It would appear that this Captain Morchowe McTerrilagh O'Brien, of the Clantiege of Aran, on July 14 of the same year, 1575, was in Galway; and being there, was minded to claim the privilege his ancestors had, he alleged, enjoyed of lodgings and meals for two days and two nights in the town, and the "mayor calling before him auncient old credibel witnesses, they declared upon their oaths that they never heard of their parents or saw the said sept have no more than two meals in the town, and it was thereupon ordered that said sept shall have no more than two meals, they being always bound to serve attend and wait upon us and in our service as their ancestors had been, and further that it was the O'Brien sept that was bound to give lodging and entertainment to all the commons of Galway, when they shall repair to the islands of Aran. And the said mayor did grant and promise O'Brien to be aiders, helpers, maintainers and assisters, of him against all persons that would lay siege to spoil the islands or castle of Aran or otherwise wrong the said Morchowe or his sept."[12]

THE CLANRICARDES.

a.d. 1579. Queen Elizabeth, by her charter to the town of Galway, having recited that Richard III., late King of England, out of his abundant grace and for the greater security and safeguard of the town of Galway, willed and ordained that neither MacWilliam Burke, Lord of Clanricarde, nor his heirs, should have any rule or power in the said town of Galway, therein to act, exact, receive, ordain, or dispose of anything without the special license, and by the assent and superintendence of the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty of the said town of Galway; appointed the mayor of Galway to be admiral of her and her successors within the town aforesaid and within and over the islands of Aran and from the said islands to Galway.

a.d. 1580. There died in this year in the islands of Aran an islander who had reached the extreme old age of two hundred and twenty years. This patriarchal inhabitant killed a bullock in his own house every year for one hundred and eighty years.

THE FEROCIOUS O'FLAHERTIES.

a.d. 1586. In this year the O'Briens, long the lords of the islands of Aran, "were expulsed from their territory by ye ferocious O'Flaherties of Iar Connaught." The matter was brought under the knowledge of the Crown, who resolved to put an end to the lawless savagery which existed in those parts, whereby one sept could, in times of peace, sail on a plundering expedition against another and expel them, wasting the country with fire and sword all the time; and accordingly a commission, under the great seal, was issued for the purpose of examining the title, if any, of the O'Flaherties to the islands. Having gone through the mockery of an inquisition, the commissioners found that the islands belonged not to the O'Briens, lords of the isles, nor yet to the O'Flaherties, who had no title at all, but that they belonged to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in right of her crown and dignity; and accordingly she, by her letters patent dated January 15th, a.d. 1587, instead of restoring them to the ancient proprietors, granted them entire to Sir John Rawson, of Athlone, gentleman, and his heirs, on condition that he should retain constantly on the islands twenty foot-soldiers of the English nation.[13]

CLAN OF MAC TIEGE O'BRIEN.

a.d. 1588. When the return of the inquisition and subsequent patent granting the lands away from the O'Briens became known, the corporation of Galway thus petitioned the Queen, in favour of Murrough McTurlogh O'Brien: "That the Mac Tieges of Aran, his ancestors, were under her Majesty and her predecessors the temporal captains or lords of the islands of Aran, and held their territories and hereditaments elsewhere under the name of Mac Tiege O'Brien of Aran, time out of man's memory, and that they the said corporation, had seen the said Murrough McTurlogh authorized by all his sept, as chief of that name, and in possession of the premises as his own lawful inheritance, as more at large doth appear in our books of record, wherein he continued until of late he was, by the usurping power of the O'Flaherties expelled; and we say, moreover, that the sept of the Mac Tiege O'Briens of Aran, since the foundation of this city, were aiding and assisting ourselves and our predecessors against the enemies of your majesty and your predecessors in all times and places, whereunto they were called as true and faithful and liege people to the crown of England, to maintain, succour, and assist the town.

"(Signed), "John Blake, Mayor of Galway,
"Walter Martin, Bailiff,
"Anthony Kirwan, Bailiff."

Queen Elizabeth heard the appeal, but her Majesty was inexorable. It is more than probable that the O'Briens had caused, at least remotely, the alienation of their inheritance by their own domestic feuds. At the north extremity of Inishmore, the large island, not far from Port Murvey, the islanders show a field where human bones are frequently dug up, and for which reason it is called Farran-na-Cann, "the field of the sculls." Here the O'Briens are said at some remote period to have slaughtered each other almost to extermination. This sort of self-destruction is the blackest blot on the page of Irish history. It has always been, and alas! is Ireland's sad and unalienable inheritance.