While Con therefore, held the chieftaincy of Tyr-owen, and long after, the monasteries of his country stood secure. Though formally "given and granted" to King Henry along with the religious houses of other provinces, by those who had no title either to give or to grant, yet the commissioners appointed to reduce them into charge did not proceed (for excellent reasons) to hold the usual inquest on their possessions, to inventory their chattels and ornaments, or expel their peaceful inhabitants; and for seventy years after the "suppression" the monks of Donegal, Kilmacrenan, and Rathmullan, of Derry, Dungiven, Coleraine, and Dungannon, under the sheltering power of O'Neill and O'Donnell "escaped," says the Abbè Mac Geoghegan, "the sacrilegious fury of the heretics:" or as the same fact is stated by the Presbyterian historian,* the abbeys though long since suppressed, were not resumed into the hands of the king, nor their useless inmates expelled until the reign of James the First." 66 Yet the northern Irish liked not the new earl, nor his honours, however unencumbered by foreign laws and usages. The bards of Ulster had no songs of praise for the obsequious liegeman of a foreign prince. O'Donnell refused to send him his customary tribute for Inis-Owen: Mac Guire of Fermanagh thought scorn to be the Uriaght of such an O'Neill as this; and Con Baccagh soon found that he was no longer the prince of the North, and must speedily give place to wor * Dr. Reid, " History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland," vol. 1, p. 77. thier scions of that ancient stock; who happily were not wanting. For, unmindful of court intrigue, and little versed in the lore of Saxon heraldry, there was, growing up to manhood, amongst the hills of Ulster, another son of Con; one of the proudest and fiercest O'Neills that had appeared there since he of the Nine Hostages; and his name was Shane. Chasing the wolf and deer with his foster-brethren in the forests of Tyr-owen, and by the shores of the lake of Feval; learning from the lips of bard and seanaghy the ancient glories and achievements of the Hy-Nial, this Shane had grown to believe, with all his soul, that the Kinel-Eoghain were the hero-race most favoured by heaven; that Tyr-owen was the eye of Erin, and the very pride of the earth: and that of all noble and royal titles of honour and sovereignty, by far the most dread and illustrious was "The O'Neill." And behold! just as the impetuous youth has reached manhood, and feels within him the strength and fiery spirit to uphold the honour of his race, that proud name is to be extinguished. The golden collar of an O'Neill, the sacred chair of Tullogh-oge, are to be made of no account; lost or forgotten in these unheard-of peerages of the stranger. By the soul of Con More! By the awful grave of Caille Nial! this must not be. Let his father plume himself in his foreign feathers: let the bastard Matthew maintain, as best he may, his "estate tail" and coronet of Dungannon; he, Shane, will be an O'Neill:-THE O'NEILL; for the clansmen of Tyr-owen, as men are wont to do, soon found out the man who was fit to be their chief. It were long to tell, how the younger brethren of Shane stood by him for the honour of Tyrowen; how the bards espoused, as ever, the cause of nationhood, and with harp and voice kindled the ancient spirit of Erin; how there was war in Ulster till the Baron of Dungannon fell (by treachery say English chroniclers); how Con the Lame recognized his true son, and repented him of his base homaging and his foreign earldom; and how, at last, the haughty Shane sat upon the chair of Stone, was invested with the white wand of sovereignty, and duly made the O'Neill, and Prince of Tyr-owen. Baron Matthew, as we said, fell: whether by treachery or on battle field, certain it is, in the course of that war he lost both life and coronet :"a lusty horseman, well-beloved, and a tried souldiour,"* but no match for the ardent and resolute Shane. For that generation, the blood of the Dundalk smith, was not to prevail; but, in the halls of Dungannon, Matthew left an infant son, one Aodh, or Hugh, who goes a fostering among the English and is "preserved by them from Shane," (not without a politic design,) and disappears for a season. 66 CHAPTER II. SHANE THE PROUD AND THE REFORMATION. A. D. 1550-1567. THE "Reformation" was meanwhile proceeding vigorously in the English colony; and the history of Ireland, from the period at which we have opened its page, is so deeply coloured by that event and its consequences, that frequent reference to its course and progress is essential to clearness of narrative. On the archiepiscopal chair of St. Laurence O'Toole,* sat one George Browne, an apostate (or reformed) friar; raised to that eminence by the King of England, in the exercise of his pontifical supremacy; and to him, with four other persons, was directed in the thirtieth year of King Henry, a commission "to investigate, inquire, and search out where, within the said land of Ireland, there were any notable images or reliques, at which the simple people of the said Lord the King were wont superstitiously to meet together * and that they should break in pieces, deform, and bear away the same, so that no fooleries of this kind might thenceforth for * • Properly Lorcan O'Tuathail. ever be in use in the said land:" a commission which was executed, wherever the English power extended, with all the zeal that religion and rapacity could both inspire. The Report of these commissioners is still extant, one of the most singular statements of account on record; in which they specify the property, "by virtue of the commission of the lord the king aforesaid, into the hands of the lord the king, taken and appraised, and by the before-recited title sold." £326 2s. 11d. is stated to be "the price of divers pieces of gold and silver, in mass and bullion, and also of certain precious stones set in gold and silver, and of silver ornaments and other things upon divers images, pictures, and reliques." Three cathedral churches, St. Patrick's Dublin, Leighlin, and Ferns, with many monasteries, priories, parish churches and chapels, are stated to have been stripped. "The price of divers vases, jewels, and ornaments of gold and silver, and bells, and the utensils and household stuff of superstitious buildings," is set down at £1710 2s. Od. and 66 one thousand pounds of wax, manufactured into candles, tapers, images, and pictures," produced £20.* So far the material reform had been effected, but on the death of Henry the Eighth, the doctrinal revolution was to begin in good earnest. Somerset, the Protector, was a Zuinglian: and under the advice of Cranmer, (who was a Zuin Original account in the Record-Office, CustomHouse, Dublin, cited in Dr. Mant's "History of the Church of Ireland," p. 163. |