A few incidents in the history of the Church of Cashel will better

illustrate the character of the contest between the native episcopacy

and the foreign power. Towards the end of the thirteenth century,

Archbishop McCarwill maintained with great courage the independence of

his jurisdiction against Henry III. and Edward I. Having inducted

certain Bishops into their sees without waiting for the royal letters,

he sustained a long litigation in the Anglo-Irish courts, and was much

harassed in his goods and person. Seizing from a usurer 400 pounds, he

successfully resisted the feudal claim of Edward I., as lord paramount,

to pay over the money to the royal exchequer. Edward having undertaken

to erect a prison—or fortress in disguise—in his episcopal city, the

bold Prelate publicly excommunicated the Lord Justice who undertook the

work, the escheator who supplied the funds, and all those engaged in

its construction, nor did he desist from his opposition until the

obnoxious building was demolished. Ralph O'Kelly, who filled the same

see from 1345 to 1361, exhibited an equally dauntless spirit. An

Anglo-Irish Parliament having levied a subsidy on all property, lay and

ecclesiastical, within their jurisdiction, to carry on the war of races

before described, he not only opposed its collection within the

Province of Cashel, but publicly excommunicated Epworth, Clerk of the

Council, who had undertaken that task. For this offence an information

was exhibited against him, laying the King's damages at a thousand

pounds; but he pleaded the liberties of the Church, and successfully

traversed the indictment. Richard O'Hedian, Archbishop from 1406 to

1440, was a Prelate of similar spirit to his predecessors. At a

Parliament held in Dublin in 1421, it was formally alleged, among other

enormities, that he made very much of the Irish and loved none of the

English; that he presented no Englishman to a benefice, and advised

other Prelates to do likewise; and that he made himself King of

Munster—alluding, probably, to some revival at this time of the old

title of Prince-Bishop, which had anciently belonged to the Prelates of

Cashel. O'Hedian retained his authority, however, till his death, after

which the see remained twelve years vacant, the temporalities being

farmed by the Earl of Ormond.

From this conflict of interests, frequently resulting in disputed

possession and intrusive jurisdiction, religion must have suffered

much, at least in its discipline and decorum. The English Archbishops

of Dublin would not yield in public processions to the Irish

Archbishops of Armagh, nor permit the crozier of St. Patrick to be

borne publicly through their city; the English Bishop of Waterford was

the public accuser of the Irish Archbishop of Cashel, last mentioned,

before a lay tribunal—the knights and burgesses of "the Pale." The

annual expeditions sent out from Dublin, to harass the nearest native

clans, were seldom without a Bishop or Abbot, or Prior of the Temple or

Hospital, in their midst. Scandals must have ensued; hatreds must have

sprung up; prejudices, fatal to charity and unity, must have been

engendered, both on the one side and the other. The spirit of party

carried into the Church can be cherished in the presence of the Altar

and Cross only by doing violence to the teachings of the Cross and the

sanctity of the Altar.

While such was the troubled state of the Church, as exemplified in its

twofold hierarchy, the religious orders continued to spread, with

amazing energy, among both races. The orders of Saint Francis and Saint

Dominick, those twin giants of the thirteenth century, already rivalled

the mighty brotherhood which Saint Bernard had consecrated, and Saint

Malachy had introduced into the Irish Church. It is observable that the

Dominicans, at least at first, were most favoured by the English and

the Anglo-Irish; while the Franciscans were more popular with the

native population. Exceptions may be found on both sides: but as a

general rule this distinction can be traced in the strongholds of

either order, and in the names of their most conspicuous members, down

to that dark and trying hour when the tempest of "the Reformation"

involved both in a common danger, and demonstrated their equal heroism.

As elsewhere in Christendom, the sudden aggrandizement of these

mendicant institutes excited jealousy and hostility among certain of

the secular clergy and Bishops. This feeling was even stronger in

England during the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., when,

according to the popular superstition, the Devil appeared at various

places "in the form of a grey friar." The great champion of the secular

clergy, in the controversy which ensued, was Richard, son of Ralph, a

native of Dundalk, the Erasmus of his age. Having graduated at Oxford,

where the Irish were then classed as one of "the four nations" of

students, Fitz-Ralph achieved distinction after distinction, till he

rose to the rank of Chancellor of the University, in 1333. Fourteen

years afterwards he was consecrated, by provision of Pope Clement VI.,

Archbishop of Armagh, and is by some writers styled "Cardinal of

Armagh." Inducted into the chief see of his native Province and

country, he soon commenced those sermons and writings against the

mendicant orders which rendered him so conspicuous in the Church

history of the fourteenth century. Summoned to Avignon, in 1350, to be

examined on his doctrine, he maintained before the Consistory the

following propositions: 1st, that our Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, was

very poor, not that He loved poverty for itself; 2nd, that our Lord had

never begged; 3rd, that He never taught men to beg; 4th, that, on the

contrary, He taught men not to beg; 5th, that man cannot, with prudence

and holiness, confine himself by vow to a life of constant mendicity;

6th, that minor brothers are not obliged by their rule to beg; 7th,

that the bull of Alexander IV., which condemns the Book of Masters,

does not invalidate any of the aforesaid conclusions; 8th, that by

those who, wishing to confess, exclude certain churches, their parish

one should be preferred to the oratories of monks; and 9th, that, for

auricular confession, the diocesan, bishop should be chosen in

preference to friars.

In a "defence of Parish Priests," and many other tracts, in several

sermons, preached at London, Litchfield, Drogheda, Dundalk, and Armagh,

he maintained the thesis until the year 1357, when the Superior of the

Franciscans at Armagh, seconded by the influence of his own and the

Dominican order, caused him to be summoned a second time before the

Pope. Fitz-Ralph promptly obeyed the summons, but before the cause

could be finally decided he died at Avignon in 1361. His body was

removed from thence to Dundalk in 1370 by Stephen de Valle, Bishop of

Meath. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his tomb; a process

of inquiry into their validity was instituted by order of Boniface IX.,

but abandoned without any result being arrived at. The bitter

controversy between the mendicant and other orders was revived towards

the end of the century by Henry, a Cistercian monk of Baltinglass, who

maintained opinions still more extreme than those of Fitz-Ralph; but he

was compelled publicly and solemnly to retract them before

Commissioners appointed for that purpose in the year 1382.

The range of mental culture in Europe during the fourteenth century

included only the scholastic philosophy and theology with the physics,

taught in the schools of the Spanish Arabs. The fifteenth century saw

the revival of Greek literature in Italy, and the general restoration

of classical learning. The former century is especially barren of

original _belles lettres_ writings; but the next succeeding ages

produced Italian poetry, French chronicles, Spanish ballads, and all

that wonderful efflorescence of popular literature, which, in our far

advanced cultivation, we still so much envy and admire. In the last

days of Scholasticism, Irish intelligence asserted its ancient equality

with the best minds of Europe; but in the new era of national

literature, unless there are buried treasures yet to be dug out of

their Gaelic tombs, the country fell altogether behind England, and

even Scotland, not to speak of Italy or France. Archbishop Fitz-Ralph,

John Scotus of Down, William of Drogheda, Professor of both laws at

Oxford, are respectable representatives among the last and greatest

group of the School-men. Another illustrious name remains to be added

to the roll of Irish Scholastics, that of Maurice O'Fihely, Archbishop

of Tuam. He was a thorough Scotist in philosophy, which he taught at

Padua, in discourses long afterwards printed at Venice. His

Commentaries on _Scotus_, his Dictionary of the Sacred Scriptures, and

other numerous writings, go far to justify the compliments of his

cotemporaries, though the fond appellation of the "flower of the earth"

given him by some of them sounds extravagant and absurd. Soon after

arriving from Rome to take possession of his see he died at Tuam in

1513, in the fiftieth year of his age—an early age to have won so

colossal a reputation.

Beyond some meagre annals, compiled in monastic houses, and a few

rhymed panegyrics, the muses of history and of poetry seem to have

abandoned the island to the theologians, jurists, and men of science.

The Bardic order was still one of the recognized estates, and found

patrons worthy of their harps in the lady Margaret O'Carroll of

Offally, William O'Kelley of Galway, and Henry Avery O'Neil. Full

collections of the original Irish poetry of the Middle Ages are yet to

be made public, but it is scarcely possible that if any composition of

eminent merit existed, we should not have had editions and translations

of it before now.

BOOK VII.

UNION OF THE CROWNS OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND.

CHAPTER I.

IRISH POLICY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH DURING THE LIFETIME OF CARDINAL

WOLSEY.

Henry the Eighth of England succeeded his father on the throne, early

in the year 1509. He was in the eighteenth year of his age, when he

thus found himself master of a well-filled treasury and an united

kingdom. Fortune, as if to complete his felicity, had furnished him

from the outset of his reign with a minister of unrivalled talent for

public business. This was Thomas Wolsey, successively royal Chaplain,

Almoner, Archbishop of York, Papal Legate, Lord Chancellor, and Lord

Cardinal. From the fifth to the twentieth year of King Henry, he was,

in effect, sovereign in the state, and it is wonderful to find how much

time he contrived to borrow from the momentous foreign affairs of that

eventful age for the obscurer intrigues of Irish politics.

Wolsey kept before his mind, more prominently than any previous English

statesman, the design of making his royal master as absolute in Ireland

as any King in Christendom. He determined to abolish every pretence to

sovereignty but that of the King of England, and to this end he

resolved to circumscribe the power of the Anglo-Irish Barons, and to

win over by "dulce ways" and "politic drifts," as he expressed it, the

Milesian-Irish Chiefs. This policy, continued by all the Tudor

sovereigns till the latter years of Elizabeth, so far as it

distinguished between the Barons and Chiefs always favoured the latter.

The Kildares and Desmonds were hunted to the death, in the same age,

and by the same authority, which carefully fostered every symptom of

adhesion or attachment on the part of the O'Neils and O'Briens. Neither

were these last loved or trusted for their own sakes, but the natural

enemy fares better in all histories than the unnatural rebel.

We must enumerate some of the more remarkable instances of Wolsey's

twofold policy of concession and intimidation. In the third and fourth

years of Henry, Hugh O'Donnell, lord of Tyrconnell, passing through

England, on a pilgrimage to Rome, was entertained with great honour at

Windsor and Greenwich for four months each time. He returned to Ulster

deeply impressed with the magnificence of the young monarch and the

resources of his kingdom. During the remainder of his life he cherished

a strong predilection for England; he dissuaded James IV. of Scotland

from leading a liberating expedition to Ireland in 1513—previous to the

ill-fated campaign which ended on Flodden field, and he steadily

resisted the influx of the Islesmen into Down and Antrim. In 1521 we

find him described by the Lord Lieutenant, Surrey, as being of all the

Irish chiefs the best disposed "to fall into English order." He

maintained a direct correspondence with Henry until his death, 1537,

when the policy he had so materially assisted had progressed beyond the

possibility of defeat. Simultaneously with O'Donnell's adhesion, the

same views found favour with the powerful chief of Tyrone. The O'Neils

were now divided into two great septs, those of Tyrone, whose seat was

at Dungannon, and those of Clandeboy, whose strongholds studded the

eastern shores of Lough Neagh. In the year 1480, Con O'Neil, lord of

Tyrone, married his cousin-germain, Lady Alice Fitzgerald, daughter of

the Earl of Kildare. This alliance tended to establish an intimacy

between Maynooth and Dungannon, which subserved many of the ends of

Wolsey's policy. Turlogh, Art, and Con, sons of Lady Alice, and

successively chiefs of Tyrone, adhered to the fortunes of the Kildare

family, who were, however unwillingly, controlled by the superior power

of Henry. The Clandeboy O'Neils, on the contrary, regarded this

alliance as nothing short of apostasy, and pursued the exactly opposite

course, repudiating English and cultivating Scottish alliances. Open

ruptures and frequent collisions took place between the estranged and

exasperated kinsmen; in the sequel we will find how the last surviving

son of Lady Alice became in his old age the first Earl of Tyrone, while

the House of Clandeboy took up the title of "the O'Neil." The example

of the elder branch of this ancient royal race, and of the hardly less

illustrious family of Tyrconnell, exercised a potent influence on the

other chieftains of Ulster.

An elaborate report on "the State of Ireland," with "a plan for its

Reformation"—submitted to Henry in the year 1515—gives us a tolerably

clear view of the political and military condition of the several

provinces. The only portions of the country in any sense subject to

English law, were half the counties of Louth, Meath, Dublin, Kildare,

and Wexford. The residents within these districts paid "black rent" to

the nearest native chiefs. Sheriffs were not permitted to execute

writs, beyond the bounds thus described, and even within thirty miles

of Dublin, March-law and Brehon-law were in full force. Ten native

magnates are enumerated in Leinster as "chief captains" of their

"nations"—not one of whom regarded the English King as his Sovereign.

Twenty chiefs in Munster, fifteen in Connaught, and three in

West-Meath, maintained their ancient state, administered their own

laws, and recognized no superiority, except in one another, as policy

or custom compelled them. Thirty chief English captains, of whom

eighteen resided in Munster, seven in Connaught, and the remainder in

Meath, Down, and Antrim, are set down as "rebels" and followers of "the

Irish order." Of these, the principal in the midland counties were the

Dillons and Tyrrells, in the West the Burkes and Berminghams, in the

South the Powers, Barrys, Roches—the Earl of Desmond and his relatives.

The enormous growth of these Munster Geraldines, and their not less

insatiable greed, produced many strange complications in the politics

of the South. Not content with the moiety of Kerry, Cork, and

Waterford, they had planted their landless cadets along the Suir and

the Shannon, in Ormond and Thomond. They narrowed the dominions of the

O'Briens on the one hand and the McCarthys on the other. Concluding

peace or war with their neighbours, as suited their own convenience,

they sometimes condescended to accept further feudal privileges from

the Kings of England. To Maurice, tenth Earl, Henry VII. had granted

"all the customs, cockets, poundage, prize wines of Limerick, Cork,

Kinsale, Baltimore and Youghal, with other privileges and advantages."

Yet Earl James, in the next reign, did not hesitate to treat with

Francis of France and the Emperor of Germany, as an independent Prince,

long before the pretence of resisting the Reformation could be alleged

in his justification. What we have here to observe is, that this

predominance of the Munster Geraldines drove first one and then another

branch of the McCarthys, and O'Briens, into the meshes of Wolsey's

policy. Cormac Oge, lord of Muskerry, and his cousin, the lord of

Carbery, defeated the eleventh Earl (James), at Moore Abbey, in 1521,

with a loss of 1,500 foot and 500 or 600 horsemen. To strengthen

himself against the powerful adversary so deeply wounded, Cormac sought

the protection of the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Surrey, and of

Pierce Roe, the eighth Earl of Ormond, who had common wrongs to avenge.

In this way McCarthy became identified with the English interest, which

he steadily adhered to till his death—in 1536. Driven by the same

necessity to adopt the same expedient, Murrogh O'Brien, lord of

Thomond, a few years later visited Henry at London, where he resigned

his principality, received back his lands, under a royal patent

conveying them to him as "Earl of Thomond, and Baron of Inchiquin."

Henry was but too happy to have raised up such a counterpoise to the

power of Desmond, at his own door, while O'Brien was equally anxious to

secure foreign aid against such intolerable encroachments. The policy

worked effectually; it brought the succeeding Earl of Desmond to

London, an humble suitor for the King's mercy and favour, which were

after some demur granted.

The event, however, which most directly tended to the establishment of

an English royalty in Ireland, was the depression of the family of

Kildare in the beginning of this reign, and its all but extinction a

few years later. Gerald, the ninth Earl of that title, succeeded his

father in the office of Lord Deputy in the first years of Henry. He had

been a ward at the court of the preceding King, and by both his first

and second marriages was closely connected with the royal family. Yet

he stood in the way of the settled plans of Wolsey, before whom the

highest heads in the realm trembled. His father, as if to secure him

against the hereditary enmity of the Butlers, had married his daughter

Margaret to Pierce Roe, Earl of Ossory, afterwards eighth Earl of

Ormond—the restorer of that house. This lady, however, entered heartily

into the antipathies of her husband's family, and being of masculine

spirit, with an uncommon genius for public affairs, helped more than

any Butler had ever done to humble the overshadowing house of which she

was born. The weight of Wolsey's influence was constantly exercised in

favour of Ormond, who had the skill to recommend himself quite as

effectually to Secretary Cromwell, after the Cardinal's disgrace and

death. But the struggles of the house of Kildare were bold and

desperate.

CHAPTER II.

THE INSURRECTION OF SILKEN THOMAS—THE GERALDINE LEAGUE—ADMINISTRATION

OF LORD LEONARD GRAY.

The ninth and last _Catholic_ Earl of Kildare, in the ninth year of

Henry VIII., had been summoned to London to answer two charges

preferred against him by his political enemies: "1st, That he had

enriched himself and his followers out of the crown lands and revenues.

2nd, That he had formed alliances and corresponded with divers Irish

enemies of the State." Pending these charges the Earl of Surrey, the

joint-victor with his father at Flodden field, was despatched to Dublin

in his stead, with the title of Lord Lieutenant.

Kildare, by the advice of Wolsey, was retained in a sort of honourable

attendance on the person of the King for nearly four years. During this

interval he accompanied Henry to "the field of the cloth of Gold," so

celebrated in French and English chronicles. On his return to Dublin,

in 1523, he found his enemy, the Earl of Ormond, in his old office, but

had the pleasure of supplanting him one year afterwards. In 1525, on

the discovery of Desmond's correspondence with Francis of France, he

was ordered to march into Munster and arrest that nobleman. But, though

he obeyed the royal order, Desmond successfully evaded him, not, as was

alleged, without his friendly connivance. The next year this evasion

was made the ground of a fresh impeachment by the implacable Earl of

Ormond; he was again summoned to London, and committed to the Tower. In

1530 he was liberated, and sent over with Sir William Skeffington,

whose authority to some extent he shared. The English Knight had the

title of Deputy, but Kildare was, in effect, Captain General, as the

Red Earl had formerly been. Skeffington was instructed to obey him in

the field, while it was expected that the Earl, in return, would

sustain his colleague in the Council. A year had not passed before they

were declared enemies, and Skeffington was recalled to England, where

he added another to the number of Kildare's enemies. After a short term

of undisputed power, the latter found himself, in 1533, for the third

time, an inmate of the Tower. It is clear that the impetuous Earl,

after his second escape, had not conducted himself as prudently as one

so well forewarned ought to have done. He played more openly than ever

the twofold part of Irish Chief among the Irish, and English Baron

within the Pale. His daughters were married to the native lords of

Offally and Ely, and he frequently took part as arbitrator in the

affairs of those clans. The anti-Geraldine faction were not slow to

torture these facts to suit themselves. They had been strengthened at

Dublin by three English officials, Archbishop Allan, his relative John

Allan, afterwards Master of the Rolls, and Robert Cowley, the Chief

Solicitor, Lord Ormond's confidential agent. The reiterated

representations of these personages induced the suspicious and

irascible King to order the Earl's attendance at London, authorizing

him at the same time to appoint a substitute, for whose conduct he

would be answerable. Kildare nominated his son, Lord Thomas, though not

yet of man's age; after giving him many sage advices, he sailed for

England, no more to return.

The English interest at that moment had apparently reached the lowest

point. The O'Briens had bridged the Shannon, and enforced their ancient

claims over Limerick. So defenceless, at certain periods, was Dublin

itself that Edmond Oge O'Byrne surprised the Castle by night, liberated

the prisoners, and carried off the stores. This daring achievement,

unprecedented even in the records of the fearless mountaineers of

Wicklow, was thrown in to aggravate the alleged offences of Kildare. He

was accused, moreover, of having employed the King's great guns and

other munitions of war to strengthen his own Castles of Maynooth and

Ley—a charge more direct and explicit than had been alleged against him

at any former period.

While the Earl lay in London Tower, an expedient very common afterwards

in our history—the forging of letters and despatches—was resorted to by

his enemies in Dublin, to drive the young Lord Thomas into some rash

act which might prove fatal to his father and himself. Accordingly the

packets brought from Chester, in the spring of 1534, repeated reports,

one confirming the other, of the execution of the Earl in the Tower.

Nor was there anything very improbable in such an occurrence. The cruel

character of Henry had, in these same spring months, been fully

developed in the execution of the reputed prophetess, Elizabeth Barton,

and all her abettors. The most eminent layman in England, Sir Thomas

More, and the most illustrious ecclesiastic, Bishop Fisher, had at the

same time been found guilty of misprision of treason for having known

of the pretended prophecies of Elizabeth without communicating their

knowledge to the King. That an Anglo-Irish Earl, even of the first

rank, could hope to fare better at the hands of the tyrant than his

aged tutor and his trusted Chancellor, was not to be expected. When,

therefore, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald flung down the sword of State on the

Council table, in the hall of St. Mary's Abbey, on the 11th day of

June, 1534, and formally renounced his allegiance to King Henry as the

murderer of his father, although he betrayed an impetuous and impolitic

temper, there was much in the events of the times to justify his belief

in the rumours of his father's execution.

This renunciation of allegiance was a declaration of open war. The

chapter thus opened in the memoirs of the Leinster Geraldines closed at

Tyburn on the 3rd of February, 1537. Within these three years, the

policy of annexation was hastened by several events—but by none more

than this unconcerted, unprepared, reckless revolt. The advice of the

imprisoned Earl to his son had been "to play the gentlest part," but

youth and rash counsels overcame the suggestions of age and experience.

One great excess stained the cause of "Silken Thomas," while it was but

six weeks old. Towards the end of July, Archbishop Allan, his father's

deadly enemy, left his retreat in the Castle, and put to sea by night,

hoping to escape into England. The vessel, whether by design or

accident, ran ashore at Clontarf, and the neighbourhood being overrun

by the insurgents, the Archbishop concealed himself at Artane. Here he

was discovered, dragged from his bed, and murdered, if not in the

actual presence, under the same roof with Lord Thomas. King Henry's

Bishops hurled against the assassins the greater excommunication, with

all its penalties; a terrific malediction, which was, perhaps, more

than counterbalanced by the Papal Bull issued against Henry and Anne

Boleyn on the last day of August—the knowledge of which must have

reached Ireland before the end of the year. This Bull cited Henry to

appear within ninety days in person, or by attorney, at Rome, to answer

for his offences against the Apostolic See; failing which, he was

declared excommunicated, his subjects were absolved from their

allegiance, and commanded to take up arms against their former

sovereign. The ninety days expired with the month of November, 1534.

Lord Thomas, as he acted without consultation with others, so he was

followed but by few persons of influence. His brothers-in-law, the

chiefs of Ely and Offally, O'Moore of Leix, two of his five uncles, his

relatives, the Delahides, mustered their adherents, and rallied to his

standard. He held the castles of Carlow, Maynooth, Athy, and other

strongholds in Kildare. He besieged Dublin, and came to a composition

with the citizens, by which they agreed to allow him free ingress to

assail the Castle, into which his enemies had withdrawn. He despatched

agents to the Emperor, Charles V., and the Pope, but before those

agents could well have returned—March, 1535—Maynooth had been assaulted

and taken by Sir William Skeffington—and the bands collected by the

young lord had melted away. Lord Leonard Gray, his maternal uncle,

assumed the command for the King of England, instead of Skeffington,

disabled by sickness, and the abortive insurrection was extinguished in

one campaign. Towards the end of August, 1535, the unfortunate Lord

Thomas surrendered on the guarantee of Lord Leonard and Lord Butler; in

the following year his five uncles—three of whom had never joined in

the rising—were treacherously seized at a banquet given to them by

Gray, and were all, with their nephew, executed at Tyburn, on the 3rd

of February, 1537. The imprisoned Earl having died in the Tower on the

12th of December, 1534, the sole survivor of this historic house was

now a child of twelve years of age, whose life was sought with an

avidity equal to Herod's, but who was protected with a fidelity which

defeated every attempt to capture him. Alternately the guest of his

aunts married to the chiefs of Offally and Donegal, the sympathy

everywhere felt for him led to a confederacy between the Northern and

Southern Chiefs, which had long been wanting. A loose league was

formed, including the O'Neils of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the

Earl of Desmond, and the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The lad, the

object of so much natural and chivalrous affection, was harboured for a

time in Munster, thence transported through Connaught into Donegal, and

finally, after four years, in which he engaged more of the minds of

statesmen than any other individual under the rank of royalty, was

safely landed in France. We shall meet him again in another reign,

under more fortunate auspices.

Lord Leonard Gray continued in office as Deputy for nearly five years

(1535-40). This interval was marked by several successes against

detached clans and the parties to the Geraldine league, whom he was

careful to attack only in succession. In his second campaign, O'Brien's

bridge was carried and demolished, one O'Brien was set up against

another, and one O'Conor against another; the next year the Castle of

Dungannon was taken from O'Neil, and Dundrum from Magennis. In 1539, he

defeated O'Neil and O'Donnell, at Bolahoe, on the borders of Farney, in

Monaghan, with a loss of 400 men, and the spoils they had taken from

the English of Navan and Ardee. The Mayors of Dublin and Drogheda were

knighted on the field for the valour they had shown at the head of

their train-bands. The same year, he made a successful incursion into

the territory of the Earl of Desmond, receiving the homage of many of

the inferior lords, and exonerating them from the exactions of those

haughty Palatines. Recalled to England in 1540, he, too, in turn, fell

a victim to the sanguinary spirit of King Henry, and perished on the

scaffold.

CHAPTER III.

SIR ANTHONY ST. LEGER, LORD DEPUTY—NEGOTIATIONS OF THE IRISH CHIEFS

WITH JAMES THE FIFTH OF SCOTLAND—FIRST ATTEMPTS TO INTRODUCE THE

PROTESTANT REFORMATION—OPPOSITION OF THE CLERGY—PARLIAMENT OF 1541—THE

PROCTORS OF THE CLERGY EXCLUDED—STATE OF THE COUNTRY—THE CROWNS

UNITED—HENRY THE EIGHTH PROCLAIMED AT LONDON AND DUBLIN.

Upon the disgrace of Lord Leonard Gray in 1540, Sir Anthony St. Leger

was appointed Deputy. He had previously been employed as chief of the

commission issued in 1537, to survey land subject to the King, to

inquire into, confirm, or cancel titles, and abolish abuses which might

have crept in among the Englishry, whether upon the marches or within

the Pale. In this employment he had at his disposal a guard of 340 men,

while the Deputy and Council were ordered to obey his mandates as if

given by the King in person. The commissioners were further empowered

to reform the Courts of Law; to enter as King's Counsel into both

Houses of Parliament, there to urge the adoption of measures upholding

English laws and customs, establishing the King's supremacy, in

spirituals as in temporals, to provide for the defence of the marches,

and the better collection of the revenues. In the three years which he

spent at the head of this commission, St. Leger, an eminently able and

politic person, made himself intimately acquainted with Irish affairs;

as a natural consequence of which knowledge he was entrusted, upon the

first vacancy, with their supreme directions. In this situation he had

to contend, not only with the complications long existing in the system

itself, but with the formidable disturbing influence exercised by the

Court of Scotland, chiefly upon and by means of the Ulster Princes.

Up to this period, the old political intimacy of Scotland and Ireland

had known no diminution. The Scots in Antrim could reckon, soon after

Henry's accession to the throne, 2,000 fighting men. In 1513, in order

to co-operate with the warlike movement of O'Donnell, the Scottish

fleet, under the Earl of Arran, in his famous flagship, "the great

Michael," captured Carrickfergus, putting its Anglo-Irish garrison to

the sword. In the same Scottish reign (that of James IV.), one of the

O'Donnells had a munificent grant of lands in Kirkcudbright, as other

adventurers from Ulster had from the same monarch, in Galloway and

Kincardine. In 1523, while hostilities raged between Scotland and

England, the Irish Chiefs entered into treaty with Francis the First of

France, who bound himself to land in Ireland 15,000 men, to expel the

English from "the Pale," and to carry his arms across the channel in

the quarrel of Richard de la Pole, father of the famous Cardinal, and

at this time a formidable pretender to the English throne. The imbecile

conduct of the Scottish Regent, the Duke of Albany, destroyed this

enterprise, which, however, was but the forerunner, if it was not the

model, of several similar combinations. When the Earl of Bothwell took

refuge at the English Court, in 1531, he suggested to Henry VIII.,

among other motives for renewing the war with James V., that the latter

was in league "with the Emperor, the Danish King, and O'Donnell." The

following year, a Scottish force of 4,000 men, under John, son of

Alexander McDonald, Lord of the Isles, served, by permission of their

King, under the banner of the Chieftain of Tyrconnell. An uninterrupted

correspondence between the Ulster Chiefs and the Scottish Court may be

traced through this reign, forming a curious chapter of Irish

diplomacy. In 1535, we have a letter from O'Neil to James V., from

which it appears that O'Neil's Secretary was then residing at the

Scottish Court; and as the crisis of the contest for the Crown drew

near, we find the messages and overtures from Ulster multiplying in

number and earnestness. In that critical period, James V. was between

twenty and thirty years old, and his powerful minister, Cardinal

Beaton, was acting by him the part that Wolsey had played by Henry at a

like age. The Cardinal, favouring the French and Irish alliances, had

drawn a line of Scottish policy, in relation to both those countries,

precisely parallel to Wolsey's. During the Geraldine insurrection,

Henry was obliged to remonstrate with James on favours shown to his

rebels of Ireland. This charge James' ministers, in their

correspondence of the year 1535, strenuously denied, while admitting

that some insignificant Islesmen, over whom he could exercise no

control, might have gone privily thither. In the spring of 1540, Bryan

Layton, one of the English agents at the Scottish Court, communicated

to Secretary Cromwell that James had fitted out a fleet of 15 ships,

manned by 2,000 men, and armed with all the ordinance that he could

muster; that his destination was Ireland, the Crown of which had been

offered to him, the previous Lent, by "eight gentlemen," who brought

him written tenders of submission "from all the great men of Ireland,"

with their seals attached; and, furthermore, that the King had declared

to Lord Maxwell his determination to win such a prize as "never King of

Scotland had before," or to lose his life in the attempt. It is

remarkable that in this same spring of 1540—while such was understood

to be the destination of the Scottish fleet—a congress of the Chiefs of

all Ireland was appointed to be held at the Abbey of Fore, in

West-Meath. To prevent this meeting taking place, the whole force of

the Pale, with the judges, clergy, townsmen and husbandmen, marched out

under the direction of the Lords of the Council (St. Leger not having

yet arrived to replace Lord Gray), but finding no such assembly as they

had been led to expect, they made a predatory incursion into Roscommon,

and dispersed some armed bands belonging to O'Conor. The commander in

this expedition was the Marshal Sir William Brereton, for the moment

one of the Lords Justices. He was followed to the field by the last

Prior of Kilmainham, Sir John Rawson, the Master of the Rolls, the

Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishop of Meath, Mr. Justice Luttrell, and

the Barons of the Exchequer-a strange medley of civil and military

dignitaries.

The prevention or postponement of the Congress at Fore must have

exercised a decided influence on the expedition of James V. His great

armada having put to sea, after coasting among the out-islands, and

putting into a northern English port from stress of weather, returned

home without achievement of any kind. Diplomatic intercourse was

shortly renewed between him and Henry, but, in the following year, to

the extreme displeasure of his royal kinsman, he assumed the

much-prized title of "Defender of the Faith." Another rupture took

place, when the Irish card was played over again with the customary

effect. In a letter of July, 1541, introducing to the Irish Chiefs the

Jesuit Fathers, Salmeron, Broet, and Capata, who passed through

Scotland on their way to Ireland, James styles himself "Lord of

Ireland"—another insult and defiance to Henry, whose newly-acquired

kingly style was then but a few weeks old. By way of retaliation, Henry

ordered the Archbishop of York to search the registers of that see for

evidence of _his_ claim to the Crown of Scotland, and industriously

cultivated the disaffected party amongst the Scottish nobility. At

length these bickerings broke out into open war, and the short, but

fatal campaign of 1542, removed another rival for the English King. The

double defeat of Fala and of Solway Moss, the treason of his nobles,

and the failure of his hopes, broke the heart of the high-spirited

James V. He died in December, 1542, in the 33rd year of his age, a few

hours after learning the birth of his daughter, so celebrated as Mary,

Queen of Scots. In his last moments he pronounced the doom of the

Stuart dynasty—"It came with a lass," he exclaimed, "and it will go

with a lass," And thus it happened that the image of Ireland, which

unfolds the first scene of the War of the Roses, which is inseparable

from the story of the two Bruces, and which occupies so much of the

first and last years of the Tudor dynasty, stands mournfully by the

deathbed of the last Stuart King who reigned in Scotland—the only

Prince of his race that had ever written under his name the title of

"_Dominus Hiberniae_."

The premature death of James was hardly more regretted by his immediate

subjects than by his Irish allies. All external events now conspired to

show the hopelessness of resistance to the power of King Henry. From

Scotland, destined to half a century of anarchy, no help could be

expected. Wales, another ancient ally of the Irish, had been

incorporated with England, in 1536, and was fast becoming reconciled to

the rule of a Prince, sprung from a Welsh ancestry. Francis of France

and Charles V., rivals for the leadership of the Continent, were too

busy with their own projects to enter into any Irish alliance. The

Geraldines had suffered terrible defeats; the family of Kildare was

without an adult representative; the O'Neils and O'Donnells had lost

ground at Bellahoe, and were dismayed by the unlooked-for death of the

King of Scotland. The arguments, therefore, by which many of the chiefs

might have justified themselves to their clans in 1541, '2 and '3, for

submitting to the inevitable laws of necessity in rendering homage to

Henry VIII., were neither few nor weak. Abroad there was no hope of an

alliance sufficient to counterbalance the immense resources of England;

at home life-wasting private wars, the conflict of laws, of languages,

and of titles to property, had become unbearable. That fatal family

pride, which would not permit an O'Brien to obey an O'Neil, nor an

O'Conor to follow either, rendered the establishment of a native

monarchy—even if there had been no other obstacle—wholly impracticable.

Among the clergy alone did the growing supremacy of Henry meet with any

effective opposition.

At its first presentation in Ireland, and during the whole of Henry's

lifetime, the "Reformation" wore the guise of schism, as distinguished

from heresy. To deny the supremacy of the Pope and admit the supremacy

of the King were almost its sole tests of doctrine. All the ancient

teaching in relation to the Seven Sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice of the

Mass, the Real Presence, Purgatory, and Prayers for the Dead, were

scrupulously retained. Subsequently, the necessity of auricular

confession, the invocation of Saints, and the celibacy of the clergy

came to be questioned, but they were not dogmatically assailed during

this reign. The common people, where English was understood, were slow

in taking alarm at these masked innovations; in the Irish-speaking

districts—three-fourths of the whole country—they were only heard of as

rumours from afar, but the clergy, secular and regular, were not long

left in doubt as to where such steps must necessarily lead.

From 1534, the year of his divorce, until 1541, the year of his

election, Henry attempted, by fits and starts, to assert his supremacy

in Ireland. He appointed George Browne, a strenuous advocate of the

divorce, some time Provincial of the order of St. Augustine in England,

Archbishop of Dublin, vacant by the murder of Archbishop Allan. On the

12th of March, 1535, Browne was consecrated by Cranmer, whose opinions,

as well as those of Secretary Cromwell, he echoed through life. He may

be considered the first agent employed to introduce the Reformation

into Ireland, and his zeal in that work seems to have been unwearied.

He was destined, however, to find many opponents, and but few converts.

Not only the Primate of Armagh, George Cromer, and almost all the

episcopal order, resolutely resisted his measures, but the clergy and

laity of Dublin refused to accept his new forms of prayer, or to listen

to his strange teaching. He inveighs in his correspondence with

Cromwell against Bassenet, Dean of St. Patrick's, Castele, Prior of

Christ's Church, and generally against all the clergy. Of the

twenty-eight secular priests in Dublin, but three could be induced to

act with him; the regular orders he found equally intractable—more

especially the Observantins, whose name he endeavoured to change to

Conventuals. "The spirituality," as he calls them, refused to take the

oaths of abjuration and supremacy; refused to strike the name of the

Bishop of Rome from their primers and mass-books, and seduced the rest

into like contumacy. Finding persuasion of little avail, he sometimes

resorted to harsher measures.

Dr. Sall, a grey friar of Waterford, was brought to Dublin and

imprisoned for preaching the new doctrines in the Spring of 1538;

Thaddeus Byrne, another friar, was put in the pillory, and was reported

to have committed suicide in the Castle, on the 14th of July of the

same year; Sir Humfrey, parson of Saint Owens, and the suffragan Bishop

of Meath, were "clapped in ward," for publicly praying for the Pope's

weal and the King's conversion; another Bishop and friar were arrested

and carried to Trim, for similar offences, but were liberated without

trial, by Lord Deputy Gray; a friar of Waterford, in 1539, by order of

the St. Leger Commission, was executed in the habit of his order, on a

charge of "felony," and so left hanging "as a mirror for all his

brethren." Yet, with all this severity, and all the temptations held

out by the wealth of confiscated monasteries, none would abide the

preaching of the new religion except the "Lord Butler, the Master of

the Rolls (Allan), Mr. Treasurer (Brabazon), and one or two more of

small reputation."

The first test to which the firmness of the clergy had been put was in

the Parliament convoked at Dublin by Lord Deputy Gray, in May, 1537.

Anciently in such assemblies two proctors of each diocese, within the

Pale, had been accustomed to sit and vote in the Upper House as

representing their order, but the proposed tests of supremacy and

abjuration were so boldly resisted by the proctors and spiritual peers

on this occasion that the Lord Deputy was compelled to prorogue the

Parliament without attaining its assent to those measures. During the

recess a question was raised by the Crown lawyers as to the competency

of the proctors to vote, while admitting their right to be present as

councillors and assistants; this question, on an appeal to England, was

declared in the negative, whereupon that learned body were excluded

from all share in the future Irish legislation of this reign. Hence,

whoever else are answerable for the election of 1541 the proctors of

the clergy are not.

Having thus reduced the clerical opposition in the Upper House, the

work of monastic spoliation, covertly commenced two years before, under

the pretence of reforming abuses, was more confidently resumed. In

1536, an act had been passed vesting the property of all religious

houses in the Crown; at which time the value of their moveables was

estimated at 100,000 pounds and their yearly value at 32,000 pounds. In

1537, eight abbeys were suppressed during the King's pleasure; in 1538,

a commission issued for the suppression of monasteries; and in 1539,

twenty-four great Houses, whose Abbots and Priors had been lords of

Parliament, were declared "surrendered" to the King, and their late

superiors were granted pensions for life. How these "surrenders" were

procured we may judge from the case of Manus, Abbot of St. Mary's,

Thurles, who was carried prisoner to Dublin, and suffered a long

confinement for refusing to yield up his trust according to the desired

formula. The work of confiscation was in these first years confined to

the walled towns in English hands, the district of the Pale, and such

points of the Irish country as could be conveniently reached. The great

order of the Cistercians, established for more than four centuries at

Mellifont, at Monastereven, at Bective, at Jerpoint, at Tintern, and at

Dunbrody, were the first expelled from their cloisters and gardens. The

Canons regular of St. Augustine at Trim, at Conal, at Athassel and at

Kells, were next assailed by the degenerate Augustinian, who presided

over the commission. The orders of St. Victor, of Aroacia, of St. John

of Jerusalem, were extinguished wherever the arm of the Reformation

could reach. The mendicant orders, spread into every district of the

island, were not so easily erased from the soil; very many of the

Dominican and Franciscan houses standing and flourishing far into the

succeeding century.

If the influence of the clergy counterbalanced the policy of the

chiefs, the condition of the mass of the population—more especially of

the inhabitants of the Pale and the marches—was such as to make them

cherish the expectation that any governmental change whatever should be

for the better. It was, under these circumstances, a far-reaching

policy, which combined the causes and the remedy for social wrongs,

with invectives against the old, and arguments in favour of the new

religion. In order to understand what elements of discontent there were

to be wrought to such conclusions, it is enough to give the merest

glance at the social state of the lower classes under English

authority. The St. Leger Commission represents the mixed population of

the marches, and the Englishry of "the Pale" as burthened by

accumulated exactions. Their lords quartered upon them at pleasure

their horses, servants, and guests. They were charged with coin and

livery—that is, horse-meat and man's-meat —when their lords travelled

from place to place—with summer-oats, with providing for their

cosherings, or feasts, at Christmas and Easter, with "black men and

black money," for border defence, and with workmen and axemen from

every ploughland, to work in the ditches, or to hew passages for the

soldiery through the woods. Every aggravation of feudal wrong was

inflicted on this harassed population. When a le Poer or a Butler

married a daughter he exacted a sheep from every flock, and a cow from

every village. When one of his sons went to England, a special tribute

was levied on every village and ploughland to bear the young

gentleman's travelling expenses. When the heads of any of the great

houses hunted, their dogs were to be supplied by the tenants "with

bread and milk, or butter." In the towns tailors, masons, and

carpenters, were taxed for coin and livery; "mustrons" were employed in

building halls, castles, stables, and barns, at the expense of the

tenantry, for the sole use of the lord. The only effective law was an

undigested jumble of the Brehon, the Civil, and the Common law; with

the arbitrary ordinances of the marches, known as "the Statutes of

Kilcash"—so called from a border stronghold near the foot of

Slievenamon—a species of wild justice, resembling too often that

administered by Robin Hood, or Rob Roy.

Many circumstances concurring to promote plans so long cherished by

Henry, St. Leger summoned a Parliament for the morrow after Trinity

Sunday, being the 13th of the month of June, 1541. The attendance on

the day named was not so full as was expected, so the opening was

deferred till the following Thursday—being the feast of Corpus Christi.

On that festival the Mass of the Holy Ghost was solemnly celebrated in

St. Patrick's Cathedral, in which "two thousand persons" had assembled.

The Lords of Parliament rode in cavalcade to the Church doors, headed

by the Deputy. There were seen side by side in this procession the

Earls of Desmond and Ormond, the Lords Barry, Roche and Bermingham;

thirteen Barons of "the Pale," and a long train of Knights; Donogh

O'Brien, Tanist of Thomond, the O'Reilly, O'Moore and McWilliam;

Charles, son of Art Kavanagh, lord of Leinster, and Fitzpatrick, lord

of Ossory. Never before had so many Milesian chiefs and Norman barons

been seen together, except on the field of battle; never before had

Dublin beheld marshalled in her streets what could by any stretch of

imagination be considered a national representation. For this

singularity, not less than for the business it transacted, the

Parliament of 1541 will be held in lasting remembrance.

In the sanctuary of St. Patrick's, two Archbishops and twelve Bishops

assisted at the solemn mass, and the whole ceremony was highly

imposing. "The like thereof," wrote St. Leger to Henry, "has not been

seen here these many years." On the next day, Friday, the Commons

elected Sir Thomas Cusack speaker, who, in "a right solemn

proposition," opened at the bar of the Lords' House the main business

of the session—the establishment of King Henry's supremacy. To this

address Lord Chancellor Allen—"well and prudentlie answered;" and the

Commons withdrew to their own chamber. The substance of both speeches

was "briefly and prudentlie" declared in the Irish language to the

Gaelic Lords, by the Earl of Ormond, "greatly to their contentation."

Then St. Leger proposed that Henry and his heirs should have the title

of King, and caused the "bill devised for the same to be read." This

bill having been put to the Lords' House, both in Irish and English,

passed its three readings at the same sitting. In the Commons it was

adopted with equal unanimity the next day, when the Lord Deputy most

joyfully gave his consent. Thus on Saturday, June 19th, 1541, the

royalty of Ireland was first formally transferred to an English

dynasty. On that day the triumphant St. Leger was enabled to write his

royal master his congratulations on having added to his dignities

"another imperial crown." On Sunday bonfires were made in honour of the

event, guns fired, and wine on stoop was set in the streets. All

prisoners, except those for capital offences, were liberated; _Te Deum_

was sung in St. Patrick's, and King Henry issued his proclamation, on

receipt of the intelligence, for a general pardon throughout _all_ his

dominions. The new title was confirmed with great formality by the

English Parliament in their session of 1542. Proclamation was formally

made of it in London, on the 1st of July of that year, when it was

moreover declared that after that date all persons being lawfully

convicted of opposing the new dignity should "be adjudged high

traitors"—"and suffer the pains of death."

Thus was consummated the first political union of Ireland with England.

The strangely-constituted Assembly, which had given its sanction to the

arrangement, in the language of the Celt, the Norman, and the Saxon,

continued in session till the end of July, when they were prorogued

till November. They enacted several statutes, in completion of the

great change they had decreed; and while some prepared for a journey to

the court of their new sovereign, others returned to their homes, to

account as best they could for the part they had played at Dublin.

CHAPTER IV.

ADHESION OF O'NEIL, O'DONNELL AND O'BRIEN—A NEW ANGLO-IRISH PEERAGE—NEW

RELATIONS OF LORD AND TENANT—BISHOPS APPOINTED BY THE CROWN—RETROSPECT.

The Act of Election could hardly be considered as the Act of the Irish

nation, so long as several of the most distinguished chiefs withheld

their concurrence. With these, therefore, Saint Leger entered into

separate treaties, by separate instruments, agreed upon, at various

dates, during the years 1542 and 1543. Manus O'Donnell, lord of

Tyrconnell, gave in his adhesion in August, 1541, Con O'Neil, lord of

Tyrowen, Murrogh O'Brien, lord of Thomond, Art O'Moore, lord of Leix,

and Ulick Burke, lord of Clanrickarde, 1542 and 1543; but, during the

reign of Henry, no chief of the McCarthys, the O'Conors of Roscommon or

of Offally, entered into any such engagement. The election, therefore,

was far from unanimous, and Henry VIII. would perhaps be classed by our

ancient Senachies among the "Kings with opposition," who figure so

often in our Annals during the Middle Ages.

Assuming, however, the title conferred upon him with no little

complacency, Henry proceeded to exercise the first privilege of a

sovereign, the creation of honours. Murrogh O'Brien, chief of his name,

became Earl of Thomond, and Donogh, his nephew, Baron of Ibrackan;

Ulick McWilliam Burke became Earl of Clanrickarde and Baron of

Dunkellin; Hugh O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnell; Fitzpatrick,

became Baron of Ossory, and Kavanagh, Baron of Ballyan; Con O'Neil was

made Earl of Tyrone, having asked, and been refused, the higher title

of Earl of Ulster. The order of Knighthood was conferred on several of

the principal attendants, and to each of the new peers the King granted

a house in or near Dublin, for their accommodation, when attending the

sittings of Parliament.

The imposing ceremonial of the transformation of these Celtic chiefs

into English Earls has been very minutely described by an eye-witness.

One batch were made at Greenwich Palace, after High Mass on Sunday, the

1st of July, 1543. The Queen's closet "was richly hanged with cloth of

arras and well strawed with rushes," for their robing room. The King

received them under a canopy of state, surrounded by his Privy Council,

the peers, spiritual and temporal, the Earl of Glencairn, Sir George

Douglas, and the other Scottish Commissioners. The Earls of Derby and

Ormond led in the new Earl of Thomond, Viscount Lisle carrying before

them the sword. The Chamberlain handed his letters patent to the

Secretary who read them down to the words _Cincturam gladii_, when the

King girt the kneeling Earl, baldric-wise, with the sword, all the

company standing. A similar ceremony was gone through with the others,

the King throwing a gold chain having a cross hanging to it round each

of their necks. Then, preceded by the trumpeters blowing, and the

officers at arms, they entered the dining hall, where, after the second

course, their titles were proclaimed aloud in Norman-French by Garter,

King at Arms. Nor did Henry, who prided himself on his munificence,

omit even more substantial tokens of his favour to the new Peers.

Besides the town houses near Dublin, before mentioned, he granted to

O'Brien all the abbeys and benefices of Thomond, bishoprics excepted;

to McWilliam Burke, all the parsonages and vicarages of Clanrickarde,

with one-third of the first-fruits, the Abbey of _Via Nova_ and 30

pounds a year compensation for the loss of the customs of Galway; to

Donogh O'Brien, the Abbey of Ellenegrane, the moiety of the Abbey of

Clare, and an annuity of 20 pounds a year. To the new lord of Ossory he

granted the monasteries of Aghadoe and Aghmacarte, with the right of

holding court lete and market, every Thursday, at his town of Aghadoe.

For these and other favours the recipients had been instructed to

petition the King, and drafts of such petitions had been drawn up in

anticipation of their arrival in England, by some official hand. The

petitions are quoted by most of our late historians as their own proper

act, but it is quite clear, though willing enough to present them and

to accept such gifts, they had never dictated them.

In the creation of this Peerage Henry proclaimed, in the most practical

manner possible, his determination to assimilate the laws and

institutions of Ireland to those of England. And the new made Earls,

forgetting their ancient relations to their clans—forgetting, as

O'Brien had answered St. Leger's first overtures three years before,

"that though he was captain of his nation he was still but one man," by

suing out royal patents for their lands, certainly consented to carry

out the King's plans. The Brehon law was doomed from the date of the

creation of the new Peers at Greenwich, for such a change entailed

among its first consequences a complete abrogation of the Gaelic

relations of clansman and chief.

By the Brehon law every member of a free clan was as truly a proprietor

of the tribe-land as the chief himself. He could sell his share, or the

interest in it, to any other member of the tribe—the origin, perhaps,

of what is now called tenant-right; he could not, however, sell to a

stranger without the consent of the tribe and the chief. The stranger

coming in under such an arrangement, held by a special tenure, yet if

he remained during the time of three lords he became thereby

naturalized. If the unnaturalized tenant withdrew of his own will from

the land he was obliged to leave all his improvements behind; but if he

was ejected he was entitled to get their full value. Those who were

immediate tenants of the chief, or of the church, were debarred this

privilege of tenant-right, and if unable to keep their holdings were

obliged to surrender them unreservedly to the church or the chief. All

the tribesmen, according to the extent of their possessions, were bound

to maintain the chief's household, and to sustain him, with men and

means, in his offensive and defensive wars. Such were, in brief, the

land laws in force over three-fourths of the country in the sixteenth

century; laws which partook largely of the spirit of an ancient

patriarchal justice, but which, in ages of movement, exchange, and

enterprise, would have been found the reverse of favourable to

individual freedom and national strength. There were not wanting, we

may be assured, many minds to whom this truth was apparent so early as

the age of Henry VIII. And it may not be unreasonable to suppose that

one of the advantages which the chief found in exchanging this

patriarchal position for a feudal Earldom would be the greater degree

of independence on the will of the tribe, which the new system

conferred on him. With the mass of the clansmen, however, for the very

same reason, the change was certain to be unpopular, if not odious. But

a still more serious change—a change of religion—was evidently

contemplated by those Earls who accepted the property of the

confiscated religious houses. The receiver of such estates could hardly

pretend to belong to the ancient religion of the country.

It is impossible to understand Irish history from the reign of Henry

VIII. till the fall of James II.—nearly two hundred years—without

constantly keeping in mind the dilemma of the chiefs and lords between

the requirements of the English Court on the one hand and of the native

clans on the other. Expected to obey and to administer conflicting

laws, to personate two characters, to speak two languages, to uphold

the old, yet to patronize the new order of things; distrusted at Court

if they inclined to the people, detested by the people if they leaned

towards the Court—a more difficult situation can hardly be conceived.

Their perilous circumstances brought forth a new species of Irish

character in the Chieftain-Earls of the Tudor and Stuart times. Not

less given to war than their forefathers, they were now compelled to

study the politician's part, even more than the soldier's. Brought

personally in contact with powerful Sovereigns, or pitted at home

against the Sydneys, Mountjoys, Chichesters, and Straffords, the

lessons of Bacon and Machiavelli found apt scholars in the halls of

Dunmanway and Dungannon. The multitude, in the meanwhile, saw only the

broad fact that the Chief had bowed his neck to the hated Saxon yoke,

and had promised, or would be by and by compelled, to introduce foreign

garrisons, foreign judges, and foreign laws, amongst the sons of the

Gael. Very early they perceived this; on the adhesion of O'Donnell to

the Act of Election, a part of his clansmen, under the lead of his own

son, rose up against his authority. A rival McWilliam was at once

chosen to the new Earl of Clanrickarde, in the West. Con O'Neil, the

first of his race who had accepted an English title, was imprisoned by

his son, John the Proud, and died of grief during his confinement.

O'Brien found, on his return from Greenwich, half his territory in

revolt; and this was the general experience of all Henry's electors.

Yet such was the power of the new Sovereign that, we are told in our

Annals, at the year 1547—the year of Henry's death—"no one dared give

food or protection" to those few patriotic chiefs who still held

obstinately out against the election of 1541.

The creation of a new peerage coincided in point of time with the first

unconditional nomination of new Bishops by the Crown. The Plantagenet

Kings, in common with all feudal Princes, had always claimed the right

of investing Bishops with their temporalities and legal dignities;

while, at the same time, they recognized in the See of Rome the seat

and centre of Apostolic authority. But Henry, excommunicated and

incorrigible, had procured from the Parliament of "the Pale," three

years before the Act of Election, the formal recognition of his

spiritual supremacy, under which he proceeded, as often as he had an

opportunity, to promote candidates for the episcopacy to vacant sees.

Between 1537 and 1547, thirteen or fourteen such vacancies having

occurred, he nominated to the succession whenever the diocese was

actually within his power. In this way the Sees of Dublin, Kildare,

Ferns, Ardagh, Emly, Tuam and Killaloe were filled up; while the

vacancies which occurred about the same period in Armagh, Clogher,

Clonmacnoise, Clonfert, Kilmore, and Down and Conor were supplied from

Rome. Many of the latter were allowed to take possession of their

temporalities—so far as they were within English power—by taking an

oath of allegiance, specially drawn for them. Others, when prevented

from so doing by the penalties of _praemunire_, delegated their

authority to Vicars General, who contrived to elude the provisions of

the statute. On the other hand, several of the King's Bishops, excluded

by popular hostility from the nominal sees, never resided upon them;

some of them spent their lives in Dublin, and others were entertained

as suffragans by Bishops in England.

In March, 1543, Primate Cromer, who had so resolutely led the early

opposition to Archbishop Browne, died, whereupon Pope Paul III.

appointed Robert Waucop, a Scotsman (by some writers called

_Venantius_), to the See of Armagh. This remarkable man, though

afflicted with blindness from his youth upwards, was a doctor of the

Sorbonne, and one of the most distinguished Prelates of his age. He

introduced the first Jesuit Fathers into Ireland, and to him is

attributed the establishment of that intimate intercourse between the

Ulster Princes and the See of Rome, which characterized the latter half

of the century. He assisted at the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1547,

was subsequently employed as Legate in Germany, and died abroad during

the reign of Edward VI. Simultaneously with the appointment of Primate

Waucop, Henry VIII. had nominated to the same dignity George Dowdal, a

native of Louth, formerly Prior of the crutched friars at Ardee, in

that county. Though Dowdal accepted the nomination, he did so without

acknowledging the King's supremacy in spirituals. On the contrary he

remained attached to the Holy See, and held his claims in abeyance,

during the lifetime of Waucop. On the death of the latter, he assumed

his rank, but was obliged to fly into exile, during the reign of

Edward. On the accession of Mary he was recalled from his place of

banishment in Brabant, and his first official act on returning home was

to proclaim a Jubilee for the public restoration of the Catholic

worship.

The King's Bishops during the last years of Henry, and the brief reign

of Edward, were, besides Browne of Dublin, Edward Staples, Bishop of

Meath, Matthew Saunders and Robert Travers, successively Bishops of

Leighlin, William Miagh and Thomas Lancaster, successively Bishops of

Kildare, and John Bale, Bishop of Ossory—all Englishmen. The only

native names, before the reign of Elizabeth, which we find associated

in any sense with the "reformation," are John Coyn, or Quin, Bishop of

Limerick, and Dominick Tirrey, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne. Dr. Quin was

promoted to the See in 1522, and resigned his charge in the year 1551.

He is called a "favourer" of the new doctrines, but it is not stated

how far he went in their support. His successor, Dr. William Casey, was

one of the six Bishops deprived by Queen Mary on her accession to the

throne. As Bishop Tirrey is not of the number—although he lived till

the third year of Mary's reign—we may conclude that he became

reconciled to the Holy See.

The native population became, before Henry's death, fully aroused to

the nature of the new doctrines, to which at first they had paid so

little attention. The Commission issued in 1539 to Archbishop Browne

and others for the destruction of images and relics, and the prevention

of pilgrimages, as well as the ordering of English prayers as a

substitute for the Mass, brought home to all minds the sweeping

character of the change. Our native Annals record the breaking out of

the English schism from the year 1537, though its formal introduction

into Ireland may, perhaps, be more accurately dated from the issuing of

the Ecclesiastical Commission of 1539. In their eyes it was the

offspring of "pride, vain-glory, avarice, and lust," and its first

manifestations were well calculated to make it for ever odious on Irish

soil. "They destroyed the religious orders," exclaimed the Four

Masters! "They broke down the monasteries, and sold their roofs and

bells, from Aran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea!" "They burned the

images, shrines, and relics of the Saints; they destroyed the Statue of

our Lady of Trim, and the Staff of Jesus, which had been in the hand of

St. Patrick!" Such were the works of that Commission as seen by the

eyes of Catholics, natives of the soil. The Commissioners themselves,

however, gloried in their work, and pointed with complacency to their

success. The "innumerable images" which adorned the churches were

dashed to pieces; the ornaments of shrines and altars, when not

secreted in time, were torn from their places, and beaten into

shapeless masses of metal. This harvest yielded in the first year

nearly 3,000 pounds, on an inventory, wherein we find 1,000 lbs. weight

of wax, manufactured into candles and tapers, valued at 20 pounds. Such

was the return made to the revenue; what share of the spoil was

appropriated by the agents employed may never be known. It would be

absurd, however, to expect a scrupulous regard to honesty in men

engaged in the work of sacrilege! And this work, it must be added, was

carried on in the face of the stipulation entered into with the

Parliament of 1541, that "the Church of Ireland shall be free, and

enjoy all its accustomed privileges."

The death of Henry, in January, 1547, found the Reformation in Ireland

at the stage just described. But though all attempts to diffuse a

general recognition of his spiritual power had failed, his reign will

ever be memorable as the epoch of the union of the English and Irish

Crowns. Before closing the present Book of our History, in which we

have endeavoured to account for that great fact, and to trace the

progress of the negotiations which led to its accomplishment, we must

briefly review the relations existing between the Kings of England and

the Irish nation, from Henry II. to Henry VIII.

If we are to receive a statement of considerable antiquity, a memorable

compromise effected at the Council of Constance, between the

ambassadors of France and England, as to who should take precedence,

turned mainly on this very point. The French monarchy was then at its

lowest, the English at its highest pitch, for Charles VI. was but a

nominal sovereign of France, while the conqueror of Agincourt sat on

the throne of England. Yet in the first assembly of the Prelates and

Princes of Europe, we are told that the ambassadors of France raised a

question of the right of the English envoys to be received as

representing a nation, seeing that they had been conquered not only by

the Romans, but by the Saxons. Their argument further was, that, "as

the Saxons were tributaries to the German Empire, and never governed by

native sovereigns, they [the English] should take place as a branch

only of the German empire, and not as a free nation. For," argued the

French, "it is evident from Albertus Magnus and Bartholomew Glanville,

that the world is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and

Africa;—that Europe is divided into four empires, the Roman,

Constantinopolitan, the Irish, and the Spanish." "The English

advocates," we are told, "admitting the force of these allegations,

claimed their precedency and rank from Henry's being monarch of

Ireland, and it was accordingly granted."

If this often-told anecdote is of any historical value, it only shows

the ignorance of the representatives of France in yielding their

pretensions on so poor a quibble. Neither Henry V., nor any other

English sovereign before him, had laid claim to the title of "Monarch

of Ireland." The indolence or ignorance of modern writers has led them,

it is true, to adopt the whole series of the Plantagenet Kings as

sovereigns of Ireland—to set up in history a dynasty which never

existed for us; to leave out of their accounts of a monarchical people

all question of their crown; and to pass over the election of 1541

without adequate, or any inquiry.

It is certain that neither Henry II., nor Richard I., ever used in any

written instrument, or graven sign, the style of king, or even lord of

Ireland; though in the Parliament held at Oxford in the year 1185,

Henry conferred on his youngest son, John _lack-land_, a title which he

did not himself possess, and John is thenceforth known in English

history as "Lord of Ireland." This honour was not, however, of the

exclusive nature of sovereignty, else John could hardly have borne it

during the lifetime of his father and brother. And although we read

that Cardinal Octavian was sent into England by Pope Urban III.,

authorized to consecrate John, _King_ of Ireland, no such consecration

took place, nor was the lordship looked upon, at any period, as other

than a creation of the royal power of England existing in Ireland,

which could be recalled, transferred, or alienated, without detriment

to the prerogative of the King.

Neither had this original view of the relations existing between

England and Ireland undergone any change at the time of the Council of

Constance. Of this we have a curious illustration in the style employed

by the Queen Dowager of Henry V., who, during the minority of her son,

granted charters, as "Queen of England and France, and lady of

Ireland." The use of different crowns in the coronations of all the

Tudors subsequent to Henry VIII. shows plainly how the recent origin of

their secondary title was understood and acknowledged during the

remainder of the sixteenth century. Nothing of the kind was practised

at the coronation of the Plantagenet Princes, nor were the arms of

Ireland quartered with those of England previous to the period we have

described—the memorable year, 1541.

BOOK VIII.

THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION.

CHAPTER I.

EVENTS OF THE REIGN OF EDWARD SIXTH.

On the last day of January, 1547, Edward, son of Henry, by Lady Jane

Seymour, was crowned by the title of Edward VI. He was then only nine

years old, and was destined to wear the crown but for six years and a

few months. No Irish Parliament was convened during his reign, but the

Reformation was pushed on with great vigour, at first under the

patronage of the Protector, his uncle, and subsequently of that uncle's

rival, the Duke of Northumberland. Archbishop Cranmer suffered the zeal

of neither of these statesmen to flag for want of stimulus, and the

Lord Deputy Saint Leger, judging from the cause of his disgrace in the

next reign, approved himself a willing assistant in the work.

The Irish Privy Council, which exercised all the powers of government

during this short reign, was composed exclusively of partizans of the

Reformation. Besides Archbishop Browne and Staples, Bishop of Meath,

its members were the Chancellor, Read, and the Treasurer, Brabazon,

both English, with the Judges Aylmer, Luttrel, Bath, Cusack, and

Howth—all proselytes, at least in form, to the new opinions. The Earl

of Ormond, with sixteen of his household, having been poisoned at a

banquet in Ely House, London, in October before Henry's death, the

influence of that great house was wielded during the minority of his

successor by Sir Francis Bryan, an English adventurer, who married the

widowed countess. This lady being, moreover, daughter and heir general

to James, Earl of Desmond, brought Bryan powerful connections in the

South, which he was not slow to turn to a politic account. His ambition

aimed at nothing less than the supreme authority, military and civil;

but when at length he attained the summit of his hopes, he only lived

to enjoy them a few months.

To enable the Deputy and Council to carry out the work they had begun,

an additional military force was felt to be necessary, and Sir Edward

Bellingham was sent over, soon after Edward's accession, with a

detachment of six hundred horse, four hundred foot, and the title of

Captain General. This able officer, in conjunction with Sir Francis

Bryan, who appears to have been everywhere, overran Offally, Leix, Ely

and West-Meath, sending the chiefs of the two former districts as

prisoners to London, and making advantageous terms with those of the

latter. He was, however, supplanted in the third year of Edward by

Bryan, who held successively the rank of Marshal of Ireland and Lord

Deputy. To the latter office he was chosen on an emergency, by the

Council, in December, 1549, but died at Clonmel, on an expedition

against the O'Carrolls, in the following February. His successes and

those of Bellingham hastened the reduction of Leix and Offally into

shire ground in the following reign.

The total military force at the disposal of Edward's commanders was

probably never less than 10,000 effective men. By the aid of their

abundant artillery, they were enabled to take many strong places

hitherto deemed impregnable to assault. The mounted men and infantry,

were, as yet, but partially armed with musquetons, or firelocks—for the

spear and the bow still found advocates among military men. The

spearmen or lancers were chiefly recruited on the marches of

Northumberland from the hardy race of border warriors; the mounted

bowmen or hobilers were generally natives of Chester or North Wales.

Between these new comers and the native Anglo-Irish troops many

contentions arose from time to time, but in the presence of the common

foe these bickerings were completely forgotten. The townsmen of

Waterford marched promptly at a call, under their standard of the three

galleys, and those of Dublin as cheerfully turned out under the

well-known banner, decorated with three flaming towers.

The _personnel_ of the administration, in the six years of Edward, was

continually undergoing change. Bellingham, who succeeded St. Leger, was

supplanted by Bryan, on whose death, St. Leger was reappointed. After

another year Sir James Croft was sent over to replace St. Leger, and

continued to fill the office until the accession of Queen Mary. But

whoever rose or fell to the first rank in civil affairs, the Privy

Council remained exclusively Protestant, and the work of innovation was

not suffered to languish. A manuscript account, attributed to Adam

Loftus, Browne's successor, assigns the year 1549 as the date when "the

Mass was put down," in Dublin, "and divine service was celebrated in

English." Bishop Mant, the historian of the Established Church in

Ireland, does not find any account of such an alteration, nor does the

statement appear to him consistent with subsequent facts of this reign.

We observe, also, that in 1550, Arthur Magennis, the Pope's Bishop of

Dromore, was allowed by the government to enter on possession of his

temporalities after taking an oath of allegiance, while King's Bishops

were appointed in that and the next two years to the vacant Sees of

Kildare, Leighlin, Ossory, and Limerick. A vacancy having occurred in

the See of Cashel, in 1551, it was unaccountably left vacant, as far as

the Crown was concerned, during the remainder of this reign, while a

similar vacancy in Armagh was filled, at least in name, by the

appointment of Dr. Hugh Goodacre, chaplain to the Bishop of Winchester,

and a favourite preacher with the Princess Elizabeth. This Prelate was

consecrated, according to a new form, in Christ Church, Dublin, on 2nd

of February, 1523, together with his countryman, John Bale, Bishop of

Ossory. The officiating Prelates were Browne, Staples, and Lancaster of

Kildare—all English. The Irish Establishment, however, does not at all

times rest its argument for the validity of its episcopal Order upon

these consecrations. Most of their writers lay claim to the Apostolic

succession, through Adam Loftus, consecrated in England, according to

the ancient rite, by Hugh Curwen, an Archbishop in communion with the

See of Rome, at the time of his elevation to the episcopacy.

In February, 1551, Sir Anthony St. Leger received the King's commands

to cause the Scriptures translated into the English tongue, and the

Liturgy and Prayers of the Church, also translated into English, to be

read in all the churches of Ireland. To render these instructions

effective, the Deputy summoned a convocation of the Archbishops,

Bishops, and Clergy, to meet in Dublin on the 1st of March, 1551. In

this meeting—the first of two in which the defenders of the old and of

the new religion met face to face—the Catholic party was led by the

intrepid Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, and the Reformers by Archbishop

Browne. The Deputy, who, like most laymen of that age, had a strong

theological turn, also took an active part in the discussion. Finally

delivering the royal order to Browne, the latter accepted it in a set

form of words, without reservation; the Anglican Bishops of Meath,

Kildare, and Leighlin, and Coyne, Bishop of Limerick, adhering to his

act; Primate Dowdal, with the other Bishops, having previously retired

from the Conference. On Easter day following, the English service was

celebrated for the first time in Christ Church, Dublin, the Deputy, the

Archbishop, and the Mayor of the city assisting. Browne preached from

the text: "Open mine eyes that I may see the wonders of the law"—a

sermon chiefly remarkable for its fierce invective against the new

Order of Jesuits.

Primate Dowdal retired from the Castle Conference to Saint Mary's

Abbey, on the north side of the Liffey, where he continued while these

things were taking place in the city proper. The new Lord Deputy, Sir

James Crofts, on his arrival in May, addressed himself to the Primate,

to bring about, if possible, an accommodation between the Prelates.

Fearing, as he said, an "order ere long to alter church matters, as

well in offices as in ceremonies," the new Deputy urged another

Conference, which was accordingly held at the Primate's lodgings, on

the 16th of June. At this meeting Browne does not seem to have been

present, the argument on the side of the Reformers being maintained by

Staples. The points discussed were chiefly the essential character of

the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the invocation of Saints. The tone

observed on both sides was full of high-bred courtesy. The letter of

the Sacred Scriptures and the authority of Erasmus in Church History

were chiefly relied upon by Staples; the common consent and usage of

all Christendom, the primacy of Saint Peter, and the binding nature of

the oath taken by Bishops at their consecration, were pointed out by

the Primate. The disputants parted, with expressions of deep regret

that they could come to no agreement; but the Primacy was soon

afterwards transferred to Dublin, by order of the Privy Council, and

Dowdal fled for refuge into Brabant. The Roman Catholic and the

Anglican Episcopacy have never since met in oral controversy on Irish

ground, though many of the second order of the clergy in both

communions have, from time to time, been permitted by their superiors

to engage in such discussions.

Whatever obstacles they encountered within the Church itself, the

propagation of the new religion was not confined to moral means, nor

was the spirit of opposition at all tunes restricted to mere argument.

Bishop Bale having begun at Kilkenny to pull down the revered images of

the Saints, and to overturn the Market Cross, was set upon by the mob,

five of his servants, or guard, were slain, and himself narrowly

escaped with his life by barricading himself in his palace. The

garrisons in the neighbourhood of the ancient seats of ecclesiastical

power and munificence were authorized to plunder their sanctuaries and

storehouses. The garrison of Down sacked the celebrated shrines and

tomb of Patrick, Bridget, and Columbkill; the garrison of Carrickfergus

ravaged Rathlin Island and attacked Derry, from which, however, they

were repulsed with severe loss by John the Proud. But the most

lamentable scene of spoliation, and that which excited the profoundest

emotions of pity and anger in the public mind, was the violation of the

churches of St. Kieran—the renowned Clonmacnoise. This city of schools

had cast its cross-crowned shade upon the gentle current of the Upper

Shannon for a thousand years. Danish fury, civil storm, and Norman

hostility had passed over it, leaving traces of their power in the

midst of the evidences of its recuperation. The great Church to which

pilgrims flocked from every tribe of Erin, on the 9th of September—St.

Kieran's Day; the numerous chapels erected by the chiefs of all the

neighbouring clans; the halls, hospitals, book-houses, nunneries,

cemeteries, granaries—all still stood, awaiting from Christian hands

the last fatal blow. In the neighbouring town of Athlone—seven or eight

miles distant—the Treasurer, Brabazon, had lately erected a strong

"Court" or Castle, from which, in the year 1552, the garrison sallied

forth to attack "the place of the sons of the nobles,"—which is the

meaning of the name. In executing this task they exhibited a fury

surpassing that of Turgesius and his Danes. The pictured glass was torn

from the window frames, and the revered images from their niches;

altars were overthrown; sacred vessels polluted. "They left not," say

the Four Masters, "a book or a gem," nor anything to show what

Clonmacnoise had been, save the bare walls of the temples, the mighty

shaft of the round tower, and the monuments in the cemeteries, with

their inscriptions in Irish, in Hebrew, and in Latin. The Shannon

re-echoed with their profane songs and laughter, as laden with chalices

and crucifixes, brandishing croziers, and flaunting vestments in the

air, their barges returned to the walls of Athlone.

In all the Gaelic speaking regions of Ireland, the new religion now

began to be known by those fruits which it had so abundantly produced.

Though the southern and midland districts had not yet recovered from

the exhaustion consequent upon the suppression of the Geraldine league

and the abortive insurrection of Silken Thomas, the northern tribes

were still unbroken and undismayed. They had deputed George Paris, a

kinsman of the Kildare Fitzgeralds, as their agent to the French King,

in the latter days of Henry VIII., and had received two ambassadors on

his behalf at Donegal and Dungannon. These ambassadors, the Baron de

Forquevaux, and the Sieur de Montluc, who subsequently became Bishop of

Valence, crossing over from the west of Scotland, entered into a

league, offensive and defensive, with "the princes" of Tyrconnell and

Tyrowen, by which the latter bound themselves to recognize, on certain

conditions, "whoever was King of France as King of Ireland likewise."

This alliance, though prolonged into the reign of Edward, led to

nothing definitive, and we shall see in the next reign how the hopes

then turned towards France were naturally transferred to Spain.

The only native name which rises into historic importance at this

period is that of Shane, or John O'Neil, "the Proud." He was the

legitimate son of that Con O'Neil who had been girt with the Earl's

baldric by the hands of Henry VIII. His father had procured at the same

time for an illegitimate son, Ferodach, or Mathew, of Dundalk, the

title of Baron of Dungannon, with the reversion of the Earldom. When,

however, John the Proud came of age, he centred upon himself the hopes

of his clansmen, deposed his father, subdued the Baron, and assumed the

title of O'Neil. In 1552 he defeated the efforts of Sir William

Brabazon to fortify Belfast, and delivered Derry from its plunderers.

From that time till his tragical death, in the ninth year of Queen

Elizabeth, he stood unquestionably the first man of his race, both in

lineage and action.

CHAPTER II.

EVENTS OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP AND MARY.

The death of Edward VI. and the accession of the lady Mary were known

in Dublin by the middle of July, 1553, and soon spread all over the

kingdom. On the 20th of that month, the form of proclamation was

received from London, in which the new Queen was forbidden to be styled

"head of the church," and this was quickly followed by another

ordinance, authorizing all who would to publicly attend Mass, but not

compelling thereto any who were unwilling. A curious legal difficulty

existed in relation to Mary's title to the Crown of Ireland. By the

Irish Statute, 38. Hen. VIII., the Irish crown was entailed by name on

the Lady Elizabeth, and that act had not been repealed. It was,

however, held to have been superseded by the English Statute, 35. Hen.

VIII., which followed the election of 1541, and declared the Crown of

Ireland "united and knit to the Imperial Crown of the Realm of

England." Read in the light of the latter statute, the Irish

sovereignty might be regarded a mere appurtenance of that of England,

but Mary did not so consider it. At her coronation, a separate crown

was used for Ireland, nor did she feel assured of the validity of her

claim to wear it till she had obtained a formal dispensation to that

effect from the Pope.

The intelligence of the new Queen's accession, and the public

restoration of the old religion, diffused a general joy throughout

Ireland. Festivals and pageants were held in the streets, and eloquent

sermons poured from all the pulpits. Archbishop Dowdal was called from

exile, and the Primacy was restored to Armagh. Sir Anthony St. Leger,

his ancient antagonist, had now conformed to the Court fashion, and was

sent over to direct the establishment of that religion which he had

been so many years engaged in pulling down. In 1554, Browne, Staples,

Lancaster, and Travers, were formally deprived of their sees; Bale and

Casey of Limerick fled beyond seas, without awaiting judgment. Married

clergymen were invariably silenced, and the children of Browne were

declared by statute illegitimate.

What, however, gratified the public even more than these retributions

was the liberation of the aged Chief of Offally from the Tower of

London, at the earnest supplication of his heroic daughter, Margaret,

who found her way to the Queen's presence to beg that boon; and the

simultaneous restoration of the Earldom of Kildare, in the person of

that Gerald, who had been so young a fugitive among the glens of

Muskerry and Donegal, and had since undergone so many continental

adventures. With O'Conor and young Gerald, the heirs of the houses of

Ormond and of Upper Ossory were also allowed to return to their homes,

to the great delight of the southern half of the kingdom. The

subsequent marriage of Mary with Philip II. of Spain gave an additional

security to the Irish Catholics for the future freedom of their

religion.

Great as was the change in this respect, it is not to be inferred that

the national relations of Ireland and England were materially affected

by such a change of sovereign. The maxims of conquest were not to be

abandoned at the dictates of religion. The supreme power continued to

be entrusted only to Englishmen; while the same Parliament (3rd and 4th

Philip and Mary) which abolished the title of head of the Church, and

restored the Roman jurisdiction in matters spiritual, divided Leix and

Offally, Glenmalier and Slewmargy, into shire ground, subject to

English law, under the name of King's and Queen's County. The new forts

of Maryborough and Philipstown, as well as the county names, served to

teach the people of Leinster that the work of conquest could be as

industriously prosecuted by Catholic as by Protestant rulers. Nor were

these forts established and maintained without many a struggle. St.

Leger, and his still abler successor, the Earl of Sussex, and the new

Lord Treasurer, Sir Henry Sidney, were forced to lead many an

expedition to the relief of those garrisons, and the dispersion of

their assailants. It was not in Irish human nature to submit to the

constant pressure of a foreign power without seizing every possible

opportunity for its expulsion.

The new principle of primogeniture introduced at the commutation of

chieftainries into earldoms was productive in this reign of much

commotion and bloodshed. The seniors of the O'Briens resisted its

establishment in Thomond, on the death of the first Earl; Calvagh

O'Donnell took arms against his father, to defeat its introduction into

Tyrconnell; John the Proud, as we have seen in the reign of Edward, had

been one of its earliest opponents in Ulster. Being accused in the last

year of Queen Mary of procuring the death of his illegitimate brother,

the Baron of Dungannon, in order to remove him from his path, he was

summoned to account for those circumstances before Sir Henry Sidney,

then acting as Lord Justice. His plea has been preserved to us, and no

doubt represents the prevailing opinion of the Gaelic-speaking

population towards the new system. He answered, "that the surrender

which his father had made to Henry VIII., and the restoration which

Henry made to his father again were of no force; inasmuch as his father

had no right to the lands which he surrendered to the King, except

during his own life; that he (John) himself was the O'Neil by the law

of Tanistry, and by popular election; and that he assumed no

superiority over the chieftains of the North except what belonged to

his ancestors." To these views he adhered to the last, accepting no

English honours, though quite willing to live at peace with English

sovereigns. When the title of Earl of Tyrone was revived, it was in

favour of the son of the Baron, the celebrated Hugh O'Neil, the ally of

Spain, and the most formidable antagonist of Queen Elizabeth.

In the Irish Parliament already referred to (3rd and 4th Philip and

Mary) an Act was passed declaring it a felony to introduce armed

Scotchmen into Ireland, or to intermarry with them without a license

under the great seal. This statute was directed against those

multitudes of Islesmen and Highlanders who annually crossed the narrow

strait which separates Antrim from Argyle to harass the English

garrisons alongshore, or to enlist as auxiliaries in Irish quarrels. In

1556, under one of their principal leaders, James, son of Conal, they

laid siege to Carrickfergus and occupied Lord Sussex some six weeks in

the glens of Antrim. Their leader finally entered into conditions, the

nature of which may be inferred from the fact that he received the

honour of knighthood on their acceptance. John O'Neil had usually in

his service a number of these mercenary troops, from among whom he

selected sixty body-guards, the same number supplied by his own clan.

In his first attempt to subject Tyrconnell to his supremacy in 1557,

his camp near Raphoe was surprised at night by Calvagh O'Donnell, and

his native and foreign guards were put to the sword, while he himself

barely escaped by swimming the Mourne and the Finn. O'Donnell had

frequently employed a similar force, in his own defence; and we read of

the Lord of Clanrickarde driving back a host of them engaged in the

service of his rivals, from the banks of the Moy, in 1558.

Although the memory of Queen Mary has been held up to execration during

three centuries as a bloody-minded and malignant persecutor of all who

differed from her in religion, it is certain that in Ireland, where, if

anywhere, the Protestant. minority might have been extinguished by such

severities as are imputed to her, no persecution for conscience' sake

took place. Married Bishops were deprived, and married priests were

silenced, but beyond this no coercion was employed. It has been said

there was not time to bring the machinery to bear; but surely if there

was time to do so in England, within the space of five years, there was

time in Ireland also. The consoling truth—honourable to human nature

and to Christian charity, is—that many families out of England,

apprehending danger in their own country, sought and found a refuge

from their fears in the western island. The families of Agar, Ellis,

and Harvey, are descended from emigrants, who were accompanied from

Cheshire by a clergyman of their own choice, whose ministrations they

freely enjoyed during the remainder of this reign at Dublin. The story

about Dr. Cole having been despatched to Ireland with a commission to

punish heretics, and, losing it on the way, is unworthy of serious

notice. If there had been any such determination formed there was ample

time to put it into execution between 1553 and 1558.

CHAPTER III.

ACCESSION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH—PARLIAMENT OF 1560—THE ACT OF

UNIFORMITY—CAREER AND DEATH OF JOHN O'NEIL "THE PROUD."

The daughter of Anna Boleyn was promptly proclaimed Queen the same day

on which Mary died—the 17th of November, 1558. Elizabeth was then in

her 26th year, proud of her beauty, and confident in her abilities. Her

great capacity had been cultivated by the best masters of the age, and

the best of all ages, early adversity. Her vices were hereditary in her

blood, but her genius for government so far surpassed any of her

immediate predecessors as to throw her vices into the shade. During the

forty-four years in which she wielded the English sceptre, many of the

most stirring occurrences of our history took place; it could hardly

have fallen out otherwise, under a sovereign of so much vigour, having

the command of such immense resources.

On the news of Mary's death reaching Ireland, the Lord Deputy Sussex

returned to England, and Sir Henry Sidney, the Treasurer, was appointed

his successor _ad interim_. As in England, so in Ireland, though for

somewhat different reasons, the first months of the new reign were

marked by a conciliating and temporizing policy. Elizabeth, who had not

assumed the title of "Head of the Church," continued to hear Mass for

several months after her accession. At her coronation she had a High

Mass sung, accompanied, it is true, by a Calvinistic sermon. Before

proceeding with the work of "reformation," inaugurated by her father,

and arrested by her sister, she proceeded cautiously to establish

herself, and her Irish deputy followed in the same careful line of

conduct. Having first made a menacing demonstration against John the

Proud, he entered into friendly correspondence with him, and finally

ended the campaign by standing godfather to one of his children. This

relation of gossip among the old Irish was no mere matter of ceremony,

but involved obligations lasting as life, and sacred as the ties of

kindred blood. By seeking such a sponsor, O'Neil placed himself in

Sidney's power, rather than Sidney in his, since the two men must have

felt very differently bound by the connection into which they had

entered. As an evidence of the Imperial policy of the moment, the

incident is instructive.

Round the personal history of this splendid, but by no means stainless

Ulster Prince, the events of the first nine years of Elizabeth's reign

over Ireland naturally group themselves. Whether at her Majesty's

council-board, or among the Scottish islands, or in hall or hut at

home, the attention of all manner of men interested in Ireland was

fixed upon the movements of John the Proud. In tracing his career, we

therefore naturally gather all, or nearly all, the threads of the

national story, during the first ten years of Queen Mary's successor.

In the second year of Elizabeth, Lord Deputy Sussex, who returned fully

possessed of her Majesty's views, summoned the Parliament to meet in

Dublin on the 12th day of January, 1560. It is to be observed, however,

that though the union of the crowns was now of twenty years' standing,

the writs were not issued to the nation at large, but only to the ten

counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, West-Meath, Kildare, Carlow,

Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, and Tipperary, with their boroughs. The

published instructions of Lord Sussex were "to make such statutes

(concerning religion) as were made in England, _mutatis mutandis_." As

a preparation for the legislature, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christ

Church were purified by paint; the niches of the Saints were for the

second time emptied of their images; texts of Scripture were blazoned

upon the walls, and the Litany was chanted in English. After these

preparatory demonstrations, the Deputy opened the new Parliament, which

sat for one short but busy month. The Acts of Mary's Parliament,

re-establishing ecclesiastical relations with Rome, were the first

thing repealed; then so much of the Act 33, Henry VIII., as related to

the succession, was revived; all ecclesiastical jurisdiction was next

declared vested in the Crown, and all "judges, justices, mayors, and

temporal officers were declared bound to take tie oath of supremacy;"

the penalty attached to the refusal of the oath, by this statute, being

"forfeiture of office and promotion during life." Proceeding rapidly in

the same direction, it was declared that commissioners in

ecclesiastical causes should adjudge nothing as heresy which was not

expressly so condemned by the Canonical Scriptures, the received

General Councils, or by Parliament. The penalty of _praemunire_ was

declared in force, and, to crown the work, the celebrated "Act of

Uniformity" was passed. This was followed by other statutes for the

restoration of first fruits and twentieths, and for the appointment of

Bishops by the royal prerogative, or _conge d'elire_—elections by the

chapter being declared mere "shadows of election, and derogatory to the

prerogative." Such was, in brief, the legislation of that famous

Parliament of ten counties—the often quoted statutes of the "2nd of

Elizabeth." In the Act of Uniformity, the best known of all its

statutes, there was this curious saving clause inserted: that whenever

the "priest or common minister" could not speak English, he might still

continue "to celebrate the service in the Latin tongue." Such other

observances were to be had as were prescribed by the 2nd Edward VI.,

until her Majesty should "publish further ceremonies or rites." We have

no history of the debates of this Parliament of a month, but there is

ample reason to believe that some of these statutes were resisted

throughout by a majority of the Upper House, still chiefly composed of

Catholic Peers; that the clause saving the Latin ritual was inserted as

a compromise with this opposition; that some of the other Acts were

passed by stealth in the absence of many members, and that the Lord

Deputy gave his solemn pledge the statute of Uniformity should be

enforced, if passed. So severe was the struggle, and so little

satisfied was Sussex with his success, that he hastily dissolved the

Houses and went over personally to England to represent the state of

feeling he had encountered. Finally, it is remarkable that no other

Parliament was called in Ireland till nine years afterwards—a

convincing proof of how unmanageable that body, even constituted as it

was, had shown itself to be in matters affecting religion.

The non-invitation of the Irish chiefs to this Parliament, contrary to

the precedent set in Mary's reign and in 1541, the laws enacted, and

the commotion they excited in the minds of the clergy, were

circumstances which could not fail to attract the attention of John

O'Neil. Even if insensible to what transpired at Dublin, the

indefatigable Sussex—one of the ablest of Elizabeth's able Court—did

not suffer him long to misunderstand his relations to the new Queen. He

might be Sidney's gossip, but he was not the less Elizabeth's enemy. He

had been proclaimed "O'Neil" on the rath of Tullahoge, and had reigned

at Dungannon, adjudging life and death. It was clear that two such

jurisdictions as the Celtic and the Norman kingship could not stand

long on the same soil, and the Ulster Prince soon perceived that he

must establish his authority, by arms, or perish with it. We must also

read all Irish events of the time of Elizabeth by the light of foreign

politics; during the long reign of that sovereign, England was never

wholly free from fears of invasion, and many movements which now seem

inexplicable will be readily understood when we recollect that they

took place under the menaces of foreign powers.

The O'Neils had anciently exercised a high-handed superiority over all

Ulster, and John the Proud was not the man to let his claim lie idle in

any district of that wide-spread Province. But authority which has

fallen into decay must be asserted only at a propitious time, and with

the utmost tact; and here it was that Elizabeth's statesmen found their

most effective means of attacking O'Neil. O'Donnell, who was his

father-in-law, was studiously conciliated; his second wife, a lady of

the Argyle family, received costly presents from the Queen; O'Reilly

was created Earl of Breffni, and encouraged to resist the superiority

to which the house of Dungannon laid claim. The natural consequences

followed; John the Proud swept like a storm over the fertile hills of

Cavan, and compelled the new-made Earl to deliver him tribute and

hostages. O'Donnell, attended only by a few of his household, was

seized in a religious house upon Lough Swilly, and subjected to every

indignity which an insolent enemy could devise. His Countess, already

alluded to, supposed to have been privy to this surprise of her

husband, became the mistress of his captor and jailer, to whom she bore

several children. What deepens the horror of this odious domestic

tragedy is the fact that the wife of O'Neil, the daughter of O'Donnell,

thus supplanted by her shameless stepmother, under her own roof, died

soon afterwards of "horror, loathing, grief, and deep anguish," at the

spectacle afforded by the private life of O'Neil, and the severities

inflicted upon her wretched father. All the patriotic designs, and all

the shining abilities of John the Proud, cannot abate a jot of our

detestation of such a private life; though slandered in other respects

as he was, by hostile pens, no evidence has been adduced to clear his

memory of these indelible stains; nor after becoming acquainted with

their existence can we follow his after career with that heartfelt

sympathy with which the lives of purer patriots must always inspire us.

The pledge given by Sussex, that the penal legislation of 1560 should

lie a dead letter, was not long observed. In May of the year following

its enactment, a commission was appointed to enforce the 2nd Elizabeth,

in West-Meath; and in 1562 a similar commission was appointed for Meath

and Armagh. By these commissioners Dr. William Walsh, Catholic Bishop

of Meath, was arraigned and imprisoned for preaching against the new

liturgy; a Prelate who afterwards died an exile in Spain. The primatial

see was for the moment vacant, Archbishop Dowdal having died at London

three months before Queen Mary—on the Feast of the Assumption, 1558.

Terence, Dean of Armagh, who acted as administrator, convened a Synod

of the English-speaking clergy of the Province in July, 1559, at

Drogheda, but as this dignitary followed in the steps of his faithful

predecessors, his deanery was conferred upon Dr. Adam Loftus, Chaplain

of the Lord Lieutenant; two years subsequently the dignity of

Archbishop of Armagh was conferred upon the same person. Dr. Loftus, a

native of Yorkshire, had found favour in the eyes of the Queen at a

public exhibition at Cambridge University; he was but 28 years old,

according to Sir James Ware, when consecrated Primate—but Dr. Mant

thinks he must have attained at least the canonical age of 30. During

the whole of this reign he continued to reside at Dublin, which see was

early placed under his jurisdiction in lieu of the inaccessible Armagh.

For forty years he continued one of the ruling spirits at Dublin,

whether acting as Lord Chancellor, Lord Justice, Privy Councillor, or

First Provost of Trinity College. He was a pluralist in Church and

State, insatiable of money and honours; if he did not greatly assist in

establishing his religion, he was eminently successful in enriching his

family.

Having subdued every hostile neighbour and openly assumed the high

prerogative of Prince of Ulster, John the Proud looked around him for

allies in the greater struggle which he foresaw could not be long

postponed. Calvagh O'Donnell was yielded up on receiving a munificent

ransom, but his infamous wife remained with her paramour. A negotiation

was set on foot with the chiefs of the Highland and Island Scots, large

numbers of whom entered into O'Neil's service. Emissaries were

despatched to the French Court, where they found a favourable

reception, as Elizabeth was known to be in league with the King of

Navarre and the Huguenot leaders against Francis II. The unexpected

death of the King at the close of 1560; the return of his youthful

widow, Queen Mary, to Scotland; the vigorous regency of Catherine de

Medicis during the minority of her second son; the ill-success of

Elizabeth's arms during the campaigns of 1561-2-3, followed by the

humiliating peace of April, 1564—these events are all to be borne in

memory when considering the extraordinary relations which were

maintained during the same years by the proud Prince of Ulster, with

the still prouder Queen of England. The apparently contradictory

tactics pursued by the Lord Deputy Sussex, between his return to Dublin

in the spring of 1561, and his final recall in 1564, when read by the

light of events which transpired at Paris, London, and Edinburgh,

become easily intelligible. In the spring of the first mentioned year,

it was thought possible to intimidate O'Neil, so Lord Sussex, with the

Earl of Ormond as second in command, marched northwards, entered

Armagh, and began to fortify the city, with a view to placing in it a

powerful garrison. O'Neil, to remove the seat of hostilities, made an

irruption into the plain of Meath, and menaced Dublin. The utmost

consternation prevailed at his approach, and the Deputy, while

continuing the fortification of Armagh, despatched the main body of his

troops to press on the rear of the aggressor. By a rapid countermarch,

O'Neil came up with this force, laden with spoils, in Louth, and after

an obstinate engagement routed them with immense loss. On receipt of

this intelligence, Sussex promptly abandoned Armagh, and returned to

Dublin, while O'Neil erected his standard, as far South as Drogheda,

within twenty miles of the capital. So critical at this moment was the

aspect of affairs, that all the energies of the English interest were

taxed to the utmost. In the autumn of the year, Sussex marched again

from Dublin northward, having at his side the five powerful Earls of

Kildare, Ormond, Desmond, Thomond, and Clanrickarde—whose mutual feuds

had been healed or dissembled for the day. O'Neil prudently fell back

before this powerful expedition, which found its way to the shores of

Lough Foyle, without bringing him to an engagement, and without any

military advantage. As the shortest way of getting rid of such an

enemy, the Lord Deputy, though one of the wisest and most justly

celebrated of Elizabeth's Counsellors, did not hesitate to communicate

to his royal mistress the project of hiring an assassin, named Nele

Gray, to take off the Prince of Ulster, but the plot, though carefully

elaborated, miscarried. Foreign news, which probably reached him only

on reaching the Foyle, led to a sudden change of tactics on the part of

Sussex, and the young Lord Kildare—O'Neil's cousin-germain, was

employed to negotiate a peace with the enemy they had set out to

demolish.

This Lord Kildare was Gerald, the eleventh Earl, the same whom we have

spoken of as a fugitive lad, in the last years of Henry VIII., and as

restored to his estates and rank by Queen Mary. Although largely

indebted to his Catholicity for the protection he had received while

abroad from Francis I., Charles V., the Duke of Tuscany and the Roman

See—especially the Cardinals Pole and Farnese—and still more indebted

to the late Catholic Queen for the restoration of his family honours,

this finished courtier, now in the very midsummer of life, one of the

handsomest and most accomplished persons of his time, did not hesitate

to conform himself, at least outwardly, to the religion of the State.

Shortly before the campaign of which we have spoken, he had been

suspected of treasonable designs, but had pleaded his cause

successfully with the Queen in person. From Lough Foyle, accompanied by

the Lord Slane, the Viscount Baltinglass, and a suitable guard, Lord

Kildare set out for John O'Neil's camp, where a truce was concluded

between the parties, Lord Sussex undertaking to withdraw his wardens

from Armagh, and O'Neil engaging himself to live in peace with her

Majesty, and to serve "when necessary against her enemies." The cousins

also agreed personally to visit the English Court the following year,

and accordingly in January ensuing they went to England, from which

they returned home in the latter end of May.

The reception of John the Proud, at the Court of Elizabeth, was

flattering in the extreme. The courtiers stared and smiled at his

bareheaded body-guard, with their crocus-dyed vests, short jackets, and

shaggy cloaks. But the broad-bladed battle-axe, and the sinewy arm

which wielded it, inspired admiration for all the uncouth costume. The

haughty indifference with which the Prince of Ulster treated every one

about the Court, except the Queen, gave a keener edge to the satirical

comments which were so freely indulged in at the expense of his style

of dress. The wits proclaimed him "O'Neil the Great, cousin to Saint

Patrick, friend to the Queen of England, and enemy to all the world

besides!" O'Neil was well pleased with his reception by Elizabeth. When

taxed upon his return with having made peace with her Majesty, he

answered—"Yes, in her own bed-chamber." There were, indeed, many points

in common in both their characters.

Her Majesty, by letters patent dated at Windsor, on the 15th of

January, 1563, recognized in John the Proud "the name and title of

O'Neil, with the like authority, jurisdiction, and pre-eminence, as any

of his ancestors." And O'Neil, by articles, dated at Benburb, the 18th

of November of the same year, reciting the letters patent aforesaid,

bound himself and his suffragans to behave as "the Queen's good and

faithful subjects against all persons whatever." Thus, so far as an

English alliance could guarantee it, was the supremacy of this daring

chief guaranteed in Ulster from the Boyne to the North Sea.

In performing his part of the engagements thus entered into, O'Neil is

placed in a less invidious light by English writers than formerly. They

now describe him as scrupulously faithful to his word; as charitable to

the poor, always carving and sending meat from his own table to the

beggar at the gate before eating himself. Of the sincerity with which

he carried out the expulsion of the Islesmen and Highlanders from

Ulster, the result afforded the most conclusive evidence. It is true he

had himself invited those bands into the Province to aid him against

the very power with which he was now at peace, and, therefore, they

might in their view allege duplicity and desertion against him. Yet

enlisted as they usually were but for a single campaign, O'Neil

expected them to depart as readily as they had come. But in this

expectation he was disappointed. Their leaders, Angus, James, and

Sorley McDonald, refused to recognize the new relations which had

arisen, and O'Neil was, therefore, compelled to resort to force. He

defeated the Scottish troops at Glenfesk, near Ballycastle, in 1564, in

an action wherein Angus McDonald was slain, James died of his wounds,

and Sorley was carried prisoner to Benburb. An English auxiliary force,

under Colonel Randolph, sent round by sea, under pretence of

co-operating against the Scots, took possession of Derry and began to

fortify it. But their leader was slain in a skirmish with a party of

O'Neil's people who disliked the fortress, and whether by accident or

otherwise their magazine exploded, killing a great part of the garrison

and destroying their works. The remnant took to their shipping and

returned to Dublin.

In the years 1565, '6 and '7, the internal dissensions of both Scotland

and France, and the perturbations in the Netherlands giving full

occupation to her foreign foes, Elizabeth had an interval of leisure to

attend to this dangerous ally in Ulster. A second unsuccessful attempt

on his life, by an assassin named Smith, was traced to the Lord Deputy,

and a formal commission issued by the Queen to investigate the case.

The result we know only by the event; Sussex was recalled, and Sir

Henry Sidney substituted in his place! Death had lately made way in

Tyrconnell and Fermanagh for new chiefs, and these leaders, more

vigorous than their predecessors, were resolved to shake off the

recently imposed and sternly exercised supremacy of Benburb. With these

chiefs, Sidney, at the head of a veteran armament, cordially

co-operated, and O'Neil's territory was now attacked simultaneously at

three different points—in the year 1566. No considerable success was,

however, obtained over him till the following year, when, at the very

opening of the campaign, the brave O'Donnell arrested his march along

the strand of the Lough Swilly, and the tide rising impetuously, as it

does on that coast, on the rear of the men of Tyrone, struck them with

terror, and completed their defeat. From 1,500 to 3,000 men perished by

the sword or by the tide; John the Proud fled alone, along the river

Swilly, and narrowly escaped by the fords of rivers and by solitary

ways to his Castle on Lough Neagh. The Annalists of Donegal, who were

old enough to have conversed with survivors of the battle, say that his

mind became deranged by this sudden fall from the summit of prosperity

to the depths of defeat. His next step would seem to establish the

fact, for he at once despatched Sorley McDonald, the survivor of the

battle of Glenfesk, to recruit a new auxiliary force for him amongst

the Islesmen, whom he had so mortally offended. Then, abandoning his

fortress upon the Blackwater, he set out with 50 guards, his secretary,

and his mistress, the wife of the late O'Donnell, to meet these

expected allies whom he had so fiercely driven off but two short years

before. At Cushendun, on the Antrim coast, they met with all apparent

cordiality, but an English agent, Captain Piers, or Pierce, seized an

opportunity during the carouse which ensued to recall the bitter

memories of Glenfesk. A dispute and a quarrel ensued; O'Neil fell

covered with wounds, amid the exulting shouts of the avenging Islesmen.

His gory head was presented to Captain Piers, who hastened with it to

Dublin, where he received a reward of a thousand marks for his success.

High spiked upon the towers of the Castle, that proud head remained and

rotted; the body, wrapped in a Kerns saffron shirt, was interred where

he fell, a spot familiar to all the inhabitants of the Antrim glens as

"the grave of Shane O'Neil." And so may be said to close the first

decade of Elizabeth's reign over Ireland!

End of Volume 1 of 2