Death and character of Hugh Roe O’Donnell.
The fall of Dunboy prevented the King of Spain from sending prompt help, but he did not give up the idea. Rumours of fresh invasions were rife during the summer, and sooner or later O’Donnell might have returned with another army. That chief had sailed from Castle Haven immediately after the battle of Kinsale, and fugitives from Munster continued to join him whenever opportunity offered. He landed at Corunna, and went straight to the King at Zamora. Falling upon his knees he obtained favourable replies to three requests: that an army should be sent to Ireland; that the King, when he gained Ireland, would set no O’Donnell over him or his successors; and that he would never deny any right that the O’Donnells had ever had. Philip sent him back to Galicia, then under the government of his zealous friend, the Marquis of Caraçena. Exiles are ever sanguine, and he professed to have no doubt of ultimate success; but Spanish vacillation sorely tried his impatient spirit. When the surrender of Kinsale became known in Spain, some vessels intended for Ireland were unloaded, and Don Juan’s report was unfavourable. The disgrace of that unsuccessful commander revived O’Donnell’s credit, and the ship which brought over Bishop MacEgan and his 12,000l. was despatched. O’Donnell began to despair of a great fleet, and begged to be allowed to go with a few small vessels. He asked his friends in Ireland to let him know the whole truth, but to keep bad news from Spanish ears. This, of course, could not be done, and the arrival of Archer and a crowd of fugitives after the disaster at Dunboy, must have outweighed all his arguments. He sought the King again at Simancas, and there he died after an illness of seventeen days. His body was carried, with great pomp, to the royal palace at Valladolid, and buried in the Franciscan monastery with every mark of respect. His solemn requiem was the death-song of the Irish tribal system. Much romance cleaves to his name, but his ideas scarcely rose above those of an ordinary chief. Local supremacy was his main object, and the panegyric of the annalists fails to raise him to the height of a national hero. He was, they say, ‘the vehement, vigorous, stern, and irresistible destroyer of his English and Irish opposers.’ He died at thirty, but there is nothing to show that he would have even attempted the task of building a stable edifice with the shifting sands of Irish life.[408]
Assassination plots.
The Irish accounts do not suggest foul play, but Carew believed that O’Donnell had been poisoned by one James Blake, of Galway, who had announced his intention of killing him. Blake was not hired by Carew, but he would hardly have made him his confidant if he had not expected reward, and he it was who brought the first news of O’Donnell’s death to Munster. John Anias, who had been implicated in a plot to murder Elizabeth, had offered to kill Florence MacCarthy, and afterwards gave out that he had been suborned by Cecil to poison that troublesome person. Cecil and Carew employed Anias as a spy, but denied that he had ever said anything about poison, and had him hanged out of the way as soon as he could be caught. Neither Blake nor Anias would have dared to speak of such things to a modern statesman, but the morality of that age was different. A similar suspicion attaches to the death of Hugh O’Donnell’s brother, Rory, afterwards Earl of Tyrconnell. An Italian came to Sir Henry Wotton, who was then ambassador at Venice, and offered to kill Tyrone or Tyrconnell, but without mentioning their names or even seeming to know them correctly. Wotton said the Earls were of no importance, having run away because they could do no harm at home. No doubt proclaimed rebels might be justly slain; ‘yet,’ he added, ‘it was somewhat questionable whether it might be done honourably, your Majesty having not hitherto proceeded to the open proscription of them to destruction abroad, neither was it a course so familiar and frequent with us as in other states.’ Three months later Tyrconnell and his page died rather mysteriously at Rome, others of his party also sickening. Roman fever was probably to blame, though Wotton seems to have half-suspected poisoning, but in the interest of the papacy, and not of the King of England.’[409]
Last struggles in Connaught.
When O’Donnell sailed for Spain he left his brother Rory in charge of the clan, who led them through all Munster and Connaught. The vast herds which Hugh had taken from his neighbours were found grazing peacefully in Sligo, and Ballymote was given up by O’Gallagher to the acting chief. Sir Niel Garv was co-operating with Docwra, and kept his rival out of Donegal; but Rory allied himself with O’Connor Sligo, and sought help from Brian O’Rourke against Sir Oliver Lambert, who was pressing him from the Connaught side. Tibbot-ne-Long and others of the lower Burkes solicited Lambert’s help, and he came up from Galway with a strong force, while O’Rourke fought for his own hand and refused to help O’Donnell. Lambert says he might easily have been stopped either at Ballina or Ballysadare, but he reached Sligo without serious fighting. The town had been burned by O’Connor, and the castle was in ruins. O’Donnell passed his cattle over the Curlews, and across the Shannon into Leitrim. Lambert, though camping in places ‘where no Christians have been since the war begun,’ could never catch him, but took 200 cows and a keg of Spanish powder. When the English were in Leitrim, and when Leitrim was invaded in turn, O’Donnell was safe in Roscommon; but Lambert established communications with his friends at Ballyshannon. The O’Malleys and O’Flaherties infested the coast, and Sir Oliver had to provide a galley with fifty mariners and fifteen oars on a side, for these pirates spared no one, and Bingham had found it necessary to take similar precautions. Lambert thought Sligo would be a dainty place for a gentleman if walled, and he placed a garrison there, which was able to maintain itself until the end of the war.[410]
Progress of Docwra in Ulster.
The absence both of Tyrone and of Hugh Roe O’Donnell in Munster left a comparatively clear field to Sir Henry Docwra; ‘the country void, and no powerful enemy to encounter withal, more than the rivers.’ Castle Derg and Newtown (Stewart), both lately garrisoned, had since been betrayed by Tirlogh Magnylson, a follower of Sir Arthur O’Neill, who had become a favourite with the English officers. Tirlogh first curried favour with Captain Atkinson at Newtown by helping him to seize some cattle. Having dined with this officer, he persuaded him to take a walk outside the castle. Three or four confederates suddenly appeared, who made the captain prisoner, while others got possession of the courtyard and of the hall-door. The soldiers ‘lying in the Irish thatched house’ were all killed. Captain Dutton lost Castle Derg by a similar stratagem. But in the absence of the great chiefs Docwra was clearly the strongest man: O’Cahan’s country was harried to punish his perfidy, and even women and children were killed. Donegal was victualled, and Ballyshannon, ‘that long desired place,’ taken and garrisoned. Tirlogh Magnylson’s turn soon came. Countrymen in Docwra’s pay pursued him from place to place, and his followers were killed one by one without knowing their pursuers; those who were taken, says Sir Henry, ‘I caused the soldiers to hew in pieces with their swords.’ The hunted man travelled about the woods at night, sometimes occupying three or four cabins successively, and lighting fires to attract attention where he did not intend to stay. A boy was set to watch, and at last the poor wretch was seen to take off his trousers and lie down. Four men, says Docwra, ‘with swords, targets, and morions, fell in upon him; he gat up his sword for all that, and gave such a gash in one of their targets as would seem incredible to be done with the arm of a man, but they dispacht him and brought me his head the next day, which was presently known to every boy in the army, and made a ludibrious spectacle to such as listed to behold it.’ Captain Dutton’s betrayers had better luck. They had killed no one, and were twice spared by Docwra, after swearing ‘with the most profound execrations upon themselves, if they continued not true.’ They broke out, nevertheless, and the ringleaders kept the woods till Tyrone’s submission, when they were pardoned by Mountjoy’s express command.[411]
Mountjoy breaks up the O’Neill throne.
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1602 Docwra and Chichester continued steadily to reduce small strongholds, to drive cattle, and to make a famine certain should Tyrone hold out till the spring. In August Mountjoy again went northwards and planted a garrison at Augher. At Tullaghogue, says Moryson, ‘where the O’Neills were of old custom created, he spent some five days, and there he spoiled the corn of all the country, and Tyrone’s own corn, and brake down the chair where the O’Neills were wont to be created, being of stone, planted in the open field.’ But he could not get within twelve miles of the rebel Earl himself, who had retreated into thick woods at the lower end of Lough Erne, and who endeavoured to keep his friends together by letters in which he urged them to make no separate terms for themselves; ‘if you do otherwise,’ he said, ‘stand to the hazard yourselves, for you shall not have my consent thereunto.’ One transient gleam of success rewarded Rory O’Donnell and O’Connor Sligo. In an attempt to force the passage of the Curlews from the Roscommon side a panic seized the English soldiers, who may have remembered the fate of Sir Conyers Clifford, and they fled in confusion to Boyle, but without any great loss.[412]