monial difficulties to their last settlement, made one more effort to gain allies in France. This time he wrote, not to the King, but to the Cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, imploring them, in the name of their great brother the Duke, who had raised the cross out of the dust where the unbelieving Huguenots were trampling it, to bring the fleur-de-lys to the rescue of Ireland from the grasp of the ungodly English. 'Help us!' he cried, blending Irish like-flattery with entreaty. When I was in England I saw your noble brother the Marquis d'Elbœuf transfix two stags with a single arrow. If the Most Christian King will not help us, move the Pope to help us. I alone in this land sustain his cause.'1

6

As the ship laboured in the gale the unprofitable cargo was thrown overboard. Terence Daniel, relieved of his crozier, went back to his place among the troopers; Creagh was accepted in his place, and taken into confidence and into Shan's household; all was done to deserve favour in earth and heaven, but all was useless. The Pope sat silent, or muttering his anathemas with bated breath; the Guises had too much work on hand at home to heed the Irish wolf, whom the English having in vain attempted to trap or poison, were driving to bay with more lawful weapons.

March.

Success or failure however was alike to the doomed garrison of Derry. The black death came back among them after a brief respite, and to the reeking vapour of the charnel-house it was indif

1 Shan O'Neil to the Cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, 1567: MS. Ibid.

ferent whether its victims returned in triumph from a stricken field, or were cooped within their walls by hordes of savage enemies. By the middle of March there were left out of eleven hundred men but three hundred available to fight. Reinforcements had been raised at Liverpool, but they were countermanded when on the point of sailing: it was thought idle to send them to inevitable death. The English council was discussing the propriety of removing the colony to the Bann, when accident finished the work which the plague had begun, and spared them the trouble of deliberation. The huts and sheds round the monastery had been huddled together for the convenience of fortification. At the end of April, probably after a drying east wind, a fire broke out in a blacksmith's forge, which spread irresistibly through the entire range of buildings. The flames at last reached the powder magazine; thirty men were blown in pieces by the explosion; and the rest, paralyzed by this last addition to their misfortunes, made no more effort to extinguish the conflagration. St Loo, with all that remained of that ill-fated party, watched from their provision boats in the river the utter destruction of the settlement which had begun so happily, and then sailed drearily away to find a refuge in Knockfergus.

Such was the fate of the first effort for the building of Londonderry; and below its later glories, as so often happens in this world, lay the bones of many a hundred gallant men who lost their lives in laying its foundations. Elizabeth, who in the immediate pressure of calamity resumed at once her nobler nature, 'perceiv

ing the misfortune not to come of treason but of God's ordinance, bore it well;' 'she was willing to do that which should be wanting to repair the loss;'1 and Cecil was able to write cheerfully to Sidney, telling him to make the best of the accident, and let it stimulate him to fresh exertions.2

May.

In

Happily the essential work had been done already, and the ruin of Derry came too late to profit Shan. His own people, divided and dispirited, were mutinying against a leader who no longer commanded success. May a joint movement was concerted between Sidney and the O'Donnells, and while the Deputy with the light horse of the Pale overran Tyrone and carried off three thousand cattle, Hugh O'Donnell came down on Shan on the river which runs into Lough Foyle. The spot where the supremacy of Ulster was snatched decisively from the ambition of the O'Neils, is called in the despatches Gaviston. The situation is now difficult to identify. It was somewhere perhaps between Lifford and Londonderry, on the west side of the river

Conscious that he was playing his last card, Shan had gathered together the whole of his remaining force, and had still nearly three thousand men with him. The O'Donnells were fewer in number; but victory, as generally happens, followed the tide in which events were setting. After a brief fight the O'Neils broke and fled; the enemy was behind them, the river was in front; and when the Irish battle-cries had died away over moor and

1 Cecil to Leicester, May, 1567: Irish MSS. Rolls House. 2 Et contra audentior ito.'-Cecil to Sidney, May 13: MS. Ibid.

mountain, but two hundred survived of those fierce troopers who were to have cleared Ireland for ever from the presence of the Saxons. For the rest, the wolves were snarling over their bodies, and the sea-gulls wheeling over them with scream and cry as they floated down to their last resting-place beneath the quiet waters of Lough Foyle. Shan's 'foster-brethren,' faithful to the last, were all killed; he himself, with half a dozen comrades, rode for his life, pursued by the avenging furies ; his first desperate intention was to throw himself at Sidney's feet, with a slave's collar upon his neck; but his secretary, Neil M'Kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope.

Surlyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at Lough Neagh; the Countess of Argyle' had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him. M'Kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred of the M'Connells.1 1

In the far extremity of Antrim, beside the falls of Isnaleara, where the black valley of Glenariff opens out into Red Bay, sheltered among the hills and close upon the sea, lay the camp of Allaster M'Connell and his nephew Gillespie. Here on Saturday, the last of May, appeared Shan O'Neil, with M'Kevin and some fifty men. He had brought the Countess and his prisoner as

1 Attainder of Shan O'Neil: Irish Statute Book, 11 Elizabeth.

peace offerings: he alighted at Allaster's tent, and threw himself on his hospitality; and though the blood of the M'Connells was fresh on his hands he was received 'with dissembled gratulatory words.' The feud seemed to be buried in the restoration of Surlyboy; an alliance was again talked of, and for two days all went well. But the death of their leaders in the field was not the only wrong which Shan had offered to the Western Islanders: he had divorced James M'Connell's daughter; he had kept a high-born Scottish lady with him as his mistress; and last of all, after killing M'Connell, he had asked Argyle to give him M'Connell's widow for a wife. The lady herself, to escape the dishonour, had remained in concealment in Edinburgh; but the mention of it had been taken as a mortal insult by her family.

June.

The third evening, Monday the 2nd of June, after supper, when the wine and the whisky had gone freely round, and the blood in Shan's veins had warmed again, Gillespie M'Connell, who had watched him from the first with an ill-boding eye, turned round upon M'Kevin and asked scornfully 'whether it was he who had bruited abroad that the lady his aunt did offer to come from Scotland to Ireland to marry with his master ?'

M'Kevin, meeting scorn with scorn, said that if his aunt was Queen of Scotland she might be proud to match the O'Neil.'

"It is false!' the fierce Scot shouted; 'my aunt is too honest a woman to match with her husband's murderer.'

VOL. VII.

37