on had collected rents two years
previously by force--the only method, it may be said in passing, by
which in those unsettled parts of the country rents ever were collected
at all. It was not an offence by law being committed outside the shire,
and he was therefore tried for it by court-martial. He was brought
before a jury of private soldiers, condemned, and executed in two days.
His estate was thereupon broken up, the greater part of it being divided
between Sir Henry Bagnall, three or four English officers, and some
Dublin lawyers, the Crown reserving for itself a quit rent. Little
wonder if the other Ulster landowners felt that their turn would come
next, and that no loyalty could assure a man's safety so long as he had
anything to lose that was worth the taking.

At this time the natural leader of the province was not Tyrlough
Luinagh, who though called the O'Neill was an old man and failing fast.
The real leader was Hugh O'Neill, son of Matthew the first Baron of
Dungannon, who had been killed, it will be remembered, by Shane O'Neill,
by whose connivance Hugh's elder brother had also, it was believed, been
made away with. Hugh had been educated in England, had been much at
Court, and had found favour with Elizabeth, who had confirmed him in the
title of Earl of Tyrone which had been originally granted to his
grandfather.

Tyrone was the very antipodes of Shane, the last great O'Neill leader.
He was much more, in fact, of an English politician and courtier than an
Irish chieftain. He had served in the English army; had fought with
credit under Grey in Munster, and was intimately acquainted with all the
leading Englishmen of the day. Even his religion, unlike that of most
Irish Catholics of the day, seems to have sat but lightly upon him.
Captain Lee, an English officer, quartered in Ulster, in a very
interesting letter to the queen written about this time, assures her
confidentially that, although a Roman Catholic, he "is less dangerously
or hurtfully so than some of the greatest in the English Pale," for that
when he accompanied the Lord-deputy to church "he will stay and hear a
sermon;" whereas they "when they have reached the church door depart as
if they were wild cats." He adds, as a further recommendation, that by
way of domestic chaplain he has at present but "one little cub of an
English priest." Lord Essex in still plainer terms told Tyrone himself
when he was posing as the champion of Catholicism: "Dost