usual, to the other sees; but for some of those there were also nominal bishops (without clergy or flocks), named by letters patent from the. queen.

During this period also the civil policy of the North remained unchanged; there was not a sheriff north of Dundalk. No "lord president" had yet ventured into these regions to govern with his " course of discretion," as Sir John Davies terms their method of administering justice. Hugh O'Neill, when in Ireland, seems to have resided quietly at his house of Dungannon, and to have acquiesced, contrary to all expectation, in the chieftaincy of old Tirlough, who held his state principally in Strabane or Benburb. And so long as the frontiers of the Pale were not advanced northwards, neither chiefs nor people concerned themselves about the affairs of other parts of the island: for, alas! there was still no Irish nation.

Several transactions, however, occurred in Ulster, during this period, which deserve some notice. In Queen Elizabeth's reign foreign plantations began to be a favourite project with the English. Large tracts of North America were by those all-powerful "letters patent" taken from the red men and deliberately given and granted to such of her discontented and adventurous subjects as would undertake to form settlements there and establish true religion and Ulster, which had been so solemnly declared forfeit to the queen seemed a very suitable theatre for similar plantations. Accordingly one Thomas Smith, a secretary to Elizabeth, having a natural son to

:

provide for, whose illegitimacy was a bar to his attaining distinction in his own country, desired to make him the founder of a noble family in Ireland. He moved the queen, therefore, to grant this young adventurer a territory in the Ards, on the east coast of Down, for the purpose, as Camden assures us, of civilizing and converting the barbarous inhabitants. And as it had always been found that the Irish could not be civilized or converted, until they had first been largely plundered, every foot soldier who should accompany Smith, was to take for his own share, one hundred and twenty acres of land, every horseman two hundred and forty acres, and all other persons according to their rank, paying Smith, as Lord of Ards, one penny per acre. But Brian Mac Art O'Neill, and his clansmen, to whom all that land belonged, had not been consulted in these arrangements, and apparently were not desirous of such civilization as this foreign pirate had to offer for when Smith landed, (1571,) and was proceeding to establish himself in the Ards, O'Neill and his people fell upon them by surprise, (by treachery, some historians say, as if the O'Neills were his natural and sworn allies,) and killed Smith and many of his troops; the rest fled to their ships and speedily weighed anchor, carrying their letters patent and their civilization to some more hospitable shore.

Shortly after, in the year 1573, Walter Devereux, earl of Essex, projected a more extensive plantation in the same district. Twelve hundred troops were to be maintained and fortifications built at the joint expense of the queen and of

Essex; and, this time, each horseman was to have four hundred acres, and each footman two hundred. A few scores of acres, more or less, of the Irish enemies' land seemed to have been reckoned of small account. Essex raised £10,000 (equal to £100,000 of the present money) by mortgaging his English estate to the queen; made vast preparations in men, arms, and stores; and so hopeful was the expedition held, that Lord Rich, Lord Dacre, Sir Henry Knowles, three sons of Lord Norris, and several other Englishmen of distinction, accompanied him to have a share of the glory and the profit. The armament set sail and arrived in the bay of Carrickfergus.

So formidable an invasion seems to have caused for the time a close union amongst the several chieftains of the name of O'Neill. Brien, lord of Clan-hugh-buidhe, whose territories were the immediate objects of this marauding expedition, was speedily joined both by Tirlough Lynnogh, and Hugh of Dungannon, who was then in this country, and seems, notwithstanding his English peerage and high favour with the queen, to have been strongly of opinion that Ireland was for the Irish. Several skirmishes occurred between the O'Neills and the troops of Essex. The new colony began to promise more hard fighting than either profit or Protestantism; and the English noblemen who shared the adventure, one by one, withdrew to England. At last the earl petitioned the queen for liberty to abandon the plantation and return home, which was not howver granted him for more than a year: and the only further proceeding we hear of in connexion

E

with the affair is that, in 1574, "a solemn peace and concord was made between the earl of Essex and Felim O'Neill. However, at a feast wherein the earl entertained that chieftain, and at the end of their good cheer, O'Neill and his wife were seized; their friends who attended were put to the sword before their faces, and Felim, together with his wife and brother, was conveyed to Dublin, where they were cut up in quarters." Even this expedient, however, did not secure Essex in his settlement. The Irish of that country would not be civilized notwithstanding all his exertions, and never could see the justice or expediency of allotting their lands to English soldiers. The troops were slain or scattered; the money was lost; and at length the earl got permission to return to England.

But the Geraldine war had now broken out in Munster, and Hugh of Dungannon must be followed to the South.

* Irish M S. Annals, quoted by Leland and Curry.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GERALDINES AND

REFORMATION IN THE

SOUTH.

1570-1578.

He

As the wars in Munster were solely on account of religion, it is needful to keep sight of the "Reformation." In the year 1575, a very singular letter was addressed to the Queen of England by Sir Henry Sidney, then lord deputy, in which the writer undertakes an exposition of the state of his province in matters ecclesiastical.* takes as an example the diocese of Meath, "the best peopled diocese, and best governed country," he calls it, of this realm, of which the queen's bishop at that time was one Brady. Sir Henry says there were in that diocese two hundred and twenty-four parish churches, of which one hundred and five were served by "very simple and sorry curates," and of these curates only eighteen were found able to speak English, "the rest Irish priests, or rather," as he prefers to call them, "Irish rogues." In many places the very walls of the churches were down, 66 very few chancels covered, windows and doors ruined." And if such be the estate of the church in Meath

Sir. H. Sidney's Letters and Memorials.