Ireland under the Stuarts and during the Interregnum, Vol. I (of 3), 1603-1642. Bagwell, Richard
tree. The jurors were Irishmen, who attended as readily as when Tyrone was present, and the monk who had commanded at Burt voluntarily purchased life and liberty by renouncing the Pope and conforming publicly. Chichester then marched through Glenconkein, ‘where the wild inhabitants,’ according to Davies, ‘wondered as much to see the King’s Deputy as the ghosts in Virgil wondered to see Aeneas alive in hell.’ At Coleraine he heard of the capture of Sir Cahir’s illegitimate brother, whom the people wished to make O’Dogherty, of Owen O’Dogherty who killed Paulet, and of Phelim Reagh MacDavitt, who was regarded as the contriver of the whole rising. Phelim, who was hunted into a wood and found there after long search, made a stout resistance and was wounded, but great care was taken to keep him alive for his trial. He was taken to Lifford, where he made statements very damaging to Neill Garv, and was then hanged with twenty others. Chichester returned to Dublin at the beginning of September, leaving only the very dregs of a rebellion behind him.51
Shane MacManus, Oge O’Donnell, who aspired to be the O’Donnell, was the last to hold out with about 240 men in Tory and the adjacent smaller islands. Sir Henry Ffolliott, the governor of Ballyshannon, finished the business in a very ruthless manner. On his way he took the island stronghold at Glenveagh, which was held by an O’Gallagher, ‘one of Tyrconnell’s fosterers, who killed three or four of his best associates after he yielded up the island, for which we took him into protection.’ Of armed resistance there was not much, but Ffolliott’s task was made difficult by foul winds upon that rough coast, and he failed to capture Shane MacManus, who escaped with the bulk of his followers by boat into Connaught, preferring to trust to Clanricarde’s clemency, but leaving eleven men in the castle on Tory island, where Ffolliott found them. The constable called to Sir Mulmore MacSwiney, begging to be allowed to see the English commander and promising service. MacSwiney let him come out, and he was induced by Ffolliott to purchase his life by betraying the castle and taking the lives of seven out of the ten men in it. A MacSwiney who was one of the garrison was also admitted to a parley and made the like promise, but the constable got back first, ‘each of them,’ says Ffolliott, ‘being well assured and resolved to cut the other’s throat.’ He killed two of his followers and the rest scattered into the rocks, where he shot one. Ffolliott kept him to his promise of seven heads, which were to be taken without help from the soldiers. One of the others turned and stabbed his late leader to the heart and was then killed by one of his own companions. Three others were killed in the scuffle. Shane MacManus’s boat was found in the island of Arran, while his mother with a boy of ten and a girl of eleven remained prisoners. ‘And so,’ reported Ffolliott, ‘there were but five that escaped, three of them churls and the other two young boys… Shane MacManus is deprived of his mother and two children and his boat, which I think he regards more than them all.’52
Sir Neill Garv O’Donnell gave no effectual help against O’Dogherty, and he was really a fellow-conspirator. Lifford, Ballyshannon and Donegal were to be seized by him and his friends, while Sir Cahir took Derry and Culmore, and all plunder was to be divided equally between them. Sir Neill was to have Burt Castle and whatever rights O’Donnell had over Inishowen, as long as he could hold his own. He continued, however, to profess loyalty and to urge his claims over the whole of Tyrconnel. O’Dogherty’s country he regained by special grant, but he was an abettor, if not the principal contriver, of the Derry surprise, gave advice about the mode of attack, sent sixteen men of his own to help, and charged O’Dogherty to spare no one. All this was not certainly known until later, and Sir Neill obtained protection from Wingfield, whom he accompanied on his expedition into Donegal. He was soon again in communication with the rebels, was arrested at Glenveagh and sent a prisoner to Dublin, but it was not until June, 1609, that a Donegal jury could be sworn in the King’s Bench there. The jurors were Irishmen and not of very high position, for the English settlers and the principal natives had served on the grand jury which found the bill. Davies offered no evidence as to Sir Neill’s complicity in the Derry affair, though there could be no doubt of the fact, because it might be held that the treason was covered by Wingfield’s protection. There was good proof of the breach of that protection by aiding and abetting the King’s enemies, but the jury were shut up from Friday till Monday and almost starved to death. They refused to find a verdict of treason on the ground that Sir Neill had not been actually in arms against the King, and it was believed that they had bound themselves by mutual oath not to find the lord of their country guilty. They were discharged ‘in commiseration of their faintings and for reasons concerning his Majesty’s service.’ ‘The priests,’ said Davies, ‘excommunicate the jurors who condemn a traitor. The Irish will never condemn a principal traitor: therefore we have need of an English colony, that we may have honest trials. They dare not condemn an Irish lord of a country for fear of revenge, because we have not power enough in the country to defend honest jurors. We must stay there till the English and Scottish colonies be planted, and then make a jury of them.’ There being no hope of a verdict, the lawyers could only suggest that Sir Neill should be tried by a Middlesex jury as O’Rourke had been in 1591. In any case he should be sent to England, for Dublin Castle was no safe place for a prisoner who was always trying to escape, and who had already been found with a rope long enough to ‘carry him over the wall from the highest tower.’ Sir Neill went to London in due course, and died in the Tower in 1626.53
The abortive rebellion of O’Dogherty made the fate of the six Ulster counties harder than it might otherwise have been. It was, say the Four Masters, ‘from this rising and from the departure of the Earls that their principalities, their territories, their estates, their lands, their forts, their fruitful harbours, and their fishful bays were taken from the Irish of the province of Ulster, and were given in their presence to foreign tribes; and they were expelled and banished into other countries, where most of them died.’ Inishowen, which O’Dogherty held by patent independently of Tyrone, was separately forfeited, and the whole of it granted to Chichester himself. The failure of trial by Jury in Neill Garv’s case prevented Davies from running a fresh risk with O’Cahan, who lay long in Dublin Castle, and was sent to the Tower late in 1609 in charge of Francis Annesley, afterwards Lord Mountnorris. Neill Garv and his son Naughton went in the same vessel. ‘The boy,’ said Chichester, ‘has more wit than either of them,’ and he had been at Oxford and at Trinity College, Dublin. No charge was made against him, but he was as proud as his father. O’Cahan remained a prisoner, and no doubt there was plenty of evidence against him, but Chichester, while carrying out the policy of the Home Government, scarcely hides his opinion that he had been badly treated, and that he had the reputation of a truth-telling man. As to the facts, the Lord Deputy’s story tallies closely with that of Docwra. Writing as late as 1614, the latter says deliberately that ‘O’Cahan, from the breach of my promise with him, derives, as well he may, the cause of all his miseries,’ and he thought he would have done nothing rebellious if faith had been kept with him. He was never tried, and spent years in the Tower, where he probably died in 1628. A thousand acres of his old territory was granted, or perhaps only promised, to his wife Honora, with reversion to her son Donell, but the young man went to the Netherlands, returned in 1642 with Owen Roe O’Neill, and was killed at Clones. His elder brother Rory was hanged for his share in the conspiracy of 1615.54
CHAPTER V
THE SETTLEMENT OF ULSTER
The tribal system known to the writers of what are called the Brehon laws survived much longer in Ulster than elsewhere. In the other three provinces the Anglo-Norman invaders may not have made a complete conquest, but they had military occupation and many of their leaders took the position of Irish chiefs when the weakening power of the Crown made it impossible to maintain themselves otherwise. Yet they never forgot their origin, and were ready enough to acquiesce when the Tudor sovereigns reasserted their authority. But there were no Butlers, Fitzgeralds, or Barries in Ulster, while the Burkes
Davies to Salisbury, August 5, 1608; Chichester to the Privy Council, September 12.
Chichester to the Privy Council, September 12 and 17, the latter enclosing Ffolliott’s narrative.
Davies on the juries, State Papers,
Docwra’s