d now fallen under the royal displeasure; had been
recalled and sent to the Tower, a common enough climax in those days to
years spent in the arduous Irish service. His place was taken in 1588 by
Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had held it nearly thirty years earlier.
Fitzwilliam was a man of very inferior calibre to Perrot. Avaricious by
nature he had been highly dissatisfied with the poor rewards which his
former services had obtained. Upon making some remonstrance to that
effect he had been told that the "position of an Irish Lord-deputy was
an honourable one and should challenge no reward." Upon this hint he
seems now to have acted. Since the Lord-deputy was not to be better
rewarded, the Lord-deputy, he apparently concluded, had better help
himself. The Spanish Armada had been destroyed a few years back, and
ships belonging to it had been strewed in dismal wreck all along the
North, South, and West coasts of Ireland. It was believed that much gold
had been hidden away by the wretched survivors, and fired with the hope
of laying his own hands upon this treasure, Sir William first issued a
permission for searching, and then started himself upon the search. He
marched into Ulster in the dead of winter, at considerable cost to the
State, and with absolutely no result. Either, as was most likely, there
was no treasure, or the treasure had been well hidden. Furious at this
disappointment he arrested two upon his own showing of the most loyal
and law-abiding landowners in Ulster, Sir Owen McToole and Sir John
O'Dogherty; dragged them back to Dublin with him, flung them into the
castle, and demanded a large sum for their liberation.

This was a high-handed proceeding in all conscience, but there was worse
to come; it seemed as if the new deputy had laid himself out for the
task of inflaming Ulster to the highest possible pitch of exasperation,
and so of once more awakening the scarce extinguished flames of civil
war. McMahon, the chief of Monaghan, had surrendered his lands, held
previously by tanistry, and had received a new grant of them under the
broad seal of England, to himself and his heirs male, and failing such
heirs to his brother Hugh. At his death Hugh went to Dublin and
requested to be put into possession of his inheritance. This Fitzwilliam
agreed to, and returned with him to Monaghan, apparently for the
purpose. Hardly had he arrived there, however, before he trumped up an
accusation to the effect that Hugh McMah