contemptuously put aside the pretensions of Mathew's son, the new Baron of Dungannon.

Shane was a man of strong will and fierce passions, but able withal, and fully capable of meeting Elizabeth's tortuous ways with corresponding cunning. His ambition prompted him to gather to himself the whole power of the north, and to try to render himself independent of the English Government. He stood forth as the champion of the old order of things; as the despiser of the new decorations, which had been so eagerly sought by his fellow-chieftains; and sneered bitterly at Mc Carthy More, when the queen made him Earl of Clancarty.

The assumption by Shane of the title of The O'Neil was a direct challenge to the English Government; and Sir Henry Sidney, who was interim deputy in Sussex's absence, marched to Dundalk, to protect the borders of the Pale. At a meeting which then took place, Shane put his case so forcibly that Sidney agreed to lay the matter before the queen, and in the mean time to abstain from active measures.

Shane's claims seem to have made some impression on Elizabeth; but he was too dangerous a person to be left in full control of Ulster, and the English Government determined to be rid of him either by fair means or foul. On Sussex's return an attempt was made to detach O'Reilly, the chieftain of Brefny, from his allegiance to Shane by creating him Baron of Cavan, and to enlist O'Donnel by promising him the projected earldom of Tyrconnel. For some years the Scots of Argyleshire had

been migrating to the north-east coast of Antrim, and had materially strengthened Shane's hands by entering his service as mercenaries. It was determined to approach McDonnell their captain, and so complete the combination against O'Neil. Shane, however, was too quick for Sussex. He burst into Brefny and overawed O'Reilly, compelling him to give hostages for his good behaviour; he dashed into Tyrconnel and seized the persons of Calvagh O'Donnel and his wife, a daughter of the Lord of the Isles; and turning on Sussex, who had seized and fortified Armagh, drove him and his army headlong before him, and marched within twenty miles of Dublin. Such was the terror inspired by Shane's name after this victory, that Sussex was unable to bring his beaten army to face him in the field; he accordingly, with the queen's entire approval, had the baseness to endeavour to compass Shane's death by assassination, and suborned one Nele Gray, with a promise of a grant of land of the value of a hundred marks, to murder him. But the plot failed, and Nele Gray lost his reward.

Shane now retreated before Sussex's reinforcements, and consented to treat with his cousin of Kildare. The result of the negotiation was that Shane agreed to present himself in person to the queen, and state his case to her. Having obtained a safe-conduct, he at once proceeded to the English court, where he and his bodyguard of gallowglasses created considerable excitement. The thews and sinews of the stalwart Irishman seem to have attracted the eye of the susceptible Elizabeth; and though advantage was taken of the cunningly worded

safe-conduct, which guaranteed his return but omitted. to fix a date for it, to keep him at the English court til! he agreed to make his submission, her partiality for him induced her to respect his safety, and to permit him, after a three-months' sojourn, to return to his country, with all the expenses of his visit paid. According to the terms of the submission, the queen allowed him to continue "Captain of Tyrone," and promised to withdraw her troops from Armagh, but refused to commit herself further on the question of his claim to the earldom; Shane, on the other hand, promised to reduce the Scots of Antrim, and to set O'Donnel at liberty. O'Donnel was accordingly released; but O'Donnel's wife, who was Shane's own stepmother by marriage-for Shane had been married to O'Donnel's daughter-continued to live with him as his mistress.

For over two years Shane and the Government did not interfere with each other, further than that the sanctimonious Sussex made another attempt on his life by procuring an Englishman of the name of Smythe to send him a present of poisoned wine, which nearly caused his death; and in September, 1563, Elizabeth, with her hands full on the continent and the Scottish border, her treasury empty, and her ill-paid and mutinous troops only fit to be disbanded, was glad to come to a settlement with him at any price, and entered into a formal treaty of peace, in which she conceded all the jurisdiction which his father Con O'Neil had enjoyed. Shane, though he knew that the English Government was not to be trusted, seems fairly to have

kept his side of the bargain. He effectually crushed the Scottish settlers, whom he surprised and cruelly massacred; he kept within his own borders, and did not interfere with the English; and he governed Ulster with a sort of rough justice, encouraging "all kinds of husbandry and the growing of wheat," and enforcing order in his own way. He did not attempt to disguise his feelings of hostility towards the English; there was a sort of armed neutrality between them; they would have taken every opportunity to ruin him, and he would have joined any league, either in or out of Ireland, to drive them out of the country. His position was that of an independent native prince. His case was that, "His ancestors were kings of Ulster, and Ulster was his; with the sword he had won it, and with the sword he would keep it." He and the English Government had gauged each other's capacity for mischief, and were content to watch each other for the present.

Early in 1566 Sir Henry Sidney returned to Ireland as lord-deputy, with the express purpose of crushing the Irish chieftain. Shane held his vassal chiefs in a state of bondage; he had even ventured to domineer over his neighbours in Connaught, and, on a pretended claim for tribute, took from them a prey of four thousand cattle. He boasted that he could bring into the field a force of five thousand men of all arms. He entered into correspondence with Charles IX. and the Cardinal Lorraine, begging for a contingent of five or six thousand French soldiers; and allied himself with Argyle and the western islanders. Sidney set himself to work at the old game

of gradually detaching his allies, and succeeded in inducing Hugh O'Donnel, the brother of Calvagh, to fall in with his plans. He managed to send round some men by sea and to throw them into Derry, and so to make a diversion from the north; while he took the field himself and marched across the border. Shane, who had been harrying the English Pale, but had been checked by the fortress of Dundalk, and had made an unsuccessful attempt on Derry, found his flank threatened by O'Donnel; he turned upon him with the bulk of his force, and, crossing the Swilly at low water near Letterkenny, endeavoured to carry by storm O'Donnel's entrenched position. O'Donnel made a stout resistance, and the attack failed; Shane's troops, beaten and broken, were driven back upon the river, where the rising tide cut off his retreat. Here near three thousand of his troops were either butchered by the men of Donegal, or drowned in the waves; and Shane himself barely escaped by a ford higher up the river into Tyrone.

He was now desperate: his army was gone; the chiefs were revolting; the hope of foreign aid had come to nothing and in despair he determined to throw himself upon the generosity of the Scottish settlers of Antrim. This determination was fatal. The Scots were burning with revenge for his treacherous slaughter of their people a twelvemonth since, and as soon as he arrived amongst them with the widow of O'Donnel and a few followers, they hewed him in pieces, and having cut off his head, despatched it to the lord-deputy at Drogheda, who sent it to rot upon a spearhead on the walls of Dublin Castle.