CHAPTER V
Conditions in Ulster Before the Revolt of O’Neill
THE first jury “trial” in Ulster was that of Hugh Roe MacMahon, chieftain of Monaghan, who became entangled with Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam in some one-sided “alliance,” and, failing in some slight particular to keep his side of the contract, was “tried” by twelve soldiers in Elizabeth’s pay, condemned to death and shot at his own door. This and other brutal murders, attested by the English historian, Moryson, filled the north with rage, and the very name of English “law” became a menace and a terror throughout the length and breadth of Ulster. From that bloody period dates the hatred and distrust of English “justice” which still survives among the Irish people. Indeed, instances of judicial murder, almost rivaling that of MacMahon Roe, might be cited by living Irishmen as having occurred within their own experience. Elizabeth’s deputy, Fitzwilliam, who was a consummate scoundrel and jobber in bribes, and would have made a champion modern “boodle alderman,” succeeded in making the very name of “shire,” or county, land detested in Ireland. When he informed McGuire, the bold chief of Fermanagh, that he was about to send a sheriff into his “county” to “empanel juries,” the chief answered grimly, “Let him come; but, first, let me know his eric (price of his blood), so that, if my people should cut off his head, I may levy it on the country.” This was the Irish method under the Brehon law. No sheriff appeared in Fermanagh for many a year after McGuire’s significant statement.
Red Hugh O’Donnell continued to make things exceedingly lively for the English garrisons in Ulster and Connaught, and made them take to the cover of their strong places after nearly every encounter. Near Inniskillen, the gallant Hugh McGuire, aided by a small body of the clansmen of Tyrone, who came “on the quiet,” under the command of O’Neill’s brother, Cormac, met a large English escort, who were conveying supplies to the town, to which Red Hugh O’Donnell had laid siege, at a ford of the river Erne. The English suffered a total rout, and their bread-wagons having been lost in the current, or overturned in the shallows, the spot is known to this day as Bael-atha-an-Biscoid—in English “the Ford of Biscuits.” Red Hugh, who had gone to Derry to meet a body of the Antrim Scots, who were coming to his aid, was necessarily absent when the battle was fought, and, on hearing of the victory, remarked he was “sorry he had not been in the fight, as he would have prevented the escape of so many of the English.” The latter began to perceive, by this time, that they had to “strip for the combat” in earnest if they meant to retain their foothold on the borders of Ulster.
Rumors of O’Neill’s disaffection had again reached the queen, and again he journeyed to London and reassured her of his “loyalty.” He even made great show of accepting the English title of Earl of Tyrone, and returned to Dungannon encumbered with the gold chain symbolical of his new “rank.” This did not please his clansmen, who could not see into his dissembling schemes, so he was obliged to placate them by consenting to be installed as The O’Neill—a title he very much preferred to his English one of Earl—at the rath of Tulloghoge (Hill of the Youths), in his native Tyrone. Thomas Davis, the poet of Young Ireland—a party of Irish literary men and high-souled patriots who flourished from 1842 until 1848—in his fine ballad of the “True Irish King,” gives a vivid picture of the scene in the following lines:
“Unsandaled he stands on the foot-dinted rock;
Like a pillar-stone fixed against every shock.
Round, round as the rath, on a far-seeing hill,
Like his blemishless honor and vigilant will.
The graybeards are telling how chiefs by the score
Had been crowned on the rath of the kings heretofore:
While crowded, yet ordered, within its green ring,
Are the dynasts and priests round the True Irish King.
“The chronicler read him the laws of the clan,
And pledged him to bide by their blessing and ban.
His skian and his sword are unbuckled to show
That they only were meant for a foreigner foe;
A white willow wand has been put in his hand—
A type of pure, upright, and gentle command,
While hierarchs are blessing, the slipper they fling
And O’Cahan proclaims him a True Irish King.
“Thrice looked he to heaven with thanks and with prayer,
Thrice looked to his borders with sentinel stare—
To the waves of Lough Neagh, to the heights of Strabane;
And thrice to his allies, and thrice to his clan—
One clash on their bucklers—one more—they are still—
What means the deep pause on the crest of the hill?
Why gaze they above him? A war eagle’s wing!
‘’Tis an omen—hurrah for the True Irish King!’”
Those who may condemn the apparently tortuous policy of O’Neill must bear in mind that he was only practicing against the enemies of his country the double-dealing and subtle acts they had themselves taught him, in order to make him a more facile instrument in their hands for that country’s subjugation. The dark and crooked policy inculcated by Machiavelli was then in vogue at all the European courts, and at none was it practiced more thoroughly than at that of Elizabeth of England. It must be admitted that the English found in Hugh O’Neill a very apt pupil—a true case of “diamond cut diamond.”