lintoy, which was being prosecuted at the same time as that of Coleraine.

During these operations," says Mr. Hill," the adjoining church was crowded with a trembling multitude of women and children, who were every hour threatened with destruction, either by fire or famine. In their dire extremity a good Roman Catholic priest, at great personal risk, interfered for their preservation. With difficulty he obtained permission to bring them water, and, in doing so, filled the water vessels with oatmeal, covering it with a few inches depth of water at the top. In this way he daily carried to the captives as much food as kept them alive till relief came. Tradition states that this truly good Samaritan was called MacGlaime, but nothing is known of him save this one noble Christian act."

Whose fragrance smells to Heaven."

Gladly would I quote any similar deeds of mercy on the part of Parsons or other of the Puritan leaders in Ireland of this time; but as far as I know there are none such to record.

A few weeks later, Monroe, who had arrived in Carrickfergus in April with 2,500 Scotch troops, and had expelled the insurgents from Newry, marched to Coleraine, burning Glenarm on his way, and making Lord Antrim a prisoner at Dunluce. Carte says this was effected in a treacherous manner after an entertainment given him by Lord Antrim; but other authorities deny the treachery. Till lately I had lost

sight of Alaster MacColl completely for near two years after this—neither any historical account nor family tradition giving me any information about him between the time when he retreated into the County of Derry, before Monroe's overwhelming force, and the time of his appointment as Major-General of about 2,000 men, despatched by Lord Antrim in the middle of 1644, in aid of Montrose in the Highlands of Scotland. From Sir John Clotworthy's officer, already quoted, I have learned that Alaster quickly united his force with Sir Phelim O'Neill's, who, thus reinforced, marched to the Lagan, a district in the north of the County of Donegall, between the rivers Foyle and Swilly, to attack a body of Protestants under Sir Robert and Sir William Stewart. O'Neill received a severe defeat.

"The next Boute the Irish and British," says this author, "had in Ulster was at a place called Glommaquin,* in the County of Dungall, whither Sir Phelim O'Neil and O'Cahan, their chief commanders, marched with about 4,000 men. Which the British hearing, under the command of Sir Robert Stewart, an old soldier, entrenched themselves in the night, but had not time to make it full breast high before morning, when the Irish appeared close to them, and sent a brigade under the command of Alexander MacColla MacDonnell, a stout brave fellow (under the command of Mount Rose afterwards in Scotland), who charged up alone to the work but was shot, and after a very sharp skirmish the Irish fell back,

Glenmaquin, in the parish of Raphoe, near Lifford, capital of the County of Donegall. The battle was fought 16th June, 1642. HillMacDonnells of Antrim, p. 75.

f

and took the retreat, where many were slain, and with much ado O'Cahan brought off MacDonnell in a horse-litter."

His wound was very severe and he had a tedious recovery, during which he was nursed by a priest named O'Crilly.

III.

In every history of this war which I have met with, scant justice is done to Lord Antrim, in respect to the services he rendered in support of the Royalist cause. He is held up to contempt as a braggart who made magnificent promises in 1644 to raise 10,000 men in aid of Montrose in Scotland, and ended by sending twelve or fifteen hundred men to join his standard in the Highlands. I assert with confidence that Antrim's services to Charles were far more important than those of any other Irish nobleman, with, perhaps, the exception of Ormond. I say perhaps, for I think Ormond's surrender of Dublin to the Long Parliament has left an indelible stain upon his character as a staunch and faithful cavalier. Already, in 1641, Lord Antrim had raised a regiment of 800 men, certainly intended by him for the support of Charles; but, by some unexplained cause, 600 of these men were Presbyterians, and therefore Parliamentarians, at the head of whom, reinforced by 200 volunteers of Coleraine, Archibald Stewart, Lord Antrim's agent, whom he had employed

to raise the regiment, marched out to attack Alaster McDonnell, with the result mentioned above.

I do not doubt that Lord Antrim, in offering to raise 10,000 men, much over-rated his power in 1644. His influence in his County of Antrim estate, running from Larne to the north coast and from the Bann to the North Channel, was seriously crippled by the presence of 10,000 Scottish soldiers, under Monroe, at Carrickfergus; and by the Plantation Protestants, under Sir Robert and Sir William Stewart, in the Counties of Derry and Tyrone. A few years before this, the chief of his family, known in the Highlands as the Clandonald South, or the Clan Ian Vohr, which had been for more than a century by much the most powerful family in the Clan MacDonald, had been driven out of Scotland by James and the Campbells; and here, therefore, the influence of Antrim to raise men was impaired by time and absence. Nevertheless, we shall see that he performed much more in recruiting Montrose's force than his depreciators gave him credit for. In Antrim he raised 2,500 men. In June, 1644, he writes to Ormond

"That he had sent off about 1,600 men, being as many as the ships could conveniently hold, completely armed by his own shifts, besides 1,500 pikes, and that he had discharged 700 or 800 men for want of shipping."* And Ormond himself writes on the 17th of the next month: "The number

*Carte's Ormond.

of men embarked by him (Lord Antrim) from Waterford and other places amounted to 2,500, well armed and victualled for two months. It cannot be denied," says Lord Clarendon, who was no friend of Lord Antrim, "that the levies the Marquis of Antrim made and sent over to Scotland, under the command of Colkitto, were the foundation of all those wonderful acts which were performed afterwards by the Marquis of Montrose. And the Marquis of Montrose did always acknowledge that the rise and beginning of his good success was due and to be imputed to that body of the Irish which had in the beginning been sent him by the Marquis of Antrim; to whom the King had acknowledged the service in several letters of his own handwriting."

In fact, these half-disciplined but heroic County of Antrim peasants formed the backbone of Montrose's force up to the time of the battle of Kilsyth; and in bravery and endurance of hardship and fatigue in a winter's campaign through the snowy Grampians and mountains of Badenoch, Lochaber, and Cantyre, they exhibited a heroism worthy of the hero that led them, speaking of whom, Cardinal de Retz says:

"Montrose, a Scottish nobleman, head of the house of Graham, the only man in the world that has ever realised to me the idea of certain heroes whom we now discover nowhere but in the lives of Plutarch."

Montrose led these men from victory to victory, from August, 1644, to August, 1645, when the victory of Kilsyth made him master of the open country of Scotland, "from Maidenkirk to John O'Groat's," till

*Carte, vol. iii., p. 328.