pole, and long grinned upon the towers of Dublin Castle; a new muniment and visible sign of that inalienable legacy of hatred to the stranger bequeathed by an O'Neill two hundred years before ;-" Hatred produced by lengthened recollections of injustice, by the murder of our fathers, brothers, and kindred; and which will not be extinguished in our time nor in that of our sons. The headless trunk of Shane the Proud was buried where it fell and they still show his grave, about three miles from the little village of Cushendun, upon the coast of Antrim. ”米 English writers have painted this Shane as a hideous monster of sensual brutality: and strange tales are current of his wine cellars at Dundrum castle, on the coast of Down; of his two hundred tuns of Spanish wine and hogsheads of usquebaugh stored in the vaults of that fortress; of his deep carouses and loathsome drunkenness; and that unheard-of course of earth-bathing, burying himself to the ears in cold clay, to cool the raging fever of his blood. But it is the painting of an enemy. He was no stupid drunkard, who for so many years defied the armies and defeated the policy of Elizabeth: and his countrymen have only to lament that, by his indomitable pride and cruelty, he armed so many Irish chiefs against him, and against their native land; and further to regret that he did not import from Spain (instead of wines of Malaga) some thousand blades of the Toledo tempering, and Spanish soldiers, then the best troops in Europe, to wield them against the deadly enemies of his race. Letter of Donald O'Neill to the pope. CHAPTER III. TIRLOUGH LYNNOGH AND THE BARON OF DUNGANNON." A. D. 1567-1584. AFTER the murder of Shane O'Neill, Queen Elizabeth and her Irish deputy believed that all danger from Ulster was at an end. Sidney held a parliament in that year in which the legislators of the Pale solemnly passed an act for what they called the "attainder" of Shane O'Neill, and the forfeiture of his "estate," meaning all the lands inhabited by his sept. The act then proceeds, after abolishing the very name of O'Neill, and imposing the penalties of high treason upon any who should dare to assume it, to grant to the queen all the other lands of northern and eastern Ulster; O'Cahan's country, now the county Derry; the Route, the Glynns, and North Clanhugh-buidhe (or Claneboy,) now composing the county of Antrim, but then inhabited by the Mac Quillans, Mac Donnells, and O'Neills; Mac Gennis' country in Down, called Iveagh; O'Hanlon's and Mac Cann's in Armagh, called Oir-thir (Orier) and Clan Bressail; and also the whole of the present county of Monaghan, comprising Farney, Uriel, Lochty, and Dartry, inhabited by . the Mac Mahons, and Triuch of the Mac Kennas All these territories were gravely confiscated to the queen's use,-upon the map, and after a documentary manner; but her majesty never derived any benefit from those new dominions, being, indeed, kept out of them by the right owners. The truth is, the northerns never heard of these acts of Elizabeth's Parliament; and never dreamed that the murder of an Irish chieftain by a traitor Scot should give any foreign power authority in Ulster. Tirlough Lynnogh O'Neill, a grandson of Con More was invested with the chieftaincy of Ulster, by the permission, as the English historians say, of the queen's government; which also permitted him to hold (but, they assure us, by "English tenure") a portion of his estate; permitted indeed more than they could have wished, wanting the power to prevent it. Sir Henry Sidney however proceeded to the North, not on a hostile expedition, but attended only by six hundred men; and there he received from several chieftains what would now be called assurances of friendly relations, or submissions" in the language of Camden and Cox; and as the latter author with much gravity assures us, "settled Ulster," which, however, will appear not to have been finally settled at that time. When Shane O'Neill was murdered, the crafty councillors of Elizabeth seem to have fixed their eyes upon young Hugh, son to the ill-fated Baron Matthew, and destined him, according to the usual English policy, as an instrument to weaken and divide the power of Ulster; by degrees to destroy its independence; and so to reform it after their fashion,* little knowing the stuff that was in him for this Hugh was then "a young man little set by."† : Unhappily, we know but little of Hugh O'Neill's early life; except that he lived sometimes in Ireland, but much frequented the English court; in his own country an Irish chief, in London a courtly nobleman; that he was high in favour with Elizabeth, being a youth of goodly presence and winning speech; that he was not very tall in stature, but powerfully made, able to endure much labour, watching, and hunger; that "his industry was great, his soul large, and fit for the weightiest businesses;"-that he "had much knowledge in military affairs, and a profound dissembling heart; so as many deemed him born either for the great good or ill of his country."‡ This man was deemed a suitable instrument of English politicians to ruin his country's liberty; and with that view was recognized by the queen as Baron of Dungannon "by his father's right," and was supported as a rival to Tirlough, then the O'Neill; for thus it was expected that the Irish chieftain and the Saxon baron would destroy each other, and that the great house of Tyrone, divided against itself, would fall. Hugh For a candid explanation of this scheme see ser's View," p. 180. † Camden, Queen Eliz. O'Neill knew well the purport and meaning of all these honours: he understood what the golden chain of an English noble symbolized, when worn round the neck of a Celtic chieftain: he felt that in those stars and ribbons there lurked danger to his country, ignominy to himself. But he had much to learn amongst the English: he had their mode of warfare to master, their policy to study, in the characters of Burleigh and Walsingham, intending, apparently, to try conclusions with them in both those departments at a future day. So with that "profound dissembling heart" of his, he stomached their disgraceful dignities; nay, bore himself proudly under them, biding his time. Nearly twenty years passed away, from the death of Shane till 1584, when Perrot came to Ireland as lord deputy; during which Ulster was comparatively quiet, though as thoroughly unreformed, and anti-English as ever. The sacrilegious outrages by which the foreigners and their bishops prosecuted reformation in the south, (and which provoked the Geraldine war there) were still unknown in the O'Neill's country. Abbey lands and monasteries were peaceably possessed by their religious inhabitants; and three northern bishoprics, those of Clogher, Derry, and Raphoe, seem to have been abandoned altogether to Catholic prelates ;* so that as Doctor Leland, lamenting the circumstance, observes, "they were still granted by the pope without control." Not that the pope did not also appoint bishops, as • Davies. |