartial, and authoritative, should intervene and heal the breach.

There was one phrase constantly ringing in the ears of the Devon Commissioners, and now, after nearly a generation has passed away, it is ringing in the ears of the nation louder than ever—'the want of tenure.' All the evidence went to show that the want of security paralysed industry and impeded social progress. It seems strange that any evidence should be thought necesary to prove that a man will not sow if he does not hope to reap, and that he will not build houses for strangers to enjoy. This would be taken as an axiom anywhere out of Ireland. Of all the people in Europe, the Irish have suffered most from the oppression of those who, from age to age, had power in the country. Whoever fought or conquered, they were always the victims; and it is a singular fact that their sufferings are scarcely ever noticed by the contemporary annalists, even when those annalists were ecclesiastics. The extent to which they were slaughtered in the perpetual wars between the native chiefs, and in the wars between those chiefs and the English, is something awful to contemplate, not to speak of the wholesale destruction of life by the famines which those wars entailed. On several occasions the Celtic race seemed very nearly extinct. The penal code, with all its malign influence, had one good effect. It subdued to a great extent the fighting propensities of the people, and fused the clans into one nation, purified by suffering. Since that time, in spite of occasional visitations of calamity, they have been steadily rising in the social scale, and they are now better off than ever they were in their whole history. When we review the stages by which they have risen, we cannot but feel at times grieved and indignant at the opportunities for tranquillising and enriching the country which were lost through the ignorance, apathy, bigotry, and selfishness of the legislature. There was no end of commissions and select committees to inquire into the condition of the agricultural population, whenever Parliament was roused by the prevalence of agrarian outrages. They reported, and there the matter ended. There were always insuperable difficulties when the natives were to be put in a better position. Between 1810 and 1814, for example, a commission reported four times on the condition of the Irish bogs. They expressed their entire conviction of the practicability of cultivating with profit an immense extent of land lying waste. In 1819, in 1823, in 1826, and in 1830, select committees inquired into and reported on drainage, reclamation of bogs and marshes, on roads, fisheries, emigration, and other schemes for giving employment to the redundant population that had been encouraged to increase and multiply in the most reckless manner, while 'war prices' were obtained for agricultural produce, and the votes of the forty-shilling freeholders were wanted by the landlords. When, by the Emancipation Act in 1829, the forty-shilling franchise was abolished, the peasant lost his political value. After the war, when the price of corn fell very low, and, consequently, tillage gave place to grazing, labourers became to the middleman an encumbrance and a nuisance that must be cleared off the land, just as weeds are plucked up and flung out to wither on the highway. Then came Lord Devon's Land Commission, which inquired on the eve of the potato failure and the great famine. The Irish population was now at its highest figure—between eight and nine millions. Yet, though there had been three bad seasons, it was clearly proved at that time that by measures which a wise and willing legislature would have promptly passed, the whole surplus population could have been profitably employed.

In this great land controversy, on which side lies the truth? Is it the fault of the people, or the fault of the law, that the country is but half cultivated, while the best of the peasantry are emigrating with hostile feelings and purposes of vengeance towards England? As to the landlords, as a class, they use their powers with as much moderation and mercy as any other class of men in any country ever used power so vast and so little restrained. The best and most indulgent landlords, the most genial and generous, are unquestionably the old nobility, the descendants of the Normans and Saxons, those very conquerors of whom we have heard so much. The worst, the most harsh and exacting, are those who have purchased under the Landed Estates Court—strangers to the people, who think only of the percentage on their capital. We had heard much of the necessity of capital to develope the resources of the land. The capital came, but the development consists in turning tillage lands into pasture, clearing out the labouring population and sending them to the poorhouse, or shipping them off at a few pounds per head to keep down the rates. And yet is it not possible to set all our peasantry to work at the profitable cultivation of their native land? Is it not possible to establish by law what many landlords act upon as the rule of their estates—namely, the principle that no man is to be evicted so long as he pays a fair rent, and the other principle, that whenever he fails, he is entitled to the market value by public sale of all the property in his holding beyond that fair rent? The hereditary principle, rightly cherished among the landlords, so conservative in its influence, ought to be equally encouraged among the tenants. The man of industry, as well as the man of rank, should be able to feel that he is providing for his children, that his farm is at once a bank and an insurance office, in which all his minute daily deposits of toil and care and skill will be safe and productive. This is the way to enrich and strengthen the State, and to multiply guarantees against revolution—not by consolidation of farms and the abandonment of tillage, not by degrading small holders into day labourers, levelling the cottages and filling the workhouses.

If the legislature were guided by the spirit that animates Lord Erne in his dealings with his tenantry, the land question would soon be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. 'I think,' said his lordship, 'as far as possible, every tenant on my estate may call his farm his castle, as long as he conducts himself honestly, quietly, and industriously; and, should he wish to leave in order to find a better landlord, I allow him to sell his farm, provided he pleases me in a tenant. Therefore, if a man lays out money on his farm judiciously, he is certain to receive back the money, should he wish to go elsewhere.' He mentioned three cases of sale which occurred last year. One tenant sold a farm of seventy acres in bad order for 570l., another thirty acres for 300l., and a third the same number of acres in worse condition for 200l. The landlord lost nothing by these changes. His rent was paid up, and in each case he got a good tenant for a bad one. Lord Erne is a just man, and puts on no more than a fair rent. But all landlords are not just, as all tenants are not honest. Even where tenant-right is admitted in name, it is obvious that the rent may be raised so high as to make the farm worth nothing in the market. To give to the tenant throughout the country generally the pleasant feeling that his farm is his castle, which he can make worth more money every day he rises, there must be a public letting valuation, and this the State could easily provide. And then there should be the right of sale to the highest solvent bidder.

This might be one way of securing permanent tenure, or stimulating the industry and sustaining the thrift of the farmer. But the nature of the different tenures, and the effect of each in bracing up or relaxing the nerves of industry, will be the object of deliberation with the Government and the legislature. It is said that, in the hands of small farmers, proprietorship leads to endless subdivision; that long leases generally cause bad husbandry; that tenants-at-will often feel themselves more secure and safe than a contract could make them; that families have lived on the same farm for generations without a scrape of a pen except the receipt for rent. On the other hand, there is the general cry of 'want of tenure;' there is the custom of serving notices to quit, sometimes for other reasons than non-payment of rent; there are occasional barbarities in the levelling of villages, and dragging the aged and the sick from the old roof-tree, the parting from which rends their heart-strings; and, above all, there is the feeling among the peasantry which makes them look without horror on the murder of a landlord or an agent who was a kind and benevolent neighbour; and, lastly, the paramount consideration for the legislature, that a large portion of the people are disaffected to the State, and ready to join its enemies, and this almost solely on account of the state of the law relating to land. Hence the necessity of settling the question as speedily as possible, and the duty of all who have the means to contribute something towards that most desirable consummation, which seems to be all that is wanted to make Irishmen of every class work together earnestly for the welfare of their country. It is admitted that no class of men in the world has improved more than the Irish landlords during the last twenty years. Let the legislature restore confidence between them and the people by taking away all ground for the suspicion that they wish to extirpate the Celtic race.

Nor was this suspicion without cause, as the following history will too clearly prove. A very able English writer has said: 'The policy of all the successive swarms of settlers was to extirpate the native Celtic race, but every effort made to break up the old framework of society failed, for the new-comers soon became blended with and undistinguishable from the mass of the people—being obliged to ally themselves with the native chieftains, rather than live hemmed in by a fiery ring of angry septs and exposed to perpetual war with everything around them. Merged in the great Celtic mass, they adopted Irish manners and names, yet proscribed and insulted the native inhabitants as an inferior race. Everything liberal towards them is intercepted in its progress.

'The past history of Ulster is but a portion of Scottish history inserted into that of Ireland—a stone in the Irish mosaic of an entirely different quality and colour from the pieces that surround it.

'Thus it came to pass that, through the confiscation of their lands and the proscription of their religion, popery was worked by a most vehement process into the blood and brain of the Irish nation.'

It has been often said that the Irish must be an inferior race, since they allowed themselves to be subjugated by some thousands of English invaders. But it should be recollected, first, that the conquest, commenced by Henry II. in the twelfth century, was not completed till the seventeenth century, when the King's writ ran for the first time through the province of Ulster, the ancient kingdom of the O'Neills; in the second place, the weakness of the Celtic communities was not so much the fault of the men as of their institutions, brought with them from the East and clung to with wonderful tenacity. So long as they had boundless territory for their flocks and herds, and could always move on 'to pastures new,' they increased and multiplied, and allowed the sword and the battle-axe to rest, unless when a newly elected chief found it necessary to give his followers 'a hosting'—which means an expedition for plunder. Down to the seventeenth century, after five hundred years' contact with the Teutonic race, they were essentially the same people as they were when the ancient Greeks and Romans knew them. They are thus described by Dr. Mommsen in his 'History of Rome:'—'Such qualities—those of good soldiers and of bad citizens—explain the historical fact that the Celts have shaken all States and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove, or, in other words, to march, preferring movable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms as a system of organised pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and with such success that even the Roman historian, Sallust, acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. They were the true 'soldiers of fortune' of antiquity, as pictures and descriptions represent them, with big but sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long moustaches—quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the upper lip—in the variegated embroidered dresses which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off, with a broad gold ring round their neck, wearing no helmets and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance, all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation—even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every free man was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted. War-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and Hellenes in the earliest times. Many a trait reminds us of the chivalry of the middle ages, particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accustomed in war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures; in peace also they fought with each other in splendid equipments, as for life or death. After such feats carousals followed in due course. In this way they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier life, constantly occupied in fighting and in their so-called feats of heroism. They were dispersed from Ireland and Spain to Asia Minor, but all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring, and they nowhere created a great state or developed a distinctive culture of their own.' Such were the people who once almost terminated the existence of Rome, and were afterwards with difficulty repulsed from Greece, who became masters of the most fertile part of Italy and of a fair province in the heart of Asia Minor, who, after their Italian province had been subdued, inflicted disastrous blows on successive Roman generals, and were only at last subjugated by Cæsar himself in nine critical and sometimes most dangerous campaigns, B.C. 51.

Niebuhr observes that at that time the form of government was everywhere an hereditary monarchy, which, when Cæsar went into Gaul, had been swallowed up, as had the authority of the Senate, in the anarchy of the nobles. Their freedom was lawlessness; an inherent incapacity of living under the dominion of laws distinguishes them as barbarians from the Greeks and Italians. As individuals had to procure the protection of some magnate in order to live in safety, so the weaker tribes took shelter under the patronage of a more powerful one. For they were a disjointed multitude; and when any people had in this manner acquired an extensive sovereignty, they exercised it arbitrarily until its abuses became intolerable, or their subjects were urged by blind hatred of their power to fall off from them, and gather round some new centre. The sole bond of union was the Druidical hierarchy which, at least in Cæsar's time, was common to both nations. Both of them paid obedience to its tribunal, which administered justice once a year—an institution which probably was not introduced till long after the age of migrations, when the expulsion of the vanquished had ceased to be regarded as the end of war, and which must have been fostered by the constant growth of lawlessness in particular states—being upheld by the ban, which excluded the contumacious from all intercourse in divine worship and in daily life with the faithful. The huge bodies, wild features, and long shaggy hair of the men, gave a ghastliness to their aspect. This, along with their fierce courage, their countless numbers, and the noise made by an enormous multitude of horns and trumpets, struck the armies arrayed against them with fear and amazement. If these, however, did not allow their terror to overpower them, the want of order, discipline, and perseverance would often enable an inferior number to vanquish a vast host of the barbarians. Besides, they were but ill equipped. Few of them wore any armour; their narrow shields, which were of the same height with their bodies, were weak and clumsy; they rushed upon their enemies with broad thin battle-swords of bad steel, which the first blow upon iron often notched and rendered useless. Like true savages, they destroyed the inhabitants, the towns, and the agriculture of the countries they conquered. They cut off the heads of the slain, and tied them by the hair to the manes of their horses. If a skull belonged to a person of rank, they nailed it up in their houses and preserved it as an heirloom for their posterity, as the nobles in rude ages do stag-horns. Towns were rare amongst them; the houses and the villages, which were very numerous, were mean, the furniture wretched—a heap of straw covered with skins served both for a bed and a seat. They did not cultivate corn save for a very limited consumption, for the main part of their food was the milk and the flesh of their cattle. These formed their wealth. Gold, too, they had in abundance, derived partly from the sandy beds of their rivers, partly from some mines which these had led them to discover. It was worn in ornaments by every Gaul of rank. In battle he bore gold chains on his arms and heavy gold collars round his neck, even when the upper part of his body was in other respects quite naked. For they often threw off their parti-coloured chequered cloaks, which shone with all the hues of the rainbow, like the picturesque dress of their kinspeople the Highlanders, who have laid aside the trousers of the ancient Gauls. Their duels and gross revels are an image of the rudest part of the middle ages. Their debauches were mostly committed with beer and mead; for vines and all the plants of southern regions were as yet total strangers to the north of the Alps, where the climate in those ages was extremely severe; so that wine was rare, though of all the commodities imported it was the most greedily bought up.

Ulster was known in ancient times as one of the five Irish 'kingdoms,' and remained unconquered by the English till the reign of James I., when the last prince of the great house of O'Neill, then Earl of Tyrone, fled to the Continent in company with O'Donel, Earl of Tyrconnel, head of another very ancient sept. Up to that period the men of Ulster proudly regarded themselves as 'Irish of the Irish and Catholic of the Catholics.' The inhabitants were of mixed blood, but, as in the other provinces of the island, the great mass of the people, as well as the ruling classes, were of Celtic origin. Those whom ethnologists still recognise as aborigines, in parts of Connaught and in some mountainous regions, an inferior race, are said to be the descendants of the Firbolgs, or Belgae, who formed the third immigration. They were followed and subdued by the Tuatha de Danans—men famed for their gigantic power and supernatural skill—a race of demigods, who still live in the national superstitions. The last of the ancient invasions was by the Gael or Celt, known as the Milesians and Scoti. The institutions and customs of this people were established over the whole island, and were so deeply rooted in the soil that their remnants to this day present the greatest obstacles to the settlement of the land question according to the English model, and on the principles of political economy, which run directly counter to Irish instincts. It is truly wonderful how distinctly the present descendants of this race preserve the leading features of their primitive character. In France and England the Celtic character was moulded by the power and discipline of the Roman Empire. To Ireland this modifying influence never extended; and we find the Ulster chiefs who fought for their territories with English viceroys 280 years ago very little different from the men who followed Brennus to the sack of Home, and encountered the legions of Julius Cæsar on the plains of Gaul.

Mr. Prendergast observes, in the introduction to his 'Cromwellian Settlement' that when the companions of Strongbow landed in the reign of Henry II. they found a country such as Cæsar had found in Gaul 1200 years before. A thousand years had passed over the island without producing the slightest social progress—'the inhabitants divided into tribes on the system of the clansmen and chiefs, without a common Government, suddenly confederating, suddenly dissolving, with Brehons, Shaunahs, minstrels, bards, and harpers, in all unchanged, except that for their ancient Druids they had got Christian priests. Had the Irish remained honest pagans, Ireland perhaps had remained unconquered still. Round the coast strangers had built seaport towns, either traders from the Carthaginian settlements in Spain, or outcasts from their own country, like the Greeks that built Marseilles. At the time of the arrival of the French and Flemish adventurers from Wales, they were occupied by a mixed Danish and French population, who supplied the Irish with groceries, including the wines of Poitou, the latter in such abundance that they had no need of vineyards.'

If vineyards had been needed, we may be sure they would not have been planted, for the Irish Celts planted nothing. Neither did they build, except in the simplest and rudest way, improving their architecture from age to age no more than the beaver or the bee. Mr. Prendergast is an able, honest, and frank writer; yet there is something amusingly Celtic in the flourish with which he excuses the style of palaces in which the Irish princes delighted to dwell. 'Unlike England,' he says, 'then covered with castles on the heights, where the French gentlemen secured themselves and their families against the hatred of the churls and villains, as the English peasantry were called, the dwellings of the Irish chiefs were of wattles or clay. It is for robbers and foreigners to take to rocks and precipices for security; for native rulers, there is no such fortress as justice and humanity.' This is very fine, but surely Mr. Prendergast cannot mean that the Irish chiefs were distinguished by their justice and humanity. The following touch is still grander:—'The Irish, like the wealthiest and highest of the present day, loved detached houses surrounded by fields and woods. Towns and their walls they looked upon as tombs or sepulchres, &c.' As to fields, there were none, because the Irish never made fences, their patches of cultivated land being divided by narrow strips of green sod. Besides, they lived in villages, which were certainly surrounded by woods, because the woods were everywhere, and they furnished the inhabitants with fuel and shelter, as well as materials for building their huts.

But further on this able author expresses himself much more in accordance with the truth of history, when he states that the 'Irish enemy' was no nation in the modern sense of the word, but a race divided into many nations or tribes, separately defending their lands from the English barons in the immediate neighbourhood. There had been no ancient national government displaced, no dynasty overthrown; the Irish had no national flag, nor any capital city as the metropolis of their common country, nor any common administration of law.' He might have added that they had no mint. There never was an Irish king who had his face stamped on a coin of his realm. Some stray pieces of money found their way into the country from abroad, but up to the close of the sixteenth century the rudest form of barter prevailed in Ulster, and accounts were paid not in coins but in cows. Even the mechanical arts which had flourished in the country before the arrival of the Celts had gradually perished, and had disappeared at the time of the English invasion. Any handy men could build a house of mud and wattles. Masons, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers, &c., were not wanted by a people who despised stone buildings as prisons, and abhorred walled towns as sepulchres. Spinning and weaving were arts cultivated by the women, each household providing materials for clothing, which was little used in warm weather, and thrown off when fighting or any other serious work was to be done.

I should be sorry to disparage the Celtic race, or any other race, by exaggerating their bad qualities or suppressing any reliable testimony to their merits. But with me the truth of history is sacred. Both sides of every case should be fairly stated. Nothing can be gained by striving to hide facts which may be known to every person who takes the trouble to study the subject. I write in the interest of the people—of the toiling masses; and I find that they were oppressed and degraded by the ruling classes long before the Norman invader took the place of the Celtic chief. And it is a curious fact that when the Cromwellians turned the Catholic population out of their homes and drove them into Connaught, they were but following the example set them by the Milesian lords of the soil centuries before.

The late Mr. Darcy Magee, a real lover of his country, in his Irish history points out this fact. The Normans found the population divided into two great classes—the free tribes, chiefly if not exclusively Celtic, and the unfree tribes, consisting of the descendants of the subjugated races, or of clans once free, reduced to servitude by the sword, and the offspring of foreign mercenary soldiers. 'The unfree tribes,' says Mr. Darcy Magee, 'have left no history. Under the despotism of the Milesian kings, it was high treason to record the actions of the conquered race, so that the Irish Belgae fared as badly in this respect at the hands of the Milesian historians as the latter fared in after times from the chroniclers of the Normans. We only know that such tribes were, and that their numbers and physical force more than once excited the apprehension of the children of the conquerors. One thing is certain—the jealous policy of the superior race never permitted them to reascend the plane of equality from which they had been hurled at the very commencement of the Milesian ascendency.'

Mr. Haverty, another Catholic historian, learned, accurate, and candid, laments the oppression of the people by their native rulers. 'Those who boasted descent from the Scytho-Spanish hero would have considered themselves degraded were they to devote themselves to any less honourable profession than those of soldiers, ollavs, or physicians; and hence the cultivation of the soil and the exercise of the mechanic arts were left almost exclusively to the Firbolgs and the Tuatha-de-Danans—the former people, in particular, being still very numerous, and forming the great mass of the population in the west. These were ground down by high rents and the exorbitant exactions of the dominant race, in order to support their unbounded hospitality and defray the expenses of costly assemblies; but this oppression must have caused perpetual discontent, and the hard-working plebeians, as they were called, easily perceived that their masters were running headlong to destruction, and that it only required a bold effort to shake off their yoke.' Then follows an account of a civil war, one of the leaders of the revolution being elected king at its termination. Carbry reigned five years, during which time there was no rule or order, and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers; her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak.'

Dr. Lynch, author of Cambrensis Eversus, expresses his astonishment at the great number of ancient Irish kings, most of whom were cut off by a violent death, each hewing his way to the throne over the body of his predecessor. But upon applying his mind to the more profound consideration of the matter, he found nothing more wonderful in the phenomenon 'than that the human family should proceed from one man—the overflowing harvest from a few grains of seed, &c.' His learned translator, the Rev. Matthew Kelly, of Maynooth, sees proof of amendment in the fact that between 722 and 1022 twelve Irish kings died a natural death. This candid and judicious writer observes in a note—'It appears from the Irish and English annals that there was perpetual war in Ireland during more than 400 years after the invasion. It could not be called a war of races, except perhaps during the first century, for English and Irish are constantly found fighting under the same banner, according to the varying interests of the rival lords and princes of both nations. This was the case even from the commencement.'[¹]

Many persons have wondered at the success of small bands of English invaders. Why did not the Irish nation rise en masse, and drive them into the sea? The answer is easy. There was no Irish nation. About half a million of people were scattered over the island in villages, divided into tribes generally at war with one another, each chief ready to accept foreign aid against his adversary—some, perhaps, hoping thereby to attain supremacy in their clans, and others, who were pretenders, burning to be avenged of those who had supplanted them. It was religion that first gave the Irish race a common cause. In the very year of the English invasion (1171) there were no fewer than twenty predatory excursions or battles among the Irish chiefs themselves, exclusive of contests with the invaders. Hence the Pope said—'Gens se interimit mutua cæde.' The Pope was right.

The clergy exerted themselves to the utmost in trying to exorcise the demon of destruction and to arrest the work of extermination. Not only the Bashall Isa, or 'the staff of Jesus,' but many other relics were used with the most solemn rites, to impress the people with a sense of the wickedness of their clan-fights, and to induce them to keep the peace, but in vain. The King of Connaught once broke a truce entered into under every possible sanction of this kind, trampling upon all, that he might get the King of Meath into his clutches. Hence the Rev. Mr. Kelly is constrained to say—'It is now generally admitted by Catholic writers that however great the efforts of the Irish clergy to reform their distracted country in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the picture of anarchy drawn by Pope Adrian is hardly overcharged.' Indeed, some Catholic writers have confessed that the anarchy would never have been terminated except by foreign conquest establishing a strong central government. This, however, was not accomplished till after a struggle of centuries, during which, except in brief intervals, when a strong prince was able to protect his people, the national demoralisation grew worse and worse. An Oxford priest, who kept a school at Limerick, writing so late as 1566 of the Irish nobles, says—'Of late they spare neither churches nor hallowed places, but thence also they fill their hands with spoil—yea, and sometimes they set them on fire and kill the men that there lie hidden.'

Mr. Froude, following the Irish MSS. in the Rolls House, has presented graphic pictures of the disorders of the Irishry in the reign of Queen Mary. 'The English garrison,' he says, 'harassed and pillaged the farmers of Meath and Dublin; the chiefs made forays upon each other, killing, robbing, and burning. When the war broke out between England and France, there were the usual conspiracies and uprisings of nationality; the young Earl of Kildare, in reward to the Queen who had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of the patriots. Ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its natural tendencies. The Brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits to which, by the exertions of Henry VIII., the circuits of the judges had been extended. And with the Brehon law came anarchy as its inseparable attendant.'

The correctness of this view is too well attested by the records which the learned historian brings to light, adopting the quaint and expressive phraseology of the old writers whom he quotes. For example:—

'The lords and gentiles of the Irish Pale that were not governed under the Queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their neighbours abroad—working everyone his own wilful will for a law—to the spoil of his country, and decay and waste of the common weal of the same. The idle men of war ate up altogether; the lord and his men took what they pleased, destroying their tenants, and themselves never the better. The common people, having nothing left to lose, became as idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest, stealing by day and robbing by night. Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all equally to enjoy, and high and low alike were always ready to bury their own quarrels, to join against the Queen and the English.'

At the time when the crown passed to Elizabeth the qualities of the people were thus described by a correspondent of the council, who presents the English view of the Irishry at that time:—

'The appearance and outward behaviour of the Irish showeth them to be fruits of no good tree, for they exercise no virtue and refrain and forbear from no vice, but think it lawful to do every man what him listeth. They neither love nor dread God, nor yet hate the devil. They are worshippers of images and open idolaters. Their common oath they swear is by books, bells, and other ornaments which they do use as holy religion. Their chief and solemnest oath is by their lord or master's hand, which whoso forsweareth is sure to pay a fine or sustain a worse turn. The Sabbath-day they rest from all honest exercises, and the week days they are not idle, but worse occupied. They do not honour their father and mother as much as they do reverence strangers. For every murder that they commit they do not so soon repent, for whose blood they once shed, they lightly never cease killing all that name. They do not so commonly commit adultery; not for that they profess or keep chastity, but for that they seldom or never marry, and therefore few of them are lawful heirs, by the law of the realm, to the lands they possess. They steal but from the strong, and take by violence from the poor and weak. They know not so well who is their neighbour as who they favour; with him they will witness in right and wrong. They covet not their neighbours' good, but command all that is their neighbours' as their own. Thus they live and die, and there is none to teach them better. There are no ministers. Ministers will not take pains where there is no living to be had, neither church nor parish, but all decayed. People will not come to inhabit where there is no defence of law.'

After six years of discipline and improvement Sir Henry Sidney, in 1566, described the state of the four shires, the Irish inhabitants, and the English garrison, in the following terms:—'The English Pale is overwhelmed with vagabonds—stealth and spoil daily carried out of it—the people miserable—not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend 20l. They have neither horse nor armour, nor apparel, nor victual. The soldiers be so beggerlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a forte, or in any dangerous service.'

A sort of 'special correspondent' or 'commissioner,' as we should call him now, furnished to Cecil a detailed account of the social condition of the people, which of course he viewed with English eyes. He found existing among them a general organisation wherever the Irish language was spoken—the remnants of a civilisation very ancient, but now fast tending to ruin. Next to the chiefs were the priesthood, and after them came a kind of intellectual hierarchy, consisting of four classes of spiritual leaders and teachers, which were thus described. The first was called the Brehon, or the judge. These judges took 'pawns' of both the parties, and then judged according to their own discretion. Their property was neutral, and the Irishmen would not prey upon them. They had great plenty of cattle, and they harboured many vagabonds and idle persons. They were the chief maintainers of rebels, but when the English army came to their neighbourhood they fled to the mountains and woods 'because they would not succour them with victuals and other necessaries.' The next sort was called Shankee, who had also great plenty of cattle wherewith they succoured the rebels. They made the ignorant men of the country believe that they were descended from Alexander the Great, or Darius, or Cæsar, 'or some other notable prince, which made the ignorant people run mad, and care not what they did.' This, the correspondent remarked, 'was very hurtful to the realm.' Not less hurtful were the third sort called Denisdan, who not only maintained the rebels, but caused those that would be true to become rebellious—'thieves, extortioners, murderers, raveners, yea, and worse if it was possible.' These seem to have been the historians or chroniclers of the tribe. If they saw a young man, the descendant of an O' or a Mac, with half a dozen followers, they forthwith made a rhyme about his father and his ancestors, numbering how many heads they had cut off, how many towns they had burned, how many virgins they had deflowered, how many notable murders they had done, comparing them to Hannibal, or Scipio, or Hercules, or some other famous person—'wherewithal the poor fool runs mad, and thinks indeed it is so.' Then he will gather a lot of rascals about him, and get a fortune-teller to prophesy how he is to speed. After these preliminaries he betakes himself with his followers at night to the side of a wood, where they lurk till morning. And when it is daylight, then will they go to the poor villages, not sparing to destroy young infants and aged people; and if a woman be ever so great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and ransacking the poor cots; then will they drive away all the kine and plough-horses, with all the other cattle. Then must they have a bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner good; and if they go by any house of friars, or religious house, they will give them two or three beeves, and they will take them and pray for them, yea, and praise their doings, and say, 'His father was accustomed so to do, wherein he will rejoice.' The fourth class consisted of 'poets.' These men had great store of cattle, and 'used all the trade of the others with an addition of prophecies. They were maintainers of witches and other vile matters, to the blasphemy of God, and to the impoverishing of the commonwealth.'

These four septs were divided in all places of the four quarters of Ireland, and some of the islands beyond Ireland, as Aran, the land of the Saints, Innisbuffen, Innisturk, Innismain, and Innisclare. These islands, he added, were under the rule of O'Neill, and they were 'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground, pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' On this description Mr. Froude remarks in a note—'At present they are barren heaps of treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat crops and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there are no hands to catch them. The change is a singular commentary upon modern improvements.' There were many branches belonging to the four septs, continues the credulous reporter, who was evidently imposed upon, like many of his countrymen in modern times with better means of information. For example, 'there was the branch of Gogath, the glutton, of which one man would eat half a sheep at a sitting. There was another called the Carrow, a gambler, who generally went about naked, carrying dice and cards, and he would play the hair off his head. Then there was a set of women called Goyng women, blasphemers of God, who ran from country to country, sowing sedition among the people.'[²]

Mr. Froude says that this 'picture of Ireland' was given by some half Anglicised, half Protestantised Celt, who wrote what he had seen around him, careless of political philosophy, or of fine phrases with which to embellish his diction. But if he was a Celt, I think his description clearly proves that he must have been a Celt of some other country than the one upon whose state he reports. Judging from internal evidence, I should say that he could not be a native; for an Irishman, even though a convert to Anglicanism, and anxious to please his new masters, could scarcely betray so much ignorance of the history of his country, so much bigotry, such a want of candour and discrimination. If Mr. Froude's great work has any fault, it is his unconscious prejudice against Ireland. He knows as well as anyone the working of the feudal system and the clan system in Scotland in the same age. He knows with what treachery and cruelty murders were perpetrated by chiefs and lairds, pretenders and usurpers—how anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often generalises from a few cases. For example, in speaking of Shane O'Neill, who killed his half-brother, Matthew Kelly, Baron of Dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, he says—'They manage things strangely in Ireland. The old O'Neill, instead of being irritated, saw in this exploit a proof of commendable energy. He at once took Shane into favour, and, had he been able, would have given him his dead brother's rights.'

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Vol. i. p. 216.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

Froude's History, of England, vol. viii. chap. vii.

CHAPTER II.

THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS.

Shane O'Neill was a man of extraordinary ability and tremendous energy, as the English found to their cost. He was guilty of atrocious deeds; but he had too many examples in those lawless times encouraging him to sacrifice the most sacred ties to his ambition. He resolved to seize the chieftainship by deposing his father and banishing him to the Pale, where, after passing some years in captivity, he died. He was, no doubt, urged to do this, lest by some chance the son of the baron of Dungannon should be adopted by England as the rightful heir, and made Earl of Tyrone. This title he spurned, and proclaimed himself the O'Neill, the true representative of the ancient kings of Ulster, to which office he was elected by his people, taking the usual oath with his foot upon the sacred stone. This was an open defiance of English power, and he prepared to abide the consequences. He thought the opportunity a favourable one to recover the supremacy of his ancestors over the O'Donels. He accordingly mustered a numerous army, and marched into Tyrconnel, where he was joined by Hugh O'Donel, brother of Calvagh, the chief, with other disaffected persons of the same clan. O'Donel had recourse to stratagem. Having caused his cattle to be driven out of harm's way, he sent a spy into the enemy's camp, who mixed with the soldiers, and returning undiscovered, he undertook to guide O'Donel's army to O'Neill's tent, which was distinguished by a great watch-fire, and guarded by six galloglasses on one side and as many Scots on the other. The camp, however, was taken by surprise in the dead of night, and O'Neill's forces, careless or asleep, were slaughtered and routed without resistance. Shane himself fled for his life, and, swimming across three rivers, succeeded in reaching his own territory. This occurred the year before he cast off his allegiance to England. He was required to appear before Elizabeth in person to explain the grounds on which he had claimed the chieftainship. He consented, on condition that he got a safe-conduct and money for the expenses of his journey. At the same time he sent a long letter to the Queen, complaining of the treatment he had received, and defending his pretensions. The letter is characteristic of the man and of the times. He said: 'The deputy has much ill-used me, your Majesty; and now that I am going over to see you, I hope you will consider that I am but rude and uncivil, and do not know my duty to your Highness, nor yet your Majesty's laws, but am one brought up in wildness, far from all civility. Yet have I a good will to the commonwealth of my country; and please your Majesty to send over two commissioners that you can trust, that will take no bribes, nor otherwise be imposed on, to observe what I have done to improve the country, and hear what my accusers have to say; and then let them go into the Pale, and hear what the people say of your soldiers, with their horses, and their dogs, and their concubines. Within this year and a half, three hundred farmers are come from the English Pale to live in my country, where they can be safe.

'Please your Majesty, your Majesty's money here is not so good as your money in England, and will not pass current there. Please your Majesty to send me three thousand pounds in English money to pay my expenses in going over to you, and when I come back I will pay your deputy three thousand pounds Irish, such as you are pleased to have current here. Also I will ask your Majesty to marry me to some gentlewoman of noble blood meet for my vocation. I will make Ireland all that your Majesty wishes for you. I am very sorry your Majesty is put to such expense. If you will trust it to me, I will undertake that in three years you will have a revenue, where now you have continual loss.'

Shane suspected evil designs on the part of the English, and not without reason. The object of the summons to England was to detain him there with 'gentle talk' till Sussex could return to his command with an English army powerful enough to subjugate Ulster. For this purpose such preparations were made by the English Government in men and money, 'that rebellion should have no chance; and,' says Mr. Froude, 'so careful was the secresy which was observed, to prevent Shane from taking alarm, that a detachment of troops sent from Portsmouth sailed with sealed orders, and neither men nor officers knew that Ireland was their destination till they had rounded the Land's End.' The English plans were well laid. Kildare, whom Elizabeth most feared, had accepted her invitation to go to London, and thus prevented any movement in the south, while O'Donel was prepared to join the English army on its advance into Ulster; and the Scots, notwithstanding their predilection for Mary Stuart, were expected to act as Argyle and his sister should direct. But Shane had a genius for intrigue as well as Elizabeth, and he was far more rapid than her generals in the execution of his plans. By a master-stroke of policy he disconcerted their arrangements. He had previously asked the Earl of Argyle to give him his daughter in marriage, in order that he might strengthen his alliance with the Ulster Scots. It is true that she had been already married to his rival, O'Donel; but that was a small difficulty in his way. The knot was tied, but he had no hesitation in cutting it with his sword. 'The countess' was well educated for her time. She was also a Protestant, and the government had hopes that her influence would be favourable to 'civility and the Reformation' among the barbarians of the north. But whatever advantages the presence of the fair Scottish missionary might bring, Shane O'Neill did not see why they should not be all his own, especially as he had managed somehow to produce a favourable impression on her heart. Accordingly he made a dash into Tyrconnel, and carried off both the lady and her husband to his stronghold, Shane's Castle, on the banks of Lough Neagh. Her Scotch guard, though fifteen hundred strong, had offered no resistance. O'Donel was shut up in a prison, and his wife became the willing paramour of the captor. 'The affront to McConnell was forgiven or atoned for by private arrangement, and the sister of the Earl of Argyle—an educated woman for her time, not unlearned in Latin, speaking French and Italian, counted sober, wise, and no less subtle—had betrayed herself and her husband. The O'Neills, by this last manoeuvre, became supreme in Ulster. Deprived of their head, the O'Donels sank into helplessness. The whole force of the province, such as it was, with the more serious addition of several thousand Scotch marauders, was at Shane's disposal, and thus provided, he thought himself safe in defying England to do its worst.'[¹]

Meantime, Sussex had arrived in Dublin preceded by his English forces. He made a rapid preliminary movement to the north, and seized the Cathedral of Armagh, in order to make it a fortified depôt for his stores. He then fell back into Meath, where he was joined by Ormond with flying companies of galloglasses. Soon after a singular attack was made on the English garrison at Armagh. Seeing a number of kernes scattered about the town, the officer in command sallied out upon them, when O'Neill suddenly appeared, accompanied by the Catholic Archbishop, on a hill outside the walls. 'The English had but time to recover their defences when the whole Irish army, led by a procession of monks, and every man carrying a fagot, came on to burn the cathedral over their heads. The monks sang a mass; the primate walked three times up and down the lines, willing the rebels to go forward, for God was on their side. Shane swore a great oath not to turn his back while an Englishman was alive; and with scream and yell his men came on. Fortunately there were no Scots among them. The English, though out-numbered ten to one, stood steady in the churchyard, and, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight, drove back the howling crowd. The Irish retired into the friars' houses outside the cathedral close, set them on fire, and ran for their lives.'

'So far,' adds Mr. Froude, 'all was well. After this there was no more talk of treating, and by the 18th, Sussex and Ormond were themselves at Armagh with a force—had there been skill to direct it—sufficient to have swept Tyrone from border to border.'

The English historian exults in the valour of the small garrison of his countrymen, well-disciplined and sheltered behind a strong wall, in resisting the assault of a howling multitude of mere Irish, and he observes significantly, that 'fortunately there were no Scots among them.' But he is obliged immediately after to record an Irish victory so signal that, according to the lord deputy himself, 'the fame of the English army so hardly gotten, was now vanished.' Yet Mr. Froude does not, in this, lay the blame of defeat upon the nationality of the vanquished. It is only the Irish nation that is made the scape-goat in such cases.

It was July, but the weather was wet, the rivers were high, Ormond was ill, Sussex would not leave his friend, and so the English army stayed in town doing nothing till the end of the month, when their failing provisions admonished them that an Irish hosting would be desirable. O'Neill, who seems to have been aware of the state of things, presented the appropriate temptation. Spies brought the lord deputy word that in the direction of Cavan there were herds of cows, which an active party might easily capture. These spies, with ardent professions of loyalty, offered to guide the English troops to the place where the booty would be found, their object being to draw them among bogs and rivers where they might be destroyed. The lord deputy did not think it necessary to accompany this host, which consisted of 200 horse, 500 men-at-arms, and some hundreds of the loyal Irish of the Pale. Shane intended to attack them the first night while resting on their march. But they escaped by an alteration of the route. Next morning they were marching on the open plain, miles from any shelter of hill or wood, when the Irish chief, with less than half their number, pursued them, and fell upon the cavalry in the rear, with the cry, 'Laundarg Aboo—the Bloody Hand—Strike for O'Neill!' The English cavalry commanded by Wingfield, seized with terror, galloped into the ranks of their own men-at-arms, rode them down, and extricated themselves only to fly panic-stricken from the field to the crest of an adjoining hill. Meantime, Shane's troopers rode through the broken ranks, cutting down the footmen on all sides. The yells and cries were heard far off through the misty morning air. Fitzwilliam, who had the chief command, was about a mile in advance at the head of another body of cavalry, when a horseman was observed by him, galloping wildly in the distance and waving his handkerchief as a signal. He returned instantly, followed by his men, and flung himself into the mêleé. Shane receiving such a charge of those few men, and seeing more coming after, ran no farther risk, blew a recall note, and withdrew unpursued. Fitzwilliam's courage alone prevented the army from being annihilated. Out of 500 English 50 lay dead, and 50 more were badly wounded. The survivors fell back to Armagh 'so dismayed as to be unfit for farther service.' Pitiable were the lamentations of the lord deputy to Cecil on this catastrophe. It was, said he, 'by cowardice the dreadfullest beginning that ever was seen in Ireland. Ah! Mr. Secretary, what unfortunate star hung over me that day to draw me, that never could be persuaded to be absent from the army at any time—to be then absent for a little disease of another man? The rearward was the best and picked soldiers in all this land. If I or any stout man had been that day with them, we had made an end of Shane—which is now farther off than ever it was. Never before durst Scot or Irishman look on Englishmen in plain or wood since I was here; and now Shane, in a plain three miles away from any wood, and where I would have asked of God to have had him, hath, with 120 horse, and a few Scots and galloglasse, scarce half in numbers, charged our whole army, and by the cowardice of one wretch whom I hold dear to me as my own brother, was like in one hour to have left not one man of that army alive, and after to have taken me and the rest at Armagh. The fame of the English army, so hardly gotten, is now vanished, and I, wretched and dishonoured, by the vileness of other men's deeds.'

This is real history that Mr. Froude has given us. It places the actors before us, enables us to discern their characters, tells us who they are and what they have done. It shows also the value and the necessity of documentary evidence for establishing the truth of history. How different from the vague, uncertain, shadowy representations derived from oral tradition, or mere reports, though contemporary, circulated from mouth to mouth, and exaggerated according to the interests of one party or the other. Let us for illustration compare Mr. Froude's vivid picture of this battle, so disastrous to the English, with the account given of the same event by the Annalists called the Four Masters. These writers had taken great pains to collect the most authentic records of the various Irish tribes from the invasion by Henry II. to the period of which we are writing. They were intensely Irish, and of course glad of any opportunity of recording events creditable to the valour of their countrymen. They lived in Donegal, under the protection of O'Donel, but they showed themselves quite willing to do full justice to his great rival O'Neill. The presence of the lord deputy, the Earl of Ormond, and other great men at Armagh, with a select English army, would naturally have roused their attention, and when that army was encountered and vanquished in the open field by the Irish general, we should have expected that the details of such a glorious event would have been collected with the greatest care from the accounts of eye-witnesses. The bards and historiographers should have been on the alert to do justice to their country on so great an occasion. They were on the spot, they were beside the victors, and they had no excuse whatever for ignorance. Yet here is the miserably cold, jejune, feeble, and imperfect record which we find in the Annals of the Four Masters:—'The Lord Justice of Ireland, namely Thomas Fitzwalter (Sussex), marched into Tyrone to take revenge for the capture of Caloach O'Donel, and also for his own quarrels with the country. He encamped with a great army at Armagh, and constructed deep entrenchments and impregnable ramparts about the great church of Armagh, which he intended to keep constantly guarded. O'Neill, i.e. John, having received intelligence of this, sent a party of his faithful men and friends with Caloach O'Donel to guard and keep him from the Lord Justice, and they conveyed him from one island to another, in the recesses and sequestered places of Tyrone. After some time the Lord Justice sent out from the camp at Armagh, a number of his captains with 1000 men to take some prey and plunder in Oriel. O'Neill, having received private information and intelligence of those great troops marching into Oriel, proceeded privately and silently to where they were, and came up to them after they had collected their prey; a battle ensued in which many were slain on both sides; and finally the preys were abandoned, and fell into the hands of their original possessors on that occasion.'

That is the whole account of the most signal victory over the English that had crowned the arms of Ulster during those wars! Not a word of the disparity of the forces, or the flight of the English cavalry, or the slaughter of the Englishmen-at-arms, or the humiliation and disabled condition of the garrison at Armagh. Equally unsatisfactory is the record of the subsequent march through Tyrone by Sussex, in the course of which his army slaughtered 4000 head of cattle, which they could not drive away. Of this tremendous destruction of property the Four Masters do not say a word. Such omissions often occur in their annals, even when dealing with contemporary events. Uncritical as they were and extremely credulous, how can we trust the records which they give of remote ages?

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Froude, Ibid.

CHAPTER III.

O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER.

The moral atmosphere of Elizabeth's court was not favourable to public virtue. Strange to say at this time Lord Pembroke seemed to be the only nobleman connected with it whose patriotism could be depended on; and, according to Cecil, there was not another person, 'no not one' who did not either wish well to Shane O'Neill, or so ill to the Earl of Sussex as 'rather to welcome the news than regret the English loss!' It would be difficult to find 'intriguing factiousness' baser than this even in barbarous Ireland. The success of O'Neill, however, had raised him high in the opinion of the Queen, who proposed, through the Earl of Kildare, to leave him in possession of all his territories, and let him govern the Irish 'according to Irish ideas' if he would only become her vassal. Sussex had returned to Dublin with the remnant of his army, while Fitzwilliam was dispatched to London to explain the disaster, bearing with him a petition from the Irish Council, that the troops who had been living in free quarters on the tenants of the Pale should be recalled or disbanded. 'Useless in the field and tyrannical to the farmer, they were a burden on the English exchequer, and answered no purpose but to make the English name detested.'

To O'Neill the Queen sent a pardon, with a safe conduct to England, if he could be prevailed on to go. In the meantime Shane sent a message to the lord deputy, demanding the removal of the garrison from Armagh. One of his messengers, Neill Grey communicated secretly with Lord Sussex, affecting to dislike rebellion, and intimating that he might help the English to get rid of his master. The lord deputy, without the least scruple or apparent consciousness of the criminality or disgrace of the proceeding, actually proposed to this man that he should murder O'Neill. This villanous purpose he avows in his letter to the Queen. 'In fine,' said he, 'I breake with him to kill Shane; and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marcs of land by the year to him, and to his heirs, for his reward. He seemed desirous to serve your Highness, and to have the land; but fearful to do it, doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and promised to do by any means he might, escaping with his life. What he will do I know not, but I assure your Highness he may do it without danger if he will. And if he will not do that he may in your service, there will be done to him what others may. God send your Highness a good end.'

This English nobleman was, it seems, pious as well as honourable, and could mingle prayers with his plots for assassination. Mr. Froude suggests extenuating circumstances: 'Lord Sussex, it appears, regarded Shane as a kind of wolf, whom having failed to capture in fair chase he might destroy by the first expedient that came to his hand.' And 'English honour, like English coin, lost something of its purity in the sister island.' Of course; it was the Irish atmosphere that did it all. But Sussex was not singular in this mode of illustrating English honour. A greater than he, the chivalrous Sir Walter Raleigh, wrote to a friend in Munster, recommending the treacherous assassination of the Earl of Desmond, as perfectly justifiable. And this crime, for which an ignorant Irishman would be hanged, was deliberately suggested by the illustrious knight whilst sitting quietly in his English study.[¹] But what perplexes the historian most of all is that the Queen of England showed no resentment at the infamous proposal of Sussex. 'It is most sadly certain, however, that Sussex was continued in office, and inasmuch as it will be seen that he repeated the experiment a few months later, his letter could not have been received with any marked condemnation.' Yet Elizabeth was never in Ireland.

Fitzwilliam, however, returned with reinforcements of troops from Berwick, with which the deputy resolved to repair the credit of the English arms, and to set the Irish an example of civilised warfare. How did he do this? Dispatching provisions by sea to Lough Foyle, he succeeded this time in marching through Tyrone, 'and in destroying on his way 4,000 cattle, which he was unable to carry away. He had left Shane's cows to rot where he had killed them; and thus being without food, and sententiously and characteristically concluding that man by his policy might propose, but God at His will did dispose; Lord Sussex fell back by the upper waters of Lough Erne, sweeping the country before him.' When the Irish peasantry saw the carcasses of their cattle rotting along the roads, while their children were famished for want of milk, they must have been most favourably impressed with the blessings of British rule! Shane, instead of encountering the deputy on his own territory, amused himself burning villages in Meath. Neither of those rulers—those chief protectors of the people—seems to have been conscious that he was doing anything wrong in destroying the homes and the food of the wretched inhabitants, whom they alternately scourged. On the contrary, the extent of devastation which they were able to effect was supposed to put them in a better position for meeting together, and treating as honourable and gallant representatives of their respective nations.

In accordance with the desire of the Queen, Shane, fresh from the work of destruction in the Pale, was invited to a conference with Kildare. They met at Dundalk, and the Irish chief consented to wait upon Elizabeth in London, being allowed to name his own conditions. In doing so he implied 'that he was rather conferring a favour than receiving one, and that he was going to England as a victorious enemy permitting himself to be conciliated.' He demanded a safe-conduct so clearly worded that, whatever was the result of his visit, he should be free to return; he required 'a complete amnesty for his past misdeeds, and he stipulated that Elizabeth should pay all expenses for himself and his retinue; the Earls of Ormond, Desmond, and Kildare must receive him in state at Dundalk, and escort him to Dublin; Kildare must accompany him to England; and, most important of all, Armagh Cathedral must be evacuated. He did not anticipate treachery; and either he would persuade Elizabeth to recognise him, and thus prove to the Irish that rebellion was the surest road to prosperity and power, or, at worst, by venturing into England, and returning unscathed, he would show them that the Government might be defied with more than impunity.'[²]

These terms, so humiliating to English pride, were advocated in the Council 'for certain secret respects;' and even Sir William Cecil was not ashamed to say, 'that, in Shane's absence from Ireland,' something might be cavilled against him or his, for non-observing the covenants on his side; and so the pact being infringed, the matter might be used as should be thought fit. With this understanding Elizabeth wrote, making all the ignominious concessions demanded, save one, the evacuation of the cathedral. Shane replied in lofty terms that, although for the Earl of Sussex he would not mollify one iota of his agreement, yet he would consent at the request of her Majesty. 'Thus,' says Mr. Froude, 'with the Earl of Kildare in attendance, a train of galloglasse, 1,000l. in hand, and a second 1,000l. awaiting for him in London, the champion of Irish freedom sailed from Dublin, and appeared on the second of January at the English court.'

It is stated that Cecil, Pembroke, and Bacon, received him privately on his arrival, instructed him how to behave in the royal presence, gave him the promised money, and endeavoured to impress upon him the enormity of his offences. But, to every appeal made to his conscience, Shane answered by a counter appeal about money; 2,000l. was a poor present from so great a Queen; he was sure their honours would give him a few more hundreds. He agreed, however, to make a general confession of his sins in Irish and English; and, thus tutored, Elizabeth received him in state on January 6, 1562, attended by the Council, the peers, the foreign ambassadors, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, who gazed 'as if at the exhibition of some wild animal of the desert.' The scene is very graphically described by Mr. Froude: 'O'Neill stalked in, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back, and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a grey lustre, frowning, fierce, and cruel. Behind him followed his galloglasse, bare-headed and fair-haired, with shirts of mail which reached their knees, a wolf-skin flung across their shoulders, and short broad battle-axes in their hands. At the foot of the throne the chief paused, bent forward, threw himself on his face upon the ground, and then, rising upon his knees, spoke aloud in Irish!' Camden says he 'confessed his crime and rebellion with howling,' and Mr. Froude adds that, to his hearers, the sound of the words 'was as the howling of a dog.' He said:—

'Oh! my most dread sovereign lady and queen, like as I Shane O'Neill, your Majesty's subject of your realm of Ireland, have of long time desired to come into the presence of your Majesty to acknowledge my humble and bounden subjection, so am I now here upon my knees by your gracious permission, and do most humbly acknowledge your Majesty to be my sovereign lady and Queen of England, France, and Ireland; and I do confess that, for lack of civil education, I have offended your Majesty and your laws, for the which I have required and obtained your Majesty's pardon. And for that I most humbly, from the bottom of my heart, thank your Majesty, and still do with all humbleness require the continuance of the same; and I faithfully promise here before Almighty God and your Majesty, and in presence of all these your nobles, that I intend, by God's grace, to live hereafter in the obedience of your Majesty as a subject of your land of Ireland.

'And because this my speech, being Irish, is not well understanded, I have caused this my submission to be written in English and Irish, and thereto have set my hand and seal; and to these gentlemen, my kinsmen and friends, I most humbly beseech your Majesty to be merciful and gracious.'

Camden remarks that the bare-headed galloglasse, with long dishevelled hair, crocus-dyed shirts, wide sleeves, short jackets, shaggy cloaks, &c., were objects of great wonder to the Londoners; while the hauteur of the Irish prince excited the merriment of the courtiers, who styled him 'O'Neill the Great, cousin to St. Patrick, friend to the Queen of England, enemy to all the world besides.' Notwithstanding Shane's precautions with respect to the safe-conduct, English artifice outdid Irish cunning. With all their horror of the Jesuits, Elizabeth's ministers in this case practised mental reservation. True, the Government had promised to permit him to return to Ireland, but then the time of his stay had not been specified. Various pretexts were invented to detain him. He must be recognised as his father's heir; the cause must be pleaded before the English judges; the young Baron of Dungannon must come over and be heard on the other side. O'Neill was told that he had been sent for, while Cecil wrote privately to Fitzwilliam to keep him safe in Ireland. While the prince was thus humoured with vain excuses, he was occupied in pleading his own cause by flattering communications to the Queen, 'whose fame was spoken of throughout the world.' He wished to study the wisdom of her government, that he might know better how to order himself in civil polity. He was most urgent that her Majesty would give him 'some noble English lady for a wife, with augmentation of living suitable.' If she would give him his father's earldom, he would make her the undisputed sovereign of willing subjects in Ulster; he would drive away all her enemies, save her from all further expense, and secure for her a great increase of revenue. He begged in the meantime, that he might be allowed to attend her favourite, Lord Robert Cecil, in order to learn 'to ride after the English fashion, to run at the tilt, to hawk, to shoot, and use such other good exercises as the said good lord was most apt unto.' Thus month after month passed away, and Shane was still virtually a prisoner. 'At length,' says Mr. Froude, 'the false dealing produced its cruel fruit, the murder of the boy who was used as the pretext for the delay. Sent for to England, yet prevented from obeying the command, the young Baron of Dungannon was waylaid at the beginning of April in a wood near Carlingford by Turlogh O'Neill. He fled for his life, with the murderers behind him, till he reached the bank of a deep river, which he could not swim, and there he was killed.'

This event brought matters to a crisis, and Shane's cause was triumphant. By articles entered into between him and the Queen it was agreed that he was to be constituted captain or governor of Tyrone 'in the same manner as other captains of the said nation called O'Nele's had rightfully executed that office in the time of King Henry VIII. And, moreover, he was to enjoy and have the name and title of O'Nele, with the like authority as any other of his ancestors, with the service and homage of all the lords and captains called urraughts, and other nobles of the said nation of O'Nele.' All this was upon the condition 'that he and his said nobles should truly and faithfully, from time to time, serve her Majesty, and, where necessary, wage war against all her enemies in such manner as the Lord Lieutenant for the time being should direct.' The title of O'Neill, however, was to be contingent on the decision of Parliament as to the validity of the letters-patent of Henry VIII. Should that decision be unfavourable, he was to enjoy his powers and prerogatives under the style and title of the Earl of Tyrone, with feudal jurisdiction over the northern counties. The Pale was to be no shelter to any person whom he might demand as a malefactor. If any Irish lord or chief did him wrong, and the deputy failed within twenty-one days to exact reparation, Shane might raise an army and levy war on his private account. An exception was made on behalf of the loyal O'Donel, whose cause was to be submitted to the arbitration of the Irish earls. The 'indenture' between the Queen and O'Neill was signed by the high contracting parties, and bears date April 30, 1562. The English historian indignantly remarks: 'A rebel subject treating as an equal with his sovereign for the terms on which he would remain in his allegiance was an inglorious spectacle; and the admission of Shane's pretensions to sovereignty was one more evidence to the small Ulster chiefs that no service was worse requited in Ireland than fidelity to the English crown. The Maguires, the O'Reillys, the O'Donels—all the clans who had stood by Sussex in the preceding summer—were given over to their enemy bound hand and foot. But Elizabeth was weary of the expense, and sick of efforts which were profitless as the cultivation of a quicksand. True it was that she was placing half Ireland in the hands of an adulterous, murdering scoundrel, but the Irish liked to have it so, and she forced herself to hope that he would restrain himself for the future within the bounds of decency.'[³]

In that hope she was soon disappointed. Shane with his galloglasse returned in glory, his purse lined with money and honour wreathed about his brows. He told the northern chiefs that he had gone to England not to lose but to win, and that they must henceforth submit to his authority, or feel his power. The O'Donels, relying on English promises, dared to refuse allegiance to the O'Neill, whereupon, without consulting the lord deputy, 'he called his men to arms and marched into Tyrconnel, killing, robbing, and burning in the old style through farm and castle.' The Irish historians, however, make excuses for O'Neill, affirming that he was released from his obligations by the bad faith of the lord deputy. He it was who gave him a safe conduct to Dublin, that he might take the oath of allegiance according to promise; but the document was so ingeniously worded that its meaning might be twisted so as to make him a prisoner. He was informed of this treachery, and, as Mr. Froude remarks, 'Shane was too cunning a fish, and had been too lately in the meshes, to be caught again in so poor a snare.' A most attractive bait was provided by Sussex in the person of his sister, who had been brought over to Dublin, and who might be won by the great northern chief if he would only come up to the viceregal court to woo her. 'Shane glanced at the tempting morsel with wistful eyes. Had he trusted himself in the hands of Sussex he would have had a short shrift for a blessing and a rough nuptial knot about his neck. At the last moment a little bird carried the tale to his ear. He had been advertized out of the Pale that the lady was brought over only to entrap him, and if he came to the deputy he should never return.' He therefore excused himself by alleging that his duty to the Queen forbade him to leave the province while it was in such a disturbed condition, the disturbance being caused chiefly by his own predatory excursions into the territories of the O'Donels and Maguires.

Shane took charge of the affairs of the Church as well as of the State. The Catholic primate refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth as the head of the Church, the see was declared vacant, and a congé d'élire was sent down for the appointment of 'Mr. Adam Loftus,' an Englishman, who came over as the lord deputy's chaplain. The answer returned and reported by Sussex to the Queen was 'that the chapter there, whereof the greater part were Shane O'Neill's horsemen, were so sparkled and out of order that they could by no means be assembled for the election. In the meantime the lord deputy began to apprehend that O'Neill aspired, not without some hope of success, to the sovereignty of the whole island. It was found that he was in correspondence with the Pope, and the Queen of Scots, and the King of Spain. No greater danger, wrote Sussex, had ever been in Ireland. He implored the Queen not to trifle with it, declaring that he wished some abler general to take the command, not from any want of will, 'for he would spend his last penny and his last drop of blood for her Majesty.' Right and left Shane was crushing the petty chiefs, who implored the protection of the Government. Maguire requested the deputy to write to him in English, not in Latin, because the latter language was well known, and but few of the Irish had any knowledge of the former, in which therefore the secrets of their correspondence would be more safe. Here is a specimen of his English: 'I know well that within these four days the sayed Shan will come to dystroy me contrey except your Lordshypp will sette some remedy in the matter.' He did indeed go down into Fermanagh with 'a great hoste.' As Maguire refused to submit, Shane 'bygan to wax mad, and to cawsse his men to bran all his corn and howsses.' He spared neither church nor sanctuary; three hundred women and children were piteously murdered, and Maguire himself, clean banished, as he described it, took refuge with the remnant of his people in the islands on the lake, whither Shane was making boats to pursue him. 'Help me, your lordship,' the hunted wretch cried, in his despair, to Sussex. 'Ye are lyke to make hym the strongest man of all Erlond, for every man wyll take an exampull by the gratte lostys; take hyd to yourself by thymes, for he is lyke to have all the power from this place thill he come to the wallys of Gallway to rysse against you.'[⁴]

It is the boast of the Irish that when Shane had subdued all his opponents, he ruled Tyrone for some time with such order, 'that if a robbery was committed within his territory, he either caused the property to be restored, or reimbursed the loser out of his own treasury.'[⁵]

The perplexity of the Government in this critical emergency is vividly described by Mr. Froude: 'Elizabeth knew not which way to turn. Force, treachery, conciliation had been tried successively, and the Irish problem was more hopeless than ever. In the dense darkness of the prospects of Ulster there was a solitary gleam of light. Grown insolent with prosperity, Shane had been dealing too peremptorily with the Scots; his countess, though compelled to live with him, and to be the mother of his children, had felt his brutality and repented of her folly, and perhaps attempted to escape. In the daytime, when he was abroad marauding, she was coupled like a hound to a page or a horse-boy, and only released at night when he returned to his evening orgies. The fierce Campbells were not men to bear tamely these outrages from a drunken savage on the sister of their chief, and Sussex conceived that if the Scots, by any contrivance, were separated from Shane, they might be used as a whip to scourge him.'

At length Sussex, determined to crush the arch-rebel, marched northward in April, 1563, with a mixed force of English and Irish, ill-armed, ill-supplied, dispirited and almost disloyal. The diary of the commander-in-chief is, perhaps, the funniest on record: 'April 6: The army arrived at Armagh. April 8: The army marches back to Newry to bring up stores and ammunition left behind. April 11: The army advances again to Armagh, where it waits for galloglasse and kerne from the Pale. April 14: The commander-in-chief answers a letter from James M'Connell. April 15: The army goes upon Shane's cattle, of which it takes enough to serve it, but would have taken more if it had had galloglasse.' Next day it returns to Armagh. There it waits three days for the galloglasse, and then sends back for them to Dublin. On April 20, again writes M'Connell, because he did not come according to promise. April 21: The army surveys the Trough mountains. April 22: The pious commander winds up the glorious record in these words: 'To Armagh with the spoil taken which would have been much more if we had had galloglasse, and because St. George even forced me, her Majesty's lieutenant, to return to divine service that night. April 23: Divine service.' Subsequently his lordship's extreme piety caused him the loss of 300 horses, which he naïvely confesses thus: 'Being Easter time, and he having travelled the week before, and Easter day till night, thought fit to give Easter Monday to prayer, and in this time certain churls stole off with the horses.' To this Mr. Froude adds the pertinent remark: 'The piety which could neglect practical duty for the outward service of devotion, yet at the same time could make overtures to Neil Greg to assassinate his master, requires no very lenient consideration.'

In connexion with the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill Lord Elcho proposed Solomon's plan of settling the dispute of the two mother Churches about Ireland. He would cut the country in two, establishing Protestantism in the north and Catholicism in the south. When an experienced member of the House of Commons makes such a proposition in this age, we should not be surprised that Sir Thomas Cusack in the year 1563 proposed to Queen Elizabeth that Ireland should be divided into four provinces, each with a separate president, either elected by the people or chosen in compliance with their wishes. O'Neill was to have the north, the Clanrickards the west, the O'Briens or Desmonds the south, and thus the English might be allowed the undisturbed enjoyment of the Pale. This notable scheme for settling the Irish question was actually adopted by the Queen, and she wrote to Sussex, stating that, as his expedition to the north had resulted only in giving fresh strength to the enemy, she 'had decided to come to an end of the war of Ulster by agreement rather than by force.' To Shane she was all compliance. He had but to prove himself a good subject, and he might have any pre-eminence which her Majesty could grant without doing any other person wrong. 'If he desired to have a council established at Armagh, he should himself be the president of that council; if he wished to drive the Scots out of Antrim, her own troops would assist in the expulsion; if he was offended with the garrison in the cathedral, she would gladly see peace maintained in a manner less expensive to herself. To the primacy he might name the person most agreeable to himself, and with the primacy, as a matter of course, even the form of maintaining the Protestant Church would be abandoned also. In return for these concessions the Queen demanded only that Shane, to save her honour, should sue for them as a favour instead of demanding them as a right. The rebel chief consented without difficulty to conditions which cost him nothing, and after an interview with Cusack, O'Neill wrote a formal apology to Elizabeth, and promised for the future to be her Majesty's true and faithful subject. Indentures were drawn up on December 17, in which the Ulster sovereignty was transferred to him in everything but the name, and the treaty required only Elizabeth's signature, when a second dark effort was made to cut the knot of the Irish difficulty.'[⁶]

This second 'dark effort' was nothing less than an attempt to murder O'Neill by means of poison. He could not be conquered; he could not be out-manoeuvred; he could not be assassinated in the ordinary way. But the resources of Dublin Castle, and of English ingenuity, were not exhausted. The lord deputy was of course delighted with the reconciliation which had been effected with the Ulster prince. What could be more natural than to send him a present of the choicest wine from the viceregal cellars? certainly few presents could be more agreeable. Shane and his household quaffed the delicious beverage freely enough we may be sure, without the slightest suspicion that there was death in the cup. But the wine was mingled with poison. Those who drank it were quickly at the point of death. O'Neill might thank his good constitution for his recovery from an illness almost mortal. The crime was traced to an Englishman named Smith, who, if employed by Lord Sussex, did not betray the guilty secret. Mr. Froude admits that the suspicion cannot but cling to him that this second attempt at murder was not made without his connivance; 'nor,' he adds, 'can Elizabeth herself be wholly acquitted of responsibility. She professed the loudest indignation, but she ventured no allusion to his previous communication with her, and no hint transpires of any previous displeasure when the proposal had been made openly to herself. The treachery of an English nobleman, the conduct of the inquiry, and the anomalous termination of it, would have been incredible even in Ireland, were not the original correspondence extant, in which the facts are not denied.'

O'Neill of course complained loudly to the Queen, whereupon she directed that a strict investigation should take place, in order that the guilty parties should be found out and punished, 'of what condition soever the same should be.' In writing to the lord deputy she assumed that Smith had been committed to prison and would be brought to condign punishment. That person, after many denials, at length confessed his guilt, and said that his object was to rid his country of a dangerous enemy. This motive was so good in the eye of the Government that it saved the life of the culprit. Sir Thomas Cusack, writing to Cecil, March 22, 1564, says, 'I persuaded O'Neill to forget the matter, whereby no more talk should grow of it; seeing there is no law to punish the offender other than by discretion and imprisonment, which O'Neill would little regard except the party might be executed by death, and that the law doth not suffer. So as the matter be wisely pacified, it were well done to leave it.' Shane was probably aware that Smith was but an instrument, who would be readily sacrificed as a peace-offering.

The sketch which Mr. Froude gives of Ulster and its wild sovereign at this time is admirably picturesque. 'Here then, for the present, the story will leave Shane safely planted on the first step of his ambition, in all but the title, sole monarch of the North. He built himself a fort on an island in Lough Neagh, which he called Foogh-ni-gall, or, Hate of Englishmen, and grew rich on the spoils of his enemies, the only strong man in Ireland. He administered justice after a paternal fashion, permitting no robbers but himself; when wrong was done he compelled restitution, or at his own cost redeemed the harm "to the loser's contentation." Two hundred pipes of wine were stored in his cellars; 600 men-at-arms fed at his table, as it were his janissaries; and daily he feasted the beggars at his gate, saying, it was meet to serve Christ first. Half wolf, half fox, he lay couched in his Castle of Malepartuis, with his emissaries at Rome, at Paris, and at Edinburgh. In the morning he was the subtle pretender to the Irish throne; in the afternoon, when the wine was in him, he was a dissolute savage, revelling in sensuality with his unhappy countess, uncoupled from her horseboy to wait upon his pleasure. He broke loose from time to time to keep his hand in practice. At Carlingford, for example, he swept off one day 200 sheep and oxen, while his men violated sixty women in the town; but Elizabeth looked away and endeavoured not to see. The English Government had resolved to stir no sleeping dogs in Ireland till a staff was provided to chastise them if they would bite. Terence Daniel, the dean of those rough-riding canons of Armagh, was installed as primate; the Earl of Sussex was recalled to England; and the new archbishop, unable to contain his exultation at the blessed day which had dawned upon his country, wrote to Cecil to say how the millennium had come at last, glory be to God!'

As a picture of Irish savage life this is very good. But the historian has presented a companion picture of English civilised life, which is not at all inferior. Sir Thomas Wroth and Sir Nicholas Arnold were sent over to reform the Pale. They were stern Englishmen, impatient of abuses among their own countrymen, and having no more sympathy for Irishmen than for wolves. In the Pale they found that peculation had grown into a custom; the most barefaced frauds had been converted by habit into rights: and a captain's commission was thought ill-handled if it did not yield, beyond the pay, 500l. a year. They received pay for each hundred men, when only sixty were on the roll. The soldiers, following the example of their leaders, robbed and ground the peasantry. In fact, the Pale was 'a weltering sea of corruption—the captains out of credit, the soldiers mutinous, the English Government hated; every man seeking his own, and none that which was Christ's.' The purification of the Pale was left to Arnold, 'a hard, iron, pitiless man, careful of things and careless of phrases, untroubled with delicacy, and impervious to Irish enchantments. The account books were dragged to light, where iniquity in high places was registered in inexorable figures. The hands of Sir Henry Ratcliffe, the brother of Sussex, were not found clean. Arnold sent him to the Castle with the rest of the offenders. Deep, leading drains were cut through the corrupting mass. The shaking ground grew firm, and honest healthy human life was again made possible. With the provinces beyond the Pale, Arnold meddled little, save where, taking a rough view of the necessities of the case, he could help the Irish chiefs to destroy each other.'

To Cecil, Arnold wrote thus: 'I am with all the wild Irish at the same point I am at with bears and ban-dogs; when I see them fight, so they fight earnestly indeed, and tug each other well, I care not who has the worst.' 'Why not, indeed?' asks Mr. Froude; 'better so than hire assassins! Cecil, with the modesty of genius, confessed his ignorance of the country, and his inability to judge; yet, in every opinion which he allowed himself to give, there was always a certain nobility of tone and sentiment.' Nobility was scarcely necessary to induce a statesman to revolt against the policy of Arnold. A little Christianity, nay a slight touch of humanity, would have sufficed for that purpose. Sussex was a nobleman, and considered himself, no doubt, a very godly man, but everyone must admit that, in all heroic qualities, he was incomparably beneath the uncultured Shane O'Neill, while in baseness and wickedness he was not far behind his northern foe, 'half wolf, half fox.' Cecil, however, was a man of a very different stamp from Sussex. Evidently shocked at the prevailing English notions about the value of Irish life, he wrote to Arnold: 'You be of that opinion which many wise men are of, from which I do not dissent, being an Englishman; but being, as I am, a Christian man, I am not without some perplexity, to enjoy of such cruelties.'

The work of reform, however, did not prove so easy a task. Arnold's vigour was limited by his powers. The paymasters continued to cheat the Government by false returns. The Government allowed the pay to run in arrear, the soldiers revenged themselves by oppressing and plundering the people; and 'so came to pass this wonderful phenomenon, that in O'Neill's country alone in Ireland—defended as it was from attacks from without, and enriched with the plunder of the Pale—were the peasantry prosperous, or life or property secure.' This fact might suggest to the English historian that the evils of Ireland do not all proceed from blood or race; and that the Saxon may be placed in circumstances which make him as false, as dishonest, as lazy, as disordered, as worthless as the Celt, and that even men of 'gentle blood' may become as base as their most plebeian servants. Nor did zeal for religious reformation redeem the defects of the Anglo-Irish rulers. The Protestant bishops were chiefly agitated by the vestment controversy. 'Adam Loftus, the titular primate, to whom,' says Mr. Froude, 'sacked villages, ravished women, and famine-stricken skeletons crawling about the fields, were matters of everyday indifference, shook with terror at the mention of a surplice.' Robert Daly wrote in anguish to Cecil, in dismay at the countenance to 'Papistry,' and at his own inability to prolong a persecution which he had happily commenced. An abortive 'devise for the better government of Ireland' gives us some insight into the condition of the people. 'No poor persons should be compelled any more to work or labour by the day, or otherwise, without meat, drink, wages, or some other allowance during the time of their labour; no earth tillers, nor any others inhabiting a dwelling, under any lord, should be distrained or punished, in body or goods, for the faults of their landlord; nor any honest man lose life or lands without fair trial by parliamentary attainder, according to the ancient laws of England and Ireland.' Surely it was no proof of incurable perversity of nature, that the Irish peasantry were discontented and disaffected, under the horrid system of oppression and slavery here laid before the English Government.

As remedial measures, it was proposed that a true servant of God should be placed in every parish, from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway; that the children should be taught the New Testament and the Psalms in Latin, 'that they, being infants, might savour of the same in age as an old cask doth;' that there should be a university for the education of the clergy, 'and such godly discipline among them that there should be no more pluralities, no more abuse of patronage, no more neglect, or idleness, or profligacy.' Mr. Froude's reflection upon this projected policy is highly characteristic:—

'Here was an ideal Ireland painted on the retina of some worthy English minister; but the real Ireland was still the old place. As it was in the days of Brian Boroihme and the Danes, so it was in the days of Shane O'Neill and Sir Nicholas Arnold; and the Queen, who was to found all these fine institutions, cared chiefly to burden her exchequer no further in the vain effort to drain the black Irish morass, fed as it was from the perennial fountains of Irish NATURE.'[⁷]

The Queen, however, thought it more prudent to let Shane have his way in Ulster. To oblige him, she would remove the Protestant primate, Loftus, to Dublin, and appoint his own nominee and friend, Terence Daniel. The Pope had sent a third archbishop for the same see, named Creagh; but, when passing through London, he was arrested, and incarcerated in the Tower, 'where he lay in great misery, cold, and hunger, without a penny, without the means of getting his single shirt washed, and without gown or hose.' At last he made his escape by gliding over the walls into the Thames. The events of 1565 made the English Government more than ever anxious to come to terms with the chieftain 'whom they were powerless to crush.' Since the defeat of the Earl of Sussex, continues Mr. Froude, 'Shane's influence and strength had been steadily growing. His return unscathed from London, and the fierce attitude which he assumed on the instant of his reappearance in Ulster, convinced the petty leaders that to resist him longer would only ensure their ruin. O'Donel was an exile in England, and there remained unsubdued in the North only the Scottish colonies of Antrim, which were soon to follow with the rest. O'Neill lay quiet through the winter. With the spring and the fine weather, when the rivers fell and the ground dried, he roused himself out of his lair, and with his galloglasse and kerne, and a few hundred harquebussmen, he dashed suddenly down upon the Red-shanks, and broke them utterly to pieces. Six or seven hundred were killed in the field, James M'Connell and his brother, Sorleyboy, were taken prisoners, and, for the moment, the whole colony was swept away. James M'Connell, himself badly wounded in the action, died a few months later, and Shane was left undisputed sovereign of Ulster.'

Primate Daniel announced to the Queen this 'glorious victory over a malicious and dangerous people' who were gradually fastening on the country; and Sir Thomas Cusack urged that now was the time to make O'Neill a friend for ever, an advice which was backed up by the stern Arnold. 'For what else could be done? The Pale,' he pleaded, 'is poor and unable to defend itself. If he do fall out before the beginning of next summer, there is neither outlaw, rebel, murderer, thief, nor any lewd nor evil-disposed person—of whom God knoweth there is plenty swarming in every quarter among the wild Irish, yea and in our own border too—which would not join to do what mischief they might.'

But Shane did not wait for further royal overtures. He saw that with the English Government might was right, and that the justice of his cause shone out more brightly in proportion to the increase of his power. Thus encouraged in his course of aggression and conquest, he seized the Queen's Castles of Newry and Dundrum. He then marched into Connaught, demanding the tribute due of old time 'to them that were kings in that realm.' He exacted pledges of obedience from the western chiefs, and spoiled O'Rourke's country, and returned to Tyrone driving before him 4,000 head of cattle. While proceeding at this rate he wrote soothing and flattering words to the Queen. It was for her majesty he was fighting; he was chastising her enemies and breaking stiff-necked chiefs into her yoke; and he begged that she would not credit any stories which his ill-willers might spread abroad against him. On the contrary he hoped she would determine his title and rule without delay, and grant him, in consideration of his good services, some augmentation of living in the Pale. Elizabeth, however, excused his conduct, saying 'we must allow something for his wild bringing-up, and not expect from him what we should expect from a perfect subject. If he mean well he shall have all his reasonable requests granted.'

But there was among Elizabeth's advisers a statesman who felt that this sort of policy would never do. Sir Henry Sidney, on being requested to take charge of the Government of Ireland, urged the absolute necessity of a radical change. The power of O'Neill, and such rulers as he, must be utterly broken, and that by force, at whatever cost. And this, he argued, would not only be sound policy but true economy. The condition of Ireland was unexampled; free from foreign invasion, the sovereignty of the Queen not denied, yet the revenue so mean and scanty that 'great yearly treasures were carried out of the realm of England to satisfy the stipends of the officers and soldiers required for the governance of the same.' He must have 10,000l. or 12,000l. to pay out-standing debts and put the army in proper condition. As for his own remuneration, the new viceroy, as he could expect nothing from the Queen, would be content with permission to export six thousand kerseys and clothes, free of duty.

Sir Henry Sidney struck out the only line of policy by which the English government of Ireland could be made successful or even possible. He said: 'To go to work by force will be chargeable, it is true; but if you will give the people justice and minister law among them, and exercise the sword of the sovereign, and put away the sword of the subject, omnia hæc adjicientur vobis—you shall drive the now man of war to be an husbandman, and he that now liveth like a lord to live like a servant, and the money now spent in buying armour, and horses, and waging of war, shall be bestowed in building of towns and houses. By ending these incessant wars ere they be aware, you shall bereave them both of force and beggary, and make them weak and wealthy. Then you can convert the military service due from the lords into money; then you can take up the fisheries now left to the French and the Spaniards; then you can open and work your mines, and the people will be able to grant you subsidies.'[⁸] When the lord deputy arrived in Ireland he found a state of things in the Pale far worse than he could have imagined. It was 'as it were overwhelmed with vagabonds; plunder and spoils daily carried out of it; the people miserable; not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend 20l.; without horse, armour, apparel, or victual. The soldiers were worse than the people: so beggarlike as it would abhor a general to look on them; never a married wife among them, and therefore so allied with Irishwomen that they betrayed secrets, and could not be trusted on dangerous service; so insolent as to be intolerable; so rooted in idleness as there was no hope by correction to amend them.' In Munster a man might ride twenty or thirty miles and find no houses standing in a country which he had known as well inhabited as many counties in England. 'In Ulster,' Sidney wrote, 'there tyrannizeth the prince of pride; Lucifer was never more puffed up with pride and ambition than that O'Neill is; he is at present the only strong and rich man in Ireland, and he is the dangerest man and most like to bring the whole estate of this land to subversion and subjugation either to him or to some foreign prince, that ever was in Ireland.' He invited this Lucifer to come into the Pale to see him, and Shane at first agreed to meet him at Dundalk, but on second thoughts he politely declined, on the ground that the Earl of Sussex had twice attempted to assassinate him, and but for the Earl of Kildare would have put a lock upon his hands when he was passing through Dublin to England. Hence his 'timorous and mistrustful people' would not trust him any more in English hands. In fact O'Neill despised any honours the Queen could confer upon him. 'When the wine was in him he boasted that he was in blood and power better than the best of their earls, and he would give place to none but his cousin of Kildare, because he was of his own house. They had made a wise earl of M'Carthymore, but Shane kept as good a man as he. Whom was he to trust? Sussex gave him a safe-conduct and then offered him the courtesy of a handlock. The Queen had told him herself that, though he had got a safe-conduct to come and go, the document did not say when he was to go; and, in order to get away from London, he was obliged to agree to things against his honour and profit, and he would never perform them while he lived.' That treachery drove him into war. 'My ancestors,' he said, 'were kings of Ulster; and Ulster is mine, and shall be mine. O'Donel shall never come into his country, nor Bagenal into Newry, nor Kildare into Dundrum, or Lecale. They are now mine. With this sword I won them, with this sword I will keep them.' Sidney, indignant at these pretensions, wrote thus to Leicester: 'No Atila nor Yotila, no Vandal nor Goth that ever was, was more to be dreaded for over-running any part of Christendom, than this man is for over-running and spoiling of Ireland. If it be an angel of heaven that will say that ever O'Neill will be a good subject till he be thoroughly chastised, believe him not, but think him a spirit of error. Surely if the queen do not chastise him in Ulster, he will chase all hers out of Ireland. Her majesty must make up her mind to the expense, and chastise this cannibal.' He therefore demanded money that he might pay the garrison and get rid of the idle, treacherous, incorrigible soldiers which were worse than none. Ireland, he said, would be no small loss to the English crown. It was never so likely to be lost as then, and he would rather die than that it should be lost during his government. The queen, however, sent money with the greatest possible reluctance, and was strangely dissatisfied with this able and faithful servant, even when his measures were attended with signal success.

In the meantime O'Neill zealously espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots. His friendship with Argyle grew closer, and he proposed that it should be cemented by a marriage. 'The countess' was to be sent away, and Shane was to be united to the widow of James M'Connell, whom he had killed—who was another half-sister of Argyle, and whose daughter he had married already and divorced. Sidney wrote, that was said to be the earl's practice; and Mr. Froude, who has celebrated the virtues of Henry VIII., takes occasion from this facility of divorce to have another fling at 'Irish nature.' He says:—'The Irish chiefs, it seemed, three thousand years behind the world, retained the habits and the moralities of the Greek princes in the tale of Troy, when the bride of the slaughtered husband was the willing prize of the conqueror; and when only a rare Andromache was found to envy the fate of a sister

Who had escaped the bed of some victorious lord.'

After a brief and brilliant campaign, in which Shane 'swept round by Lough Erne, swooped on the remaining cattle of Maguire, and struck terror and admiration into the Irishry,' he wrote a letter to Charles IX. of France, inviting his co-operation in expelling the heretics, and bringing back the country to the holy Roman see. The heretic Saxons, he said, were the enemies of Almighty God, the enemies of the holy Church of Rome, the King's enemies, and his. 'The time is come when we all are confederates in a common bond to drive the invader from our shores, and we now beseech your Majesty to send us 6,000 well-armed men. If you will grant our request there will soon be no Englishmen left alive among us, and we will be your Majesty's subjects ever more.' This letter was intercepted, and is now preserved among the Irish MSS.

Sidney resolved to adopt a new plan of warfare. His campaigns would not be mere summer forays, mere inroads of devastation during the few dry weeks of August and September. He would wait till the harvest was gathered in, place troops in fortresses, and continue hostilities through the winter. He adopted this course because 'in the cold Irish springs, the fields were bare, the cattle were lean, and the weather was so uncertain that neither man nor horse could bear it, whereas in August food everywhere was abundant, and the soldiers would have time to become hardened to their work.' They could winter somewhere on the Bann; harry Tyrone night and day without remission, and so break Shane to the ground and ruin him. There was no time to be lost. Maguire had come into Dublin, reporting that his last cottage was in ashes, and his last cow driven over the hill into Shane's country; while Argyle, with the whole disposable force of the western isles, was expected to join him in summer. O'Neill himself, after an abortive attempt to entrap Sidney at Dundalk, made a sudden attack on that town in July; but his men were beaten back, 'and eighteen heads were left behind to grin hideously over the gates.' He then returned to Armagh and burned the cathedral to the ground, to prevent its being again occupied by an English garrison. He next sent a swift messenger to Desmond, calling for a rising in Munster. 'Now was the time or never' to set upon the enemies of Ireland. If Desmond failed, or turned against his country, God would avenge it on him. But Desmond's reply was an offer to the deputy 'to go against the rebel with all his power. The Scots also held back.' Shane offered them all Antrim to join him, all the cattle in the country, and the release of Sorleyboy from captivity; but Antrim and its cattle they believed that they could recover for themselves, and James M'Connell had left a brother Allaster, who was watching with eager eyes for an opportunity to revenge the death of his kinsman, and the dishonour with which Shane had stained his race.

In the meantime troops and money came over from England, and on September 17, Colonel Randolph was at the head of an army in Lough Foyle; and the lord deputy took the field accompanied by Kildare, the old O'Donel, Shane Maguire, and O'Dogherty. So that this war against O'Neill was waged for the dispossessed Irish chiefs as well as for England. Armagh city they found a mere heap of blackened stones. Marching without obstruction to Ben brook, one of O'Neill's best and largest houses, which they found 'utterly burned and razed to the ground,' thence they went on towards Clogher, 'through pleasant fields, and villages so well inhabited as no Irish county in the realm was like it.' The Bishop of Clogher was out with Shane in the field. 'His well-fattened flock were devoured by Sidney's men as by a flight of Egyptian locusts.' 'There we stayed,' said Sidney, 'to destroy the corn; we burned the country for 124 miles compass, and we found by experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most harm.' But he says not a word of the harm he was doing to the poor innocent peasantry, whose industry had produced the crops, to the terrified women and children whom he was thus consigning to a horrible lingering death by famine. This was a strange commencement of his own programme to treat the people with justice.

The lord deputy expected to meet Randolph at Lifford; but struck with the singular advantages presented by Derry, then an island, for a military position, he pitched his tents there, and set the troops to work in erecting fortifications. Nothing then stood on the site of the present city, save a decrepid and deserted monastery of Augustine monks, which was said to have been built in the time of St. Columba.

Sidney stayed a few days at Derry, and then, leaving Randolph with 650 men, 350 pioneers, and provisions for two months, he marched on to Donegal. This was once a thriving town, inhabited by English colonists. At the time of Sidney's arrival it was a pile of ruins, 'in the midst of which, like a wild beast's den, strewed round with mangled bones, rose the largest and strongest castle which he had seen in Ireland. It was held by one of O'Donel's kinsmen, to whom Shane, to attach him to his cause, had given his sister to wife. At the appearance of the old chief with the English army, it was immediately surrendered. O'Donel was at last rewarded for his fidelity and sufferings; and the whole tribe, with eager protestations of allegiance, gave sureties for their future loyalty.' Sidney next directed his march to Ballyshannon, and on by the coast of Sligo. Passing over the bogs and mountains of Mayo, they came into Roscommon, and then, 'leaving behind them as fruitful a country as was in England or Ireland all utterly waste,' the army crossed the Shannon at Athlone, swimming 'for lack of a bridge.' The results of this progress are thus summed up by Mr. Froude. 'Twenty castles had been taken as they went along and left in hands that could be trusted. In all that long and painful journey Sidney was able to say that there had not died of sickness but three persons; men and horses were brought back in full health and strength, while her majesty's honour was re-established among the Irishry, and grown to no small veneration—"an expedition comparable only to Alexander's journey into Bactria," wrote an admirer of Sidney to Cecil—revealing what to Irish eyes appeared the magnitude of the difficulty, and forming a measure of the effect which it produced. The English deputy had bearded Shane in his stronghold, burned his houses, pillaged his people, and had fastened a body of police in the midst of them, to keep them waking in the winter nights. He had penetrated the hitherto impregnable fortresses of mountain and morass; the Irish who had been faithful to England were again in safe possession of their lands and homes. The weakest, maddest, and wildest Celts were made aware that, when the English were once roused to effort, they could crush them as the lion crushes the jackal.'[⁹]

O'Neill had followed the lord deputy to Lifford, and then marched on to the Pale, expecting to retaliate upon the invaders with impunity. But he was encountered by Warren St. Leger, lost 200 men, and was at first hunted back over the border. He again returned, however, with 'a main army,' burned several villages, and in a second fight with St. Leger, compelled the English to retire, 'for lack of more aid;' but they held together in good order, and Shane, with the Derry garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit. 'Before he could revenge himself on Sidney, before he could stir against the Scots, before he could strike a blow at O'Donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was fastened in his unguarded side.'

In order to accomplish this object, he hovered cautiously about the Foyle, watching for an opportunity to attack the garrison. But Randolph fell upon him by surprise, and after a short sharp action, the O'Neills gave way. O'Dogherty with his Irish horse chased the flying crowd of his countrymen, killing every person he caught; and Shane lost 400 men, the bravest of his warriors. The English success was dearly bought, for Randolph leading the pursuit, was struck by a random shot, and fell dead from his horse.

Before the Irish chief could recover from this great disaster, Sidney 'struck in again beyond Dundalk, burning his farms and capturing his castles. The Scots came in over the Bann, wasting the country all along the river side. Allaster M'Connell, like some chief of Sioux Indians, sent to the captain of Knockfergus an account of the cattle that he had driven, and the wives and bairns that he had slain. Like swarms of angry hornets, these avenging savages drove their stings in the now maddened and desperate Shane on every point where they could fasten; while in December the old O'Donel came out over the mountains from Donegal, and paid back O'Neill with interest for his stolen wife, his pillaged country, and his own long imprisonment and exile. The tide of fortune had turned too late for his own revenge: worn out with his long sufferings, he fell from his horse, at the head of his people, with the stroke of death upon him; but before he died, he called his kinsmen about him, and prayed them to be true to England and their queen, and Hugh O'Donel, who succeeded to his father's command, went straight to Derry, and swore allegiance to the English crown.

'Tyrone was now smitten in all its borders. Magennis was the last powerful chief who still adhered to Shane's fortunes; the last week in the year Sidney carried fire and sword through his country, and left him not a hoof remaining. It was to no purpose that Shane, bewildered by the rapidity with which disasters were piling themselves upon him, cried out now for pardon and peace; the deputy would not answer his letter, and nothing was talked of but his extirpation by war only.'[¹⁰]

The war, however, was interrupted by a singular calamity that befel the Derry garrison. By the death of their commander left 'a headless people,' they suffered from want of food and clothing. They also became the prey of a mysterious disease, against which no precautions could guard, which no medicine could cure, and by which strong men were suddenly struck dead. By the middle of November 'the flux was reigning among them wonderfully;' many of the best men went away because there was none to stay them. The secret of the dreadful malady—something like the cholera—was discovered in the fact that the soldiers had built their sleeping quarters over the burial-ground of the abbey, 'and the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them.' The officer who succeeded to the command applied the most effectual remedy. He led the men at once into the pure air of the enemies' country, and they returned after a few days driving before them 700 horses and 1,000 cattle. He assured Sidney, that with 300 additional men, he could so hunt the rebel, that ere May was passed, he should not show his face in Ulster. But the 'Black Death' returned after a brief respite; and, says Mr. Froude, in the reeking vapour of the charnel-house, it was indifferent whether its victims returned in triumph from a stricken field, or were cooped within their walls by hordes of savage enemies. By the middle of March there were left out of 1,100 but 300 available to fight. Reinforcements had been raised at Liverpool, but they were countermanded when on the point of sailing. The English council was discussing the propriety of removing the colony to the Bann, when accident finished the work which the plague had begun, and spared them the trouble of deliberation. The huts and sheds round the monastery had been huddled together for the convenience of fortification. At the end of April, probably after a drying east wind, a fire broke out in a blacksmith's forge, which spread irresistibly through the entire range of buildings. The flames at last reached the powder magazine: thirty men were blown to pieces by the explosion, and the rest, paralysed by this last addition to their misfortunes, made no more effort to extinguish the conflagration. St. Loo, with all that remained of that ill-fated party, watched from their provision boats in the river the utter destruction of the settlement which had begun so happily, and then sailed drearily away to find a refuge in Knockfergus. Such was the fate of the first efforts for the building of Londonderry; and below its later glories, as so often happens in this world, lay the bones of many a hundred gallant men who lost their lives in laying its foundations. Elizabeth, who in the immediate pressure of calamity resumed at once her noble nature, 'perceiving the misfortune not to come of treason, but of God's ordinance,' bore it well; she was willing to do that should be wanting to repair the loss; and Cecil was able to write cheerfully to Sidney, telling him to make the best of the accident and let it stimulate him to fresh exertions.'[¹¹]

In the meantime Shane O'Neill, hard pressed on every side, earnestly implored the cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, in the name of their great brother the duke, to bring the Fleur-de-lys to the rescue of Ireland from the grasp of the ungodly English. 'Help us,' he cried, blending Irish-like flattery with entreaty: 'when I was in England, I saw your noble brother, the Marquis d'Elboeuf, transfix two stags with a single arrow. If the most Christian king will not help us, move the pope to help us. I alone in this land sustain his cause.' To propitiate his holiness, Primate Daniel was dismissed to the ranks of the army, and Creagh received his crosier, and was taken into O'Neill's household.

'All was done,' says the English historian, 'to deserve favour in earth and heaven, but all was useless. The Pope sat silent or muttering his anathemas with bated breath. The Guises had work enough on hand at home to heed the Irish wolf, whom the English, having in vain attempted to trap or poison, were driving to bay with more lawful weapons.' His own people, divided and dispirited, began now to desert the failing cause. In May, by a concerted movement, the deputy with the light horse of the Pale overran Tyrone, and robbed the farmers of 3,000 cattle, while the O'Donels mustered their forces for a great contest with Shane, now struggling, almost hopelessly, to maintain his supremacy. The O'Neills and O'Donels met on the banks of the Foyle near Lifford. The former were superior in number, being about 3,000 men. After a brief fight 'the O'Neills broke and fled; the enemy was behind them, the river was in front; and when the Irish battle cries had died away over moor and mountain, but 200 survived of those fierce troopers, who were to have cleared Ireland for ever from the presence of the Saxons. For the rest, the wolves were snarling over their bodies, and the seagulls whirling over them with scream and cry, as they floated down to their last resting-place beneath the quiet waters of Lough Foyle. Shane's foster-brethren, faithful to the last, were all killed; he himself with half-a-dozen comrades rode for his life, pursued by the avenging furies. His first desperate intention was to throw himself at Sidney's feet, with a slave's collar upon his neck; but his secretary, Neil M'Kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope. Sorleyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at Lough Neagh, the Countess of Argyle had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him. M'Kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred of the M'Connells.'

Acting on this advice, O'Neill took his prisoner, 'the countess, his secretary, and fifty men to the camp of Allaster M'Connell, in the far extremity of Antrim. He was received with dissembled gratulatory words.' For two days all went on well, and an alliance was talked of. But the vengeance of his hosts was with difficulty suppressed. The great chief who was now in their power, had slain their leaders in the field, had divorced James M'Connell's daughter, had kept a high-born Scottish lady as his mistress, and had asked Argyle to give him for a wife M'Connell's widow, who, to escape the dishonour, had remained in concealment at Edinburgh. On the third evening, Monday June 2, when the wine and the whiskey had gone freely round, and the blood in Shane's veins had warmed, Gilespie M'Connell, who had watched him from the first with an ill-boding eye, turned round upon M'Kevin, and asked scornfully, 'whether it was he who had bruited abroad that the lady his aunt did offer to come from Scotland to Ireland to marry with his master?'

M'Kevin meeting scorn with scorn said, that if his aunt was Queen of Scotland she might be proud to match with the O'Neill. 'It is false,' the fierce Scot shouted; 'my aunt is too honest a woman to match with her husband's murderer.'

'Shane, who was perhaps drunk, heard the words, and forgetting where he was, flung back the lie in Gilespie's throat. Gilespie sprung to his feet, ran out of the tent, and raised the slogan of the Isles. A hundred dirks flashed into the moonlight, and the Irish, wherever they could be found, were struck down and stabbed. Some two or three found their horses and escaped, all the rest were murdered; and Shane himself, gashed with fifty wounds, was wrapped in a kern's old shirt, and flung into a pit, dug hastily among the ruined arches of Glenarm. Even there, what was left of him was not allowed to rest. Four days later, Piers, the captain of Knockfergus, hacked the head from the body, and carried it on a spear's point through Drogheda to Dublin, where, staked upon a pike, it bleached on the battlements of the castle, a symbol to the Irish world of the fate of Celtic heroes.'[¹²]

Mr. Froude might have added: Celtic heroes struck down by Celtic hands. No lord deputy could boast of a victory over Shane O'Neill in the field. Irish traitors in English pay, Irish clans moved by vengeance, did the work of England in the destruction of the great principality of the O'Neills, and it was by their swords, not by English valour, that Sidney 'recovered Ireland for the crown of Elizabeth.' Whatever may have been the faults of Shane O'Neill, and no doubt they were very great, though not to be judged of by the morality of the nineteenth century, his talents, his force of character, his courage and capacity as a general, deserved more favourable notice from Mr. Froude, who, in almost every sentence of his graphic and splendid descriptions, betrays an animosity to the Celtic race, very strange in an author so enlightened, and evincing, with this exception, such generous sympathies. After so often reviling the great Irish champion by comparing him to all sorts of wild beasts, the historian thus concludes:—

'So died Shane O'Neill, one of those champions of Irish nationality, who under varying features have repeated themselves in the history of that country with periodic regularity. At once a drunken ruffian, and a keen and fiery patriot, the representative in his birth of the line of the ancient kings, the ideal in his character of all which Irishmen most admired, regardless in his actions of the laws of God and man, yet the devoted subject in his creed of the holy Catholic Church; with an eye which could see far beyond the limits of his own island, and a tongue which could touch the most passionate chords of the Irish heart; the like of him has been seen many times in that island, and the like of him may be seen many times again till the Ethiopian has changed his skin, and the leopard his spots. Numbers of his letters remain, to the Queen, to Sussex, to Sidney, to Cecil, and to foreign princes; far-reaching, full of pleasant flattery and promises which cost him nothing, but showing true ability and insight. Sinner though he was, he too in his turn was sinned against; in the stained page of Irish misrule there is no second instance in which an English ruler stooped to treachery, or to the infamy of attempted assassination; and it is not to be forgotten that Lord Sussex, who has left under his own hand the evidence of his own baseness, continued a trusted and favoured councillor of Elizabeth, while Sidney, who fought Shane and conquered him in the open field, found only suspicion and hard words.'

Footnote 1: [(return)]

See Life of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

Froude.

Footnote 3: [(return)]

Froude.

Footnote 4: [(return)]

Wright's Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 73.

Footnote 5: [(return)]

Haverty's History of Ireland, p. 300.

Footnote 6: [(return)]

Froude, vol. viii. p. 48.

Footnote 7: [(return)]

Vol. viii. p. 377.

Footnote 8: [(return)]

Opinions of Sir H. Sidney, Irish MSS., Rolls House; Froude, p. 385.

Footnote 9: [(return)]

Vol. viii. p. 407.

Footnote 10: [(return)]

Froude, p. 413.

Footnote 11: [(return)]

Page 410.

Footnote 12: [(return)]

Froude, p. 418, &c.

CHAPTER IV.

EXTERMINATING WARS.

Mr. Froude's magnificent chapter on Ireland, in the eleventh volume of his history, just published, ought to be studied by every member of the legislature before parliament meets. If a nation has a conscience, England must feel remorse for the deeds done in her name in Ireland; and ought to make amends for them, if possible. The historian has well described the policy of Queen Elizabeth. She was at times disposed to forbearance, but 'she made impossible the obedience she enjoined. Her deputies and her presidents, too short-sighted to rule with justice, were driven to cruelty in spite of themselves. It was easier to kill than to restrain. Death was the only gaoler which their finances could support, while the Irish in turn lay in wait to retaliate upon their oppressors, and atrocity begat atrocity in hopeless continuity.'

Whenever there was a failing in any enterprise, the queen conceived 'a great misliking of the whole matter;' but success covered a multitude of sins. When the Irish were powerful, and the colony was in danger, she thought it 'a hard matter to subvert the customs of the people which they had enjoyed, to be ruled by the captains of their own nation. Let the chiefs sue for pardon, and submit to her authority, and she would let them have their seignories, their captaincies, their body-guards, and all the rest of their dignities, with power of life and death over their people. But,' says Mr. Froude, 'it was the curse of the English rule that it never could adhere consistently to any definite principle. It threatened, and failed to execute its threats. It fell back on conciliation, and yet immediately, by some injustice or cruelty, made reliance on its good faith impossible.'

Essex seemed to understand well the nature and motive of the queen's professions, and he resolved to make some bold attempts to win back her favour. He had made a sudden attack on Sir Brian O'Neill of Clandeboye, with troops trained in the wars of the Low Countries, and in a week he brought him to abject submission, which he expressed by saying that 'he had gone wickedly astray, wandering in the wilderness like a blind beast.' But it was the misfortune of Sir Brian, or M'Phelim, that he still held his own territory, which had been granted by the queen to Essex. 'The attempt to deprive him had been relinquished. He had surrendered his lands, and the queen, at Essex's own intercession, had reinstated him as tenant under the crown. It seems, however, as if Essex had his eye still upon the property.' Under such circumstances, it was easy to assume that O'Neill was still playing false. So he resolved that he should not be able to do so any longer. 'He determined to make sure work with so fickle a people.' He returned to Clandeboye, as if on a friendly visit. Sir Brian and Lady O'Neill received him with all hospitality. The Irish Annalists say that they gave him a banquet. They not only let him off safe, but they accompanied him to his castle at Belfast. There he was very gracious. A high feast was held in the hall; and it was late in the night when the noble guest and his wife retired to their lodging outside the walls. When they were supposed to be asleep, a company of soldiers surrounded the house and prepared to break the door. 'The O'Neills flew to arms. The cry rang through the village, and the people swarmed out to defend their chief; but surprised, half-armed, and outnumbered, they were overpowered and cut to pieces. Two hundred men were killed. The Four Masters add that the women were slain. The chieftain's wife had female attendants with her, and no one was knowingly spared. The tide being out, a squadron of horse was sent at daybreak over the water into the "Ardes," from which, in a few hours, they returned with 3,000 of Sir Brian's cattle, and with a drove of stud mares, of which the choicest were sent to Fitzwilliam. Sir Brian himself, his brother, and Lady O'Neill, were carried as prisoners to Dublin, where they were soon after executed.'[¹]

Essex did not miscalculate the probable effect of this exploit. It raised him high in the estimation of the Anglo-Irish of the Pale. 'The taint of the country was upon him; he had made himself no better than themselves, and was the hero of the hour.' The effect of such conduct and such a spirit in the rulers, may be imagined. A few weeks later, Sir Edward Fitton wrote: 'I may say of Ireland, that it is quiet; but if universal oppression of the mean sort by the great; if murder, robberies, burnings make an ill commonwealth, then I cannot say we are in a good case ... Public sentiment in Dublin, however, was unanimous in its approbation. Essex was the man who would cauterize the long-standing sores. There was a soldier in Ireland at last who understood the work that was to be done, and the way to set about it. Beloved by the soldiers, admirable alike for religion, nobility, and courtesy, altogether the queen's, and not bewitched by the factions of the realm, the governor of Ulster had but to be armed with supreme power, and the long-wished-for conquest of Ireland would be easily and instantly achieved.'

These feelings were not unnatural to the party in Dublin, now represented by the men who recently declared that they rejoiced in the election of a Fenian convict in Tipperary, and declared that they would vote for such a candidate in preference to a loyal man. But how did Queen Elizabeth receive the news of the treacherous and atrocious massacre at Belfast? She was not displeased. 'Her occasional disapprobation of severities of this kind,' says Mr. Froude, 'was confined to cases to which the attention of Europe happened to be especially directed. She told Essex that he was a great ornament of her nobility, she wished she had many as ready as he to spend their lives for the benefit of their country.'

Thus encouraged by his sovereign, and smarting under the reproach of cowardice cast on him by Leicester, Essex determined to render his name illustrious by a still more signal deed of heroism. After an unprovoked raid on the territories of O'Neill in Tyrone, carrying off cattle and slaughtering great numbers of innocent people whom his soldiers hunted down, he perpetrated another massacre, which is certainly one of the most infamous recorded in history. A great number of women and children, aged and sick persons, had fled from the horrors that reigned on the mainland, and taken refuge in the island of Rathlin. The story of their tragic fate is admirably told by Mr. Froude:—'The situation and the difficulty of access had thus long marked Rathlin as a place of refuge for Scotch or Irish fugitives, and, besides its natural strength, it was respected as a sanctuary, having been the abode at one time of St. Columba. A mass of broken masonry, on a cliff overhanging the sea, is a remnant of the castle in which Robert Bruce watched the leap of the legendary spider. To this island, when Essex entered Antrim, M'Connell and other Scots had sent their wives and children, their aged and their sick, for safety. On his way through Carrickfergus, when returning to Dublin, the earl ascertained that they had not yet been brought back to their homes. The officer in command of the English garrison (it is painful to mention the name either of him, or of any man concerned in what ensued) was John Norris, Lord Norris's second son, so famous afterwards in the Low Countries, grandson of Sir Henry Norris, executed for adultery with Anne Boleyn. Three small frigates were in the harbour. The summer had been hot and windless; the sea was smooth, there was a light and favourable air from the east; and Essex directed Norris to take a company of soldiers with him, cross over, and—'

What? Bring those women and children, those sick and aged folk, back to their homes? Essex had made peace by treaty with the O'Neill. He had killed or chased away every man that could disturb the peace; and an act of humanity like this would have had a most conciliatory effect, and ought to recommend the hero to the queen, who should be supposed to have the heart as well as the form of a woman.

No; the order was, to go over 'and kill whatever he could find!' Mr. Froude resumes: 'The run of the Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished. Before an alarm could be given, the English had landed, close to the ruins of the church which bears St. Columba's name. Bruce's castle was then standing, and was occupied by a score or two of Scots, who were in charge of the women. But Norris had brought cannon with him. The weak defences were speedily destroyed, and after a severe assault, in which several of the garrison were killed, the chief who was in command offered to surrender, if he and his people were allowed to return to Scotland. The conditions were rejected. The Scots yielded at discretion, and every living creature in the place, except the chief and his family (who were probably reserved for ransom), was immediately put to the sword. Two hundred were killed in the castle. It was then discovered that several hundred more, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shore. There was no remorse, nor even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it. They were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed. Sorleyboy and other chiefs, Essex coolly wrote, had sent their wives and children into the island, "which be all taken and executed to the number of six hundred. Sorleyboy himself," he continued, "stood upon the mainland of the Glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he there lost all that he ever had!" The impression left upon the mind by this horrible story, is increased by the composure with which even the news of it was received. "Yellow-haired Charley," wrote Essex to the queen, "might tear himself for his pretty little ones and their dam," but in Ireland itself the massacre was not specially distinguished in the general system of atrocity. Essex described it himself as one of the exploits with which he was most satisfied; and Elizabeth, in answer to his letters, bade him tell John Norris, "the executioner of his well-designed enterprise, that she would not be unmindful of his services."'

I have transcribed this narrative partly for the sake of the reflection with which Mr. Froude concludes. He says: 'But though passed over and unheeded at the time, and lying buried for three hundred years, the bloody stain comes back to the light again, not in myth or legend, but in the original account of the nobleman by whose command the deed was done; and when the history of England's dealings with Ireland settles at last into its final shape, that hunt among the caves at Rathlin will not be forgotten.'[²] It was for services like these that Essex got the barony of Farney, in the county Monaghan. He had mortgaged his English estates to the queen for 10,000l.,and after his plundering expeditions in Ireland he went home to pay his debts.

Further on Mr. Froude has another reflection connected with the death of Essex, supposed to have been poisoned, as his widow immediately after married Leicester. He says: 'Notwithstanding Rathlin, Essex was one of the noblest of living Englishmen, and that such a man could have ordered such a deed, being totally unconscious of the horror of it, is not the least instructive feature in the dreadful story.' It is certainly a strange fact that nearly all the official murderers who ruled in Ireland in those times were intensely religious, setting to their own class a most edifying example of piety. Thus, from the first, Protestantism was presented to the Irish in close connexion with brutal inhumanity and remorseless cruelty. Essex, when dying, was described by the bystanders as acting 'more like a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man.' His opinion of the religious character of his countrymen was most unfavourable. 'The Gospel had been preached to them,' he said, 'but they were neither Papists nor Protestants—of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity. There was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity!—atheism, atheism!—no religion, no religion!' What such tiger-like slaughterers of women and children, such ruthless destroyers, could have meant by religion is a puzzle for philosophers.

Sidney reluctantly resumed the office of viceroy in 1575. Tirlogh O'Neill congratulated the Government on his appointment, 'wretched Ireland needing not the sword, but sober, temperate, and humane administration.' Though it was winter, the new deputy immediately commenced a progress through the provinces. Going first to Ulster, he saw Sorleyboy, and gave him back Rathlin. He paid a friendly visit to the O'Neill, who gave him an assurance of his loyalty. Leinster he found for the most part 'waste, burnt up and destroyed.' He proceeded by Waterford to Cork. He was received everywhere with acclamation. 'The wretched people,' says Mr. Froude, how truly!—'sanguine then, as ever, in the midst of sorrow, looked on his coming as the inauguration of a new and happier era.' So, in later times, they looked on the coming of Chesterfield, and Fitzwilliam, and Anglesey. But the good angel was quickly chased away by the evil demon—invoked under the name of the 'Protestant Interest.' The Munster and the Connaught chiefs all thronged to Sidney's levées, weary of disaffection, and willing to be loyal, if their religion were not interfered with, 'detesting their barbarous lives,'—promising rent and service for their lands. 'The past was wiped out. Confiscation on the one hand, and rebellion on the other, were to be heard of no more. A clean page was turned.' Even the Catholic bishops were tractable, and the viceroy got 'good and honest juries in Cork, and with their help twenty-four malefactors were honourably condemned and hanged.' Enjoying an ovation as he passed on to Limerick and Galway, he found many grievances to be redressed—'plenty of burnings, rapes, murders, besides such spoil in goods and cattle as in number might be counted infinite, and in quantity innumerable.'

Sir William Drury was appointed president of Munster; and he was determined that in his case the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain. Going round the counties as an itinerant judge, he gleaned the malefactors Sidney had left, and hanged forty-three of them in Cork. One he pressed to death for declining to plead to his indictment. Two M'Sweenys, from Kerry, were drawn and quartered. At Limerick he hanged forty-two, and at Kilkenny thirty-six, among which he said were 'some good ones,' as a sportsman might say, bagging his game. He had a difficulty with 'a blackamoor and two witches,' against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them 'by natural law.' Although Jeffreys, at the Bloody Assizes, did not come near Drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the English Government for the paucity of his victims, saying, 'I have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.' With the Government in Ireland, as Mr. Froude has well remarked, 'the gallows is the only preacher of righteousness.'

But the gallows was far too slow, as an instrument of reform and civilisation, for Malby, president of Connaught; and as modern evictors in that province and elsewhere have chosen Christmas as the most appropriate season for pulling down dwellings, extinguishing domestic fires, and unhousing women and children, so Malby chose the same blessed season for his 'improvements' in 1576. It is such a model for dealing with the Fenians and tenants on the Tory plan, that I transcribe his own report, which Mr. Froude has found among the Irish MSS. 'At Christmas,' he wrote, 'I marched into their territory, and finding courteous dealing with them had like to have cut my throat, I thought good to take another course; and so with determination to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, I entered their mountains. I burnt all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them the best leaders they had. This was Shan Burke's country. Then I burnt Ulick Burke's country. In like manner I assaulted a castle where the garrison surrendered. I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers, that they could not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan Burke made means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people. I would not hearken, but went on my way. The gentlemen of Clanrickard came to me. I found it was but dallying to win time, so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses standing as I left his brother; and what people was found had as little favour as the other had. It was all done in rain and frost and storm, journeys in such weather bringing them the sooner to submission. They are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to offer them.'

And so Malby and his soldiers enjoyed a merry Christmas; and when Walsingham read his letters, giving an account of his civilising progress, to the Queen, she, too, must have enjoyed a fresh sensation, a new pleasure amidst the festivities and gallantries of her brilliant court. Mr. Froude has rendered a timely service in this Christmas time to the Coercionists, the Martial Law men, and the Habeas Corpus Suspension men of our own day. He has shown them their principles at work and carried out with a vengeance, and with what results! He has admirably sketched the progress of English rule in Ireland up to that time—a rule unchanged in principle to the present hour, though restrained in its operation by the spirit of the age. Mr. Froude says: 'When the people were quiet, there was the rope for the malefactors, and death by the natural law for those whom the law written could not touch. When they broke out, there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother and the baby at her breast. These, with ruined churches, and Irish rogues for ministers,—these, and so far only these were the symbols of the advance of English rule; yet even Sidney could not order more and more severity, and the president of Munster was lost in wonder at the detestation with which the English name was everywhere regarded. Clanrickard was sent to Dublin, and the deputy wished to hang him, but he dared not execute an earl without consulting his mistress, and Elizabeth's leniency in Ireland, as well as England, was alive and active towards the great, although it was dead towards the poor. She could hear without emotion of the massacres at Rathlin or Slievh Broughty; but the blood of the nobles, who had betrayed their wretched followers into the rebellion for which they suffered, was for ever precious in her sight. She forbade Sidney to touch him.'[³]

Next came the great Desmond Rebellion, by which Munster was desolated. The Pope had encouraged an expedition against the heretics in Ireland, and some Spanish forces joined in the enterprise. It was organised by an English ecclesiastic, named Sanders, and an exiled Geraldine, named Fitzmaurice of Kerry, both able and energetic men. The Spaniards landed at Dingle in 1579. In a few days all Kerry and Limerick were up, and the woods between Mallow and the Shannon 'were swarming with howling kerne.' 'The rebellion,' wrote Waterhouse, 'is the most perilous that ever began in Ireland. Nothing is to be looked for but a general revolt.' Malby took the command against them, joined by one of the Burkes, Theobald, who when he saw Fitzmaurice struck by a ball and staggering in his saddle, rode at him and cut him down. The Papal standard was unfolded in this battle. Malby then burnt the Desmonds' country, killing all the human beings he met, up to the walls of Askeaton. When opportunity offered, Desmond retaliated by sacking and burning Youghal. For two days the Geraldines revelled in plunder; they violated the women and murdered all who could not escape. At length Elizabeth was roused to the greatness of the danger, her parsimony was overcome. A larger force was drawn into Ireland than had ever been assembled there for a century. Ormond, the hereditary enemy of Desmond, was appointed commander-in-chief; and Burghley, writing to him in the name of the queen, concluded thus: 'So now I will merely say, Butler aboo, against all that cry in the new language—Papa aboo, and God send your hearts' desire to banish and vanquish those cankered Desmonds!' The war now raged, and, as usual, the innocent people, the cultivators of the soil, were the first victims. 'We passed through the rebel countries,' wrote Pelham, 'in two companies, burning with fire all habitations, and executing the people wherever we found them.' Mr. Froude says: 'Alone of all the English commanders he expressed remorse at the work.' Well, if the creatures they destroyed were horses, dogs, or cats, we should expect a man of ordinary human feelings to be shocked at the wholesale butchery. But the beings slaughtered were men and women and children—Christians found unarmed and defenceless in their dwellings. Let the English imagine such a war carried on in Kent or Yorkshire, by Irish invaders, killing in the name of the Pope. The Irish Annalists say that Pelham and Ormond killed the blind and the aged, women and children, sick and idiots, sparing none.

The English, as usual, had help from an Irish chief in the work of destruction. Ormond had in his train M'Carthymore, 'who, believing Desmond's day to be done, hoped, by making himself useful, to secure a share of the plunder.' Dividing their forces, Pelham marched on to Dingle, 'destroying as he went, with Ormond parallel to him on the opposite side of the bay, the two parties watching each other's course at night across the water by the flames of the burning cottages!'

The fleet was waiting at Dingle. There was a merry meeting of the officers. 'Here,' says Sir Nicholas White, 'my lord justice and I gathered cockles for our supper.'[⁴] The several hunting parties compared notes in the evening. Sometimes the sport was bad. On one occasion Pelham reported that his party had hanged a priest in the Spanish dress. 'Otherwise,' he says, 'we took small prey, and killed less people, though we reached many places in our travel!' At Killarney they found the lakes full of salmon. In one of the islands there was an abbey, in another a parish church, in another a castle, 'out of which there came to them a fair lady, the rejected wife of Lord Fitzmaurice.' Even the soldiers were struck with the singular loveliness of the scene. 'A fairer land,' one of them said, 'the sun did never shine upon—pity to see it lying waste in the hands of traitors.' Mr. Froude, who deals more justly by the Irish in his last volumes, replies: 'Yet it was by those traitors that the woods whose beauty they so admired had been planted and fostered. Irish hands, unaided by English art or English wealth, had built Muckross and Innisfallen and Aghadoe, and had raised the castles on whose walls the modern poet watched the splendour of the sunset.'

Ormond was the arch-destroyer of his countrymen. In a report of his services he stated that in this one year 1580, he had put to the sword 'forty-six captains and leaders, with 800 notorious traitors and malefactors, and above 4,000 other people.'[⁵] In that year the great Desmond wrote to Philip of Spain that he was a homeless wanderer. 'Every town, castle, village, farm-house belonging to him or his people had been destroyed. There was no longer a roof standing in Munster to shelter him.' Hunted like a wolf through the mountains, he was at last found sleeping in a hut and killed. In vain his wife pleaded with Ormond, and threw herself on his protection. Even she was not spared. Mr. Froude gives an interesting account of Desmond's last hours. He was hunted down into the mountains between Tralee and the Atlantic. M'Sweeny had sheltered him and fed him through the summer, though a large price was set on his head; and when M'Sweeny was gone, killed by an Irish dagger, the earl's turn could not be distant. Donell M'Donell Moriarty had been received to grace by Ormond, and had promised to deserve his pardon. This man came to the captain of Castlemayne, gave information of the hiding-place, a band was sent—half-a-dozen English soldiers and a few Irish kerne, who stole in the darkness along the path which followed the stream—the door was dashed in, and the last Earl of Desmond was killed in his bed.

Ormond had recourse to a horrible device to extinguish the embers of the rebellion. It was carrying out to a diabolical extent the policy of setting one Irishman against another. If the terror-stricken wretches hoped for pardon, they must deserve it, by murdering their relations. Accordingly sacks full of the heads of reputed rebels were brought in daily. Yet concerning him Mr. Froude makes this singular remark: 'To Ormond the Irish were human beings with human rights. To the English they were vermin, to be cleared from off the earth by any means that offered.'

Consequently, when it was proposed to make Ormond viceroy, the Pale was in a ferment. How could any man be fit to represent English power in Dublin Castle, who regarded the Irish as human beings! Not less curious is the testimony which the historian bears to the character of the English exterminators. He says, 'They were honourable, high-minded men, full of natural tenderness and gentleness, to every one with whom they were placed in human relations. The Irish, unfortunately, they looked upon as savages who had refused peace and protection when it was offered to them, and were now therefore to be rooted out and destroyed.' A reformer in 1583, however, suggested a milder policy. He recommended that 'all Brehons, carraghs, bards, rhymers, friars, monks, jesuits, pardoners, nuns, and such-like should be executed by martial law, and that with this clean sweep the work of death might end, and a new era be ushered in with universities and schools, a fixed police, and agriculture, and good government.'

When the English had destroyed all the houses and churches, burnt all the corn, and driven away all the cattle, they were disgusted at the savage state in which the remnant of the peasantry lived. A gentleman named Andrew Trollope gave expression to this feeling thus: 'The common people ate flesh if they could steal it, if not they lived on shamrock and carrion. They never served God or went to church; they had no religion and no manners, but were in all things more barbarous and beast-like than any other people. No governor shall do good here,' he said, 'except he show himself a Tamerlane. If hell were open and all the evil spirits abroad, they could never be worse than these Irish rogues—rather dogs, and worse than dogs, for dogs do but after their kind, and they degenerate from all humanity.'[⁶]

The population of Ireland was then by slaughter and famine reduced to about 600,000, one-eighth of the population of England; but far too many, in the estimation of their English rulers. Brabason succeeded Malby in Connaught, and surpassed him in cruelty. The Four Masters say: 'Neither the sanctuary of the saint, neither the wood nor the forest valley, the town nor the lawn, was a shelter from this captain and his people, till the whole territory was destroyed by him.' In the spring of 1582 St. Leger wrote from Cork: 'This country is so ruined as it is well near unpeopled by the murders and spoils done by the traitors on the one side, and by the killing and spoil done by the soldiers on the other side, together with the great mortality in town and country, which is such as the like hath never been seen. There has died by famine only not so few as 30,000 in this province in less than half a year, besides others that are hanged and killed.'

At length the world began to cry shame on England; and Lord Burghley was obliged to admit that the English in Ireland had outdone the Spaniards in ferocious and blood-thirsty persecution. Remonstrating with Sir H. Wallop, ancestor of Lord Portsmouth, he said that the 'Flemings had not such cause to rebel against the oppression of the Spaniards, as the Irish against the tyranny of England.' Wallop defended the Government; the causes of the rebellion were not to be laid at the door of England at all. They were these, 'the great affection they generally bear to the Popish religion, which agreeth with their humour, that having committed murder, incest, thefts, with all other execrable offences, by hearing a mass, confessing themselves to a priest, or obtaining the Pope's pardon, they persuade themselves that they are forgiven, and, hearing mass on Sunday or holyday, they think all the week after they may do what heinous offence soever and it is dispensed withal.' Trollope said they had no religion. Wallop said they had too much religion. But their nationality was worse than their creed. Wallop adds, 'They also much hate our nation, partly through the general mislike or disdain one nation hath to be governed by another; partly that we are contrary to them in religion; and lastly, they seek to have the government among themselves.'

The last was the worst of all. Elizabeth wished to heal the wounds of the Irish nation by appointing Ormond lord deputy. He was a nobleman of Norman descent. His family had been true to England for centuries. He had commanded her armies during this exterminating war, and, being a native of the country, he would be best fitted to carry on the work of conciliation after so much slaughter. But, says Mr. Froude, 'from every English officer serving in the country, every English settler, every bishop of the Anglo-Irish Church, there rose one chorus of remonstrance and indignation; to them it appeared as a proposal now would appear in Calcutta to make the Nizam Viceroy of India.'[⁷] Wallop wrote that if he were appointed, there would be 'no dwelling in the country for any Englishman.'

The fear that a merciful policy might be adopted towards Ireland sorely troubled Wallop and Archbishop Loftus; but they were comforted by a great prize—an archbishop fell into their hands. Dr. Hurley refused to give information against others. Walsingham suggested that he should be put to the torture. To him Archbishop Loftus wrote with unction. 'Not finding that easy method of examination do any good, we made command to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture, such as your honour advised us, which was to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots.' He confessed something. They asked permission to execute him by martial law. The queen took a month to consider. She recommended an ordinary trial for high treason, and if the jury did not do its duty, they might take the shorter way. She wished for no more torture, but 'for what was past her majesty accepted in good part their careful travail, and greatly commended their doings.' The Irish judges had repeatedly decided that there was no case against Archbishop Hurley; but on June 19, 1584, Loftus and Wallop wrote to Walsingham, 'We gave warrant to the knight-marshal to do execution upon him, which accordingly was performed, and thereby the realm rid of a most pestilent member.'[⁸]

This was the last act of these two lords justices. Sir John Perrot, the new viceroy, made a speech which sent a ray of hope athwart the national gloom. It was simply that the people might thenceforth expect a little justice and protection. He told the natives that 'as natural-born subjects of her majesty she loved them as her own people. He wished to be suppressed and universally abolished throughout the realm the name of a churle and the crushing of a churle; affirming that, however the former barbarous times had desired it and nourished it, yet he held it tyrannous both in name and manner, and therefore would extirpate it, and use in place of it the titles used in England, namely, husbandmen, franklins or yeomen.' 'This was so plausible,' wrote Sir G. Fenton, 'that it was carried throughout the whole realm, in less time than might be thought credible, if expressed.'

The extirpation of the Munster Geraldines, in the right line, according to the theory of the 'Undertakers' and the law of England in general, vested in the queen the 570,000 acres belonging to the late earl. Proclamation was accordingly made throughout England, inviting 'younger brothers of good families' to undertake the plantation of Desmond—each planter to obtain a certain scope of land, on condition of settling thereupon so many families—'none of the native Irish to be admitted' Under these conditions, Sir Christopher Hatton took up 10,000 acres in Waterford; Sir Walter Raleigh 12,000 acres, partly in Waterford and partly in Cork; Sir William Harbart, or Herbert, 13,000 acres in Kerry; Sir Edward Denny 6,000 in the same county; Sir Warren St. Leger, and Sir Thomas Norris, 6,000 acres each in Cork; Sir William Courtney 10,000 acres in Limerick; Sir Edward Fitton 11,500 acres in Tipperary and Waterford, and Edmund Spenser 3,000 acres in Cork, on the beautiful Blackwater. The other notable Undertakers were the Hides, Butchers, Wirths, Berkleys, Trenchards, Thorntons, Bourchers, Billingsleys, &c. Some of these grants, especially Raleigh's, fell in the next reign to Richard Boyle, the so-called 'great Earl of Cork '—probably the most pious hypocrite to be found in the long roll of the 'Munster Undertakers.'

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Froude, vol. xi. p. 179.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

History of England, vol. xi. p. 184.

Footnote 3: [(return)]

Vol. xi, p. 197.

Footnote 4: [(return)]

Carew Papers; Froude, vol. xi. p. 225.

Footnote 5: [(return)]

Carew Papers; Froude, vol. xi. p. 225.

Footnote 6: [(return)]

Froude, vol. xi. p. 246.

Footnote 7: [(return)]

Ibid. p. 202.

Footnote 8: [(return)]

Froude, vol. xi. p. 264.

CHAPTER V.

AN IRISH CRUSADE.

In 1602, the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, in obedience to instructions from the Government in London, marched to the borders of Ulster with a considerable force, to effect, if he could, the arrest of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, or to bring him to terms. Since the defeat of the Irish and Spanish confederacy at Kinsale, O'Neill comforted himself with the assurance that Philip III. would send another expedition to Ireland to retrieve the honour of his flag, and avenge the humiliation it had sustained, owing to the incompetency or treachery of Don Juan d'Aquila. That the king was inclined to aid the Irish there can be no question; 'for Clement VIII., then reigning in the Vatican, pressed it upon him as a sacred duty, which he owed to his co-religionists in Ireland, whose efforts to free themselves from Elizabeth's tyranny, the pontiff pronounced to be a crusade against the most implacable heretic of the day.'[¹]

If Mr. Meehan's authorities may be relied upon, Queen Elizabeth was, in intention at least, a murderer as well as a heretic. He states that while she was gasping on her cushions at Richmond, gazing on the haggard features of death, and vainly striving to penetrate the opaque veil of the future, she commanded Secretary Cecil to charge Mountjoy to entrap Tyrone into a submission, on diminished rank as Baron of Dungannon, and with lessened territory; or if possible, to have his head, before engaging the royal word. It was to accomplish either of these objects, that Mountjoy marched to the frontier of the north. 'Among those employed to murder O'Neill in cold blood, were Sir Geoffry Fenton, Lord Dunsany, and Henry Oge O'Neill. Mountjoy bribed one Walker, an Englishman, and a ruffian calling himself Richard Combus, to make the attempt, but they all failed.'[²] Finding it impossible to procure the assassination of 'the sacred person of O'Neill, who had so many eyes of jealousy about him,' he wrote to Cecil from Drogheda, that nothing prevented Tyrone from making his submission but mistrust of his personal safety and guarantee for maintenance commensurate to his princely rank. The lords of Elizabeth's privy council empowered Mountjoy to treat with O'Neill on these terms, and to give him the required securities. Sir Garret Moore and Sir William Godolphin were entrusted with a commission to effect this object. But while the lord deputy, with a brilliant retinue, was feasting at Mellifont, a monastery bestowed by Henry VIII. on an ancestor of Sir Garret Moore, by whom it was transformed into a 'fair mansion,' half palace, half fortress, a courier arrived from England, announcing the death of the queen. Nevertheless the negotiations were pressed on in her name, the fact of her decease being carefully concealed from the Irish. Tyrone had already sent his secretary, Henry O'Hagan, to announce to the lord deputy that he was about to come to his presence. Accordingly on March 29, he surrendered himself to the two commissioners at Tougher, within five miles of Dungannon. On the following evening he reached Mellifont, when, being admitted to the lord deputy's presence, 'he knelt, as was usual on such occasions;' and made penitent submission to her majesty. Then, being invited to come nearer to the deputy, he repeated the ceremony, if we may credit Fynes Moryson, in the same humiliating attitude, thus:—

'I, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, do absolutely submit myself to the queen's mercy, imploring her gracious commiseration, imploring her majesty to mitigate her just indignation against me. I do avow that the first motives of my rebellion were neither malice nor ambition; but that I was induced by fear of my life, to stand upon my guard. I do therefore most humbly sue her majesty, that she will vouchsafe to restore to me my former dignity and living. In which state of a subject, I vow to continue for ever hereafter loyal, in all true obedience to her royal person, crown, and prerogatives, and to be in all things as dutifully conformable thereunto as I or any other nobleman of this realm is bound by the duty of a subject to his sovereign, utterly renouncing the name and title of O'Neill, or any other claim which hath not been granted to me by her majesty. I abjure all foreign power, and all dependency upon any other potentate but her majesty. I renounce all manner of dependency upon the King of Spain, or treaty with him or any of his confederates, and shall be ready to serve her majesty against him or any of his forces or confederates. I do renounce all challenge or intermeddling with the Uriaghts, or fostering with them or other neighbour lords or gentlemen outside my country, or exacting black-rents of any Uriaghts or bordering lords. I resign all claim and title to any lands but such as shall now be granted to me by her majesty's letters patent. Lastly, I will be content to be advised by her majesty's magistrates here, and will assist them in anything that may tend to the advancement of her service, and the peaceable government of this kingdom, the abolishing of barbarous customs, the clearing of difficult passes, wherein I will employ the labours of the people of my country in such places as I shall be directed by her majesty, or the lord deputy in her name; and I will endeavour for myself and the people of my country, to erect civil habitations such as shall be of greater effect to preserve us against thieves, and any force but the power of the state.'

To this act of submission Tyrone affixed his sign manual, and handed it to the deputy, who told him he must write to Philip III. of Spain, to send home his son Henry, who had gone with Father M'Cawell to complete his studies in Salamanca. The deputy also insisted that he should reveal all his negotiations with the Spanish court, or any other foreign sovereign with whom he maintained correspondence; and when the earl assured him that all these requirements should be duly discharged, the lord deputy in the queen's name promised him her majesty's pardon to himself and followers, to himself the restoration of his earldom and blood with new letters patent of all his lands, excepting the country possessed by Henry Oge O'Neill, and the Fews belonging to Tirlough Mac Henry O'Neill, both of whom had recently taken grants of their lands, to be holden immediately from the queen. It was further covenanted that Tyrone should give 300 acres of his land to the fort of Charlmont, and 300 more to that of Mountjoy, as long as it pleased her majesty to garrison said forts. Tyrone assented to all these conditions, and then received the accolade from the lord deputy, who, a few months before, had written to Queen Elizabeth, that he hoped to be able to send her that ghastliest of all trophies—her great rebel's head!

On April 4, the lord deputy returned to Dublin accompanied by the great vassal whom he fancied he had bound in inviolable loyalty to the English throne. To make assurance doubly sure, the day after James was proclaimed, Tyrone repeated the absolute submission made at Mellifont, the name of the sovereign only being changed. He also despatched a letter to the King of Spain stating that he had held out as long as he could, in the vain hope of being succoured by him, and finally when deserted by his nearest kinsmen and followers, he was enforced as in duty bound to declare his allegiance to James I., in whose service and obedience he meant to live and die.

The importance of this act of submission will appear from a manifesto issued by O'Neill three years before, dated Dungannon, November 16, 1599, and subscribed 'O'Neill.' This remarkable document has been published for the first time by Father Meehan.

'To the Catholics of the towns in Ireland.

'Using hitherto more than ordinary favour towards all my countrymen, who generally by profession are Catholics, and that naturally I am inclined to affect [esteem] you, I have for these and other considerations abstained my forces from tempting to do you hindrance, and because I did expect that you would enter into consideration of the lamentable state of our poor country, most tyrannically oppressed, and of your own gentle consciences, in maintaining, relieving and helping the enemies of God and our country in wars infallibly tending to the promotion of heresy: But now seeing you are so obstinate in that which hereunto you continued of necessity, I must use severity against you (whom otherwise I most entirely love) in reclaiming you by compulsion. My tolerance and happy victories by God's particular favour doubtless obtained could work no alteration in your consciences, notwithstanding the great calamity and misery, whereunto you are most likely to fall by persevering in that damnable state in which hereunto you have lived. Having commiseration on you I thought it good to forewarn you, requesting every of you to come and join with me against the enemies of God and our poor country. If the same you do not, I will use means to spoil you of all your goods, but according to the utmost of my power shall work what I may to dispossess you of all your lands, because you are the means whereby wars are maintained against the exaltation of the Catholic faith. Contrariwise, whosoever it shall be that shall join with me, upon my conscience, and as to the contrary I shall answer before God, I will employ myself to the utmost of my power in their defence and for the extirpation of heresy, the planting of the Catholic religion, the delivery of our country of infinite murders, wicked and detestable policies by which this kingdom was hitherto governed, nourished in obscurity and ignorance, maintained in barbarity and incivility, and consequently of infinite evils which were too lamentable to be rehearsed. And seeing these are motives most laudable before any men of consideration, and before the Almighty most meritorious, which is chiefly to be expected, I thought myself in conscience bound, seeing God hath given me some power to use all means for the reduction of this our poor afflicted country into the Catholic faith, which can never be brought to any good pass without either your destruction or helping hand; hereby protesting that I neither seek your lands or goods, neither do I purpose to plant any in your places, if you will adjoin with me; but will extend what liberties and privileges that heretofore you have had if it shall stand in my power, giving you to understand upon my salvation that chiefly and principally I fight for the Catholic faith to be planted throughout all our poor country, as well in cities as elsewhere, as manifestly might appear by that I rejected all other conditions proffered to me this not being granted. I have already by word of mouth protested, and do now hereby protest, that if I had to be King of Ireland without having the Catholic religion which before I mentioned, I would not the same accept. Take your example by that most Catholic country, France, whose subjects for defect of Catholic faith did go against their most natural king, and maintained wars till he was constrained to profess the Catholic religion, duly submitting himself to the Apostolic See of Rome, to the which doubtless we may bring our country, you putting your helping hand with me to the same. As for myself I protest before God and upon my salvation I have been proffered oftentimes such conditions as no man seeking his own private commodity could refuse; but I seeking the public utility of my native country will prosecute these wars until that generally religion be planted throughout all Ireland. So I rest, praying the Almighty to move your flinty hearts to prefer the commodity and profit of our country, before your own private ends.'

As a crusader, the O'Neill was a worthy disciple of the King of Spain. The Catholics of the south had no wish to engage in a religious war, but the northern chief aspiring to the sovereignty of the whole island, resolved to reclaim them by compulsion, seeing that his tolerance and happy victories had worked no change in their consciences, and they still persevered in that 'damnable state' in which they had lived. From his entire love and commiseration he forewarned them that if they did not come and join him against the enemies of God and 'our poor country,' he would not only despoil them of all their goods, but dispossess them of all their lands. The extirpation of heresy, the planting of the Catholic religion, he declared could never be brought to any good pass without either the destruction or the help of the Catholics in the towns of the south and west. He did not want their lands or goods, nor did he intend to plant others in their places if they would adjoin with him. Pointing to the example of France, he vowed that he would prosecute those wars until the Catholic religion should be planted throughout all Ireland, praying that God would move their flinty hearts to join him in this pious and humane enterprise. In those times when religious wars had been raging on the continent, when the whole power of Spain was persistently employed to exterminate Protestants with fire and sword and every species of cruelty, it is not at all surprising that a chief like O'Neill, leading such a wild warlike life in Ulster, should persuade himself that he would be glorifying God and serving his country by destroying the Catholic inhabitants of the towns, that is all the most civilised portion of the community, because they would not join him in robbing and killing the Protestants. But it is not a little surprising that an enlightened, learned, and liberal Catholic priest, writing in Dublin in the year 1868, should give his deliberate sanction to this unchristian and barbarous policy. Yet Father Meehan writes: 'But no; not even the dint of that manifesto, with the ring of true steel in its every line, could strike a spark out of their hearts, for they were chalky.'[³]

It was very natural that the English Government should act upon the same principle of intolerance, especially when they had the plea of state necessity. They did not yet go the length of exterminating Catholicity by the means with which the O'Neill threatened his peaceable and industrious co-religionists in the towns.

All they required was that the Catholics should cease to harbour their priests, and that they should attend the Protestant churches. Remarking upon the proclamation of Chichester to this effect Mr. Meehan says:—'Apart from the folly of the king, who had taken into his head that an entire nation should, at his bidding, apostatise from the creed of their forefathers, the publishing such a manifesto in Dungannon, in Donegal, and elsewhere was a bitter insult to the northern chieftains, whose wars were crusades,—the natural consequence of faith,—stimulated by the Roman Pontiffs, assisted by Spain, then the most Catholic kingdom in the world.' Does not Mr. Meehan see that crusading is a game at which two can play? And if wars which were crusades were the natural consequence of the Catholic faith, were stimulated by the Roman Pontiffs, and assisted by Spain, for the purpose of destroying the power of England, everywhere as well as in Ireland, and abolishing the Reformation,—does it not follow as a necessary consequence that the English Government must in sheer self-defence have waged a war of extermination against the Catholic religion, and have regarded its priests as mortal enemies? No better plea for the English policy in Ireland was ever offered by any Protestant writer than this language, intended as a condemnation, by a very able priest in our own day. It was no doubt extreme folly for King James I. to expect that a nation, or a single individual, should apostatise at his bidding; but it was equal folly in the King of Spain to expect Protestants to apostatise at his bidding; and if possible still greater folly for O'Neill to expect the Catholic citizens of Munster to join him in the bloody work of persecution. It was, then, the Spanish policy stimulated by the Sovereign Pontiff that was the standing excuse of the cruel intolerance and rancorous religious animosity which have continued to distract Irish society down to our own time. Persecution is alien to the Irish race. The malignant virus imported from Spain poisoned the national blood, maddened the national brain, and provoked the terrible system of retaliation that was embodied in the Penal Code, and which, surviving to our own time, still defends itself by the old plea—the intrusion of a foreign power attempting to overrule the government of the country.

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Fate and Fortunes of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell. By the Rev. P.C. Meehan, M.R.I.A.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

See Life and Letters of Florence M'Carthy. By D. M'Carthy, Esq.

Footnote 3: [(return)]

Page 34.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST OF THE IRISH PRINCES.

The accession of James I. produced a delirium of joy in the Catholics of the south. Their bards had sung that the blood of the old Celtic monarchs circulated in his veins, their clergy told them that as James VI. of Scotland he had received supplies of money from the Roman court, and above all Clement VIII. then reigning, had sent to congratulate him on his accession, having been solicited by him to favour his title to the crown of England, which the Pope guaranteed to do on condition that James promised not to persecute the Catholics. The consequence was that the inhabitants of the southern towns rose en masse without waiting for authority, forced open the gates of the ancient churches, re-erected the altars and used them for the public celebration of worship. The lord deputy was startled by intelligence to this effect from Waterford, Limerick, Cork, Lismore, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Wexford, &c. The cathedrals, churches, and oratories were seized by the people and clergy, Father White, Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford, being the leader in this movement, going about from city to city for the purpose of 'hallowing and purifying' the temples which Protestantism had desecrated.

The mayors of the cities were rebuked by Mountjoy as seditious and mutinous in setting up 'the public exercise of the Popish religion,' and he threatened to encamp speedily before Waterford, 'to suppress insolences and see peace and obedience maintained.' The deputy kept his word, and on May 4, 1603, he appeared before Waterford at the head of 5,000 men, officered by Sir R. Wingfield, and others who had distinguished themselves during Tyrone's war. 'There is among the family pictures at Powerscourt,' says Mr. Meehan, 'a portrait of this distinguished old warrior, whose lineal descendant, the present noble lord, has always proved most generous to his Catholic tenantry.' The reverend gentleman gives an amusing sketch of a theological encounter between the old warrior and Father White and a Dominican friar, who came forth to the camp under a safe-conduct, both wearing their clerical habits and preceded by a cross-bearer. The soldiers jeered at the sacred symbol, and called it an idol. Father White indignantly resented the outrage, when Sir Richard Wingfield threatened to put an end to the controversy by running his sword through the Vicar-Apostolic. 'The deputy however was a bookish man, at one period of his life inclined to Catholicity, and he listened patiently to Father White on the right of resisting or disobeying the natural prince; but when the latter quoted some passage thereanent in the works of St. Augustine, Mountjoy caused to be brought to him out of his tent the identical volume, and showed to the amazement of the bystanders, that the context explained away all the priest had asserted.' The noble theologian told Father White that he was a traitor, worthy of condign punishment for bringing an idol into a Christian camp and for opening the churches by the Pope's authority. Father White appeared in the camp a second time that day, making a most reasonable request. He fell on his knees before the deputy, begging liberty of conscience, free and open exercise of religion, protesting that the people would be ready to resist all foreign invasion were that granted; and finally beseeching that some of the ruined churches might be given to the Catholics, who were ready to rebuild them, and pay for them a yearly rent into his majesty's exchequer. But the deputy was inexorable, and all he would grant was leave to wear clerical clothes, and celebrate mass in private houses. Mountjoy entered Waterford, received from the citizens the oath of allegiance, and made over the city churches to the small section of Protestants. At the same time he sent despatches to other towns ordering the authorities to evict the Roman Catholics from the places of worship. And then proceeding to Cork, and thence through Cashel to Dublin, he undid all that the clergy had done with respect to the churches, 'leaving perhaps to future statesmen,' writes Father Meehan, 'living above the atmosphere of effete prejudices, the duty of restoring to the Catholics of Ireland those grand old temples, which were never meant to accommodate a fragment of its people.'[¹]

When Mountjoy returned to Dublin he found that he had been created Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with two-thirds of the deputy's allowance, Sir George Carew, appointed deputy during his absence in England, receiving the other third together with his own pay as treasurer-at-war. Mountjoy was also informed that the royal pardon had been granted to Tyrone under the great seal, and that all other grants made to him by the lord deputy had been confirmed. The king concluded by requesting that he would induce Tyrone to go with him to London, adding, 'as we think it very convenient for our service, and require you so to do; and if not that at least you bring his son.' Along with these instructions came a protection for O'Neill and his retinue. It was supposed that James felt grateful to the Ulster chieftain for the services he had rendered him during the late queen's reign; and it is stated by Craik that after the victory of the Blackwater, he sent his secretary O'Hagan to Holyrood, to signify to his majesty that if he supplied him with money and munitions he would instantly march on Dublin, proclaim him King of Ireland, and set the crown upon his head.

In compliance with the sovereign's request, Mountjoy, with a brilliant suite, accompanied by Tyrone and Rory O'Donel, embarked in May 1603, and sailed for Holyhead. But when they had sighted the coast of Wales, the pinnace was driven back by adverse winds, and nearly wrecked in a fog at the Skerries. They landed safe, however, at Beaumaris, whence they rode rapidly to Chester, where they stopped for the night, and were entertained by the mayor. The king's protection for the O'Neill was not uncalled for. Whenever he was recognised in city or hamlet, the populace, notwithstanding their respect for Mountjoy, the hero of the hour, pursued the earl with bitter insults, and stoned him as he passed along. Throughout the whole journey to London, the Welsh and English women assailed him with their invectives. Not unnaturally, for 'there was not one among them but could name some friend or kinsman whose bones lay buried far away in some wild pass or glen of Ulster, where the object of their maledictions was more often victor than vanquished.'[²] The king, however, gave the Irish chiefs a gracious reception, having issued a proclamation that he had restored them to his favour, and that they should be 'of all men honourably received.' This excited intense disgust amongst English officers who had been engaged in the Irish wars. Thus Sir John Harrington, writing to a bishop, said: 'I have lived to see that damnable rebel, Tyrone, brought to England, honoured and well liked. Oh, what is there that does not prove the inconstancy of worldly matters! How I did labour after that knave's destruction! I adventured perils by sea and land, was near starving, eat horseflesh in Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did hazard their lives to destroy him; and now doeth Tyrone dare us old commanders with his presence and protection.'

In fact the favour of the king went to an excess fatal to its object, by conceding powers incompatible with his own sovereignty, leading to disorders and violence, and exciting jealousy and mortal enmity in those who were charged with the government in Ireland. The lords of the Privy Council, with the king's consent, gave O'Neill authority for martial law, 'to be executed upon any offenders that shall live under him, the better to keep them in obedience.' It was ordered that the king's garrisons should not meddle with him or his people. The king also invested O'Donel with all the lands and rights of ancient time belonging to his house, excepting abbeys and other spiritual livings, the castle and town of Ballyshannon, and 1,000 acres adjoining the fishing there. He also received the style and title of Earl of Tyrconnel, with remainder to his brother Caffar, the heirs male apparent being created Barons of Donegal. He was formally installed in Christ Church Cathedral on the 29th of September following, in presence of Archbishop Loftus and a number of high officials. Tyrone, however, was dogged by spies while he was in London, and one Atkinson swore informations to the effect that he was in the habit of entertaining a Jesuit named Archer, who was intriguing with the foreign enemies of England, and who was held by Irish royalists for 'the most bloody and treacherous traitor, who could divert Tyrone and all the rest from the king, and thrust them again into actual rebellion.'

In the meantime, Sir George Carew was pursuing a policy in Ireland which must of necessity involve the north in fresh troubles. In his letters to England, he complained that the country 'so swarmed with priests, Jesuits, seminarists, friars, and Romish bishops, that if speedy means were not used to free the kingdom of this wicked rabble, which laboured to draw the subjects' hearts from their due obedience to their prince, much mischief would burst forth in very short time. For,' he said, 'there are here so many of this wicked crew, that are able to disquiet four of the greatest kingdoms in Christendom. It is high time they were banished from hence, and none to receive, or aid, or relieve them. Let the judges and officers be sworn to the supremacy; let the lawyers go to the church and show conformity, or not plead at the bar; and then the rest by degrees will shortly follow.'

Carew was succeeded as deputy by Sir Arthur Chichester, descended from a family of great antiquity in Devon. He had served in Ireland as governor of Carrickfergus, admiral of Lough Neagh, and commander of the Fort of Mountjoy. Father Meehan describes him as malignant and cruel, with a physiognomy repulsive and petrifying; a Puritan of the most rigid character, utterly devoid of sympathy, solely bent on his own aggrandisement, and seeking it through the plunder and persecution of the Irish chieftains. That is the Irish view of his character. How far he deserved it the reader will be able to judge by his acts. He was evidently a man of strong will, an able administrator and organiser; and he set himself at once, and earnestly, to the establishment of law and order in the conquered territories of the Irish princes. He sent justices of assize throughout Munster and Connaught, reducing the 'countries or regions' into shire-ground, abolishing cuttings, cosheries, spendings, and other customary exactions of the chiefs, by which a complete revolution was effected. He issued a proclamation, by the king's order, commanding all the Catholics, under penalties, to assist at the Church of England service; proscribing priests, and other ecclesiastical persons ordained by authority from the see of Home; forbidding parents to send their children to seminaries beyond the seas, or to keep as private tutors other than those licensed by the Protestant archbishop or bishop. If any priest dared to celebrate mass, he was liable to a fine of 200 marks, and a year's imprisonment; while to join the Romish Church was to become a traitor, and to be subject to a like penalty. Churchwardens were to make a monthly report of persons absent from church, and to whet the zeal of wardens and constables, for each conviction of offending parties, they were to have a reward of forty shillings, to be levied out of the recusant's estate and goods. Catholics might escape these penalties by quitting the country, and taking the oath of abjuration, by which they bound themselves to abjure the land and realm of James, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, to hasten towards a certain port by the most direct highway, to diligently seek a passage, and tarry there but one flood and ebb. According to one form, quoted by Mr. Meehan, the oath concluded thus: 'And, unless I can have it (a passage) in such a place, I will go every day into the sea up to my knees, essaying to pass over, so God me help and His holy judgment.'

The deputy found some difficulty in bending the consciences of the Dublin people to the will of the sovereign in matters of faith; but the said will was to be enforced circa sacra at all hazards; so he summoned sixteen of the chief citizens and aldermen before the Privy Council, and censured them for their recusancy, imprisoned them in the castle during pleasure, inflicting upon six a fine of 100l. each, and upon three 50l. each. The king was delighted with this evangelical method of extending reformed religion in Ireland. Congratulating his deputy, he expressed a hope that many, by such means, would be brought to conformity in religion, who would hereafter 'give thanks to God for being drawn by so gentle a constraint to their own good.' The 'gentle constraint' was imposed in all directions. The Privy Council decreed that none but a member of the Church of England could hold any office under the Crown. The old Catholic families of the Pale humbly remonstrated, and their chief men were flung into prison. Sir Patrick Barnwell, their agent, was sent to London by order of the king, and was forthwith committed to the Tower for contempt. Henry Usher, then Archbishop of Armagh, carried out the system of exclusion in his own diocese, which included the territories of Tyrone. All 'Papists' were forbidden to assist at mass, on pain of forfeiture of their goods and imprisonment. In a like manner, the Catholic worship was prohibited even in the residence of the Earl of Tyrconnel. He and Tyrone strongly remonstrated against this violation of the royal word, that they and their people might have liberty for their worship in private houses. The answer was decided. His majesty had made up his mind to disallow liberty of worship, and his people, whether they liked it or not, should repair to their parish churches.

In addition to this religious grievance, which excited the bitterest feelings of discontent, the two earls were subjected to the most irritating annoyances. They complained that their people were plundered by sheriffs, under-sheriffs, officers, and soldiers; and that even their domestic privacy was hourly violated, that their remonstrances were unheeded, and their attempts to obtain legal remedies were frustrated. At the same time their vassals were encouraged to repudiate their demands for tribute and rent. Bishop Montgomery of Derry was a dangerous neighbour to O'Neill. Meeting him one day at Dungannon, the earl said: 'My lord, you have two or three bishopricks, and yet you are not content with them, but seek the lands of my earldom.'

'My lord,' replied the bishop, 'your earldom is swollen so big with the lands of the Church, that it will burst if it be not vented.' If he had confined his venting operations to the chiefs, and abstained from bleeding the poor people, it would have been better for Protestantism. For we read that he sent bailiffs through the diocese of Raphoe, to levy contributions for the Church. 'For every cow and plough-horse, 4d.; as much out of every colt and calf, to be paid twice a year; and half-a-crown a quarter of every shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and weaver in the whole country; and 8d. a year for every married couple.'

This bishop seems to have been greatly impressed with the 'commodities' of O'Cahan's country, which he describes with much unction in a letter to the Earl of Salisbury. He said that the country was 'large, pleasant, and fruitful; twenty-four miles in length between Lough Foyle and the Bann; and in breadth, from the sea-coast towards the lower parts of Tyrone, 14 miles.' He states that O'Cahan was able to assist the Earl of Tyrone, during his war, with 1,200 foot and 300 horse, the ablest men that Ulster yielded; and, by the confession of gentlemen of the first plantation, had oftener put them to their defence than any enemy they had to do with, not suffering them to cut a bough or build a cabin without blows. When Tyrone was driven to his fastness, Glenconkeine, O'Cahan sent him 100 horse and 300 foot, and yet made good his own country against the army lying round about him, adding, that his defection 'did undo the earl, who, as he had his country sure behind him, cared little for anything the army could do to him.' The bishop was, therefore, very anxious that Tyrone should not have any estate in O'Cahan's country, 'since he was of great power to offend or benefit the poor infant city of Derry, its new bishop and people, cast out far from the heart and head into the remotest part of Ireland, where life would be unsafe until the whole region was well settled with civil subjects. If this be not brought to pass, we may say: "fuimus Troes,—fuit Ilium."'[³]

The defection of O'Cahan was, no doubt, a very serious matter to O'Neill. Their case was referred for adjudication to the lord deputy, Chichester, before whom they personally pleaded. Their contradictory statements, and the eagerness of each for the support of a ruler whom they regarded as a common enemy, accounts for the facility with which their power was ultimately destroyed. They at the same time throw much light on the condition of Ulster before the confiscation of James I., proving that it was by no means so poor and wild and barren a region as it is generally represented by modern writers. The two chiefs had a personal altercation at the council table, and O'Neill so far lost his temper as to snatch a paper out of the hand of O'Cahan. Whereupon Sir John Davis remarked: 'I rest assured, in my own conceit, that I shall live to see Ulster the best reformed province in this kingdom; and as for yourself, my lord, I hope to live to see you the best reformed subject in Ireland.' To this the haughty chief replied with warmth, that he hoped 'the attorney-general would never see the day when injustice should be done him by transferring his lands to the Crown, and thence to the bishop, who was intent on converting the whole territory into his own pocket.'

Acting under the advice of the bishop, O'Cahan employed a skilful hand to draw up a statement of his case, which was presented on May 2, 1607, in the form of 'the humble petition of Donald Ballagh O'Cahan, chief of his name,' addressed to the lord deputy and council. He declared that for 3,000 years and upwards, he and his ancestors had been possessed of a country called 'O'Cahan's country,' lying between the river Bann and Lough Foyle, without paying any rent, or other acknowledgment thereof to O'Neill, saving that his ancestors were wont to aid O'Neill twice a year if he had need, with risings of 100 horse and 300 foot, for which O'Cahan had in return O'Neill's whole suit of apparel, the horse that he rode upon, and 100 cows in winter. He also paid 21 cows every year in the name of Cios'righ, the king's rent, or the king's rent-cess. He alleged that Queen Elizabeth had granted him his country to be held immediately from her majesty at the accustomed rent, by virtue of which he enjoyed it for one whole year without paying, or being craved payment, of any rent or duty, until the Earl of Tyrone, on his return from England, alleged that he had got O'Cahan's country by patent, from the king, who had made him vassal to Tyrone and his heirs for ever, imposing the annual payment of 100 cows, with the yearly rent of 200l. He had also claimed the fishing of the Bann; he preyed yearly upon other parts of his country, and drew from him his best tenants. He therefore prayed for the protection of the lord deputy against these unjust demands and usurpations.

On the 23rd of the same month, O'Neill made a counter statement to the following effect: O'Cahan had no estate in the territory that was by a corruption of speech called O'Cahan's country; nor did he or any of his ancestors ever hold the said lands but as tenants at sufferance, servants and followers to the defendant and his ancestors. His grandfather Con O'Neill was seised in fee of those lands before he surrendered to Henry VIII., 'and received yearly, and had thereout, as much rents, cutting, spending and all other duties as of any other lands which he had in demesne,' within the province of Ulster and territory of Tyrone, and that after Con's surrender the territories were all re-granted with the rents, customs, duties, &c. as before. He was ready to prove that the ancestors of O'Cahan never enjoyed the premises at any time, but at the will and sufferance of O'Neill and his ancestors. A few days after, he despatched a memorial to the king setting forth his grievances, in which he stated that there were so many that sought to deprive him of the greatest part of the residue of his territory that without his majesty's special consideration he should in the end have nothing to support his 'estate' or rank. For the Lord Bishop of Derry, not content with the great living the king had bestowed upon him, sought to have the greater part of the earl's lands, to which none of his predecessors had ever laid claim. And he also set on others to question his titles which had never before before doubted. He therefore humbly besought the king to direct that new letters patent should be made out re-conveying to him and his heirs the lands in dispute, being, he said, 'such a favour as is appointed by your majesty to be extended to such of your subjects of this kingdom as should be suitors for the same, amongst whom I will during my life endeavour to deserve to be in the number of the most faithful, whereunto not only duty, but also your majesty's great bounty, hath ever obliged me.'

This was dated at Mellifont on May 26, 1607. It does not appear that any answer was received to his appeals to the king, nor is it likely that it served his cause, for it is seldom safe to appeal from an agent or deputy to the supreme authority. The Privy Council in Dublin, however, made a report confirming to some extent the claims put forth by Tyrone. A jury had been appointed to inquire into the boundaries and limits of the lands granted by Queen Elizabeth, and they found that they extended from the river Fuin to Lough Foyle, and from Lough Foyle by the sea-shore to the Bann, and thence to the east of Lough Neagh. Within these limits they found that there existed the territory called O'Cahan's, Glenconkeine and Killetragh, which were not the lands of the O'Neills, 'but held by tenants having estates in them equivalent to estates of freehold.' The jury could not determine what rents the tenants of said lands were accustomed to pay, but they found generally that all lands within the limits of Tyrone, except the lands of the church, rendered to O'Neill bonnaght or free quarters for armed retainers, 'rising out, cutting and spending.' The parties, however, did not abide by the decision of the privy council, but kept up their contention in the courts of law. It was quite clear that matters could not remain long in that unsettled state, with so many adventurers thirsting for the possession of land, which was lying comparatively idle. It was thought desirable to appoint a president of Ulster, as there had been a president of Munster. The Earl of Tyrone applied to the king for the office, evidently fearing that if Chichester were appointed, he must share the fate of the Earl of Desmond. On the other hand, it was felt that with his hereditary pretensions, impracticable temper, and vast influence with the people, it would be impossible to establish the English power on a permanent basis until he was got out of the way. This was not difficult, with unprincipled adventurers who were watching for opportunities to make their fortunes in those revolutionary times. Among these was a person named St. Lawrence, Baron of Howth. This man worked cunningly on the mind of the lord deputy, insinuating that O'Neill was plotting treason and preparing for a Spanish invasion. He even went so far as to write an anonymous letter, revealing an alleged plot of O'Neill's to assassinate the lord deputy. It was addressed to Sir William Usher, clerk of the council, and the writer began by saying that it would show him, though far severed from him in religion, how near he came home to him in honesty. He was a Catholic, and professed to reveal what he had heard among Catholic gentlemen, 'after the strictest conditions of secresy.' The conspirators were, in the first place, to murder or poison the lord deputy when he came to Drogheda, 'a place thought apt and secure to act the same.' They thought it well to begin with him, because his authority, wisdom, and valour stood only in the way of their first attempts. Next after him they were to cut off Sir Oliver Lambert, whom for his own judgment in the wars, his sudden resolution, and undertaking spirit, they would not suffer to live. These two lights thus put out, they would neither fear nor value any opposite in the kingdom. The small dispersed garrisons must either through hunger submit themselves to their mercy, or be penned up as sheep to the shambles. They held the castle of Dublin for their own, neither manned nor victualled, and readily surprised. The towns were for them, the country with them, the great ones abroad prepared to answer the first alarm. The Jesuits warranted from the Pope and the Catholic king would do their parts effectually, and Spanish succours would not be wanting. These secrets greatly troubled the sensitive conscience of Lord Howth. From the time he was entrusted with them, he said, 'till I resolved to give you this caveat, my eyelids never closed, my heart was a fire, my soul suffered a thousand thousand torments; yet I could not, nor cannot persuade my conscience, in honesty, to betray my friends, or spill their bloods, when this timely warning may prevent the mischief.' In conclusion, he said, 'though I reverence the mass and the Catholic religion equal with the devoutest of them, I will make the leaders of this dance know that I prefer my country's good before their busy and ambitious humours.' It is related of this twenty-second baron of Howth, known as Sir Christopher St. Lawrence, that having served in Ulster under Essex, and accompanied him in his flight to England, he proposed to murder Lord Grey de Wilton, lest he should prejudice the queen's mind against her former favourite, if he got access to her presence before him; that he had commanded a regiment of infantry under Mountjoy, and that when that regiment was disbanded, he became discontented, not having got either pension or employment; that having gone as a free lance to the Low Countries, and failed to advance himself there as he expected, through the interest of Irish ecclesiastics, he returned to England, and skulked about the ante-chambers of Lord Salisbury, waiting upon Providence, when he hit upon the happy idea of the revelations which he conveyed under the signature of' A.B.'[⁴]

After some time he acknowledged the authorship of the letter privately, but refused to come forth publicly as an informer, nor was he able to produce any corroboration of the improbable story. Ultimately, however, when pressed by Chichester, he induced his friend Baron Devlin to swear an information to the same effect, revealing certain alleged conversations of O'Neill. In the meantime St. Lawrence cunningly worked upon the fears of the earl, giving him to understand that his ruin was determined on, and that he had better consult his safety, by leaving the country. It appears that he received intimations to the same effect from his correspondents in Spain and in London. At all events, he lost heart, became silent, moody, and low-spirited, suspecting foul play on the part of the king, who was very urgent that he should be brought over to London, in which case Tyrone was led to believe that he would certainly be sent to the Tower, and probably lose his head. With such apprehensions, he came to the conclusion that it was idle to struggle any longer against the stream.

He had for some weeks been engaged quietly making preparations for his flight. He had given directions to his steward to collect in advance one half of his Michaelmas rents, leading the lord deputy to think that he did so either to provide funds for his journey to London, or to defray the expenses of his son's projected marriage with the daughter of Lord Argyle. Meanwhile a vessel had been purchased by Cu-Connaught Maguire, and Bath, the captain of this vessel, assured the Earl of Tyrconnel, whom he met at Ballyshannon, that he also would lose his life or liberty if he did not abandon the country with O'Neill. On September 8, Tyrone took leave of the lord deputy, and then spent a day and night at Mellifont with his friend Sir Garret Moore, who was specially dear to him as the fosterer of his son John. The earl took his leave with unusual emotion, and after giving his blessing according to the Irish fashion to every member of his friend's household, he and his suite took horse and rode rapidly by Dundalk, over the Fews to Armagh, where he rested a few hours, and then proceeded to Creeve, one of his crannoges or island habitations, where he was joined by his wife and other members of his family. Sir Oliver Lambert in a communication to the Irish Government, relating to the affairs of Ulster, made some interesting allusions to O'Neill. He states that he had apologised for having appealed to the king in the case between him and O'Cahan, and said that he felt much grieved in being called upon so suddenly to go to England, when on account of his poverty he was not able to furnish himself as became him for such a journey and for such a presence. In all things else, said Sir Oliver, 'he seemed very moderate and reasonable, albeit he never gave over to be a general solicitor in all causes concerning his country and people however criminal.' He thought the earl had been much abused by persons who had cunningly terrified, and diverted him from going to the king; 'or else he had within him a thousand witnesses testifying that he was as deeply engaged in these secret treasons as any of the rest, whom they knew or suspected.' At all events he had received information on the previous day from his own brother Sir Cormac O'Neill, from the primate, from Sir Toby Caulfield and others, that the earl had taken shipping with his lady, the Baron of Dungannon, his eldest son, and two others of his children, John and Brien, both under seven years old, the Earl of Tyrconnel, and his son and heir, an infant, not yet a year old, his brother Caffar O'Donel, and his son an infant two years old, 'with divers others of their nearest and trusted followers and servants, as well men as women, to the number of between thirty and forty persons.'

The Rev. Mr. Meehan gives graphic details of the flight of his two heroes. Arrived at Rathmullen they found Maguire and Captain Bath laying stores of provisions on board the ship that had come into Lough Swilly under French colours. Here they were joined by Rory, Earl of Tyrconnel. At noon on Friday they all went on board and lifted anchor, but kept close to the shore waiting for the boats' crews, who were procuring water and fuel; but they had to wait till long after sunset, when the boats came with only a small quantity of wood and water. According to a fatality which makes one Irishman's extremity another Irishman's opportunity, the foraging party was set upon by M'Sweeny of Fanad, who churlishly prevented them getting a sufficient supply of these necessaries. This barbarous conduct is accounted for by Mr. Meehan, from the fact, that this M'Sweeny had recently taken a grant of his lands from the crown. At midnight, September 14, 1607, they spread all sail and made for the open sea, intending, however, to land on the Island of Arran, off the coast of Donegal, to provide themselves with more water and fuel. The entire number of souls on board this small vessel, says O'Keenan in his narrative, was ninety-nine, having little sea store, and being otherwise miserably accommodated. Unable to make the island of Arran, owing to a gale then blowing off the land, and fearing to be crossed by the king's cruisers, they steered for the harbour of Corunna in Spain. But for thirteen days, continues O'Keenan, 'the sea was angry, and the tempest left us no rest; and the only brief interval of calm we enjoyed, was when O'Neill took from his neck a golden crucifix containing a relic of the true cross, and trailed it in the wake of the ship. At that moment, two poor merlins with wearied pinions sought refuge in the rigging of our vessel, and were captured for the noble ladies, who nursed them with tenderest affection.' After being tempest-tossed for three weeks, they dropped anchor in the harbour of Quilleboeuf in France, having narrowly escaped shipwreck, their only remaining provisions being one gallon of beer and a cask of water. They proceeded to Brussels and thence to Louvain, where splendid accommodation was provided for them. In several of the cities through which they passed they received ovations, their countrymen clerical and military having prepared for their reception with the greatest zeal and devotion. The King of Spain was of course friendly, but to avoid giving offence to King James he discouraged the stay of the exiles in his dominions, and they found their final resting-place at Rome, where the two earls were placed upon the Pope's civil list, which, however, they did not long continue to burden. Tyrconnel fell a victim to the malaria, and died on July 28, 1608. 'Sorrowful it was,' say the Four Masters, 'to contemplate his early eclipse, for he was a generous and hospitable lord, to whom the patrimony of his ancestors seemed nothing for his feastings and spending.' His widow received a pension of 300l. a year out of his forfeited estates. O'Neill survived his brother earl eight years, having made various attempts to induce the King of Spain to aid him in the recovery of his patrimony. He died in 1616, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Sir Francis Cottington, announcing the event from Madrid, said, 'The Earl of Tyrone is dead at Rome; by whose death this king saves 500 ducats every month, for so much pension he had from here, well paid him. Upon the news of his death, I observed that all the principal Irish entertained in several parts of this kingdom are repaired unto this court.'

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Page 30.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

Father Meehan.

Footnote 3: [(return)]

Meehan, p. 79.

Footnote 4: [(return)]

Meehan, p. 103.

CHAPTER VII.

GOVERNMENT APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE.

The flight of the earls caused great consternation to the Irish Government. Letters were immediately despatched to the local authorities at every port to have a sharp look out for the fugitives, and to send out vessels to intercept them, should they be driven back by bad weather to any part of the coast. At the same time the lord deputy sent a despatch to the Government in London, deprecating censure for an occurrence so unexpected, and so much to be regretted, because of the possibility of its leading to an invasion by the Spaniards. In other respects it was regarded by the principal members of the Irish Government, and especially by the officials in Ulster, as a most fortunate occurrence. For example, Sir Oliver Lambert, in his report to the lords of the council, already referred to, said:—'But now these things are fallen out thus, contrary to all expectation or likelihood, by the providence of God I hope, over this miserable people, for whose sake it may be he hath sent his majesty this rare and unlocked for occasion: whereby he may now at length, with good apprehension and prudent handling, repair an error which was committed in making these men proprietary lords of so large a territory, without regard of the poor freeholders' rights, or of his majesty's service, and the commonwealth's, that are so much interested in the honest liberty of that sort of men, which now, in time, I commend unto your lordships' grave consideration and wisdom, and will come to that which nearest concerns ourselves and the whole.'

According to Sir John Davis, in his letter to the first minister, Lord Salisbury, Tyrone could not be reconciled in his heart to the English Government, because 'he ever lived like a free prince, or, rather, like an absolute tyrant, there. The law of England, and the ministers thereof, were shackles and handlocks unto him.' He states that after the Irish manner, he made all the tenants of his land villeins. 'Therefore to evict any part of that land from him was as grievous unto him as to pinch away the quick flesh from his body ... Besides,' the attorney-general added, 'as for us that are here, we are glad to see the day wherein the countenance and majesty of the law, as civil government, hath banished Tyrone out of Ireland, which the best army in Europe, and the expense of two millions of sterling pounds did not bring to pass. And we hope his majesty's happy government will work a greater miracle in this kingdom, than ever St. Patrick did; for St. Patrick did only banish the poisonous worms, but suffered the men full of poison to inhabit the land still; but his majesty's blessed genius will banish all that generation of vipers out of it, and make it, ere it be long, a right fortunate island.'

Again, Sir Geoffry Fenton, writing to Salisbury on the same subject, says, 'And now I am to put your lordship in mind what a door is open to the king, if the opportunity be taken, and well converted, not only to pull down for ever these two proud houses of O'Neill and O'Donel, but also to bring in colonies to plant both countries, to a great increasing of his majesty's revenues, and to establish and settle the countries perpetually in the crown; besides that many well-deserving servitors may be recompensed in the distribution; a matter to be taken to heart, for that it reaches somewhat to his majesty's conscience and honour to see these poor servitors relieved, whom time and the wars have spent, even unto their later years, and now, by this commodity, may be stayed and comforted without charges to his majesty.' This advice was quite in accordance with the views of the prime minister, who in a letter to Chichester said, 'I do think it of great necessity that those countries be made the king's by this accident; that there be a mixture in the plantation, the natives made his majesty's tenants of part, but the rest to be divided among those that will inhabit; and in no case any man is suffered to embrace more than is visible he can and will manure. That was an oversight in the plantation of Munster, where 12,000 acres were commonly allotted to bankrupts and country gentlemen, that never knew the disposition of the Irish; so as God forbid that those who have spent their blood in the service should not of all others be preferred.' It was because this idea of manuring, i.e. residence and cultivation, was carried out in Ulster, that the plantation has proved so successful. But Davis would allow but small space comparatively to the natives, whom he compared to weeds which, if too numerous, would choke the wheat. With him the old inhabitants were simply a nuisance from the highest to the lowest; and if there were no other way of getting rid of them, he would no doubt have adopted the plan recommended by Lord Bacon, who said, 'Some of the chiefest of the Irish families should be transported to England, and have recompense there for their possessions in Ireland, till they were cleansed from their blood, incontinency, and theft, which were not the lapses of particular persons, but the very laws of the nation.' The Lord Deputy Chichester, however, agreed thoroughly with his attorney-general, for he certainly made no more account of rooting out the 'mere Irish' from their homes than if they were the most noxious kinds of weeds or vermin. 'If,' said he, writing to Lord Salisbury, 'I have observed anything during my stay in this kingdom, I may say it is not lenity and good works that will reclaim the Irish, but an iron rod, and severity of justice, for the restraint and punishment of those firebrands of sedition, the priests; nor can we think of any other remedy but to proclaim them, and their relievers and harbourers, traitors.'

Considering that those Englishmen were professedly Christian rulers, engaged in establishing the reformed religion, the accounts which they give with perfect coolness of their operations in this line, are among the most appalling passages to be met with in the world's history. For instance, the lord deputy writes: 'I have often said and written, it is famine that must consume the Irish, as our swords and other endeavours worked not that, speedy effect which is expected; hunger would be a better, because a speedier, weapon to employ against them than the sword.' He spared no means of destruction, but combined all the most fearful scourges for the purpose of putting out of existence the race of people whom God in his anger subjected to his power. Surely the spirit of cruelty, the genius of destruction, must have been incarnate in the man who wrote thus: 'I burned all along the Lough (Neagh) within four miles of Dungannon, and killed 100 people, sparing none, of what quality, age, or sex soever, besides many burned to death. We killed man, woman and child, horse, beast, and whatsoever we could find.'

At the time of the flight of the earls, however, he was very anxious about the safety of the kingdom. He was aware that the people were universally discontented, he had but few troops in the country, and little or no money in the treasury, so that in case of a sudden invasion, it was quite possible that the maddened population would rise and act in their own way upon his own merciless policy of extermination. He therefore hastened to issue a proclamation for the purpose of reassuring the inhabitants of Ulster, and persuading them that they would not suffer in any way by the desertion of their chiefs. In this proclamation, headed by 'The Lord Deputy and Counsell,' it was stated that Tyrone and Tyrconnel and their companions had lately embarked themselves at Lough Swilly and had secretly and suddenly departed out of this realm without license or notice. The Government was as yet uncertain about their purpose or destination. But inasmuch as the manner of their departure, considering the quality of their persons, might raise many doubts in the minds of his majesty's loving subjects in those parts, and especially the common sort of people inhabiting the counties of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, who might suppose they were in danger to suffer prejudice in their lands and goods for the contempt or offence of the earls,—they were solemnly assured that they had nothing whatever to fear. The words of the proclamation on this point are: 'We do therefore in his majesty's name declare, proclaim, and publish that all and every his majesty's good and loyal subjects inhabiting those countries of Tyrone and Tyrconnel shall and may quietly and securely possess and enjoy all and singular their lands and goods without the trouble or molestation of any of his majesty's officers or ministers or any other person or persons whatsoever as long as they disturb not his majesty's peace, but live as dutiful and obedient subjects. And forasmuch as the said earls to whom his majesty, reposing special trust in their loyalty, had committed the government of the said several countries are now undutifully departed, therefore his Majesty doth graciously receive all and every of his said loyal subjects into his own immediate safeguard and protection, giving them full assurance to defend them and every of them by his kingly power from all violence or wrong, which any loose persons among themselves or any foreign force shall attempt against them. And to that end, we the lord deputy and council have made choice of certain commissioners as well Irish as English, residing in the said several countries, not only to preserve the public peace there, but also to administer speedy and indifferent justice to all his majesty's loving subjects in those parts, which shall have any cause of complaint before them.' All governors, mayors, sheriffs, justices of peace, provost-marshals, bailiffs, constables, and all other his majesty's ministers whatsoever were strictly charged to use their utmost endeavours faithfully and diligently to keep the people in their duty and obedience to his majesty and the laws of the realm.

The assurance thus given that the subjects and tenants of the absconding princes should securely possess and enjoy their lands and be protected from all oppression under the sceptre of King James would have been very satisfactory had the royal promise been realised, but conciliation was then absolutely necessary, for the lord deputy himself stated that 'the kingdom had not been in the like danger these hundred years, as we have but few friends and no means of getting more.' The foregoing proclamation was issued from Rathfarnham on September 10. On November 9 following, another proclamation of a general nature was published and widely circulated in order to justify the course the Government adopted. According to this document it was known to all the world 'how infinitely' the fugitive earls had been obliged to the king for his singular grace and mercy in giving them free pardon for many heinous and execrable treasons, above all hope that they could in reason conceive, and also in restoring the one to his lands and honours justly forfeited, and in raising the other 'from a very mean estate to the degree and title of an earl, giving him withal large possessions for the support of that honour, before either of them had given any proof of loyalty, or merited the least favour.' Even in the point of religion, which served as a cloak for all their treasons, they got no provocation or cause of grievance. For these and other causes it was announced that his majesty would seize and take into his hands all the lands and goods of the said fugitives. But he would, notwithstanding, extend such grace and favour to the loyal inhabitants of their territories that none of them should be 'impeached, troubled, or molested in their own lands, goods, or bodies, they continuing in their loyalty, and yielding unto his majesty such rents and duties as shall be agreeable to justice and equity.' This assurance was repeated again emphatically in these words: 'His most excellent majesty doth take all the good and loyal inhabitants of the said countries, together with their wives and children, land and goods, into his own immediate protection, to defend them in general against all rebellions and invasions, and to right them in all their wrongs and oppressions, offered or to be offered unto them by any person whatsoever, etc.'

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CASE OF THE FUGITIVE EARLS.

Before proceeding to notice the manner in which these promises of justice, equity, and protection to the occupiers of the land were fulfilled, it is well to record here the efforts made by King James and his ambassador to discredit the fugitive earls on the Continent, and the case which they made out for themselves in the statement of wrongs and grievances which they addressed to the king soon after. There was great alarm in England when news arrived of the friendly reception accorded to the Irish chiefs by the continental sovereigns through whose dominions they passed, and especially by the King of Spain, who was suspected of intending another invasion of Ireland. Consequently the most active preparations were made to meet the danger. In every street of the metropolis drums were beating for recruits, and large detachments were sent in all possible haste to reinforce the Irish garrisons. Sir Charles Cornwallis was then English ambassador at Madrid; and lest his diplomatic skill should not be up to the mark, James himself sent him special and minute instructions as to the manner in which he should handle the delicate subjects he had to bring before the Spanish sovereign. There has been seldom a better illustration of the saying, that the use of speech is to conceal thought, than in the representations which the ambassador was instructed to make about Irish affairs. Indeed Cornwallis had already shown that he scarcely needed to be tutored by his sovereign. In a preliminary despatch he had sent an account of his conversation with Philip III.'s secretary of state about the fugitive earls. He told him that though they had been guilty of rebellions and treasons they had not only been pardoned, but loaded with dignities such as few or none of the king's ancestors had ever bestowed on any of the Irish nation. He had conferred upon them an absolute and, 'in a manner, unlimited government in their own countries, nothing wanting to their ambitions but the name of kings, and neither crossed in anything concerning their civil government, nor so much as in act or imagination molested, or in any sort questioned with, for their consciences and religion.' He thought therefore that they would never have fled in such a way, unless they had been drawn to Spain by large promises in the hope of serving some future turns.

The secretary listened to this insinuation with much impatience, and declared solemnly, laying his hand on his breast with an oath, that of the departure and intention of the earls there was no more knowledge given to the king or any of his state than to the ambassador himself. He added that there had been much consumption of Spanish treasure by supporting strangers who had come from all parts. In particular they had a bitter taste of those who had come from James's dominions; and they would have suffered much more, 'if they had not made a resolute and determined stop to the running of that fountain and refused to give ear to many overtures.' The ambassador expressed his satisfaction at this assurance, and then endeavoured to show how unworthy those Irish princes were of the least encouragement. Their flight was the result of madness, they departed without any occasion of 'earthly distaste' or offence given them by their sovereign, whose position towards the Irish was very different from that of the late queen. Elizabeth had employed against their revolts and rebellions only her own subjects of England, who were not accustomed either to the diet of that savage country, or to the bogs, and other retreats which that wild people used. But now, the king his master, being possessed of Scotland, had in that country, 'near adjoining to the north part of Ireland, a people of their own fashion, diet, and disposition, that could walk their bogs as well as themselves, live with their food, and were so well practised and accustomed in their own country to the like, that they were as apt to pull them out of their dens and withdrawing places, as ferrets to draw rabbits out of their burrows.' Moreover all other parts of Ireland were now reduced to such obedience, and so civil a course, and so well planted with a mixture of English, that there was not a man that showed a forehead likely to give a frown against his majesty, or his government. Cornwallis went on to plead the incomparable virtues of the king his master, among which liberality and magnificence were not the least. But if he had given largely, it was upon a good exchange, for he had sowed money, which of itself can do nothing, and had reaped hearts that can do all. As for the alleged number of 'groaning Catholics,' he assured the secretary that there were hardly as many hundreds as the fugitives reckoned thousands.

According to his report the minister heard him with great attention, and at the conclusion protested, that he joined with him in opinion that those fugitives were dangerous people and that the Jesuits were turbulent and busy men. He assured him on the word of a caballero, that his majesty and council had fully determined never to receive or treat any more of those 'straying people;' as they had been put to great inconvenience and cost, how to deliver themselves from those Irish vagabonds, and continual begging pretenders.

This despatch, dated October 28, 1607, was crossed on the way by one from the English minister Salisbury, dated the 27th, giving the king's instructions 'concerning those men that are fled into Spain.' Cornwallis was directed not to make matters worse than they really were, because the end must be good, 'what insolencies soever the Jesuits and pack of fugitives there might put on. King James knew that this remnant of the northern Irish traitors had been as full of malice as flesh and blood could be, no way reformed by the grace received, but rather sucking poison out of the honey thereof.' He knew also that they had absolutely given commission to their priests and others to abandon their sovereign if Spain would entertain their cause. But this he could not demonstrably prove in foro judicii, though clear in foro conscientiæ, and therefore punishment would savour of rigour. So long as things were in that state his majesty was obliged to suffer adders in his bosom, and give them means to gather strength to his own prejudice, whereas now the whole country which they had possessed would be made of great use both for strength and profit to the king. What follows should be given in his majesty's own words:—

'Those poor creatures who knew no kings but those petty lords, under the burden of whose tyranny they have ever groaned, do now with great applause desire to be protected by the immediate power, and to receive correction only from himself, so as if the council of Spain shall conceive that they have now some great advantage over this state, where it shall appear what a party their king may have if he shall like to support it, there may be this answer: that those Irish without the King of Spain are poor worms upon earth; and that when the King of Spain shall think it time to begin with Ireland, the king my master is more like than Queen Elizabeth was, to find a wholesomer place of the King of Spain's, where he would be loath to hear of the English, and to show the Spaniards who shall be sent into Ireland as fair a way as they were taught before. In which time the more you speak of the base, insulting, discoursing fugitives, the more proper it will be for you. In the meantime upon their departure, not a man hath moved, neither was there these thirty years more universal obedience than there is now. Amongst the rest of their barbarous lies I doubt not but they will pretend protection for religion, and breach of promise with them; wherein you may safely protest this, that for any, of all those that are gone, there never was so much as an offer made to search their consciences.'

Not content with the labours of his ambassadors at the various continental courts, to damage the cause of the Irish earls, the king issued a proclamation, which was widely dispersed abroad. His majesty said he thought it better to clear men's judgments concerning the fugitives, 'not in respect of any worth or value in these men's persons, being base and rude in their original,' but to prevent any breach of friendship with other princes. For this purpose he declared that Tyrone and Tyrconnel had not their creation or possessions in regard of any lineal or lawful descent from ancestors of blood or virtue, but were only conferred by the late queen and himself for some reasons of state. Therefore, he judged it needless to seek for many arguments 'to confirm whatsoever should be said of these men's corruption and falsehood, whose heinous offences remained so fresh in memory since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only withdraw themselves from their personal obedience to their sovereign, but were content to sell over their native country, to those who stood at that time in the highest terms of hostility with the crowns of England and Ireland.' 'Yet,' adds the king, 'to make the absurdity and ingratitude of the allegation above mentioned so much the more clear to all men of equal judgment, we do hereby profess in word of a king that there was never so much as any shadow of molestation, nor purpose of proceeding in any degree against them for matter concerning religion:—such being their condition and profession, to think murder no fault, marriage of no use, nor any man worthy to be esteemed valiant that did not glory in rapine and oppression, as we should have thought it an unreasonable thing to trouble them for any different point in religion, before any man could perceive by their conversation that they made truly conscience of any religion. The king thought these declarations sufficient to disperse and to discredit all such untruths as these contemptible creatures, so full of infidelity and ingratitude, should discharge against him and his just and moderate proceedings, and which should procure unto them no better usage than they would wish should be afforded to any such pack of rebels born their subjects and bound unto them in so many and so great obligations.'

Such was the case of the English Government presented to the world by the king and his ministers. Let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves. The Rev. C.P. Meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the 'old historic rolls,' in the Public Record Office, London. These documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[¹] O'Neill's defence is headed, 'Articles Exhibited by the Earl of Tyrone to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, declaring certain Causes of Discontent offered Him, by which he took occasion to Depart His Country.' The statement is divided into twenty items, of which the following is the substance: It was proclaimed by public authority in his manor of Dungannon, that none should hear mass upon pain of losing his goods and imprisonment, and that no ecclesiastical person should enjoy any cure or dignity without swearing the oath of supremacy and embracing the contrary religion, and those who refused so to do were actually deprived of their benefices and dignities, in proof of which the earl referred to the lord deputy's answer to his own petition, and to the Lord Primate of Ireland, who put the persecuting decree into execution. The Earl of Devon, then lord-lieutenant, had taken from him the lands of his ancestors called the Fews, in Armagh, and given them to other persons. He was deprived of the annual tribute of sixty cows from Sir Cahir O'Dogherty's country called Inishowen, which tribute had never been brought into question till James's reign. The same lord-lieutenant had taken from him the fishings of the Bann, which always belonged to his ancestors, and which he was forced to purchase again. Portions of his territory had been taken 'under colour of church-lands, a thing never in any man's memory heard of before.' One Robert Leicester an attorney had got some more of the earl's land, which he transferred to Captain Leigh. 'So as any captain or clerk had wanted means, and had no other means or device to live, might bring the earl in trouble for some part or parcel of his living, falsely inventing the same, to be concealed or church-land.' The Archbishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Derry and Clogher claimed the best part of the earl's whole estate, as appertaining to their bishoprics, 'which was never moved by any other predecessors before, other than that they had some chiefry due to them, in most part of all his living, and would now have the whole land to themselves as their domain lands, not content with the benefit of their ancient registers, which the earl always offered, and was willing to give without further question. O'Cahan, 'one of the chiefest and principalest of the earl's tenants, was set upon by certain of his majesty's privy council, as also by his highness's counsel-at-law, to withdraw himself and the lands called Iraght-I-Cahan from the earl, being a great substance of his living;' and this although O'Cahan had no right to the property except as his tenant at will, yielding and paying all such rents, dues, and reservations as the other tenants did. He complained that at the council table in Dublin it was determined to take two-thirds of O'Cahan's country from him; and he perceived by what Sir John Davis said, that they had determined to take the other third also. They further made claim in his majesty's behalf to four other parcels of the earl's land, which he named, being the substance of all that was left, and began their suit for the same in the court of exchequer. In fine he felt that he could not assure himself of anything by the letters patent he had from the king. Whenever he had recourse to law his proceedings were frustrated by the government; so that he could not get the benefit of his majesty's laws, or the possession of his lands; 'and yet any man, of what degree soever, obtained the extremity of the law with favour against him, in any suit.' Although the king had allowed him to be lieutenant of his country, yet he had no more command there than his boy; the worst man that belonged to the sheriff could command more than he, and that even in the earl's own house. If they wanted to arrest any one in the house they would not wait till he came out, but burst open the doors, and 'never do the earl so much honour in any respect as once to acquaint him therewith, or to send to himself for the party, though he had been within the house when they would attempt these things; and if any of the earl's officers would by his direction order or execute any matter betwixt his own tenants, with their own mutual consent, they would be driven not only to restore the same again, but also be first amerced by the sheriff, and after indicated as felons, and so brought to trial for their lives for the same; so as the earl in the end could scarce get any of his servants that would undertake to levy his rents.' According to law the sheriff should be a resident in the county, have property there, and be elected by the nobility and chief gentlemen belonging to it; but the law was set aside by the lord deputy, who appointed as sheriffs for the counties Tyrone and Armagh Captain Edmund Leigh and one Marmaduke Whitechurch, dwelling in the county of Louth, both being retainers, and very dear friends to the Knight-marshal Bagenal, who was the only man that urged the earl to his last troubles. Of all these things 'the earl did eftsoons complain to the lord deputy, and could get no redress, but did rather fare the worse for his complaints, in respect they were so little regarded.'

The earl understanding that earnest suit had been made to his majesty for the presidentship of Ulster, made bold to write to the king, humbly beseeching him not to grant any such office to any person over himself, 'suspecting it would be his overthrow, as by plain experience he knew the like office to be the utter overthrow of others of his rank in other provinces within the realm of Ireland.' He also wrote to the Earl of Salisbury, who replied that the earl was not to tie his majesty to place or displace officers at his (the earl's) pleasure in any of his majesty's kingdoms. This was not the earl's meaning, but it indicated to him pretty plainly that he had no favour to expect from that quarter. The office was intended for Sir Arthur Chichester, and he much feared that it would be used for his destruction without his majesty's privity. Therefore, seeing himself envied by those who should be his protectors, considering the misery sustained by others through the oppression of the like government, he resolved to sacrifice all rather than live under that yoke.

The next item is very characteristic. The earl's nephew Brian M'Art happened to be in the house of Turlough M'Henry, having two men in his company. Being in a merry humour, some dispute arose between him and a kinsman of his own, who 'gave the earl's nephew a blow of a club on the head, and tumbled him to the ground; whereupon, one of his men standing by and seeing his master down, did step up with the fellow and gave him some three or four stabs of a knife, having no other weapon, and the master himself, as it was said, gave him another, through which means the man came to his death. Thereupon, the earl's nephew and his two men were taken and kept in prison till the next sessions holden in the county Armagh, where his men were tried by a jury of four innocent and mere ignorant people, having little or no substance, most of them being bare soldiers and not fit, as well by the institution of law in matters of that kind as also through their own insufficiency, to be permitted or elected to the like charge; and the rest foster-brethren, followers, and very dear friends to the party slain, that would not spare to spend their lives and goods to revenge his death. Yet all that notwithstanding were they allowed, and the trial of these two gentlemen committed to them, through which means, and the vigorous threatening and earnest enticements of the judges, they most shamefully condemned to die, and the jury in a manner forced to find the matter murder in each of them, and that, not so much for their own offences, as thinking to make it an evidence against the master, who was in prison in the Castle of Dublin, attending to be tried the last Michaelmas term, whose death, were it right or wrong, was much desired by the lord deputy.

Again, the earl had given his daughter in marriage to O'Cahan with a portion of goods. After they had lived together for eight years, O'Cahan was induced to withdraw himself from the earl, and at the same time, by the procurement of his setters on, he turned off the earl's daughter, kept her fortune to himself, and married another. The father appealed to the lord deputy for justice in vain. He then took proceedings against O'Cahan, at the assizes in Dungannon. But the defendant produced a warrant from the lord deputy, forbidding the judges to entertain the question, as it was one for the Lord Bishop of Derry. The Bishop of Derry, however, was the chief instigator of the divorce, and therefore no indifferent judge in the case. Thus the earl's cause was frustrated, and he could get no manner of justice therein, no more than he obtained in many other weighty matters that concerned him. The next complaint is about outrages committed by one Henry Oge O'Neill, one Henry M'Felemey and others, who at the instigation of the lord deputy, 'farther to trouble the earl,' went out as a wood-kerne to rob and spoil the earl and his nephew, and their tenants. They committed many murders, burnings, and other mischievous acts, and were always maintained and manifestly relieved amongst the deputy's tenants and their friends in Clandeboye, to whom they openly sold the spoils. They went on so for the space of two years, and the earl could get no justice, till at length they murdered one of the deputy's own tenants. Then he saw them prosecuted, and the result was, that the earl cut them all off within a quarter of a year after. But the lord deputy was not at all pleased with this. Therefore he picked up 'a poor rascally knave' and brought him to Dublin, where he persuaded him to accuse above threescore of the earl's tenants of relieving rebels with meat, although it was taken from them by force. For the rebels killed their cattle in the fields, and left them dead there, not being able to carry them away; burnt their houses, took what they could of their household stuff, killed and mangled themselves. 'Yet were they, upon report of that poor knave, who was himself foremost in doing these mischiefs, all taken and brought to their trial by law, where they were, through their innocency, acquitted, to their no small cost; so as betwixt the professed enemy, and the private envy of our governors, seeking thereby to advance themselves, there was no way left for the poor subject to live.'

One Joice Geverard, a Dutchman, belonging to the deputy, was taken prisoner on his way from Carrickfergus to Toome, and he was compelled to pay to his captors a ransom of 30l. For this the lord deputy assessed 60l. on the county, and appointed one-half of it to be taken from O'Neil's tenants, being of another county, and at least twelve miles distant from the scene of the outrage, perpetrated by a wood-kerne, 'and themselves being daily killed and spoiled by the said wood-kerne, and never no redress had to them.' Several outrages and murders perpetrated by the soldiers are enumerated; but they were such as might have been expected in a state bordering on civil war, which was then the condition of the province. If, however, Tyrone is to be believed, the rulers themselves set the example of disorder. Sir Henry Folliott, governor of Ballyshannon, in the second year of his majesty's reign, came with force of arms, and drove away 200 cows from the earl's tenants, 'and killed a good gentleman, with many other poor men, women, and children; and besides that, there died of them above 100 persons with very famine, for want of their goods; whereof the earl never had redress, although the said Sir Henry could show no reasonable cause for doing the same.'

Finally the earl saw that the lord deputy was very earnest to aggravate and search out matters against him, touching the staining of his honour and dignity, scheming to come upon him with some forged treason, and thereby to bereave him of both his life and living. The better to compass this he placed his 'whispering companion,' Captain Leigh, as sheriff in the county, 'so as to be lurking after the earl, to spy if he might have any hole in his coat.' Seeing then that the lord deputy, who should be indifferent, not only to him but to the whole realm, having the rod in his own power, did seek his destruction, he esteemed it a strife against the stream for him to seek to live secure in that kingdom, and therefore of both evils he did choose the least, and thought it better rather to forego his country and lands, till he had further known his majesty's pleasure—to make an honourable escape with his life and liberty only, than by staying with dishonour and indignation to lose both life, liberty, and country, which much in very deed he feared. Indeed the many abuses 'offered' him by Sir John Davis, 'a man more fit to be a stage player than a counsel,' and other inferior officers, might be sufficient causes to provoke any human creature, not only to forego a country, were it ever so dear to him, but also the whole world, to eschew the like government. And thus he concludes his appeal to his 'most dread sovereign:' 'And so referring himself, and the due consideration of these, and all other his causes, to your majesty's most royal and princely censure, as his only protector and defender, against all his adversaries, he most humbly taketh his leave, and will always, as in bounden duty, pray.'

The Earl of Tyrconnel's statement contains no less than forty-four items under the following heading: 'A note, or brief collection of the several exactions, wrongs, and grievances, as well spiritual as temporal, wherewith the Earl of Tyrconnel particularly doth find himself grieved and abused by the king's law ministers in Ireland, from the first year of his majesty's reign until this present year of 1607: to be presented to the king's most excellent majesty.'

Imprimis, all the priests and religious persons dwelling within the said earl's territories were daily pursued and persecuted by his majesty's officers. Sir Arthur Chichester told him, in the presence of divers noblemen and gentlemen, that he must resolve to go to church, or he would be forced to go. This was contrary to the toleration which had been till then enjoyed, and he resolved rather to abandon lands and living, yea, all the kingdoms of the earth, with the loss of his life, than to be forced utterly against his conscience to any such practice.

When Sir George Carew was lord deputy, Captain Nicholas Pynnar and Captain Basil Brook, officers of the king's forces at Lifford, plundered the earl's tenants there, taking from them 150 cows, besides as many sheep and swine as they pleased. Not satisfied with this spoil, they most tyrannically stripped 100 persons of all their apparel. These outrages the earl complained of 'in humble wise' to the lord deputy, and could find no remedy; for the same year the garrisons of Lough Foyle, and Ballyshannon took from the earl's tenants 400 cows for the victualling of the soldiers; and although the English council wrote to the lord deputy, requiring him to pay for the cattle in English money, the payment was never made. When, in pursuance of a promise made to him by the lord deputy, he appeared before the king, to get new letters patent of his territories, &c., his property, in Sligo, Tyrawly, Moylurg, Dartry, Sir Cahir O'Dogherty's country, and all Sir Nial O'Donel's lands, were excepted and kept from him, together with the castle of Ballyshannon and 1,000 acres of land, and the whole salmon-fishing of the river Erne, worth 800l. a year, 'the same castle being one of the earl's chieftest mansion houses.' They also took from him 1,000 acres of his best land, and joined it to the garrison of Lifford for the king's use, without any compensation. There were seven sheriffs sent into Tyrconnel, by each of which there was taken out of every cow and plough-horse 4d., and as much out of every colt and calf twice a year, and half-a-crown a quarter of every shoemaker, carpenter, smith, and weaver in the whole country, and eight pence a year for every married couple.'

Sir Nial O'Donel was committed to prison by Tyrconnel, for usurping the title of O'Donel and taking his herds and tenants. 'He broke loose from prison and killed some of his Majesty's subjects. For this the earl prosecuted him under a special warrant from the lord deputy; but notwithstanding all this, Carew gave warrants to Captains Pynnar, Brook, and Bingley, to make reprisals upon the earl's tenants for the pretender's use. Accordingly three English companies joining with nine score of Sir Nial's men, seized and carried away 500 cows, 60 mares, 30 plough-horses, 13 horses, besides food and drink to support the assailants for six weeks. They were guilty of many other extortions, the country being extremely poor after the wars, and 17 of the earl's tenants were hindered from ploughing that season. A certain horse-boy, who was sentenced to be hanged for killing one Cusack, was promised his life by Sir George Carew, if he accused Tyrconnel as having employed him to commit the murder. The boy did make the accusation, which served no purpose 'but to accelerate his hanging.' Thus betrayed, he declared at the gallows, and in the presence of 400 persons, the sheriff of the county, and the portreve of Trim, he retracted the false confession. A similar attempt was made with an Englishman, who was kept a close prisoner without food, drink, or light, in order to get him to accuse the earl of Cusack's murder. All such, with many other of the said Carew's cruel and tyrannical proceedings, the earl showed to the council in England, which promised to give satisfaction by punishing the said Carew, who at his arrival in England did rather obtain greater favours than any reprehension or check of his doings, so as the earl was constrained to take patience for a full satisfaction of his wrongs.

Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Derry, levied 100l. off Tyrconnel's tenants for the building of a church in that city, but the money was applied by Sir Henry to his own use. Carew ordered the troops under Sir H. Docwra, Sir H. Folliott, Sir Ralph Constable, Sir Thomas Roper, and Captain Doddington, to be quartered for three months upon Tyrconnel's people, 'where they committed many rapes, and used many extortions, which the earl showed, and could neither get payment for their victuals nor obtain that they should be punished for their sundry rapes and extortions.' Indeed there was never a garrison in Tyrconnel that did not send at their pleasure private soldiers into the country to fetch, now three beeves, now four, as often as they liked, until they had taken all; and when the earl complained, Carew seemed rather to flout him than any way to right him. Sir H. Folliott's company on one occasion took from his tenants thirty-eight plough-horses, which were never restored or paid for; at another time they took twenty-one, and again fourteen. This being done in the spring of the year the tenants were hindered from ploughing as before. During a whole year Folliott took for the use of his own house, regularly every month, six beeves and six muttons, without any manner of payment. Captain Doddington and Captain Cole made free with the people's property in the same manner.

'All these injuries he laid in a very humble manner before the lord deputy, but instead of obtaining redress he was dismissed by him in a scoffing manner, and even a lawyer whom he employed was threatened by Carew in the following terms:—that he and his posterity should smart for his doings until the seventh generation; so that all the earl's business was ever since left at random, and no lawyer dared plead in his cause.'

Tyrconnel killed some rebels, and captured their chief, whom his men carried to Sir H. Folliott to be executed. Sir Henry offered to spare his life if he could accuse the earl of any crime that might work his overthrow. He could not, and he was hanged. In order to settle a dispute between the earl and Sir Nial, the English protégé and pretender to the chieftainship, twelve tenants of each were summoned to be examined by the king's officers in the neighbourhood. 'The earl's men were not examined, but locked up in a room; and the vice-governor, upon the false deposition of Sir Nial's men, directed warrants, and sent soldiers to the number of 300, to bring all the earl's tenants unto Sir Nial, to the number of 340 persons, who paid half-a-crown a piece, and 12d. for every cow and garron, as a fee unto the captains, whereby they lost their ploughing for the space of twenty-eight days, the soldiers being in the country all the while. One Captain Henry Vaughan, being sheriff in the year 1605, got a warrant to levy 150l. to build a sessions house. He built the house of timber and wattles. It was not worth 10l, and it fell in three months. Nevertheless he levied every penny of the money, and the people had to meet a similar demand the next year, to build another house. It was a rule with the governors of the local garrisons to offer his life to every convict about to be executed, and also a large reward, if he could accuse the earl of some detestable crime. No less than twenty-seven persons hanged in Connaught and Tyrone were offered pardon on this condition. He was at the same sessions called to the bar for hanging some wood-kerne, although he had authority from the king to execute martial law. Shortly after, by the lord deputy's orders, the horse and foot soldiers under Docwra and Folliott were cessed upon the country, where they for four months remained, and paid nothing for their charges of horse-meat or man's meat.' In the year 1606 the lord deputy came to Ballyshannon, where, being at supper, he demanded of the earl what right he had to the several territories he claimed. He replied that his ancestors had possessed them for 1,300 years, and that the duties, rents, and homages were duly paid during that time. Whereupon the lord deputy said, 'the earl was unworthy to have them, he should never enjoy them, the State was sorry to have left so much in his possession, and he should take heed to himself or else the deputy would make his pate ache.' The matters in dispute between him and Sir Nial being referred on that occasion to the lord deputy, both parties having submitted their papers for examination, every case was decided against Tyrconnel, all his challenges frustrated, 300l. damages imposed, and his papers burned; while Sir Nial's papers were privately given back to him. The result was that at the next sessions Sir Nial had the benefit of all his papers, his opponent having nothing to show to the contrary. The fishery of Killybegs, worth 500l. a season, had belonged to Tyrconnel's ancestors for 1,300 years. But it was taken from him without compensation, by Sir Henry Folliott and the Bishop of Derry, with the ultimate sanction of the lord deputy, who confirmed the bishop in possession 'both for that season and for all times ensuing.' Sir H. Folliott on one occasion took away for his carriage the horses that served the earl's house with fuel and wood for fire, 'and the soldiers, scorning to feed the horses themselves, went into the earl's house, and forcibly took out one of his boys to lead them, and ran another in the thigh with a pike for refusing to go with him.' He had a number of tenants, who held their lands 'by lease of years for certain rents.' Yet the lord deputy sent warrants to them, directing them to pay no rents, and requiring the Governor of Derry 'to raise the country from time to time, and resist and hinder the earl from taking up his rents.'

To crown all, when Tyrconnel made a journey into the Pale to know the reason why he was debarred from his rents, he lodged on his way in the Abbey of Boyle. He had scarcely arrived there when the constable of the town, accompanied by twenty soldiers, and all the churls of the place, surrounded and set fire to the house where he lay, he having no company within but his page and two other serving men. 'But it befell, through the singular providence of Almighty God, whose fatherly care he hath ever found vigilant over him, that he defended himself and his house against them all the whole night long, they using on the other side all their industry and might to fire it, and throwing in of stones and staves in the earl's face, and running their pikes at him and swords until they had wounded him, besides his other bruisings, with stones and staves in six places; they menacing to kill him, affirming that he was a traitor to the king, and that it was the best service that could be rendered to his majesty to kill him. And that all this is true, Sir Donough O'Conor, who was taken prisoner by the same men, because he would not assist them in their facinorous and wicked design of killing the earl, will justify; but in the morning the earl was rescued by the country folk, which conveyed him safely out of the town. And when the earl complained, and showed his wounds unto the lord deputy, he promised to hang the constable and ensign, but afterwards did not once deign so much as to examine the matter or call the delinquents to account, by reason whereof the earl doth verily persuade himself—which his surmise was afterwards confirmed in time, by the credible report of many—that some of the State were sorry for his escape, but specially Sir Oliver Lambert, who had purposely drawn the plot of the earl's ruin.'

Footnote 1: [(return)]

Page 192.

[Transcriber's note: marker for following footnote is missing in the original]

[Footnote: Meehan's Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, pp. 192-224.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE CONFISCATION OF ULSTER.