The persecuted earls clearly saw there was no hope of peace for them in Ireland, and that their presence only wrought further ill to their faithful clansmen, now reduced, for the first time, to the condition of “subjects” of the King of England. Lord Howth, a powerful Catholic noble of the Pale, was suspected of having given information to the Lord Deputy of a meeting held at Maynooth the previous Christmas at which the earls and several Anglo-Catholic noblemen were present. It was claimed that the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity was there discussed, and that another effort to overthrow the English power would be made by the parties to the meeting. This “plot,” if there were any at all, was communicated to the Clerk of the Privy Council by an anonymous letter dropped at the Castle of Dublin in March, 1607. “O’Neill,” says McGee, “was with Chichester, at Slane, in September when he received a letter from the McGuire—not the traitor of that title—who had been abroad, conveying some startling information upon which Tyrone seems to have acted at once. He took leave of the Lord Deputy, as if to prepare for a journey to London, whither he had been summoned on some false pretext; and, after spending a few days with his old friend, Sir Garrett Moore, at Mellifont, repaired to his seat of Dungannon, where he, at once, assembled all of his immediate family and all proceeded to the shores of Lough Swilly, at Rathmullen, where they were joined by Roderick O’Donnell and all of his household. They embarked immediately on the French ship which had conveyed McGuire to Ireland, and set sail for France, where, on landing, they were warmly welcomed and royally entertained by the chivalric King Henry IV, who, as became a stout soldier and able captain, greatly admired the prowess displayed in the Ulster wars by Hugh O’Neill. There sailed to France with the latter his last countess, daughter of McGenniss of Iveagh; his three sons, Hugh, John, and Brian; his nephew, Art O’Neill, son of Cormac, and many of lesser note. With O’Donnell sailed his brother Cathbar; his fair sister, Nuala, wife of Niall Garbh, who had, in righteous indignation, forsaken the traitor when he drew the sword against Ireland and her noble brother, Red Hugh; the lady Rose O’Doherty, wife of Cathbar, and, after his death, of Owen O’Neill; McGuire, Owen MacWard, the chief bard of Tyrconnel, and several others. It proved to be a fatal voyage, for it exiled forever the best and bravest of the Irish chiefs. Well might the Four Masters in their Annals of the succeeding generation say: “Woe to the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that conceived, woe to the council that decided on the project of voyage, without knowing whether they should to the end of their lives be able to return to their ancient principalities and patrimonies.” And, adds the graphic Mitchel, “with gloomy looks and sad forebodings, the clansmen of Tyrconnel gazed upon that fatal ship, ‘built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark,’ as she dropped down Lough Swilly, and was hidden behind the cliffs of Fanad Head. They never saw their chieftains more.”
Everything was now settled in Ulster, for the English interest, except for the brief “rebellion” of Sir Cahir O’Doherty, the young chief of Inishowen, who fell out with Sir George Powlett of Derry, and flew at once to arms. He made a brave struggle of some months’ duration, but, as no aid reached him from any outside quarter, he was speedily penned up in his own small territory, and, fighting to the last, died the death of a soldier—the noblest death he could have died, surrounded by the armies of Marshal Wingfield and Sir Oliver Lambert, on the rock of Doon, near Kilmacrenan, in August, 1608. Thus went out the last spark of Ulster valor for a generation.
King James, having used Niall Garbh O’Donnell for all he was worth to the English cause, grew tired of his importunities and had him conveyed to England, under guard, together with his two sons. All three were imprisoned in the Tower of London from which the traitor, at least, never emerged again. He met a fate he richly merited. Cormac O’Neill, the brave captor of Armagh, and the legitimate O’Cahan, both of whom had incurred the hatred of Chichester, also perished in the same gloomy prison.
And now all that remained to be done was to parcel out the lands of the conquered Ultonians and others of “the Meer Irish” between the captains of the new conquest. Chichester was given the whole of O’Doherty’s country, the peninsula of Inishowen, and to this was added O’Neill’s former borough of Dungannon, with 1,300 acres of valuable land in the neighborhood of the town. Wingfield was created Lord Powerscourt and obtained the beautiful district of Fercullen, near Dublin—one of the most charming domains in all Europe. Lambert became Earl of Cavan and had several rich estates, including that of Carrig, bestowed upon him in addition. All the counties of Ulster were declared forfeited to the Crown of England. The primate and other Protestant prelates of Ulster claimed, and received, 43,000 acres. Trinity College, Dublin, received 30,000 acres, in Tyrone, Derry, and Armagh, together with six advowsons, or Church beneficies, in each county. The various guilds, or trades, of the city of London, England, obtained the gross amount of 209,800 acres, including the city of Derry, to which the name of “London” was then prefixed. Grants to individuals were divided into three classes of 2,000, 1,500, and 1,000 acres each. Catholic laborers were required to take the oath of supremacy—acknowledging King James as spiritual head of the Church—which they, notwithstanding all their misfortunes, nobly refused to do. In the end, seeing that the fields would remain uncultivated for the most part, the English and Scotch “undertakers,” or settlers, for prudence’ sake, rather than from liberal motives, practically made this tyrannical requirement a dead letter. But the Catholic tillers of the soil were driven from the fertile plains and forced to cultivate miserable patches of land in the bogs or on the mountains. When these became in any degree valuable, an exorbitant “rent” was charged, and the poor Catholics, utterly unable to pay it, were again compelled to move to some even more unpromising location, where the same procedure again and again produced the same wretched result.
It was thus that the ancient Irish clans, and families, were actually robbed, in spite of solemn treaties and royal pledges, of their rightful inheritance, and that strangers and “soulless corporations” became lords of their soil. It was the beginning, in Ulster at least, of that system of “felonious landlordism” which is the curse of all Ireland, in spite of recent remedial measures, even in this day. So, too, began that English garrison in Ireland—pitting race against race and creed against creed—which has divided, distracted, and demoralized the Irish nation ever since. The “Plantation of Ulster” was the most fatal measure ever carried into effect by English policy in Ireland. Some of the Irish princes did not long survive their exile. From France they had proceeded to Rome and were very kindly received by the Pontiff, who placed residences commensurate with their rank and fame at their disposal. Roderick O’Donnell died in the Eternal City in July, 1608. McGuire died at Genoa, while en route to Spain in August, and, in September, Cathbar O’Donnell also passed away, and was laid in the same grave with his gallant brother, on St. Peter’s Hill. (McGee.) O’Neill’s fate was sadder still. The historian just quoted says of him: “He survived his comrades as he did his fortunes, and, like another Belisarius, blind and old, and a pensioner on the bounty of strangers, he lived on eight weary years in Rome.” Death came to his relief, according to a historian of his own period, in 1616, when he must have been over seventy years of age. He sleeps his last sleep amid the consecrated dust of ages, beneath the flagstones of the convent of St. Isidore; and there, in the words of the Irish orator and American general, Meagher, “the fiery hand that rent the ensign of St. George on the plains of Ulster has mouldered into dust.”
BOOK III
RECORDING THE DOINGS OF THE ENGLISH AND IRISH, IN IRELAND, FROM THE TIME OF JAMES I TO THE JACOBITE WARS IN THE DAYS OF JAMES II AND WILLIAM III