sh, because they began to conform themselves to English customs, and
had embraced a more civilized form of life than had been practised by
their ancestors.[*]

The usual revenue of Ireland amounted only to six thousand pounds a
year:[**] the queen, though with much repining,[***] commonly added
twenty thousand more, which she remitted from England; and with
this small revenue a body of a thousand men was supported, which, on
extraordinary emergencies, was augmented to two thousand.[****] No
wonder that a force so disproportioned to the object, instead of
subduing a mutinous kingdom, served rather to provoke the natives, and
to excite those frequent insurrections, which still further inflamed the
animosity between the two nations, and increased the disorders to which
the Irish were naturally subject.

In 1560, Shan O'Neale, or the great O'Neale, as the Irish called him,
because head of that potent clan, raised a rebellion in Ulster; but
after some skirmishes, he was received into favor, upon his submission,
and his promise of a more dutiful behavior for the future.[v]

* Camden, p. 457.

** Memoirs of the Sidneys, vol. i. p. 86.

*** Cox, p. 342. Sidney, vol. i. p. 85, 200.

**** Camden, p. 542. Sidney, vol. i. p. 65, 109, 183, 184.

v Camden, p. 385, 391. 305

This impunity tempted him to undertake a new insurrection in 1567;
but being pushed by Sir Henry Sidney, lord deputy, he retreated into
Clandeboy, and rather than submit to the English, he put himself into
the hands of some Scottish islanders, who commonly infested those parts
by their incursions. The Scots, who retained a quarrel against him
on account of former injuries, violated the laws of hospitality, and
murdered him at a festival to which they had invited him. He was a man
equally noted for his pride, his violence, his debaucheries, and
his hatred of the English nation. He is said to have put some of his
followers to death because they endeavored to introduce the use of bread
after the English fashion.[*] Though so violent an enemy to luxury,
he was extremely addicted to riot; and was accustomed, after his
intemperance had thrown him into a fever, to plunge his body into
mire, that he might allay the flame which he had raised by former
excesses.[**] Such was the life led by this haughty barbarian; who
scorned the title of the earl of Tyrone, which Elizabeth intended to
have restored to him, and who assumed the rank and appe