became the willing paramour of the captor.  ’The affront to McConnell was forgiven or atoned for by private arrangement, and the sister of the Earl of Argyle—­an educated woman for her time, not unlearned in Latin, speaking French and Italian, counted sober, wise, and no less subtle—­had betrayed herself and her husband.  The O’Neills, by this last manoeuvre, became supreme in Ulster.  Deprived of their head, the O’Donels sank into helplessness.  The whole force of the province, such as it was, with the more serious addition of several thousand Scotch marauders, was at Shane’s disposal, and thus provided, he thought himself safe in defying England to do its worst.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Froude, Ibid.]

Meantime, Sussex had arrived in Dublin preceded by his English forces.  He made a rapid preliminary movement to the north, and seized the Cathedral of Armagh, in order to make it a fortified depot for his stores.  He then fell back into Meath, where he was joined by Ormond with flying companies of galloglasses.  Soon after a singular attack was made on the English garrison at Armagh.  Seeing a number of kernes scattered about the town, the officer in command sallied out upon them, when O’Neill suddenly appeared, accompanied by the Catholic Archbishop, on a hill outside the walls.  ’The English had but time to recover their defences when the whole Irish army, led by a procession of monks, and every man carrying a fagot, came on to burn the cathedral over their heads.  The monks sang a mass; the primate walked three times up and down the lines, willing the rebels to go forward, for God was on their side.  Shane swore a great oath not to turn his back while an Englishman was alive; and with scream and yell his men came on. Fortunately there were no Scots among them. The English, though out-numbered ten to one, stood steady in the churchyard, and, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight, drove back the howling crowd.  The Irish retired into the friars’ houses outside the cathedral close, set them on fire, and ran for their lives.’

‘So far,’ adds Mr. Froude, ’all was well.  After this there was no more talk of treating, and by the 18th, Sussex and Ormond were themselves at Armagh with a force—­had there been skill to direct it—­sufficient to have swept Tyrone from border to border.’

The English historian exults in the valour of the small garrison of his countrymen, well-disciplined and sheltered behind a strong wall, in resisting the assault of a howling multitude of mere Irish, and he observes significantly, that ’fortunately there were no Scots among them.’  But he is obliged immediately after to record an Irish victory so signal that, according to the lord deputy himself, ’the fame of the English army so hardly gotten, was now vanished.’  Yet Mr. Froude does not, in this, lay the blame of defeat upon the nationality of the vanquished.  It is only the Irish nation that is made the scape-goat in such cases.