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The disorganised condition of the county during the transition from the Irish to the English system of government invited attack. Some of the disappointed Burkes and O'Briens conspired together to carry off as much as they could of what was left after O'Donnell. They swept through Feacle and Tulla, and along the course of the Fergus by Ballyalla, and rested for the night with their plunder at Kilrachtis. The following day they were pursued by the MacNamaras and some troops in the pay of the Earl of Thomond; but, with the loss of some men, and the wounding of two of the leaders, one of whom, Teigue O'Brien, a near relative of the earl, died soon after, they escaped into Galway.

The earl, after all this loss to the county, which may be fairly ascribed to his policy, appeared on the scene for a short period in the beginning of 1601, and signalised his presence by holding an assize at the monastery of Clonroad, and hanging sixteen persons for various offences.1 He then went to England, from which he returned towards the end of the year with reinforcements for Lord Mountjoy, who was then besieging Kinsale.

The disastrous defeat of O'Neill and O'Donnell, who marched south to relieve the Spaniards besieged in Kinsale, does not properly find a place in this history. The only one of note from Clare who took part in it on the Irish side was Teigue Caoch MacMahon, who, after his flight from Carrigaholt, took refuge with O'Donnell, and fought under his banner. At the door of another MacMahon, Brian of Monaghan, lies the shame of the betrayal of the Irish. He should not have been trusted, for he was one of those who sent sons to be brought up at the feet of Elizabeth. The request, secretly conveyed, for a bottle of whisky, was apparently the signal, prearranged between him and Sir George Carew, that important information was about to be conveyed. His position as one of the council of war in the Irish army enabled him to give Carew some hours' warning of the contemplated night attack. That betrayal, as well as the confusion the army were thrown into by going astray in the darkness, gave the Irish 1 Four Masters.

2 Pac. Hib. vol. ii. chap. xxi. Moryson, vol. ii. chap. ii.

and Catholic cause a blow from which it never fully recovered. It will suffice to quote the Four Masters as showing how it told on the Irish mind.

"Manifest was the displeasure of God and misfortune to the Irish of fine Fodhla on this occasion; for previous to this day a small number of them had more frequently routed many hundreds of the English, than they had fled from them in the field of battle, in the gap of danger, in every place they had encountered, up to this day; immense and countless was the loss in that place, although the number slain was trifling; for the prowess and valour, prosperity and affluence, nobleness and chivalry, dignity and renown, hospitality and generosity, bravery and protection, devotion and pure religion of the island, were lost in this engagement."

After the surrender of Kinsale, and the retreat homewards of the Northern Irish, a vain but gallant attempt was made by O'Sullivan Beare to hold his own castle of Dunboy. Teigue Caoch MacMahon, faithful to the end, and brave to a fault, threw in his fortunes with O'Sullivan; and here he found himself once more besieged by his old enemy, the Earl of Thomond. An act of insubordination brought his stormy life to an end in a most tragic way by the hand of his own son. O'Sullivan wanted the vessel of which we have heard before to sail for supplies to Spain. MacMahon, whose son was in charge of her in the harbour, refused to let her out of his own reach. O'Sullivan took a boat with some men to board her himself, into which MacMahon also leaped. When close to the vessel, he called out to his son to fire. It was his own death-summons. He received a bullet, from which he died soon after. The son, overwhelmed by such a misfortune, sailed away to Spain, from whence he never was again. heard of. With him disappeared the family that ruled for

more than a thousand years in West Corcovaskin.

The glorious though unsuccessful defence of Dunboy needs no recounting here. It stands out in history as one of the most heroic and the most brilliant on record.

1 "There was no barony in Ireland of which this Teigue was not worthy to be lord for bounteousness, for purchase of wine, horses, and literary works."-Four Masters.

O'Sullivan Beare, seeing all was now lost, determined, however, not to sue for terms or surrender. At the head of about one thousand followers, he set out for the North. He had to fight his way literally inch by inch. The retreat celebrated by Xenophon was not so full of adventure. When they came upon the Shannon at Coill-fhire, a wood near Portland, in the parish of Lorha, not finding boats to ferry them over, they killed all their horses, made corachs of their skins, and succeeded, strangely enough, in crossing on such frail boats, carrying with them as much as they could of the flesh to serve as food in their great extremity. Being now in the Clanrickard country, they were hemmed in on all sides by the English and their allies, the Burkes. Fighting against great odds, but with the courage of despair, they cut their way through, and finally reached the friendly shelter of O'Ruarck's territory-thirty-five in all out of the thousand who started with their chief from Glengariff.1

The defeat of the Catholic Irish was now complete for the present at least; but it was resolved to renew the struggle if only reinforcements could be procured from Spain. O'Donnell proceeded there for this purpose; and, notwithstanding the total failure of the attempt to relieve the Spanish garrison of Kinsale, he was received at court with. the highest marks of distinction. The hope was held out to him of yet one more attempt to rescue the Catholic Irish from the grip of the Protestant English queen. The Irish army under O'Neill was still to be counted on. They had made their way back to the North, little knowing that they had in their company a traitor-MacMahon, to whom their defeat was largely due.

While these events were occurring in the South, a considerable number of the discontented in Clare took arms once more. Among these were some near relatives of the Earl of Thomond, who seized on the castles of Derryowen, in Kilkeady, and Castletown, in the parish of Doura. When, however, he returned with considerable force to Clare, they did not attempt to hold out against him, especially as he gave them promise of safety for a fortnight, within which to 1 Four Masters.

put together and carry away what they could of their property. No sooner had they crossed the Shannon into Duharrow, than O'Brien of Ara-that pliant tool of the English policy-set upon them, captured most of them, and put them back into the hands of the earl at Killaloe. Here, on the pretext that their fortnight had expired, he hanged them face to face 1 on the nearest trees-a favourite method of his, as was shown before at Dunbeg and Dunmore. could now write to his mistress Elizabeth, who was then on her dying bed in that awful agony of conscience of which English history tells us, that the Catholic Dalcassian race of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary was, mainly through his effort, at the feet of a foreign Protestant potentate. Truly a noble boast for the head of that valiant, proud, and, for twenty centuries, free and freedom-loving people.

He

In the year A.D. 1602 died that John MacNamara, Lord of West Clancuilean, who had refused to sign the formal surrender of their lands and their rights proposed to the Clare chiefs by Sir John Perrot. Mac Brody also died, than whom, say the Four Masters, "there was not in Ireland a better historian, poet, or rhymer."

On the 24th of March 1603, Queen Elizabeth ended her stormy and, from a worldly point of view, most successful career. She was succeeded on the throne by James VI. of Scotland and I. of England-the son of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, whom, in her jealous hate, she had so foully and so unnaturally brought to the scaffold.

1 Four Masters.

CHAPTER XIX.

FROM 1602 TO 1641.

Recusants-Priests flung overboard at sea after leaving Scattery

(Iniscatha) Island-Parliament in Dublin A.D. 1613--Interesting State of Protestantism in Thomond, as described by Protestant Bishops-First Great Confiscation.

WHEN James ascended the throne, he found all Ireland. reduced to at least outward submission. His accession was a cause of almost as much joy to the Catholic Irish as was the death of Elizabeth. They hoped great things from the son of a mother who suffered death for their faith, and a prince who had Irish blood in his veins. Never were a people so cruelly disappointed. At the outset the gage was thrown down to them. Their leading men were called upon to take the oath of loyalty to the king, including an acknowledgment of his supremacy as head of the Church. Those who refused were called recusants; and measures were soon taken to deprive them of their lands and such offices of emolument or honour as they held. The king gave himself up blindly to the avarice and cupidity of his counsellors. The rage for dispossessing the Irish and transplanting English into their places took full possession of him. To crown all, the "Act of Uniformity" of Elizabeth, prohibiting attendance at Roman Catholic worship, was again solemnly promulgated; and on the 4th of July 1605, a further proclamation was issued by His Majesty, declaring to his beloved subjects of Ireland "that the freedom of worship they were led to expect was not to be given them, and ordering all Catholic. bishops and priests out of the kingdom."

The first to suffer from these tyrannical measures were the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, the latter the brother of

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