of the soil of a populous island, have long since made the very name of Irish landlord synonymous with oppression throughout the world.

While the war against the Desmonds was raging in the south, under pretence of suppressing rebellion, no one could help seeing that in reality it was directed against the Catholic religion. If any had doubted the real object, events which quickly followed Elizabeth's victory soon convinced them. Dermid O'Hurley, Arch-1 bishop of Cashel, being taken by the victors, was brought to Dublin in 1582. Here the Protestant Primate Loftus besieged him in vain, for nearly a year, to deny the pope's supremacy, and acknowledge the queen's. Finding him of unshaken faith, he was brought out for martyrdom, on St. Stephen's Green, adjoining the city: 'there he was tied to a tree, his boots filled with combustibles, and his limbs stripped and smeared with oil and alcohol. Alternately they lighted and quenched the flame which enveloped him, prolonging his tortures through four successive days. Still remaining firm, before dawn of the fifth day, they finally consumed his last remains of life, and left his calcined bones among the ashes at the foot of his stake. The relics, gathered in secret by some pious friends, were hidden away in the half-ruined Church of St. Kevin, near that outlet of Dublin called Kevinsport. In Desmond's town of Kilmallock were taken Patrick O'Hely, Bishop of Mayo, Father Cornelius, a Franciscan, and some others. To extort from them confessions of the new faith, their thighs were broken with hammers, and their arms crushed by levers. They died without yielding, and the instruments of their torture were buried with them in the Franciscan convent at Askeaton. The Most Reverend Richard Creagh, Primate of all Ireland, was the next victim. Failing to convict him in Ireland of the imputed crime of violating a young woman, who herself exposed the calumny, and suffered for so doing, they brought him to London, where he is said to have died of poison on the 14th of October, 1585. In the same year, the war of extermination was directed towards Ulster.

Two great families, descended from a common ancestor, were pillars of the church in the north. O'Donnell's, the younger, was tributary to O'Neil's, the elder branch. Differences and conflicts more than enough had been between these houses in past times; but about this period, two chiefs arose of a more generous and politic nature, who, for twelve years and upwards acting in concert, saved Ulster and Connaught from the horrors rècently inflicted on Munster.

Hugh O'Neil, grandson of Con, now of middle age, was, in his infancy, carried away by the English, and educated at London. He was of "large soul," "profound dissembling heart," and "great military skill," according to Camden, the annalist of his enemies. No man surely had ever such need to remember the Spartan maxim of eking out the lion's with the fox's skin. Reared to be used for his country's division, he hoped to be her liberator; trusted as a tool, yet, while trusted, hated, his first twenty years of public life are full of devices and changes of character, easily accounted for, but not to be justified. From Leicester and Walsingham, Cecil and Bacon, he had learned to justify to his own mind simulation and dissimulation, to wait patiently for the ripening of opportunities, and to trust implicitly no man but himself.

Hugh O'Donnell, surnamed Rud, (Rufus,) was twenty years of age, when, after five years' imprisonment in Dublin Castle, he effected an escape, and made his way undiscovered to his home. From his earliest youth, the greatest expectations were entertained in Ulster of this chief; his valor, comeliness, and chivalry fitting him for popular leadership, as much as the wisdom and science of O'Neil. The one supplied what was defective in the other, and when their several clans chose them as chiefs, and they pledged a life-long fealty to each other in the halls of Dungannon, the hopes of the northern Catholics rose over all obstacles.

While as yet O'Neil was in London court, and O'Donnell in Dublin Castle, King Philip's ships were tossing in the white waves of Biscay. The Armada was partly intended for Ireland, and the spirit that manned it with

so many noble cavaliers was, in part, inspired by Irish preachers and writers at Madrid, Salamanca, Coimbra, and Lisbon. Many of these exiles were companions of the voyage-the young Geraldine, from Alcala; Donnell Kavanagh, (called "Spaniagh," or the Spaniard ;) Florence Conroy, Archbishop of Tuam, and many ecclesiastics, secular and regular, sailed in the expedition of 1588, and in the second expedition in 1589. The wreck of this fleet, and the capture of some stray ships knocking about the English Channel, are familiar to all. English patriotism has dwelt for three hundred years on the tale, and repeated it with every possible embellishment. On the west coast of Ireland thirteen great ships and three thousand men were lost, including the vice admiral, Alphonso de Leria, a natural son of King Philip, a nephew of Cardinal Granville, and the Geraldines. The expedition of the following year fared no better, though less lives were lost. Archbishop Conroy escaped back to Spain, where he lived for some years, until, under the viceroyalty of Albert and Isabella, he removed to the Netherlands, and founded the Irish college at Louvain. There he presided, wrote his commentaries on St. Augustine, established an Irish press, from which he issued devotional and catechetical works "For the salvation of the souls of the Gael,” and there his ashes remain near the high altar of the chapel dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua. He was an active promoter of both expeditions.

The wreck of the Spanish Armadas of '88 and '89 retarded the projects of Hugh O'Neil. He, however, made the best use of certain Spanish officers, who escaped to Dungannon, by opening through them a formal correspondence with King Philip. Cautious and artful as he was bold, he had previously obtained the consent of Elizabeth to maintain six companies of foot, which he kept constantly disbanding and recruiting as fast as they acquired discipline. He also gradually imported military stores, and extended his confederacy, so that by 1593 he had his plans tolerably well matured.

By design, or accident, O'Donnell began the war.

Aided by his suffragans, McGuire, O'Rorke, and the McSweeneys, he drove the English garrisons out of Strabane and Enniskillen. He then carried the war into Connaught, took Sligo, defeated an English army among the Leitrim Mountains, and made tolerably clean work of it with all their garrison towns as far south as Athlone. During this campaign, O'Neil acted, to admiration, the part of mediator; but in the coming spring, he resolved to clear his territory of the garrisons, after O'Donnell's fashion.

From the towers of Dungannon, the broad white flag, with the blazon of the red hand, was spread, amid the acclamations of a great gathering, in the spring of 1594. A detachment simultaneously advanced on the English fort of Portmore, near Coleraine, took and razed it to the corner stone. Advancing through Cavan, O'Neil laid siege to Monaghon, resolving to carry the war towards Dublin. Russell, the new viceroy, determined to negotiate, and sent forward, as queen's commissioners, Sir Henry Wallop and Chief Justice Gardiner. O'Neil treated with them in a plain between both armies, but a temporary truce was the only result. This truce, made to be broken, gave time for Sir John Norreys to arrive from England with a picked body of Flemings and Brabanters, and for O'Donnell, on the other hand, to come up from Connaught. At Clontibret the first regular battle was fought, Norreys defeated, the chief of his "Methian" cavalry, Seagrave, killed by O'Neil's own hand, and the royal standard captured.

In

The war, thus commenced, lasted for seven years almost without interruption. From the victory of Clontibret to the defeat before Kinsale, "the two Hughs" were the Achilles and Ulysses of the Catholic cause. 1596, they received Don Alonzo Copis, who brought them some arms and ammunition from Spain; the same year O'Neil retook Armagh; in '97, De Burgh, a new deputy, but an old soldier, marched northward with a great army, and despatched Sir Conyers Clifford to the north-west; O'Donnell routed Clifford with immense loss in Leitrim; another detachment was cut to pieces at

Tyrrell's Pass, by Tyrrell and O'Connor; while at Drumfluich, on the Blackwater, the united Irish forces routed the main army with heavy loss, the Lords De Burgh and Kildare, Sir Francis Vaughn, and other leading officers being among the slain. A fresh store of English standards and arms were forwarded as trophies to Dungannon and Donegal.

The chief Irish victory of the war was that won at the "Yellow Ford," on the little river Avonmore, in Armagh. It was fought the 10th of August, 1598. Marshal Bagenal commanded for the queen, O'Neil for the Catholics. "Two thousand five hundred English were slain, including twenty-three superior officers, besides lieutenants and ensigns. Twelve thousand gold pieces, thirty-four standards, all the musical instruments and cannon, together with a long train of provision wagons," were taken. Fifteen hundred prisoners were disarmed and marched to Dublin; the Catholics buried all the dead, as well foes as friends. They had only two hundred and sixty killed and six hundred wounded.* This was the most glorious day of that heroic effort against the heresy and policy of Elizabeth.

Warmed by these tidings from the north, the whole nation was stirred with emulation. Owen O'Moore, son of Rory, the victim of Bellingham, won back, by the strong arm, two thirds of Leix, as O'Connor did the greater half of Offally; Feach McHugh O'Byrne, of Glendalough, backed by clan Kavanagh, rose at the same time, defeated and slew Sir Dudley Bagenal and Heron, constable of Leighlin; and again, in 1599, routed the Earls of Essex and Southampton, half way between Arklow and Enniscorthy, pursued them forty miles to Dublin, and razed the fort at Crumlin, within two miles of the capital..

Even desolated Munster raised her head once more. A collateral heir of the Desmonds was made earl by O'Neil, to whom he did homage; and except a few

* Mitchel's Life of Hugh O'Neil, p. 144, where the several authorities are quoted.