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 McMahon 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.