M’Connell.  April 15:  The army goes upon Shane’s cattle, of which it takes enough to serve it, but would have taken more if it had had galloglasse.’  Next day it returns to Armagh.  There it waits three days for the galloglasse, and then sends back for them to Dublin.  On April 20, again writes M’Connell, because he did not come according to promise.  April 21:  The army surveys the Trough mountains.  April 22:  The pious commander winds up the glorious record in these words:  ’To Armagh with the spoil taken which would have been much more if we had had galloglasse, and because St. George even forced me, her Majesty’s lieutenant, to return to divine service that night.  April 23:  Divine service.’  Subsequently his lordship’s extreme piety caused him the loss of 300 horses, which he naively confesses thus:  ’Being Easter time, and he having travelled the week before, and Easter day till night, thought fit to give Easter Monday to prayer, and in this time certain churls stole off with the horses.’  To this Mr. Froude adds the pertinent remark:  ’The piety which could neglect practical duty for the outward service of devotion, yet at the same time could make overtures to Neil Greg to assassinate his master, requires no very lenient consideration.’

In connexion with the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill Lord Elcho proposed Solomon’s plan of settling the dispute of the two mother Churches about Ireland.  He would cut the country in two, establishing Protestantism in the north and Catholicism in the south.  When an experienced member of the House of Commons makes such a proposition in this age, we should not be surprised that Sir Thomas Cusack in the year 1563 proposed to Queen Elizabeth that Ireland should be divided into four provinces, each with a separate president, either elected by the people or chosen in compliance with their wishes.  O’Neill was to have the north, the Clanrickards the west, the O’Briens or Desmonds the south, and thus the English might be allowed the undisturbed enjoyment of the Pale.  This notable scheme for settling the Irish question was actually adopted by the Queen, and she wrote to Sussex, stating that, as his expedition to the north had resulted only in giving fresh strength to the enemy, she ’had decided to come to an end of the war of Ulster by agreement rather than by force.’  To Shane she was all compliance.  He had but to prove himself a good subject, and he might have any pre-eminence which her Majesty could grant without doing any other person wrong.  ’If he desired to have a council established at Armagh, he should himself be the president of that council; if he wished to drive the Scots out of Antrim, her own troops would assist in the expulsion; if he was offended with the garrison in the cathedral, she would gladly see peace maintained in a manner less expensive to herself.  To the primacy he might name the person most agreeable to himself, and with the primacy, as a matter of course, even the form