brother-in-law their relations for the future might be CHAP VIL improved. The present sovereign of England would 1562 perhaps give one of her daughters to the King of August Dahomey with more readiness than the Earl of Sussex would have consigned his sister to Shan O'Neil; yet he condescended to reply that he could not promise to give her against her will,' but if Shan would visit him 'he could see and speak with her, and if he liked her and she him they should both have his good will.'1 Shan glanced at the tempting morsel with wistful eyes. Had he trusted himself in the hands of Sussex he would have had a short shrift for a blessing and a rough nuptial knot about his neck. At the last moment a little bird carried the tale to his ear. 'He had advertisement out of the Pale that the lady was brought over only to entrap him, and if he came to the Deputy he should never return.' 92 After this second failure Sussex told Elizabeth that she must either use force once more or she must be prepared to see first all Ulster and afterwards the whole 'Irishry' of the four provinces accept Shan for their sovereign. There was no sort of uncertainty as to O'Neil's intentions he scarcely affected to conceal them. He had written to the Pope; he was in correspondence with the Queen of Scots; he had established secret relations with Spain through de Quadra; and Sussex advised war immediate and unsparing. No greater danger,' he said, had ever been in Ireland;' he implored the Queen not to trifle with it; and with a modest sense of his own failures he recommended her to send a more efficient person than himself to take the command-not, 1 Sussex to the Queen, September 20.-Irish MSS. CHAP VII he protested, from any want of will, for he would 1562 spend his last penny and his last drop of blood for September her Majesty,' but he knew himself to be unequal to the work. rebels. Post after post brought evidence of the fatal consequences of the quasi recognition of Shan's sovereignty. Right and left he was crushing the petty chiefs, who one and all sent to say that they must yield unless England Shan again supported them. Sussex wrote to him in useless menace 'that if he followed his foolish pride her Majesty would destroy him at the last.' He held a parley' with the Irish Council on Dundalk Bridge on the 17th of September, and bound himself to keep peace with the Queen for six months;' but he felt himself discharged of all obligations towards a government which had aimed at his life by deliberate treachery. In the face of his ambiguous dealings, the garrison had been still maintained at Armagh; at the beginning of October the hostages for his good behaviour which he had sent in on his return from England escaped from Dublin Castle; and on the 10th in a dark moonless night the guard at the cathedral were alarmed with mysterious lights like blown matches glimmering through the darkness. Had the troops ventured out to reconnoitre, some hundreds of 'harquebusmen' were in ambush to cut them off. Suspecting treason they kept within their walls, and Shan was compelled to content himself with driving their cattle; but had they shown outside not a man of them would have been left alive. The next day the Irish came under the gate and taunted them with 'cowardice,' 'telling them the wolves had eaten their cattle, and that the matches they thought they saw were wolves' eyes.'' 1 Sussex to Elizabeth, October 15.-Irish MSS. 1562 October Con O'Donnell the Callogh's son wrote piteously to CHAP VII Elizabeth that after carrying off his father and his mother Shan had now demanded the surrender of his castles; he had refused out of loyalty to England, and his farms were burnt, his herds destroyed, and he was a ruined man.1 A few days later M'Guyre from the banks of Lough Erne wrote that Shan had summoned him to submit ; he had answered that he would not forsake the English till the English forsook him;' wherefore,' he said, Shan 'I know well that within these four days the sayed Shan the Ulster will come to dystroy me contrey except your Lordshypp chiefs. will sette some remedy in the matter.'" Sussex was powerless. Duly as the unlucky chief foretold, Shan came down into Fermanagh with a great hoste;' M'Guyre still kept his truth to England; 'wherefore Shan bygan to wax mad and to cawsse his men to bran all his corn and howsses;' he spared neither church nor sanctuary; three hundred women and children were piteously murdered; and M'Guyre himself clean banished,' as he described it, took refuge with the remnant of his people in the islands on the lake, whither Shan was making boats to pursue him. 'Help me your lordship,' the hunted wretch cried in his despair to Sussex; 'I promes you, and you doo not sy the rather to Shan O'Nele is besynes, ye ar lyke to make hym the strongest man of all Erlond, for every man wyll take an exampull by me gratte lostys; take Con O'Donnell to Elizabeth, September 30. - Irish MSS. Rolls House. Sussex, in forwarding the letter, added This Con is valiant, wise, much disposed of himself to civility, true of his word, speaketh and writeth very good English, and hath natural 2 M'Guyre to Sussex, October 9.- crushes CHAP VII hyd to yourself by thymes for he is lyke to have all the power from this place thill he come to the wallys of Gallway to rysse against you.'' 1562 November Elizabeth knew not now which way to turn. Force, treachery, conciliation, had been tried successively, and the Irish problem was more hopeless than ever. Sussex had protested from the first against the impolicy of recognizing Shan; the event had proved that he was right, and the Queen now threw herself upon him and the Council of Ireland for advice. In the dense darkness of the prospects of Ulster there was a solitary gleam of The Scots light. Grown insolent with prosperity Shan had been Countess, dealing too peremptorily with the Scots; his countess, and the though compelled to live with him and to be the mother of his children, had felt his brutality, repented of her folly, and perhaps attempted to escape. In the day time when he was abroad marauding, she was coupled like a hound to a page or a horse-boy, and only released at night when he returned to his evening orgies. The fierce Campbells were not men to bear tamely these outrages, from a drunken savage on the sister of their chief; and Sussex conceived that if the Scots could by any contrivance be separated from Shan they might be used as a whip to scourge him.' Elizabeth bade Sussex do his best. The Irish Council agreed with the Deputy that the position of things' was the most dangerous that had ever been in Ireland;' and that if the Queen intended to continue to hold the 25. 1 Shan M'Guyre to Sussex, Oc- 2Shan O'Neil possesseth O'Donnell's wife, and by him she is with child. She is all day chained by the arm to a little boy, and at bed and board, when he is present, she is at liberty.'-Randolph to Cecil, Scotch MSS. Rolls House. 1562 country Shan must be crushed at all hazards and at all CHAP VII costs. In desperate acquiescence she consented to supply the means for another invasion; yet with characteristic November perversity she refused to accept Sussex's estimate of his own inability to conduct it. In submitting to his opinion, she insisted that he should take the responsibility of carrying it into action. Once more therefore the Deputy prepared for war. Fresh stores were thrown into Armagh, and the troops there increased to a number which could harass Tyrone through the winter. The M'Connells were plied with promises to which they were not unwilling to listen; and among the O'Neils themselves a faction was raised opposed to Shan under Tirlogh, the murderer of the Baron of Dungannon. O'Donnell was encouraged to hold out; M'Guyre defended himself in his islands. By the beginning of February Sussex undertook to relieve them. Council Unhappily the Deputy had but too accurately measured his own incapacity. His assassination plots were but the forlorn resources of a man who felt his work too heavy for him; the Irish Council had no confidence The Irish in a man who had none in himself; and certain that any distrust enterprise which was left to him to conduct would end Sussex. in disaster, they were unwilling to waste their men, their money, or their reputation. The army was disaffected, disorganized, and mutinous; Sussex lamented its condition to the Home Government, but was powerless to improve it; at length Kildare and Ormond in the name of the other loyal noblemen and gentlemen, declared that they had changed their minds; they declined to supply their promised contingents for the invasion, and requested that it should be no longer thought of. The farmers of the Pale gathered courage from the example. |