First escape of Hugh Roe O’Donnell, 1591.
Although not more than fifteen or sixteen years old, Hugh Roe was married to Tyrone’s daughter, and the whole North was thus interested in his safety. Perrott refused 2,000l. for his release, and he remained in prison until Fitzwilliam’s time. His brother Donnell, who married a daughter of Tirlogh Luineach, would have seized the chiefry, had he not been killed in resisting a force raised by Ineen Duive on behalf of her husband and son. Hugh’s fellow-prisoners were hostages from every part of Ireland: among them being Henry and Arthur, sons of Shane O’Neill, and Patrick Fitzmaurice, afterwards Lord of Kerry. The seneschal of Imokilly died in the Castle early in 1589. After more than three years’ confinement, Hugh Roe found means to escape with some of his friends. A wet ditch at that time surrounded the Castle, and the approach was over the wooden bridge, where the Lord Deputy had lately come into collision with the mutineers. The favour, almost amounting to subservience, which Fitzwilliam showed to Tyrone made people think that he was ready to connive at his son-in-law’s escape; but this is very hard to believe. ‘Upon my duty,’ he said when supporting one of the Earl’s numerous applications for Hugh’s release, ‘no reward maketh me write thus much.’ Friendly partisans were numerous in Dublin, and the soldiers who kept the gate always wanted money, and were often under female influences. A rope was conveyed into the Castle, and Hugh slipped on to the bridge in the dusk of evening. The sentry was for the moment inside the gatehouse, and the prisoners managed to chain the gate on the outside. Art Kavanagh, ‘a renowned warrior of Leinster,’ was near with swords hidden under his Irish mantle, and the whole party slipped out of the town, and across the mountains to a wood near Powerscourt. Hugh’s companions here left him, for his shoes had fallen to pieces with the wet, and his feet were lacerated by the furze. Felim O’Toole, the lord of the neighbouring castles, was appealed to; for he had lately visited Hugh in prison, and was supposed to be his friend, the rather that he had married the sister of Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne. Fearing to offend the Government, or believing that escape was hopeless, O’Toole decided to gain credit for loyalty, and he gave up the fugitive, who was taken back to Dublin and loaded with irons.[211]
Tyrone elopes with Mabel Bagenal,
which her brother resents.
A plot in private life may have great public consequences, as every generation can testify. The Helen of the Elizabethan wars was Mabel Bagenal, daughter of Sir Nicholas and sister of Sir Henry, whose charms were at least one principal cause of the Ulster revolt. Tyrone had been first married to a daughter of Sir Brian MacPhelim O’Neill, from whom, according to his own account, he was ‘divorced by the orders of the Church.’ As to the validity of this divorce there were certainly doubts at the time, but the repudiated wife married again and had children. Tyrone’s second venture was with an O’Donnell, and he talked of discarding her too, though possibly without intending to do it. She died, and he then fell in love with Miss Bagenal, whom he might see at Newry as often as he pleased. Bagenal would not consent to the match, and his objections had some weight: the possible opposition of the Queen, ‘the incivility of the Earl’s country not agreeing with his sister’s education, and the uncertainty of a jointure to be allotted for her maintenance after the Earl’s death,’ being those which seemed important to the Irish Government. Tyrone was a much more civilised being than Shane O’Neill, and Mabel Bagenal was more accustomed to Irish ways than Lady Frances Radclyffe; but Bagenal hated the proposed alliance as much as Sussex. ‘I can,’ he told Burghley, ‘but accurse myself and fortune that my blood, which in my father and myself hath often been spilled in repressing this rebellious race, should now be mingled with so traitorous a stock and kindred.’ To keep her out of harm’s way, he sent Mabel to her sister, who was married to Sir Patrick Barnewall, and who lived at Turvey near Swords; but Tyrone invited himself to the house for a night, obtained a secret promise of her hand, and presented her with a gold chain worth a hundred pounds. A few days after this he came to Turvey to dine with several friends, and after dinner the young lady slipped away on horseback behind one of them. ‘When I understood,’ he said, ‘that my prey (the language of cattle-lifting) was well forward in her way towards the place where we had agreed upon, I took my leave of Sir Patrick Barnewall and his lady, and followed after, and soon after I was gone, the gentlemen which were in company with me took their horses and came away privately.’[212]
Tyrone’s marriage, 1591.
Tyrone was fifty and Mabel twenty, which makes the romance rather less romantic, and Bagenal may have been right in saying that he did ‘by taking advantage of her years and ignorance of his barbarous estate and course of living, entice the unfortunate girl by nursing in her through the report of some corrupted persons an opinion of his haviour and greatness.’ At all events she probably liked the idea of being a countess. Tyrone’s intentions were so far honourable, in spite of Bagenal’s insinuations to the contrary, and the marriage was celebrated at William Warren’s house near Dublin, by no less a person than the Bishop of Meath, who declared that he was chiefly actuated by regard ‘for the gentlewoman’s credit.’ And, as Tyrone well knew, regard for Bishop Jones’s credit would prevent the marriage from being seriously questioned. But Bagenal’s hostility was unabated, and even in his sister’s presence Tyrone openly declared that he hated no man in the world so much as the Knight Marshal. There is no evidence that he ill-treated her, as Shane ill-treated his victim, but there is some that she was not altogether happy in the wild life which she had chosen, or with her crafty and unscrupulous mate. She died after less than five years of matrimony, and so did not live to see her brother killed in conflict with her husband.[213]
FOOTNOTES:
[187] Fitzwilliam to the Privy Council, Dec. 31, 1588; to Burghley, Aug. 20, 1590; Robert Legge to Burghley, Feb. 17, 1590; Four Masters, 1588; Fynes Moryson, 1589; compare Captain Lee’s account in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, i. 129. Sir John O’Gallagher is called Sir Owen O’Toole in some English accounts, but this is wrong and misleading; the Christian name is Eoin not Eogan. Fynes Moryson was not in Ireland in 1588, and very probably copied Lee’s story.
[188] Fitzwilliam to the Privy Council, Dec. 31, 1588; Tyrone to Walsingham, Feb. 5, 1589; Patrick Foxe to Walsingham, Feb. 12.