CHAPTER VIII. In the summer of 1594 the cruel and mercenary Fitzwilliam was succeeded by Sir William Russell, who had served the Queen both in Ireland and in diverse other places beyond the sea in martial affairs. In lieu of the arbitrary exaction of Countess Sesse, so grossly abused by his predecessor, the shires of the pale were to pay for the future into the Treasury of Dublin a composition of twenty-one hundred pounds per annum, out of which the fixed sum of one thousand pounds was allowed as the deputies' wages. Russell's administration lasted till May 1597. In that month he was succeeded by Thomas, Lord Burrow, who died in August following of the wounds received in an expedition against Tyrone, after which the administration remained in the hands of the Justices till the appointment of the Earl of Essex. On the arrival of Russell, Tyrone for the last time ventured to appear within the walls of Dublin. His influence in the city, and even at the Council table, must have been considerable to enable him to enter the gates of the castle with so much confidence. He came to explain his wrongs against the previous deputy, to defend himself against Bagnol's charges, and to discover, if possible, the instructions of Russell. If in one respect he was gratified by a personal triumph over his brother-in-law, in another he had caused for serious alarm, on learning that Sir John Norris, brother of the President of Munster, a commander of the highest reputation, was to be sent over under the title of Lord General, with two thousand veterans who served in Brittany, and one thousand of a new levy. He further learned that his own arrest had been discussed at the Council, and leaving Dublin precipitately, he hastened to his home at Dunganon. All men's minds were now naturally filled with wars and rumors of wars. The first blow was struck at the fire-brand of the mountains, as he was called at court, Feggmet Q. O'Burn. The truce made with him expired in 1594, and his application for his renewal was not honoured with an answer. On the contrary, his sureties at Dublin, Geoffrey, son of Hugh, and his own son, James, were committed to close custody in the Castle. His son-in-law, Sir Walter Fitzgerald, had been driven by ill usage and his friendship for Lord Baltinglass to the shelter of Glenmellor, and this was, of course, made a ground of charge against its chief. During the last months of 1594, Mince, Sheriff of Carlow, informed the Lord Deputy of War-like Preparations in the Glen, and that Brian O'Rourke had actually passed to and fro through Dublin City and County as Confidential Agent between Feggmet Q. and Tyrone. In January following, under cover of a hunting-party among the hills, the deputy, by a night-march on Glenmellor, succeeded in surprising O'Burn's house at Balancor, and had almost taken the aged chief and prisoner. In the flight, Rose O'Toole, his wife, was wounded in the breast, and a priest detected hiding in a thicket was shot dead. Fegg retired to Drompsiet, or the Cat's Back Mountain, one of the best positions in the Glen, while a strong force was quartered in his former mansion to observe his movements. In April his son-in-law Fitzgerald was taken prisoner, near Baltinglass, in a retreat where he was laid up severely wounded. In May, a party under the deputy's command scoured the mountains and seized the Lady Rose, who was a tainted of treason, and like Fitzgerald barbarously given up to the halter and the quartering-knife. Two foster brothers of the chief were at the same time and in the same manner put to death, and a large reward was offered for his own apprehension, alive or dead. Hugh O'Neill announced his resort to arms by a vigorous protest against the onslaught made on his friend O'Burn. Without waiting for or expecting any answer he surprised the fort erected on the Blackwater which commanded the highway into his own territory. This fort, which was situated between Armagh and Danganon, about five miles distant from either, served before the fortification of Char Mont as the main English stronghold in that part of Ulster. The river Blackwater on which it stood, from its source on the borders of Monhan to its outlet in Lochneag, watered a fertile valley, which now became the principal theater of war. For Hugh O'Neill, and afterwards for his celebrated nephew, it proved to be a theater of victory. General Norris, on reaching Ireland, at once marched northward to recover the fort lately taken. O'Neill, having demolished the works, retreated before him, considering Danganon also unfit to stand a regular siege, he dismantled the town, burnt his own castle to the ground, having first secured every portable article of value. Norris contented himself with reconnoitering the earl's entrenched camp at some distance from Danganon, and returned to Newory, where he established his headquarters. The campaign in another quarter was attended with even better success for the Confederates. Hugh Rowe O'Donnell, no longer withheld by the more politic O'Neill, displayed in action all the fiery energy of his nature. Under his banner he united almost all the tribes of Ulster not enlisted with O'Neill, while six hundred Scots, led by Macleod of Ara, obeyed his commands. He first descended on the plains of Analeo Farrell, the present county of Longford, driving the English settlers before him. He next visited the undertaker's tenants in Canot, ejecting them from Boyle and Ballymote, and pursuing them to the gates of Tum. On his return the important town in Castle of Sligo, the property of O'Connor, then in England, submitted to him. Sir Richard Bingham endeavored to recover it, but was beaten off with loss. O'Donnell, finding it cheaper to demolish than defend it, broke down the castle and returned in triumph across the urn. General Norris, having arranged his plan of campaign at Nury, attempted to victual Armagh, besieged by O'Neill, but was repulsed by that leader after a severe struggle. He, however, succeeded in throwing supplies into Monahan, where a strong garrison was quartered, and to which O'Neill and O'Donnell proceeded to lay siege. While lying before Monahan they received overtures of peace from the Lord Deputy, who continually disagreed with Sir John Norris as to the conduct of the war, and lost no opportunity of thwarting his plans. He did not now blush to address, as Earl of Tyrone, the man he had lately proclaimed a traitor at Dublin, by the title of the son of a blacksmith. The Irish leaders of the outset refused to meet the commissioners, Chief Justice Gardner and Sir Henry Wallop, treasurer at war in Dundalk, so the latter were compelled to wait on them in the camp before Monahan. The terms demanded by O'Neill and O'Donnell, including entire freedom of religious worship, were reserved by the commissioners for the consideration of the Council, with whose sanction, a few weeks afterward, all the Ulster Chiefs, except the Queen's O'Reilly, were formally tried before a jury at Dublin and condemned as traitors. Monahan was thrice taken and retaken in this campaign. It was on the second return of General Norris from that town he found himself unexpectedly in the presence of O'Neill's army, advantageously posted on the left bank of the little stream which waters the village of Clontabret. Norris made two attempts to force the passage, but without success. Sir Thomas Norris and the General himself were wounded. Seagrave, a gigantic methion-calvary officer, was slain in a hand-to-hand encounter with O'Neill. The English retreated hastily on Newery, and Monahan was again surrendered to the Irish. This brilliant combat at Clontabret closed the campaign of 1595. General Norris, who, like Sir Johnmore, two centuries later, commanded the respect and frankly acknowledged the wrongs of the people against whom he fought, employed the winter months in endeavouring to affect a reconciliation between O'Neill and the Queen's Government. He had conceived a warm and chivalrous regard for his opponent, for he could not deny that he had been driven to take up arms in self-defense. At his instance a royal commission to treat with the Earl was issued, and the latter cheerfully gave them a meeting in an open field without the walls of Dundalk. The same terms which he had proposed before Monahan were repeated in his ultimatum, and the commissioners agreed to give him a positive answer by the second day of April. On that day they attended at Dundalk, but O'Neill did not appear. The commissioners delayed an entire fortnight, addressing him in the interim, and urgent remonstrants to come in and conclude their negotiation. On the seventeenth of the month they received his reasons for breaking off the treaty, the principle of which was that the truce had been repeatedly broken through by the English garrisons, and so the campaign of 1596 was to be fought with renewed animosity on both sides. Early in May the Lord Deputy made another dissent on Balancourt, which Fyagmec Hugh had recovered in the autumn to lose again in the spring. Though worn with years and infirm of body, the Wicklow chieftain held his devoted bands well together, and kept the garrison of Dublin constantly on the defensive. In the new chieftain of the Omors he found, at this moment, a young and active co-ajutor. In an affair at Strad Valley Bridge, Omor obtained a considerable victory, leaving among the slain Alexander and Francis Cosby, grandsons of the commander in the massacre at Mullen Mast. The arrival of three Spanish frigates with arms and ammunition in Donegal Bay was welcome news to the northern Catholics. They were delivered to O'Donnell, who was incessantly in the field, while O'Neill was again undergoing the forms of diplomacy with a new royal commission at Dundalk. He himself disclaimed any correspondence with the King of Spain, but did not deny that such negotiations might be maintained by others. It is alleged that, while many of the chiefs had signed a formal invitation to the Spanish king to assume their crown, O'Neill had not gone beyond verbal assurances of co-operation with them. However this may be, he resolved that the entire season should not be wasted in words, so he attacked the strong garrison left in our mug, and recovered the primatial city. According to the Irish practice, he dismantled the fortress, which, however, was again reconstructed by the English before the end of the war. From other skirmishes, of which we have no very clear account, and which we may set down as of no decisive character, terminated the campaign. In May 1597 Lord Burrow, who had distinguished himself in the Netherlands, replaced Russell as Lord Deputy, and assumed the command in chief in place of Sir John Norris. Simultaneously with his arrival, V.A.G. Matt Q. O. Byrne was surprised in Glenmalure by a detachment from Dublin and Slain. He died as he had lived, a hero and a free man. O'Neill, who was warmly attached to the Wicklow chief, immediately dispatched such sucker as he could spare to F.A.G.'s sons, and promised to continue to them the friendship he had always entertained for their father. Against Tyrone the new Lord Deputy now endeavored to combine all the military resources at his disposal. Towards the end of July Sir Conyers Clifford was ordered to muster the available force of Cannot at Boyle, and to march into Sligo and Donegal. A thousand men of the Anglo-Irish were assembled at Mullengar, under the command of young Barnwell of Trimbuston, who was instructed to effect a junction with the main force upon the borders of Ulster. The Lord Deputy, marching in force from Dugheda, penetrated unopposed the valley of the Blackwater, and entered Armagh. From Armagh he moved to the relief of the Blackwater Fort, besieged by O'Neill. At a place called Drumfluidge, where Battlefort Bridge now stands, Tyrone contrived to draw his enemies into an engagement on very disadvantageous ground. The result was a severe defeat to the new Deputy, who a few days afterwards died of his wounds at Newry, as his second in command the Earl of Kildare did at Drogheda. Sir Francis Vaughn, Sir Thomas Waller, and other distinguished officers fell in the same action, but the Fort, the main prize of the combatants, remained in English hands till the following year. O'Donnell, with equal success, held Valley Shannon, compelled Sir Conyers Clifford to raise the siege with the loss of the Earl of Thoman, and a large part of his following. Simultaneously, Captain Richard Tyrell of Westmieth, one of O'Neill's favorite officers, having laid an ambush god for young Barnwell at the pass in Westmieth, which now bears his name, the Methian regiment were sabred to a man. Mullingar and Maryborough were taken and sacked, and in the north, Sir John Chichester, Governor of Carrick-Fergus, was cut off with his troop by MacDonald of the Glens. These successes synchronized exactly with the expectation of a second Spanish armada, which filled Elizabeth with her old apprehensions. Philip was persuaded again to tempt the fortune of the seas, and towards the end of October his fleet, under the Adelatado of Castilla, appeared off the skilly islands, with a view to secure the Isle of Wight, or some other station from which to operate an invasion in the ensuing spring. Extraordinary means were taken for defense. The English troops in France were recalled, new levies raised, and the Queen's favorite, the young Earl of Essex, appointed to command the fleet, with Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard as Vice-Admirals. But the elements again fought for the Northern Island, a storm which swept the Channel for weeks, drove the English ships into their ports, but scattered those of Spain over the Bay of Biscay. In the second expedition sailed Florence Conroy, and other Irish exiles, who had maintained for years a close correspondence with the Catholic leaders. Their presence in the fleet, the existence of the correspondence, and the progress of the revolt itself, will sufficiently account for the apparent vacillations of English policy and ulster in the last months of 1597. Shortly before Christmas, or Mond, now Lord Lieutenant, accompanied by the Earl of Thoman, attended only by their personal followers, visited Dunganon, and remained three days in conference with O'Neill and O'Donnell. The Irish chiefs reiterated their old demands, freedom of worship, and the retention of the substantial power attached to their ancient rank. They would admit sheriffs if they were chosen from among the natives of their counties, but they declined to give hostages out of their own families. These terms were referred to the Queen's consideration, who after much protocolling to and fro finally ratified them the following April, and affixed the great seal to O'Neill's pardon. But Tyrone, guided by intelligence received from Spain or England or both, evaded the royal messenger charged to deliver him that instrument, and as the late truce expired in the first week of June, devoted himself anew to military preparations. In the month of June 1598 the Council at Dublin were in a state of fearful perplexity. O'Neill, two days after the expiration of the truce, invested the fort on the black water, and seemed to resolve to reduce it, if not by force, by famine. O'Donnell, as usual, was operating on the side of Canot, where he had brought back O'Rourke, O'Connor's Ligo, and McDermott to the Confederacy, from which they had been for a season estranged. Tyrone and O'more, leading spirits in the Midland Counties, were ravaging O'mon's Palatinate of Tipperary almost without opposition. An English reinforcement, debarked at Dungarvon, was attacked on its march toward Dublin, and lost four hundred men. In this emergency, before which even the iron nerve of O'mon quailed, the Council took the resolution of ordering one moiety of the Queen's troops, under O'mon, to march south against Tyrell and O'more, the other under Marshall Bagnell, to produce northward to the relief of the Blackwater Fort. O'mon's campaign was brief and inglorious. After suffering a severe check in Lex, he shut himself up and killed Kenny, where he heard of the disastrous fate of Bagnell's expedition. On Sunday the thirteenth of August, the Marshal reached Neury with some trifling lost from skirmishes on the route. He had with him, by the best accounts, six regiments of infantry, numbering in all about four thousand men and three hundred and fifty horse. After resting a day, his whole force marched out of the city in three divisions, the first under the command of the Marshal and Colonel Percy, the cavalry under Sir Kelisthenes Brooke and Captain's Montague and Fleming, the rearguard under Sir Thomas Wingfield and Colonel Cosby. The Irish, whose numbers both mounted in a foot somewhat exceeded the Marshal's force, but who were not so well armed, had taken up a strong position at Bellinaboy, the Yellow Ford, about two miles north of Armog. With O'Neill were O'Donnell, McGuire and McDonald of Antrim, all approved leaders beloved by their men. O'Neill had neglected no auxiliary means of strengthening the position. In front of his lines he dug deep trenches, covered with green sods, supported by twigs and branches. The pass leading into this plain was lined by five hundred cairn, whose Parthian warfare was proverbial. He had reckoned on the headlong and boastful disposition of his opponent, and the result showed his accurate knowledge of character. Bagnall's first division, veterans from Brittany and Flanders, included six hundred caraciers in complete armor, armed with lances nine feet long, dashed into the pass before the second and third divisions had time to come up. The cairn poured in their rapid volleys, many of the English fell, the pass was yielded, and the whole power of Bagnall debushed into the plain. His artillery now thundered upon O'Neill's trenches, and the cavalry, with the plain before them, were ordered to charge, but they soon came upon the concealed pitfalls, horses fell, riders were thrown, and confusion spread among the squadron. Then it was O'Neill in turn gave the signal to charge, himself led on the center, O'Donnell on the left, and McGuire, famous for horsemanship, the Irish horse. The overthrow of the English was complete, and the victory most eventful. The marshal, twenty-three superior officers, with about seventeen hundred of the rank and file, fell on the field, while all the artillery baggage and twelve stand of colors were taken. The Irish loss, and killed and wounded, did not exceed eight hundred men. It was a glorious victory for the rebels, says the co-temporary English historian Camden, and of special advantage, for hereby they got arms and provisions, and Tyrone's name was cried up all over Ireland as the author of their liberty. It may also be added that it attracted renewed attention to the Irish war at Paris, Madrid, and Rome, where the names of O'Neill and O'Donnell were spoken of by all zealous Catholics with enthusiastic admiration. The battle was over by noon of the fifteenth of August, and the only effort to arrest the flight of the survivors was made by the Queens O'Reilly, who was slain in the attempt. By one o'clock the remnant of the cavalry under Montague were in full career for Dundalk, closely pressed by the mounted men of O'Hanlon. During the ensuing week the Blackwater Fort capitulated, the Protestant garrison of Armog surrendered, and were allowed to march south, leaving their arms and ammunition behind. The panic spread far and wide, the citizens of Dublin were enrolled to defend their walls, Lord Ormond continued shut up and kill Kenny, O'Morrin Tyrell, who entered Munster by O'Neill's order, to kindle the elements of resistance, compelled the Lord President to retire from kill Mallet to Cork. O'Donnell established his headquarters at Ballymote, a dozen miles south of Sligo, which he had purchased from the chieftain of Corrin for four hundred pounds and three hundred cows. The castle had served for thirteen years as an English stronghold, and was found staunch enough fifty years later to withstand the siege trains of Coot and Ludlow. From this point the donagal chieftain was unable to stretch his arm in every direction over Lower Cannot. The result was that before the end of the year fifteen ninety-eight nearly all the inhabitants of Clenrecard and the surrounding districts were induced, either from policy or conviction, to give in their adhesion to the northern Confederacy. CHAPTER VIII. The last favorite of the many who enjoyed the foolish, if not guilty, members of Elizabeth was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, son of that unfortunate nobleman spoken of in a previous chapter as the undertaker of Farny and Clandaboy. Born in fifteen sixty-seven, the Earl had barely reached the age of manhood when he won the heart of his royal mistress, already verging on three score. Gifted by nature with a handsome person, undoubted courage, and many generous qualities, he exhibited, in the most important transactions of life, the recklessness of a madman and the levity of a spoiled child. It was apparent to the world that nothing short of the personal fascination which he exercised over the Queen could so long have preserved him from the consequences of his continual caprices and quarrels. Such was the character of the young nobleman who, as was afterwards said, at the instigation of his enemies, was sent over to restore the ascendancy of the English arms in the revolted provinces. His appointment was to last during the Queen's pleasure. He was provided with an army of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse. Three-fourths of the ordinary annual revenue of England, three hundred and forty thousand pounds out of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds, was placed at his disposal, and the largest administrative powers, civil and military, were conferred on him. A new plan of campaign in Ulster was decided upon at the royal council table, and Sir Samuel Bagnal, father of the late Marshal, and other experienced officers, were to proceed or accompany him to carry it into execution. The main feature of this plan was to get possession by sea and strongly fortify Bally Shannon, Donagall, Derry, and the entrance to the foil, so as to operate it once in the rear of the Northern chiefs, as well as along the old familiar base of Nury, Monahan, and Armagh. Essex, being sworn into office at Dublin on the fifteenth of April, fifteen ninety-nine, immediately issued a proclamation offering pardon and restoration of property to such of the Irish as would lay down their arms by a given day, but very few persons responded to this invitation. He next dispatched reinforcements to the garrisons of Wicklow and Noss, menaced by the Omores and Oburns, and to those of Dragheda, Dundalk, Nury, and Carrot-Fergus, the only Northern strongholds remaining in possession of the Queen. The principal operations, it had been agreed before he left England, were to be directed against Ulster, but with the waywardness which always accompanied him, he disregarded that arrangement, and set forth, at the head of seven thousand men, for the opposite quarter. He was accompanied in this march by the Earls of Clan Ricard and Thoman, Sir Conyers Clifford, Governor of Connaught, and O'Connor of Sligo, the only native chief who remained in the English ranks. In Normand he received the submission of Lord Mount Garret, son in law to Tyrone, and took the strong castle of Cahere from another of the insurgent butlers. After a halt at Limerick he set out against the Geraldines, who the previous year had joined the Northern League, at the instance of Tyrol and Omor. Although the only heir of the Earl of Desmond was a prisoner, or ward of Elizabeth in England, James Fitzgerald, son of Thomas Rowe, son of the fifteenth Earl by that marriage which had been pronounced invalid, assumed the title at the suggestion of O'Neill, and was recognized as the Desmond by the greater portion of the relatives of that family. Fitzmouris, Lord of Lixna, the Knight of Glen, the White Knight, the Lord Roche, Pierce Lacy of Burry in Brough, the last descendant of Hugh de Lacy and the daughter of Rodrigo Conna, with the McCarthy's, Donahoe's, O'Sullivan's, Condon's, and other powerful tribes, were all a stir to the number, as Carouss opposes, of eight thousand men, all emulous of their compatriots in the North. Issuing from Limerick, Essex marched southward to strengthen the stronghold of Askeeton, into which he succeeded, after a severe skirmish by the way, in throwing supplies. Proceeding to Victual Adair, he experienced a similar check, losing, among others, Sir Henry Norris, the third of those brave brothers who had fallen a victim to these Irish wars. In returning to Dublin, by way of Waterford and Kildare, he was assailed by O'More at a difficult defile, which to this day is known in Irish as the Pass of the Plumes or Feathers. The Earl forced a passage with the loss of five hundred lives, and so returned with little glory to Dublin. The next military incident of the year transpired in the West. We have spoken of O'Connor Sligo as the only native chief who followed Essex to the South. He had been lately at the English court, where he was treated with the highest distinction, in order that he might be used to impede O'Donnell's growing power in Lower Cannot. On returning home he was promptly besieged by the Donnigal chief in his remaining castle at Coluni, within five miles of Sligo. Essex, on learning this fact, ordered Sir Conyers Clifford to march to the relief of O'Connor with all the power he could muster. Clifford dispatched from Galway, by sea, stores and materials for the re-fortification of Sligo Town, and sat out himself at the head of twenty-one hundred men, drafted from both sides of the Shannon under twenty-five ensigns. He had under him Sir Alexander Radcliffe, Sir Griffin Markham, and other experienced officers. Their rendezvous, as usual, was the old monastic town of Boyle, about a day's march to the south of Sligo. From Boyle the highway led into the Curlew Mountains, which divide Sligo on the southeast from Roscommon. Here in the strong pass of Balagboy, O'Donnell, with the main body of his followers, awaited their approach. He had left the remainder, under his cousin and brother-in-law, Niall Garve, or the Ruff, to maintain the siege of Coluni Castle. O'Rourke and the men of Brefney joined him during the battle, but their entire force is nowhere stated. It was the eve of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and the first anniversary of the great victory of the Yellow Ford. The night was spent by the Irish in fasting and prayer, the early morning in hearing mass and receiving the Holy Communion. The day was far advanced when the head of Clifford's column appeared in the defile, driving in a barricade erected at its entrance. The defenders, according to orders, discharged their javelins and muskets and fell back farther into the gorge. The English advanced twelve abreast, through a piece of woodland, after which the road crossed a patch of bog. Here the thick of the battle was fought. After Alexander Radcliffe, who led the vanguard, fell early in the action, and his division falling back on the center threw them all into confusion. O'Rourke, arriving with his men at the critical moment, completed the route and pursued the fugitives to the gates of Boyle. The gallant Clifford, scorning to fly, was found among the slain, and honorably interred by his generous enemies in the monastery of Lockheed. On his head, being shown to O'Connor at Coluni, he at once surrendered to O'Donnell, and entered into the northern confederacy. Theobald Burke, the commander of the vessels sent round from Galway to fortify Sligo, also submitted to O'Donnell, and was permitted to return to the port from which he had lately sailed, with very different intentions. Essex, whose mind was a prey to apprehension from his enemies in England, had demanded reinforcements before he could undertake anything against Ulster. It seems hardly creditable that the fifteen thousand regular troops in the country, at his coming, should be mostly taken up with garrison duty, yet we cannot otherwise account for their disappearance from the field. He asked for two thousand fresh troops, and while awaiting their arrival sent a detachment of six hundred men into Wicklow, who were repulsed with loss by Felham, son of Fiegg, the new chief of the O'Burns. Essex was thrown into transports of rage at this new loss. The officers who were treated were tried by Court Marshall, and contrary to his usual generous temper, the surviving men were inhumanely decimated. Early in September, the reinforcement he had asked for arrived with a bitterly reproachful letter from the Queen. He now hastened to make a demonstration against her own, although from some cause unexplained, he does not seem to have drawn out the whole force at his disposal. From Newry he proceeded northwards towards Carrick-Fergus, with only thirteen hundred foot and three hundred horse. On the high ground to the north of the River Lagan, overlooking a non-Clart bridge, he found the host of O'Neill encamped, and received a courteous message from their leader soliciting a personal interview. Essex at first declined, but afterwards accepted the invitation, and at an appointed hour the two commanders rode down to the opposite banks of the river, wholly unattended, the advanced guard of each looking curiously on from the uplands. O'Neill spurred his horse into the stream up to the saddle-girth, and thus for an hour, exposed to the generous but impulsive Englishman, the grievances of himself and his compatriots. With all the art for which he was distinguished he played upon his knowledge of the Earl's character. He named those enemies of his own whom he also knew to be hostile to Essex. He showed his provocations in the strongest light, and declared his readiness to submit to Her Majesty, on condition of obtaining complete liberty of conscience, an act of indemnity to include his allies in all the four provinces, that the principal officers of State, the judges, and one half the army should in future be Irish by birth. This was, in effect, a demand for national independence, though the Lord Lieutenant may not have seen it in that light. He promised, however, to transmit the propositions to England, and within the presence of six principal officers of each side, agreed to a truce till the first of May following. Another upgrading letter from Elizabeth, which awaited him on his return to Dublin, drove Essex to the desperate resolution of presenting himself before her without permission. The short remainder of his troubled career, his execution in the Tower in February 1601, and Elizabeth's frantic lamentations are familiar to the readers of English history. In presenting so comprehensive and ultimatum to Essex, O'Neill was emboldened by the latest intelligence received from Spain. Philip II, the lifelong friend of the Catholics, had indeed died the previous September, but one of the first acts of his successor, Philip III, was to send envoys to Ireland, assuring its chiefs that he would continue to them the friendship and alliance of his father. Shortly before the conference at Anaclart, a third armada, under the Atalandando of Castilla, was awaiting orders in the Port of Coruna, and England, for the third time in ten years, was placed in a posture of defence. The Spaniards sailed, but soon divided into two squadrons, one of which passed down the British Channel unobserved, and anchored in the waters of the Sleuths, while the others sailed for the Canaries to intercept the Hollenders. At the same time, however, most positive assurances were renewed that an auxiliary force might shortly be expected to land in Ireland in aid of the Catholics. The non-arrival of this force during the fortunate campaign of 1599 was not much felt by the Catholics, and was satisfactorily explained by Philip's envoys, but the mere fact of the existence of the Spanish alliance gave additional confidence and influence to the Confederates. That fact was placed beyond all question by the arrival of two Spanish ships laden with stores for O'Neill, immediately after the interview with Essex. In the summer or autumn ensuing, Matthew of Oviedo, a Spaniard consecrated at Rome, Archbishop of Dublin, brought over 22,000 crowns towards the pay of the Irish troops, and a year afterwards Don Martin de la Serda was sent to reside as envoy with Tyrone. The year 1600 was employed by Hugh O'Neill, after the manner of his ancestors, who were candidates for the kingship of Tara, in a visitation of the provinces. Having first planted strong garrisons on the southern passes leading into Ulster, he marched at the head of three thousand men into West Mieth, where he obliged Lord Delvin and Sir Theobald Dillon to join the confederation. From Mieth he marched to Eli, whose chief he punished for a late act of treachery to some Ulster soldiers invited to his assistance. From Eli he turned aside to venerate the relic of the Holy Cross at Thurles, and being there he granted his protection to the great monastery built by Donald Moore O'Brien. At Cachele he was joined by the Geraldine, whom he caused to be recognized as Earl of Desmond. Desmond and his supporters accompanied him through Limerick into Cork, quartering their retainers on the lands of their enemies, but sparing their friends. The Earl of Ormond, with a core of observation, moving on a parallel line of march, but carefully avoiding a collision. In the beginning of March the Catholic army halted at Inescara, upon the River Lee, about five miles west of Cork. Over O'Neill remained three weeks in camp, consolidating the Catholic party in South Munster. During that time he was visited by the chiefs of the ancient Eugenian clans, O'Donohoe, O'Donovan, and O'Mahoney. Thither also came two of the most remarkable men of the Southern province, Florence McCarthy, Lord of Carberry, and Donald O'Sullivan, Lord of Barrahaven.  O'Sullivan, as was afterwards shown, was possessed of military virtues of a high order. Florence was inaugurated with O'Neill's sanction as McCarthy Moore, and although the rival house of Muscaree fiercely resisted his claim to superiority at first, a wiser choice could not have been made had the times tended to confirm it. While at Inescara O'Neill lost in single combat one of his most accomplished officers, the chief of Fermanah. McGuire, accompanied only by a priest and two horsemen, was making observations nearer to the city than the camp, when Sir Warm St. Ledger, Marshal of Munster, issued out of cork with a company of soldiers, probably on a similar mission. Both were in advance of their attendance when they came unexpectedly face to face. Both were famous as horsemen and for the use of their weapons, and neither would retrace his steps. The Irish chief, poising his spear, dashed forward against his opponent, but received a pistol shot which proved mortal the same day. He, however, had strength enough to drive his spear through the neck of St. Ledger and to affect his escape from the English cavalry. St. Ledger was carried back to cork where he expired. McGuire, on reaching the camp, had barely time left to make his last confession when he breathed his last. This untoward event, the necessity of preventing possible dissensions in Fermanah, and still more, the menacing movements of the new deputy, lately sworn in at Dublin, obliged O'Neill to return home earlier than he intended. Soon after reaching Dunganon he had the gratification of receiving a most gracious letter from Pope Clement VIII, together with a crown of phoenix feathers, symbolical of the consideration with which he was regarded by the sovereign Pontiff. A new deputy had landed at Houth on the 24th of February 1600, and was sworn in at Dublin the day following. This was Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, afterwards Earl of Devonshire, a nobleman now in his thirty-seventh year. He had been the rival, the enemy, and the devoted friend of the unfortunate Essex, whom he equalled in personal gifts, in courage, and in gallantry, but far exceeded in judgment, firmness, and foresight. He was one of a class of soldier statesmen, peculiar to the second half of Elizabeth's reign, who affected authorship and the patronage of letters as a necessary compliment to the manners of a courtier and a commander. On the second of April, Mountjoy, still at Dublin, wrote to her majesty that the army had taken heart since his arrival, that he had no fear of the loss of the country, but was more anxious for cannot than any other province. He deplored the capture of Lord Ormond by the Omors, but hoped if God prospered her arms during the summer, either to bow or to break the crooked humors of these people. The three succeeding years of peace granted to England, interrupted only by the mad emut of Essex and the silly intrigues of the King of Scotland, enabled Elizabeth to direct all the energies of state, which had so immensely increased in wealth during her reign, for the subjugation of the Irish revolt. The capture of Ormond by the Omors took place in the month of April at a place called Coronadoff, in an interview between the Earl, the President of Munster, and Lord Thoman, on the one part, and the Lenster chief on the other. Ormond, who stood out from his party, had asked to see the famous Jesuit, Father Archer, then with Omor. The priest advanced, leaning on his staff, which, in the heat of a discussion that arose, he raised once or twice in the air. The clansmen, suspecting danger to the Jesuit, rushed forward and dragged the Earl from his horse. Lord Thoman and the President, taking the alarm, plied their spurs, and were but too glad to escape. Thoman remained a prisoner from April to June, during which interval he was received by Archer into the church, to which he firmly adhered to the day of his death. On his liberation he entered into bonds for three thousand pounds, not to make reprisals, but Mount Joy took vengeance for him. The fair, well-fenced, and well-cultivated land of Lex was cruelly ravaged immediately after Ormond's release. The common soldiers cut down with their swords, corned to the value of ten thousand pounds and upwards, and the brave chief, only, son of Rory, having unconsciously exposed himself in an attack on Maryborough, was on the seventeenth of August, killed by a musket-shot. Mount Joy's administration, operations in Ulster and Munster, Carus, Witt and Cunning, landing of Spaniards in the South, Battle of Kinsel, Death of O'Donnell in Spain. The two-fold operations against Ulster, neglected by Essex, were vigorously pressed forward by the energetic Mount Joy. On the sixteenth of May a fleet arrived in Locke-Foyle, having on board four thousand foot and two hundred horse, under the command of Sir Henry Daukra, with an abundance of stores, building materials, and ordinance. At the same moment the deputy forced the Moira past, and made a feigned demonstration against Armog to draw attention from the fleet in the Foyle. This feint served its purpose. Daukra was unable to land and throw up defensive works at Derry, which he made his headquarters, to fortify Cullmore at the entrance to the harbour, where he placed six hundred men under the command of Captain Atford, and to seize the ancient fort of Eliak, at the head of Locke-Swilly, where Captain Ellis Flood was stationed with one hundred and fifty men. The attempt against Ballet-Shanon was, on a nearer view, found impracticable, and deferred. The deputy, satisfied that the lodgemen had been made upon Locke-Foyle, retired to Dublin after increasing the garrisons at Newry, Carlingford and Dundalk. The Catholic chieftains immediately turned their attention to the new fort at Derry, appeared suddenly before it with five thousand men, but failing to draw out its defenders, and being wholly unprovided with a siege train in implements, as they appeared to have been throughout, they withdrew the second day, O'Donnell leaving a party in hopes to starve out the foreigners. This party were under the command of O'Dority of Ineshowan and Neal Garve O'Donnell, the most distinguished soldier of his name, after his illustrious cousin-in-chief. On the twenty-eighth of June, a party of the besieged, headed by Sir John Chamberlain, made a sally from the works, but were driven in with loss and Chamberlain killed. On the twenty-ninth of July, O'Donnell, who had returned from his annual incursion into Connaught and Thomond, seized the English cavalry horses and defeated the main force of the besieged, who had issued out to their rescue. From this affair, D'Alcro was carried back wounded into Denny. But Treason was busy in the Irish camp and country among the discontented members of the neighbouring clans. The election of chiefs for life, always a fruitful source of bickering and envy, supplied the very material upon which the princely policy of division, recommended by Bacon to Essex, might be exercised. D'Alcro succeeded in the summer in winning over Art O'Neill, son of Turlog, the early adversary of the Great Hugh. Before the year was over, by bribes and promises, he seduced Niall Gaurav in the absence of his chief in Connaught, and Niall, having once entered on the career of Treason, pursued it with all the dogged courage of his disposition. Though his wife, sister to Red Hugh, forsook him, though his name was execrated throughout the province, except by his blindly devoted personal followers, he served the English during the remainder of the war with a zeal and ability to which they acknowledged themselves deeply indebted. By a rapid march at the head of one thousand men, supplied by D'Alcro, he surprised the town of Lifford, which his new allies promptly fortified with walls of stone, and entrusted him to defend. Red Hugh, on learning this alarming incident, hastened from the West to invest the place. After sitting before it an entire month, with no other advantage than a sally repulsed, he concluded to go into winter quarters. Arthur O'Neill and Niall Gaurav had the dignity of knighthood conferred upon them, and were besides recognized for the day by the English officials as the future O'Neill and O'Donnell. In like manner a Queen's Maguire had been raised up in Fermanagh, and a Queen's O'Reilly in Cavern, and other chiefs of smaller districts were provided with occupation enough at their own doors by the princely policy of Lord Bacon. The English interest in Munster during the first year of Mount Joye's administration had recovered much of its lost predominance. The new President, Sir George Carew, afterwards Earl of Totnes, was brother to that nightly undertaker who claimed the moiety of Desmond, and met his death at Glenmalure. He was a soldier of the new school, who prided himself especially on his wit and cunning in the composition of sham and counterfeit letters. He had an early experience in the Irish Wars, first as Governor of Askeeton Castle, and afterwards as Lieutenant-General of the Ordinance. Subsequently he was employed in putting England in a state of defence against the Spaniards, and had just returned from an Embassy to Poland when he was ordered to join Mount Joye with the rank of Lord President. He has left us a memoir of his administration, civil and military, edited by his natural son and secretary, Thomas Stafford, exceedingly interesting to read both as to matter and manner, but the documents embodied in which are about as reliable as the speeches which are read in Livy. Some of them are admitted forgeries, others are at least of doubtful authenticity. After escaping with Lord Thomand from the scene of Orman's capture, his first act on reaching Cork was to conclude a month's truce with Florence McCarthy. This he did in order to gain time to perfect a plot for the destruction of O'Neill's other friend, called in derision by the Anglo-Irish of Munster the Sugane, or straw-rope, Earl of Desmond. This plot, so characteristic of Caru and of the turn which English history was about to take in the next reign, deserves to be particularly mentioned. There was in the service of the Earl, one Dermot O'Connor, captain of fourteen hundred hired troops, who was married to Lady Margaret Fitzgerald, daughter to the late, and niece to the new-made Earl of Desmond. This lady, naturally interested in the restoration of her young brother, then the Queen's ward or prisoner at London, to the title and estates, was easily drawn into the scheme of seducing her husband from his patron. To justify and cloak the treachery, a letter was written by Caru to the Sugane Earl, reminding him of his engagement to deliver up O'Connor. This letter, as prearranged, was intercepted by the latter, who, watching his opportunity, rushed with it open into the Earl's presence and arrested him in the name of O'Neill, as a traitor to the Catholic cause. Anxious to finger his reward, one thousand pounds and a royal commission for himself, before giving up his capture, O'Connor imprisoned the Earl in the keep of Castle Ishen, but the White Knight, the Knight of Glen, Fitzmouris of Kerry, and Pierce Lacey, levying rapidly two thousand men, speedily delivered him from confinement while his baffled betrayer, Crestfallen and Dishonored, was compelled to quit the province. The year following he was attacked while marching through Galway, and remorselessly put to death by Theobald Burke, usually called Theobald of the ships. Another device employed to destroy the influence of O'Neill Stesmond was the liberation of the young son of the late Earl from the tower, and placing him at the disposal of Carew. The young nobleman, attended by a Captain Price, who was to watch all his movements, landed at Yughal, where he was received by the Lord President, the Clerk of the Council, Mr. Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, and Myler McGrath, an apostate ecclesiastic who had been the Queen's Archbishop of Casual. By his influence with the Warders, Castle Main, and Kerry, surrendered to the President. On reaching Kilmalach he was received with such enthusiasm that it required the effort of a guard of soldiers to make way for him through the crowd. According to their custom the people showered down upon him from the windows, handfuls of wheat and salt, emblems of plenty and safety, but the next day being Sunday, turned all this joy into mourning, not unmingled with anger and shame. The young Lord, who had been bred up a Protestant by his keepers, directed his steps to the English Church, to the consternation of the devoted adherents of his house. They clung round him in the street and endeavored to dissuade him from proceeding, but he continued his course, and on his return was met with hootings and reproaches by those who had hailed him with acclamations the day before. Deserted by the people, and no longer useful to the President, he was recalled to London, where he resumed his quarters in the tower and shortly afterwards died. The capture of the strong Castle of Glen from the night of that name, and the surrender of Carigafoil by O'Connor of Cary, were the other English successes which marked the campaign of sixteen hundred in Munster. On the other hand O'Donnell had twice exercised his severe supremacy over Southern Canot, burning the Earl of Thoman's new town of Ennis, and sweeping the veils and plains of Clare and of Clanrecard of the animal wealth of their Recreant Earls, now actively enlisted against the National Confederacy. The eventful campaign of sixteen-o-one was fought out in almost every quarter of the kingdom. To hold the coastline and prevent the advantages being obtained, which the possession of dairy and other harbours on Locfoil gave them, were the tasks of O'Donnell, while to defend the Southern Frontier was the peculiar charge of O'Neill. They thus fought, as it were, back to back against the opposite lines of attack. The death of Odority, early in this year, threw the succession to Ennishaun into confusion, and while O'Donnell was personally endeavouring to settle conflicting claims, Neal Garve seized on the famous Franciscan monastery which stood at the head of the bay, within the side of the towers of Donegal Castle. Hugh Rowe immediately invested the place, which his relative astoutly defended. Three months from the end of June till the end of September, the siege was strictly maintained, the garrison being regularly supplied with stores and ammunition from the sea. On the night of the twenty-ninth of September an explosion of gunpowder occurred, and soon the monastery was wrapped in flames. This was the moment chosen for the final attack. The glare of the burning abbey reflected over the beautiful bay, the darkness of night all around, the shouts of the assailants, and the shrieks of the fugitives driven by the flames upon the spheres of their enemies must have formed a scene of horrors such as even war rarely combines. Hundreds of the besieged were slain, but Neal Garve himself, with the remainder, covered by the fire of an English ship in the harbour, escaped along the strand to the neighbouring monastery of Magarraburg, which he quickly put into a state of defence. All that was left to O'Donnell of that monastery, the burial place of his ancestors, and the chief school of his kinsmen, was a skeleton of stone, standing amid rubbish and ashes. It was never re-inhabited by the Franciscans. A group of huts upon the shore served them for shelter, and the ruined chapel for a place of worship, while they were still left in the land. While Hugh Rowe was investing Donnell Abbey, the war had not paused on the southern frontier. We have said that Mount Joy had made a second and third demonstration against Armog the previous year. In one of these journeys he raced a strong fort at the northern outlet of the Moira Pass, which he called Mount Norris, in honour of his late master in the art of war. This work, strongly built and manned, gave him the free entree of the field of battle whenever he chose to take it. In June of this year he was in the valley of the black water, menaced O'Neal's castle of Ben Burb, and left Sir Charles Danvers with 750 foot and 100 horse in possession of Armog. He further proclaimed a reward of two thousand pounds for the capture of Tyrone alive, or one thousand pounds for his head. But no Irishman was found to entertain the thought of that bribe. An English assassin was furnished with passports by Danvers, and actually drew his sword on the earl in his own tent, but he was seized, disarmed, and on the ground of insanity was permitted to escape. Later in the summer Mount Joy was again on the black water, where he laid the foundation of Charlemont, called after himself, and placed 350 men in the works under the command of Captain Williams, the brave defender of the Old Ford in the same neighborhood. There were thus quartered in Ulster at this period four thousand foot and four hundred horse under Daukra, chiefly on the foil, with whatever companies of current adhered to Arthur O'Neal and Niall Garb. With Chichester and Carrick Fergus there were eight hundred and fifty foot and one hundred and fifty horse, with Danvers in Armog seven hundred and fifty foot and one hundred horse, in Mount Norris under Sir Samuel Bagnell six hundred foot and fifty horse, and in and about down Patrick, lately taken by the deputy under Morrison three hundred foot, in Neury under Stafford four hundred foot and fifty horse, in Charlemont with Williams three hundred foot and fifty horse, or in all of English regulars in Ulster alone seven thousand foot and eight hundred horse. The position of the garrisons on the map will show how firm a grass Mount Joy had taken of the northern province. The last scene of this great struggle was now about to shift to the opposite quarter of the kingdom. The long looked-for Spanish fleet was known to have left the Tagus, had been seen off the Silly Islands. On the twenty-third of September the Council, presided over by Mount Joy, was assembled in Kilkenny Castle. There were present Caru, Ormond, Sir Richard Wingfield, Marshal of the Queen's Troops, Uncle to Caru, and founder of the family of Powerscourt. Also Chief Justice Gardner and other members less known. While they were still sitting a message arrived from Cork that the Spanish fleet was off that harbour, and soon another that they had anchored in Kinsel, and taken possession of the town without opposition. The course of the Council was promptly taken. Courtyours were at once dispatched to call in the garrisons far and near which could possibly be dispensed with for service in Munster. Letters were dispatched to England for reinforcements and a winter campaign in the south was decided on. The Spanish Auxiliary Force, when it sailed from the Tagus, consisted originally of six thousand men in fifteen armed vessels and thirty transports. When they reached Kinsel, after suffering severely at sea, and parting company with several of their comrades, the soldiers were reduced to three thousand four hundred men, a number inferior to Dalcrest force on the foil. The general, Don Juan de Aguila, was a brave but testy, passionate and suspicious officer. He has been severely censured by some Irish riders for landing in the extreme south, within fourteen miles of the English arsenal and headquarters at Cork, and for his general conduct as a commander. However vulnerable he may be on the general charge, he does not seem fairly to blame for the choice of the point of debarkation. He landed in the old Geraldine country, unaware of course of the events of the last few weeks, in which the Sugayne Earl and Florence McCarthy had been entrapped by Carew's wit and cunning, and shipped for London, from which they never returned. Even the northern chiefs, up to this period, evidently thought their cause much stronger in the south, and Munster much farther restored to vigor and courage than it really was. To the bitter disappointment and disgust of the Spaniards, only O'Sullivan beer, O'Driscoll and O'Connor of Carey, declared openly for them, while they could hear daily of chiefs they had been taught to count as friends, either as prisoners or allies of the English. On the seventeenth of October, three weeks from their first arrival, they were arrested in Kinsell by a mixed army of English and Anglo-Irish, fifteen thousand strong, under the command of the deputy and president, of whom above five thousand had freshly arrived at Cork from England. With Mountjoy were the earls of Thomond and Clanricard, more zealous than the English themselves for the triumph of England. The harbor was blockaded by ten ships of war under Sir Richard Leviston, and the forts at the entrance, Ring Corrin and Castlin Park, being taken by Canaanade, the investment on all sides was complete. Don Juan's messengers found O'Neal and O'Donnell busily engaged on their own frontiers, but both instantly resolved to muster all their strength for a winter campaign in Munster. O'Donnell rendezvoused at Balimo, from which he set out, at the head of twenty-five hundred men, of Tyr Connell and Canaanade, on the second day of November. O'Neal, with MacDonald of Antrim, McGinnis of Down, Macman of Monahan, and others, his suffragens, marched at the head of between three thousand and four thousand men, through West Mieeth towards Ormond. Holy Cross was their appointed place of meeting, where they expected to be joined by such of the neighboring Catholics as were eager to strike a blow for liberty of worship. O'Donnell reached the neighborhood first, and encamped in a strongly defensible position, plashed on every quarter for greater security. Mount Joy, anxious to engage him before O'Neal should come up, detached a numerically superior force under Carew for that purpose, but O'Donnell, evacuating his quarters by night, marched over the mountain of Slivfellam, casting away much of his heavy baggage, and before calling a halt was thirty-two Irish miles distant from his late encampment. After this extraordinary mountain march equal to forty of our present miles, he made a detour to the westward, descended on Castle Haven in Cork, and formed a junction with seven hundred Spaniards, who had just arrived to join Del Aguila. A portion of these veterans were detailed to the forts of Castle Haven, Baltimore, and Dunboy, commanding three of the best havens in Munster. The remainder joined O'Donnell's division. During the whole of November the Siege of Kinsel was pressed with the utmost vigor by Mount Joy. The place presented but three or four effective guns, while twenty great pieces of ordinance were continually playing on the walls. On the first of December a breach was found practicable, and an assault made by a party of two thousand English was bravely repulsed by the Spaniards. The English fleet, ordered round to Castle Haven on the third, were becalmed, and suffered some damage from a battery manned by Spanish gunners on the shore. The lines were advanced closer towards the town, and the bombardment became more effective. But the English ranks were considerably thinned by disease and desertion, so that on the last day of December, when the United Irish took up their position at Begley, a mile to the north of their lines, the Lord Deputy's effective force did not, it is thought, exceed ten thousand men. The Catholic army has generally been estimated at six thousand native foot and five hundred horse. To these are to be added three hundred Spaniards under Don Alfonso Ocampo, who joined O'Donnell at Castle Haven. The prospect for the besiegers was becoming exceedingly critical, but the Spaniards and Kinsel were far from being satisfied with their position. They had been fully three months within walls, in a region wholly unknown to them before their allies appeared. They neither understood nor made allowance for the immense difficulties of a winter campaign in a country trenched with innumerable swollen streams, thick with woods, which at that season gave no shelter, and where camping out at nights was enough to chill the hottest blood. They only felt their own inconveniences. They were cut off from escape by sea by a powerful English fleet, and Carew was already practicing indirectly on their commander, his wit and cunning, in the fabrication of rumors and the forging of letters. Don Juan wrote urgent appeals to the northern chiefs to attack the English lines without another day's delay, and a council of war, the third day after their arrival at Begley, stated that the attack should be made on the morrow. This decision was come to on the motion of O'Donnell, contrary to the judgment of the more circumspect and far-seeing O'Neill. Overruled, the latter acquiesced in the decision and cheerfully prepared to discharge his duty. A story is told by Carew that information was obtained of the attended attack from McMahon in return for a bottle of aquavita presented to him by the President. This tale is wholly unworthy of belief, told of a chief of the First Rank, encamped in the midst of a friendly country. It is also said, and it seems creditable enough, that an intercepted letter of Don Juan's gave the English in good time this valuable piece of information. On the night of the 2nd of January, new style, 24th of December, old style, and use among the English, the Irish army left their camp in three divisions, the vanguard left by Tyrell, the center by O'Neill, and the rear by O'Donnell. The night was stormy and dark, with continuous peals and flashes of thunder and lightning. The guides lost their way, and the march, which, even by the most circuitous route, ought not to have exceeded four or five miles, was protracted through the entire night. At the dawn of day O'Neill, with whom were O'Sullivan and Ocampo, came inside of the English lines, and to his infinite surprise found the men under arms, the cavalry in troop posted in advance of their quarters. O'Donnell's division was still to come up, and the veteran Earl now found himself in the same dilemma into which Bagnall had fallen at the Yellow Ford. His embarrassment was perceived from the English camp. The cavalry were at once ordered to advance. For an hour O'Neill maintained his ground alone. At the end of that time he was forced to retire. Of Ocampo's three hundred spaniards, forty survivors were, with their gallant leader, taken prisoners. O'Donnell at length arrived, and drove back a wing of the English cavalry. Tyrell's horsemen also held their ground tenaciously. But the route of the center proved irremediable. Fully twelve hundred of the Irish were left dead on the field, and every prisoner taken was instantly executed. On the English side fell Sir Richard Graham, Captain's Danvers and Godolphin, with several others were wounded. Their total loss they stated at two hundred, and the Anglo-Irish, of whom they seldom made count in their reports, must have lost in proportion. The Earls of Thomand and Clan Ricard were actively engaged with their followers, and their loss could hardly have been less than that of the English regulars. On the night following their defeat the Irish leaders held counsel together at Ineshanan, on the River Bandon, where it was agreed that O'Donnell should instantly take shipping for Spain to lay the true state of the contest before Philip III. That O'Sullivan should endeavor to hold the Castle of Dunboy, as commanding a most important harbor, that Rory O'Donnell, current brother of Hugh Rowe, should act as chieftain of Tier Connell, and that O'Neill should return into Ulster to make the best defense in his power. The loss in men was not irreparable. The loss in arms, colors, and reputation was more painful to bear, and far more difficult to retrieve. On the twelfth of January, nine days after the battle, Don Juan surrendered the town, and agreed to give up at the same time Dunboy, Baltimore, and Castle Haven. He had lost one thousand men out of his three thousand during a ten-week siege, and was heartily sick of Irish warfare. On his return to Spain he was degraded from his rank, for his too great intimacy with Carew, and confined a prisoner in his own house. He is said to have died of a broken heart occasioned by these indignities. O'Donnell sailed from Castle Haven in a Spanish ship on the sixth of January, three days after the battle, and arrived at Coruna on the fourteenth. He was received, with all honors due to a crown prince, by the Conde de Garatheña, Governor of Galicia. Among other objects he visited the remains of the Tower of Betanzos, from which, according to Bartic legends, the son of Melisius had sailed to seek for the Isle of Destiny among the waves of the West. On the twenty-seventh he set out for the court, accompanied as far as Santa Lucia by the Governor, who presented him with one thousand dukets towards his expenses. At Campostela the Archbishop offered him his own palace, which O'Donnell respectfully declined. He afterwards celebrated a solemn high mass for the Irish chief's intention, entertained him magnificently at dinner, and presented him as the Governor had done with one thousand dukets. At Zamora he received from Philip III a most cordial reception, and was assured that in a very short time a more powerful armament than Don Juan should sail with him from Coruna. He returned to that port, from which he could every day look out across the western waves that lay between him and home, and where he could be kept constantly informed of what was passing in Ireland. Spring was over and gone, and summer too had passed away, but still the exigencies of Spanish policy delayed the promised expedition. At length O'Donnell set out on a second visit to the Spanish court, then at Valladolid, but he reached no further than Siminacas, when fevered in mind and body he expired on the 10th of September, 1602, in the twenty-ninth year of his age. He was attended in his last moments by two Franciscan fathers who accompanied him, Florence, afterwards Archbishop of Tom, and Maurice Dunleavy of his own Abbey of Donegal. His body was interred with regal honors in the Cathedral of Valladolid, where a monument was erected to his memory by the King of Spain. Thus closed the career of one of the brightest and purest characters in any history. His youth, his early captivity, his princely generosity, his daring courage, his sincere piety won the hearts of all who came in contact with him. He was the sword as O'Neill was the brain of the Ulster Confederacy, the Ulysses and Achilles of the war. They fought side by side without jealousy or envy, for almost as long a period as their prototypes had spent in besieging Troy. End of CHAPTER X The Days of Queen Elizabeth were now literally numbered. The death of Essex, the intrigues of the King of Scotland, and the successes of Tyrone preyed upon her spirits. The Irish chief was seldom out of her mind, and as she often predicted she was not to live to receive his submission. She was accustomed to send for her godson, Harrington, who had served in Ireland, to ask him questions concerning Tyrone. The French ambassador considered Tyrone's war one of the causes that totally destroyed her peace of mind in her latter days. She received the news of the victory of Kinsale with pleasure, but even then she was not destined to receive the submission of Tyrone. The events of the year so inauspiciously begun for the Irish arms continued of the same disastrous character. Castlehaven was surrendered by its Spanish guard, according to Del Aguila's agreement. Baltimore, after a momentary resistance, was also given up, but O'Sullivan, who considered the Spanish capitulation nothing short of treason, threw a body of native troops, probably drawn from Tyrone's men, into Dunboy, under Captain Richard McGoggan and Taylor and Englishman, connected by marriage with Tyrone. Another party of the same troops took possession of clear island, but were obliged to abandon it as untenable. The entire strength of the Dunboy garrison amounted to one hundred and forty-three men. Towards the end of April, the last of the Spaniards having sailed in March, Keru left Cork at the head of three thousand men to besiege Dunboy. Sir Charles Wilmot moved on the same point from Kerri, with a force of one thousand men, to join Keru. In the past near Mangerton, Wilmot was encountered by Donald O'Sullivan and Tyrell, at the head of the then remaining followers, but forced to passage and united with his superior on the shores of Bearhaven. On the first of June the English landed on Bear Island, and on the sixth opened their Kananad. They were four thousand men, with every military equipment necessary, against one hundred and forty-three. After eleven days bombardment the place was shattered to pieces. The garrison offered to surrender if allowed to retain their arms, but their messenger was hanged, and an instant assault ordered. Over fifty of the spand of Christian Spartans had fallen in the defense. Thirty attempted to escape in boats or by swimming, but were killed to a man while in the water. The remainder retreated with Magaghan, who was severely wounded, to a cellar approached by a narrow stair, where the command was assumed by Taylor. All day the assault had been carried on till night closed upon the scene of carnage. Placing a strong guard on the approach to the crypt, Keru returned to the charge with the returning light. Kanan were first discharged into the narrow chamber which held the last defenders of Dunboy, and then a body of the assailants rushing in dispatched the wounded Magaghan with their swords, having found him, candle in hand, dragging himself towards the gunpowder. Taylor and fifty-seven others were led out to execution. Of all the heroic band not a soul escaped alive. The remaining fragments of Dunboy were blown into the air by Keru on the twenty-second of June. Dursey Castle, another island fortress of Osullivans, had fallen even earlier, so that no roof remained to the Lord of Barahaven. Still, he held his men well together in the glens of Keru, during the months of summer, but the ill news from Spain in September threw a gloom over those mountains deeper than was ever cast by equinocpial storm. Tyrell was obliged to separate from him in the autumn, probably from the difficulty of providing for so many mouths, and Osullivan himself prepared to bid a sad farewell to the land of his inheritance. On the last day of December he left Glengarath, with four hundred fighting men and six hundred women, children and servants, to seek a refuge in the distant north. After a retreat almost unparalleled, the survivors of this exodus succeeded in reaching the friendly roof of O'Rourke, at Dromahare, not far from Sligo. Their entire march, from the extreme south to the almost extreme northwest of the island, at a distance as they traveled it of not less than two hundred miles, was one scene of warfare and suffering. They were compelled to kill their horses on reaching the Shannon in order to make boats of the hides to ferry them to the western bank. At Ogrem they were attacked by a superior force under Lord Clanrecard's brother, and Captain Henry Malby, but they fought with the courage of despair, routed the enemy, slaying Malby and other officers. Of the ten hundred who left the shores of Glengarath but thirty-five souls reached the Letrim Chieftain's mansion. Among these were the chief himself, with Dermid, father of the historian, who at the date of this march had reached the age of seventy. The conquest of Munster, at least, was now complete. In the ensuing January, Owen MacEgon, Bishop of Ross, was slain in the midst of a guerrilla party in the mountains of Carberry, and his chaplain, being taken, was hanged with the other prisoners. The policy of extermination recommended by Carew was zealously carried out by strong detachments under Wilmont, Harvey, and Flower. Mr. Boyle and the other undertakers zealously assisting as volunteers. Mountjoy, after transacting some civil business at Dublin, proceeded in person to the north, while Dalkra, marching out of Derry, pressed O'Neill from the north and northeast. In June, Mountjoy was at Charlemont, which he placed under the custody of Captain Toby Cawfield, the founder of an illustrious title taken from that fort. He advanced on Duncanon, but discovered it from the distance, as Norris had once before done, in flames, kindled by the hand of its straightened proprietor. On Loch Nia he erected a new fort called Mountjoy, so that his communications on the south now stretched from that great lake round to O'Mog, while those of Dalkra at Auger, Donegal, and Lifford nearly completed the circle. Almost the only outlet from this chain of posts was into the mountains of O'Cain's country, the northeast angle of the present county of Derry. The extensive tract so enclosed and guarded had still some natural advantages for carrying on a defensive war. The primitive woods were standing in masses at no great distance from each other. The nearly parallel veils of Faun, Moala, and the River Rowe, with the intermediate leagues of Moor and Mountain, were favourable to the movements of native forces familiar with every fort and footpath. There was also, while this central tract was held, a possibility of communication with other unbroken tribes, such as those of Klandeboy and the Antrim Glens on the east, and Brefne O'Rourke on the west. Never did the genius of Hugh O'Neill shine out brighter than in these last defensive operations. In July, Mountjoy writes apologetically to the council that notwithstanding Her Majesty's great forces, O'Neill doth still live. He bitterly complains of his consummate caution, his pestilent judgment to spread and to nourish his own infection, and of the reverence entertained for his person by the native population. Early in August, Mountjoy had arranged what he hoped might prove the finishing stroke in the struggle. Dalkra from Derry, Chichester from Carrick-Fergus, Danvers from Armagh, and all who could be spared from Mountjoy, Charlemont, and Mount Norris, were gathered under his command, to the number of eight thousand men, for a foray into the interior of Tyrone. Ennis Lachlan, on the borders of Down and Antrim, which contained a great quantity of valuables belonging to O'Neill, was captured. Maggerlownie and Tl'log were taken next. At the latter place to the ancient stone chair on which the O'Neills were inaugurated time out of mind, it was now broken into atoms by Mountjoy's orders. But the most effective warfare was made on the growing crops. The eight thousand men spread themselves over the fertile fields along the valleys of the ban in the row, destroying the standing grain with fire where it would burn, or with the prakha, a peculiar kind of harrow tearing it up by the roots. The horsemen trampled crops into the earth which had generously nourished them. The infantry shored them down with their sabers, and the sword, though in a very different sense from that of the Holy Scripture, was indeed converted into a sickle. The harvest month never shone upon such fields in any Christian land. In September Mountjoy reported to Cecil that between Tl'log and Tl'log there lay unburied a thousand dead, and that since his arrival on the Blackwater, a period of a couple of months, there were about three thousand starved in Tyrone. In O'Kane's country, the misery of his clansmen drove the chief to surrender to D'Alcra, and the news of Hugh Rowe's death having reached Donegal, his brother repaired to Athelone and made his submission to Mountjoy early in December. O'Neill, unable to maintain himself on the river Rowe, shared with six hundred foot and sixty horse to Glencanson, near Loch Nia, the most secure of his fastnesses. His brother Cormac McMahon and Ardo Neal of Clandiboy shared with him the wintry hardships of that last asylum, while Tyrone, Clandiboy, and Monahan were given up to horrors surpassing any that had been known or dreamt of in former wars. Morrison, secretary to Mountjoy, in his account of this campaign, observes that no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead, with their mouths all coloured green, by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend above ground. The new year, opening without hope, it began to be rumoured that O'Neill was disposed to surrender on honourable terms. Mountjoy and the English council long urged the aged queen to grant such terms, but without effect. Her pride as a sovereign had been too deeply wounded by the revolted Earl to allow her easily to forgive or forget his offences. Her advisers urged that Spain had followed her own course towards the Netherlands in Ireland, that the war consumed three-fourths of her annual revenue, and had obliged her to keep up an Irish army of twenty thousand men for several years past. At length she yielded her reluctant consent, and Mountjoy was authorised to treat with the arch-rebel upon honourable terms. The agents employed by the Lord Deputy in this negotiation were Sir William Godolphin and Sir Garrett Moore of Mellifont, ancestor of the Marquis of Dragheda, the latter a warm personal friend, though no partisan of O'Neill's. They found him in his retreat near Loch Nia early in March, and obtained his promise to give the deputy an early meeting at Mellifont. Elizabeth's serious illness concealed her Moneil, though well known to Mountjoy, hastened the negotiations. On the twenty-seventh of March he had intelligence of her to cease at London on the twenty-fourth, but carefully concealed it till the fifth of April following. On the thirty-first of March he received to Rhone's submission at Moore's residence, the ancient Cistercian Abbey, and not until a week later did O'Neill learn that he had made peace with the dead sovereign. The honourable terms on which this memorable religious war was concluded were these. O'Neill abjured all foreign allegiance, especially that of the King of Spain, renounced the title of O'Neill, agreed to give up his correspondence with the Spaniards and to recall his son Henry, who was a page at the Spanish court, and to live in peace with the sons of John the Proud. Mountjoy granted him an amnesty for himself and his allies, agreed that he should be restored to his estates as he had held them before the war, and that the Catholics should have the free exercise of their religion. That the restoration of his ordinary chieftain rights, which did not conflict with the royal prerogative, was also included, we have the best possible evidence. After Henry Dalkra having complained to Lord Mountjoy that O'Neill quartered men on O'Cain, who had surrendered to himself, Mountjoy made answer, My Lord of Tyrone is taken in with promise to be restored as well to all his lands as to his honour and dignity, and O'Cain's country is his, and must be obedient to his commands. That the article concerning religion was understood by the Catholics to concede full freedom of worship is evident by subsequent events. In Dublin, sixteen of the principal's citizens suffered fine and imprisonment for refusing to comply with the act of uniformity. In Kilkenny the Catholics took possession of the Black Abbey, which had been converted into a lay fee. In Waterford they did the same by St. Patrick's Church, where a Dominican preacher was reported to have said, among other imprudent things, that Jezebel was dead, alluding to the late Queen. In Cork, Limerick, and Casual the Cross was carried publicly in procession, the old churches restored to their ancient rites and enthusiastic proclamation made of the public restoration of religion. These events, having obliged the Lord Deputy to make a progress through the towns and cities, he was met at Waterford by a vast procession, headed by religious persons in the habits of their order, who boldly declared to him that the citizens of Waterford could not, in conscience, obey any prince that persecuted the Catholic religion. When such was the spirit of the town populations, we are not surprised to learn that, in the rural districts, almost exclusively Catholic, the people entered upon the use of many of their old churches and repaired several abbeys, among the number Budevant, Kilcria, and Timmolig in Cork, Quinn Abbey in Clare, Kilconnel in Galway, Rustnaryal in Mayo, and Multifarnam in Westmiath. So confident were they that the days of persecution were past, that King James prefaces his proclamation of July 1605 with the statement, whereas we have been informed that our subjects in the Kingdom of Ireland, since the death of our beloved sister, have been deceived by a false rumour, to wit, that we would allow them, liberty of conscience, and so forth. How cruelly they were then undeceived belongs to the history of the next reign. Here we need only remark that the Articles of Limerick were not more shamefully violated by the Statutes Sixth and Seventh, including the Third, than the Articles of Meliphant were violated by this proclamation of the Third Year of James the First. CHAPTER XII of a popular history of Ireland, Book VIII by Thomas Starcy McGee, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. STATE OF RELIGION AND LEARNING DURING THE RAIN OF ELIZABETH During the greater part of the reign of Elizabeth, the means relied upon for the propagation of the reformed doctrines were more exclusively those of force and coercion than even in the time of Edward VI. Thus, when Sir William Drury was deputy in 1578, he bound several citizens of Kilkenny under a penalty of forty pounds each to attend the English Church services and authorize the Anglican bishop to make a rate for the repair of the church and to destrain for the payment from it, the first mention of church's rates we remember to have met with. Drury's method of proceeding may be further inferred from the fact that of the thirty-six executions ordered by him in the city, one was a black-a-moor and two were witches, who were condemned by the law of nature, for there was no positive law against witchcraft in Ireland in those days. That defect was soon supplied, however, by the Statute Twenty-Seventh of Elizabeth, against witchcraft and sorcery. Sir John Perot, successor to Drury, trod in the same path, as we judge from the charge of severity against recusans, upon which, among other articles, he was recalled from the government. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, however, it began to be discovered by the wisest observers that violent methods were worse than useless with the Irish. Edmund Spencer urged that religion should not be forcibly impressed into them with terror and sharp penalties, as now is the manner, but rather delivered and intimated with mildness and gentleness. Lord Bacon, in his considerations touching the Queen's service in Ireland, addressed to Secretary Cecil, recommends the recovery of the hearts of the people as the first step towards their conversion. With this view he suggested a toleration of religion for a time not definite, except it be in some principal towns and cities, as a measure warrantable in religion and in policy of absolute necessity. The philosophic chancellor farther suggested, as a means to this desired end, the preparations of verses of Bibles and Catechisms and other works of instruction in the Irish language. In accordance with these views of conversion, the University of Trinity College was established by a royal charter in the month of January, 1593. The mayor and corporation of Dublin had granted the ancient monastery of All Hallows as a site for the buildings. Some contributions were received from the Protestant gentry, large grants of confiscated Abbey and other lands, which afterwards yielded a princely revenue, were bestowed upon it, and the Lord Treasurer Burleigh graciously accepted the office of its chancellor. The first provost was Archbishop Loftus, and of the first three students entered, one was the afterwards illustrious James Usher. The commanders and officers engaged at Kinsel presented it with the sum of eighteen hundred pounds for the purchase of a library, and at the subsequent confiscations in Munster and Ulster the college came in for a large portion of the forfeited lands. Although the Council in England generally recommended the adoption of persuasive arts and limited toleration, those who bore the sword usually took care that they should not bear it in vain. A High Commission court, armed with ample powers to enforce the act of uniformity, had been established at Dublin in 1593. But its members were ordered to proceed cautiously after the Ulster Confederacy became formidable, and their powers lay dormant in the last two or three years of the century. Essex and Mountjoy were both fully convinced of the wisdom of Bacon's views. The former showed a partial toleration, convived at the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, even in the capital, and liberated some priests from prison. Mountjoy, in answer to the command of the English Council to deal moderately in the great matter of religion, replied by letter that he had already advised such as dealt in it for a time to hold a restrained hand therein. The other course, he adds, might have overthrown the means of our own end of a reformation of religion. This conditional toleration, such as it was, excited the indignation of the Morzellus Reformers, whose favorite preacher, the youthful Usher, did not hesitate to denounce it from the pulpit of Christ's church, as an unhallowed compromise with anti-Christ. In 1601, Usher, then but twenty-one years of age, preached his well-known sermon from the text of the forty days, in which Ezekiel was to bear the iniquity of the house of Judah, a day for a year. From this year, cried the youthful zealot, will I reckon the sin of Ireland, that those whom you now embrace shall be your ruin, and you shall bear their iniquity. When the northern insurrection of 1641 took place, this rhetorical menace was exalted, after the fact, into the dignity of a prophecy fulfilled. After the victory of Kinsel, however, the ultra-Protestant Party had less cause to complain of the temporizing of the civil power. The pecuniary mulst of twelve pence for each absence from the English service was again enforced at least in Dublin, and several priests, then in prison, were on various pretenses put to death. Among those who suffered in the capital was the learned Jesuit, Henry Fitzsimons, son of a mayor of the city, the author of Britannomachia, with whom, while in the castle, usher commenced a controversy, which was never finished. But the terms agreed upon at Mellifont, between Mount Joi and Tyrone, again suspended for a short interval the sword of persecution. Notwithstanding its manifold losses by exile in the scaffold, the ancient church was enabled, through the abundance of vocations and the zeal of the ordained, to keep up a still powerful organization. Philip O'Sullivan states, under the next reign that the government had ascertained through its spies the names of one-thousand one-hundred and sixty priests, secular and regular, still in the country. There must have been between three-hundred and four-hundred others detained abroad, either as professors in the Irish colleges in Spain, France and Flanders, or as ecclesiastics, awaiting major orders. Of the regulars at home, one-hundred and twenty were Franciscans, and about fifty Jesuits. There are said to have been, but four fathers of the order of St. Dominic remaining at the time of Elizabeth's death. The reproach of Cambrensis had long been taken away, since every diocese might now point to its martyrs. Of these we recall, among the hierarchy the names of O'Helly, Bishop of Kilala, executed at Kilmalloch in fifteen seventy-eight. O'Hurley, Archbishop of Casual, burned at the stake in Dublin in fifteen eighty-two. Craig, Archbishop of Armagh, who died a prisoner in the tower in fifteen eighty-five. Archbishop McGarran, his successor, slain in the act of ministering to the wounded in the engagement at Tulsk, in Ross Common in fifteen ninety-three. MacEgan, Bishop of Ross, who met his death under precisely similar circumstances in Carberry in sixteen-oh-three. Yet through all these losses the Episcopal secession was maintained unbroken. In the early part of the next reign O'Sullivan gives the names of the four archbishops, Peter Lombard of Armagh, Edward McGarran of Dublin, David O'Carney of Casual, and Florence Conroy of Tom. On the other hand, the last trying half-century had furnished, so far as we can learn, no instance of apostasy amongst the bishops, and but half a dozen at most from all orders of the clergy. We read that Owen O'Connor, an apostate, was advanced by letters patented to Kilala in fifteen ninety-one, that Maurice O'Brien of Ara was, in fifteen seventy by the same authority, elevated to the sea of Kilalo, which he had resigned in sixteen twelve, that Myler McGrath, in early life of Francisca and Friar, was promoted by the queen to the seas of Klogger, Kilala, Archery and Lismore successively. He finally settled in the sea of Casual, in which he died, having secretly returned to the religion of his ancestors. For the rest the queen's bishops were chiefly chosen out of England, though some few natives of the pale or of the walled towns, educated at Oxford, may be found in the list. Of the state of learning in those troubled times the brief story is easily told. The bardic order still flourished and was held in honour by all ranks of the native population. The national adversity brought out in them, as in others, many noble traits of character. The harper, O'Dugan, was the last companion that clung to the last of the Desmond's. The bard of Tirkanel, Owen Ward, accompanied the Ulster chiefs in their exile, and poured out his Gaelic dirge above their Roman graves. Although the bardic compositions continued to be chiefly personal, relating to the inauguration, journeys, exploits, or death of some favourite chief, a large number of devotional poems on the passing of our Lord and the glories of the Blessed Virgin are known to be of this age. The first four runners of what was destined to be a numerous progeny, the controversial Ode or Ballad, appeared in Elizabeth's reign, in the form of comparisons between the old and new religions, lamentations over the ruin of religious houses, and the apostasy of such persons as Myler McGrath, and the son of the Earl of Desmond. The talents of many of the authors are admitted by Spencer, a competent judge, but the tendency of their writings, he complains, was to foster the love of lawlessness and rebellion rather than of virtue and loyalty. He recommended them for correction to the mercies of the provost Marshal, whom he would have to walk the country with half a dozen or half a score of his horsemen, in quest of the treasonable poets. As this was the age of the general diffusion of printing, we may observe that the casting of Irish type for the use of Trinity College, by order of Queen Elizabeth, is commonly dated from the year 1591. But as the college was not opened for two years later, the true date must be anticipated. John Kearney, treasurer of St. Patrick's Church, who died about the year 1600, published a Protestant catechism from the college press, which, says O'Reilly, was the first book ever printed in Irish types. In the year 1593 Florence Conroy translated from the Spanish into Irish a catechism entitled Christian Instruction, which he states in the preface, he had no opportunity of sending into Ireland until the year of the age of our Lord 1598. Whether it was then printed we are not informed, but there does not seem to have been any Irish type in Catholic hands before the foundation of the Irish College at Louvain in 1616. The merit of first giving to the press, in the native language of the country, a version of the sacred scriptures, belongs clearly to Trinity College. Nicholas Walsh, Bishop of Osary, who died in 1585, had commenced with the assistance of John Kearney to translate the Greek Testament into Gaelic. He had also the assistance of Dr. Nehemiah Donilon and Dr. William Daniel, or O'Daniel, both of whom subsequently filled the Sea of Tome. This translation, dedicated to King James, and published by O'Daniel in 1603, is still reprinted by the Bible Societies. The first Protestant translation of the Old Testament, made under Bishop Beedle's eye, and with such revision of particular passages as his imperfect knowledge of the language enabled him to suggest, though completed in the reign of Charles I, was not published before the year 1680. It was Beedle also who caused the English liturgy to be recited in Irish in his Cathedral, as early as 1630. Ireland and her affairs naturally attracted, during Elizabeth's reign, the attention of English writers. Of these it is enough to mention the poet Spencer, Secretary to Lord Greater Wilton, Vines Morrison, Secretary to Lord Mountjoy, and the Jesuit father, Campion. Campion, early distinguished at Oxford, was employed as Cambrances had been four centuries earlier, and as plowed in was two centuries later, to write down everything Irish. He crossed the Channel in 1570, and composed two books rapidly, without accurate or full information as to the condition or history of the country. The nearer view of Catholic suffering and Catholic constancy exercised a powerful influence on this accomplished scholar. He became a convert and a Jesuit. For members of that order there was but one exit out of life, under the law of England. He suffered death at Tibern in 1581. Richard Stannehurst, son of the recorder of Dublin, and uncle of the Archbishop Usher, went through precisely the same experiences as his friend Campion, except that he died a quarter of a century later, chaplain to the Archdukes at Brussels, instead of expiring at the stake. His English hexameters are among the curiosities of literature, but his contributions to the history of his country, especially his allusions to events and characters in and about his own time, are not without their use. Stannehurst wrote his historical tracks, as did Lombard the Catholic and Usher the Protestant primate, Osullivan, White, and O'Meara, and almost all the Irish writers of that age, without exception in the Latin language. The first Latin book printed in Ireland is thought to be O'Meara's Poem in Praise of Thomas, Earl of Ormonda Nasserie, published in 1615. The earliest English books printed in Ireland are unknown to me. The collection of Anglo-Irish statutes, ordered to be published while Sir Henry Sidney was deputy, was the most important undertaking of that class in the reign of Elizabeth. As to institutions of learning, if we accept Trinity College, which increased rapidly in numbers and reputation under the patronage of the Crown, and the College of St. Nicholas at Galway, protected by its remote situation on the brink of the Atlantic, there was no famous seat of learning left in the island. In the next reign, thirteen hundred scholars are stated to have attended that Western School of Humanity, when the ecclesiastical commissioners despotically ordered it to be closed, because the learned principal, John Lynch, would not conform to the religion established. But the greater number of the children of Catholics, who still retained property enough to educate them, were sent beyond seas, a fact with which King James, soon after his accession, reproached the deputation of that body. A proclamation issued by Lord Deputy Chichester in sixteen ten alludes to the same custom, and commands all noblemen, merchants, and others, whose children are broad for educational purposes, to recall them within one year from the date thereof, and in case they refuse to return, all parents, friends, etc., sending them money, directly or indirectly, will be punished as severely as the law permits. It was mainly to guard against this danger that the School of Wards was established by Elizabeth, and enlarged by James I, in which the Great Duke of Ormond, Sir Felham O'Neill, Murug, Lord Itchitquin, and other sons of noble families were educated for the next generation. Early in the reign of James there were not less than three hundred of these Irish children in the Tower, or at the Lambeth School, and it is humiliating to find the great name of Sir Edward Koch among those who gloried in the success of this unnatural substitution of the state for the parent in the work of education. End of Chapter 12. End of A Popular History of Ireland, Book Eight, by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read by Cibella Denton in Carrollton, Georgia, in December 2008. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibreVots.org.


At a recent Pike County Fiscal Court meeting, Judge Executive Ray Jones and the county commissioners addressed the subject of elk hunting. And to protect the elk herd near Fish Trap Lake in the Middlefield area, the court unanimously voted to close elk hunting in that area. I first and foremost elk hunting was never intended in the Middlefield area. The Army Corps has established an elk restoration area on adjacent property, part of the same property. And one of the greatest tourism potentials we have in eastern Kentucky is the elk, elk hunting, elk viewing. And this property is used for a lot of other purposes. Of course, we have people that go trail rides, people that run dogs, and we wanted to make sure the property wasn't close to all forms of hunting. But with the goal to try to restore the elk herd here in Pike County, we wanted to shut it down for elk hunting purposes. The fiscal court also addressed the subject of professional guides who were hired by hunters to help them locate and harvest elk they have tags for. We had Fish and Wildlife officers make us aware of professional guides that were charging a substantial amount of money to bring people in with the intent to hunt in Middlefield. And Middlefield was never intended to be open for elk hunting, and there was a mistake on the Fish and Wildlife website that showed that it was open. So we wanted to clarify that. We also want to make sure that if there are professional guide services that are charging people thousands of dollars to come and hunt, that they're registered with their Occupational Tax Office, that they're licensed to do business here. Because it's only fair if local businesses have to do it, that people are coming in making a lot of money off of elk hunting are also licensed. And we're going to continue to enforce the ordinance that has been put in place. Firearm season for elk in eastern Kentucky opens this Saturday.