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harbour of Invermore. Sending messengers to O'Neale, he went to meet the Spanish envoy at Tirboghaine. On this occasion the sum of £6000 was sent over by the king of Spain, and divided between O'Donell and O'Neale. And in the beginning of January, 1600, O'Donell, having consulted fully with the Spaniard on the affairs of the country, and doubtless concerted the next invasion from Spain, which occurred so soon after, returned to his camp at Lifford.

While thus engaged, he received intimation that O'Conor Sligo had entered into an engagement to seize on his person and deliver him up to the English. Having communicated this alarming intelligence to his friends, they resolved to prevent O'Conor's design by seizing himself. This was quickly effected, and he was sent to Lough Esk, and kept as a hostage.

The movements of both parties which succeeded, as they had little or no result, are scarcely worth the narration. Many skirmishings and marchings took place without decisive issue.

It was in the month of October that events occurred, which at first promising a favourable turn to the affairs of O'Donell, ended in their total ruin. A Spanish fleet arrived in the harbour of Kinsale; this event broke up all minor plans, and brought the two great leaders of the Irish, O'Donell and O'Neale, with their whole forces, to meet and join their allies. It also caused a powerful concentration of the English under the lord-deputy and president, to the amount of 7,600 men. The Spaniards were 4,000, under the command of Don Juan D'Aguila. The Irish force cannot, with any tolerable certainty, be stated, but may be reasonably rated at many thousands. All circumstances had for a considerable time favoured the military improvement of the Irish. They had, according to the statements of the Irish biographer, received arms for upwards of 20,000 men, besides the large supplies taken in plunder, and not numerically stated. A great part of the money sent over from England came by the same course of traffic into their hands, and the English possessed resources far inferior to those they thus obtained. It was, indeed, to meet the disadvantage arising from the Irish being thus enabled to purchase all they wanted in Spain, that the English cabinet adopted the unsafe expedient of a debased coinage, by which the currency might be confined to the country.

As this great struggle, which terminated the insurrection of O'Donell, O'Neale, and the other chiefs who were leagued with them, at this period, will come more appropriately into the life of Tyrone, when we shall have occasion to bring forward in detail, a fuller view of various concurrent events, we shall here confine ourselves as nearly as we can to those particular incidents in which O'Donell was more immediately a party.

The Spanish took possession of Kinsale and Rin Corran, being the main places of strength on either side of the harbour of Kinsale. They were deprived of Rin Corran; and Kinsale was closely besieged by the lord-deputy. On the seventh of November, the lord-deputy aving intelligence that O'Donell was approaching, as was also Tyrone, la council, in which it was agreed to send the lord-president and Sir Charles Wilmot with their regiments, amounting to a nd men, with two hundred and fifty horse, to meet O'Donell

-a force which the Irish biographer, with the exaggeration of party feeling, and a very excusable ignorance of the fact, states as four thousand men.

O'Donell was waiting near Holy Cross, in Tipperary, for the earl of Tyrone; his camp was strongly fortified by the strong fastnesses of wood and bog, which he had secured by plashing on every side: so that no immediate assault was practicable by the English party. These in the mean time were strengthened by a regiment of foot and a few horse, under Sir Christopher St Lawrence. It was not the object of O'Donell to risk a premature conflict with this detached body before he could effect a junction with his allies; and he very wisely determined to avoid an encounter. It was still less desirable to be cooped up within his entrenchments. He escaped by a combination of good fortune with that skill in marches, which, throughout, appears to have been a conspicuous part of his tactics. The nearest available way through which his army could pass was twenty miles distant, near the abbey of Ownhy. His way was intercepted by the English. The only passage besides lay through the heights and passes of the mountain Slewphelim, which were rendered impracticable by recent rains which flooded the numerous bogs and marshes which obstructed the mountain and rendered the acclivity in every part miry and slippery, so that no army could pass without leaving their entire materiel behind them. A sudden frost consolidated the marshy surface; and O'Donell, at once seizing the occasion, led his troops over a path entirely impervious on the preceding night-fall. The English lay about four miles from the Irish camp; and ere long were apprised of the enemy's movement; and about four hours before dawn they began to pursue, still hoping to intercept O'Donell before he could reach the pass. They reached the abbey by eleven in the forenoon, and heard that he had been there before them and had hastened on to a house of the countess of Kildare, called Crom; his whole march being thirtytwo miles. The president pushed on to Kilmallock; but before he could reach Crom, O'Donell had departed with all his men to Conneloghe. The president on this concluded the pursuit hopeless, and returned to Kinsale. O'Donell, following a circuitous and difficult path, at last joined the Spaniards at Castlehaven.*

Between the English and the Spanish in Kinsale, many fierce encounters had taken place, hereafter to be described; and each had been strengthened by strong reinforcements. When O'Donell and Tyrone were come up, they received a letter from Don Juan, strongly urging an immediate attack on the English;—he informed them that the English had not men enough to defend the third part of the intrenchments, and that if their first fury were resisted, all would end well.

On the receipt of this letter, O'Donell and Tyrone held a council, in which the MS. biographer of O'Donell affirms that they disagreed: O'Donell urging an attack, and O'Neale opposing this advice. O'Donell prevailed; but the MS. mentions, that the consequence was a quarrel between them, fatal to their cause; for neither chief giving way,

* Sir W. Betham.

after a night of warm direte they separated in the morning, and each party came separately before the English at day break.*

It will here be enough to state, that they were attacked by the lord-deputy with 1,100 men; and that they were routed with desperate slaughter, leaving 1,200 dead on the feld, with 800 wounded. This battle was fought within a mile of Kinsale; and terminated the insurrection of O'Neale and O'Donell The Spanish treated for their surrender; and the Irish, it is said, disputed for several days on the proposal of another battle. Pacifie resolutions prevailed, though the consultation wanted little of the violence of a fight.

O'Donell, still bent on maintaining the struggle to which his life had been dedicated, embarked with Don Juan for Spain, from Castlehaven, on the 6th of January, 1602; and landed at Corunna on the 16th of the same month. The king was at the time on a progress through his dominions; and O'Donell repaired to him at Zamora in Castile. He was received kindly by Philip, who listened with the appearance at least of generous sympathy to his complaints against their common enemy. He was promised every assistance of men and means; and desired to wait in Corunna. O'Donell returned to Corunna, and for eight or nine tedious months suffered the penalties which but too frequently await those who put their trust in princes. The spring passed away in eager hope;—summer still smiled on the lingering day of sickening expectation. When autumn came, the impatience of the fervid son of Tyrconnell had risen to its height. O'Donell could rest no longer-it is, indeed, likely enough, that he was forgotten-he again resolved to visit the king; and set out on his way to Valladolid, where he kept his court, but did not reach the end of his journey. At Simancas, within two leagues of Valladolid, he fell sick, and died, 10th September, 1602. O'Donell was thus cut off in his 29th year; having, in the course of a few years, by his activity and the ascendancy of a vigorous understanding and decisive mind, done more to make his countrymen formidable in the field than the whole unremitting fierceness and resistance of the four previous centuries had effected. He was prompt to seize every advantage-and cautious to avoid collisions to which he was unequal. He kept his people employed, and brought their faculties into training, while he accumulated arms and the means of war. Had he been allowed to persist a few years longer in that course of which his faithful secretary affords us many graphic views: acquiring ascendancy and wealthspoiling the chiefs who held out against him—and recompensing with the spoil those who were his allies; exercising his troops without loss or risk, while he slowly concentrated the mind and force of the country under a common leader-it is hard to say what might be the limit of the achievements of his maturer years. Far inferior in power, experience, and subtilty to the earl of Tyrone, it is yet remarkable how early he began to take the lead on those occasions in which their personal qualities alone were brought into collision. On such occasions the temporizing temper of the earl seems ever to have given way before the frank resolution of Red Hugh. O'Donell, of all the Irishmen of

*Sir W. Betham.

his day, seems to have been actuated by a purpose independent of selfinterest; and though much of this is to be traced to a sense of injury and the thirst of a vindicative spirit, strongly impressed at an early age, and cherished for many years of suffering, so as to amount to an education; yet, in the mingled motives of the human breast, it may be allowed, that his hatred to the English was tempered and dignified with the desire to vindicate the honour and freedom of his country. And if we look to the fickleness, venality, suppleness and want of truth, which prominently characterizes the best of his allies in the strife their readiness to submit and to rebel; O'Donell's steady and unbending zeal, patience, caution, firmness, tenacity of purpose, steady consistency, and indefatigable energy, may bear an honourable comparison with the virtues of any other illustrious leader, whose name adorns the history of his time.

James, commonly called the Sugan Earl
of Desmond.

DIED A. D. 1608.

JAMES, the fifteenth earl of Desmond, was first married to Joan, daughter of lord Fermoy. After the birth, from this union, of one son, Thomas, he obtained a divorce on the plea of consanguinity. Earl James married again, and the succession was by devise and settlement transferred to a son by his second wife, Gerald, the unfortunate earl, whose history has already been given at length in this volume. In the mean time, the son thus set aside, grew up and obtained possession of a sufficient inheritance in the county of Cork, where he built the castle of Conoha, in which he spent his life in quiet; prudently forbearing to entangle himself in the sea of disturbance, in which so many of his race had been wrecked. He married a daughter of lord Poer, by whom he had three sons and a daughter.

On the attainder of his unfortunate uncle, the sixteenth earl, James, the eldest of these, was induced to plunge into the troubles which were beginning to rise to an unprecedented height, and to menace destruction to the English possessions in Ireland. It was a subject of deep irritation to see an inheritance to which the obstruction to his own claim was now removed, in the hands of the English undertakers, and his last hope of obtaining redress, was reduced to the chances of rebellion. These chances seemed now to multiply in appearance; rebellion was beginning to assume a more concentrated form; the discipline of the Irish was increasing under the grasping activity of Hugh O'Donell, the cautious policy of Tyrone, which matured rebellion on a broad basis; and the enmity of Spain against the queen, which promised effectual aid. Such were the motives which led this claimant of the earldom to join Tyrone, of whose rebellion, his will be found to form the regular preliminary; so that we are led to pass in the natural order of events, from one to the other.

In 1598, he was raised by Tyrone's authority to the title of earl of Desmond. The earl of Tyrone, whose history virtually comprehends that of all the other insurgent chiefs of his time, had first sent Owny

M'Rory, with captain Tyrrel, and a considerable body of men, into Munster, for the purpose of awakening and giving a strong impulse to rebellion in that quarter. And, according to the account of the earl of Totness, who conducted this war to its conclusion, he shortly followed himself. Those whom he found in rebellion he confirmed, and from those who were doubtful he took pledges. But of all those whose influence he courted, as the most efficient in the south, the heir of the estates and principles of the princely and ever rebellious house of Desmond, stood foremost in his estimation. From the white knight he took pledges; Donald M'Carthy he deposed, and in his place raised Florence McCarthy to the title and authority of M'Carthy More. On good subjects he inflicted the punishment of fire and sword: but the Sugan earl was his chief object and hope in Munster.

The Sugan earl began his career by a descent on the estates of the brave and loyal lord Barry, with a small tumultuary force of 100 kerne, and drove away 300 cows and 10 horses.

The lord-president early adopted a system of action, which in the Munster rebellion, he found in a considerable degree available. The operation of fear and self-interest had a material influence with its leaders, who were not like those of the north, strengthened in the secure and unshaken hold of their vast possessions:-Desmond and M'Carthy were scarcely seated in their authority; and Dermond O'Conor was a soldier of fortune, whose reputation as a soldier, along with his marriage with a daughter of the old earl of Desmond, were in reality his chief claims to authority. These were, nevertheless, the heads of the rebellion, and if allowed, likely to gather a degree of power, which might, considering the state of Ulster, become difficult to cope with. The president therefore tried the effect of separate treaties, and had the address to divide these shallow but dangerous spirits. Florence M'Carthy was awed into a temporary neutrality, and O'Conor was easily detached from his rebel kinsman.

Dermond O'Conor had been appointed by Tyrone to the command of his men, whom he left in Munster; and being retained for pay, was therefore considered by the president as a fit person for his purpose. For this and other considerations, he assailed O'Conor through his wife, who, being a sister to the son of the late earl, at the time confined in the Tower, would be the more likely to take a strong part against the pretender. It was through this lady settled with O'Conor, that he should take Desmond prisoner, and deliver his person up to the president, for which service he should receive £1000, and be appointed to a company in the queen's service. Dermond also stipulated for hostages, which were granted. The lord-president selected four persons who were likely to be safe in his hands, and to prevent suspicion they were met taken as prisoners by a party of Dermond's men sent to meet them for the purpose.

In the mean time, each party pursued its preparation. The president contrived to spread a premature alarm, which brought together the rebel forces in the forest of Kilmore, between Moyallo and Kilmallock, where they waited for ten days in daily expectation of the enemy: after which, having consumed their provisions and wearied conjecture, they were forced to separate. By this contrivance the presi

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