of maintaining the Protestant Church would be abandoned also.  In return for these concessions the Queen demanded only that Shane, to save her honour, should sue for them as a favour instead of demanding them as a right.  The rebel chief consented without difficulty to conditions which cost him nothing, and after an interview with Cusack, O’Neill wrote a formal apology to Elizabeth, and promised for the future to be her Majesty’s true and faithful subject.  Indentures were drawn up on December 17, in which the Ulster sovereignty was transferred to him in everything but the name, and the treaty required only Elizabeth’s signature, when a second dark effort was made to cut the knot of the Irish difficulty.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Froude, vol. viii. p.48.]

This second ‘dark effort’ was nothing less than an attempt to murder O’Neill by means of poison.  He could not be conquered; he could not be out-manoeuvred; he could not be assassinated in the ordinary way.  But the resources of Dublin Castle, and of English ingenuity, were not exhausted.  The lord deputy was of course delighted with the reconciliation which had been effected with the Ulster prince.  What could be more natural than to send him a present of the choicest wine from the viceregal cellars? certainly few presents could be more agreeable.  Shane and his household quaffed the delicious beverage freely enough we may be sure, without the slightest suspicion that there was death in the cup.  But the wine was mingled with poison.  Those who drank it were quickly at the point of death.  O’Neill might thank his good constitution for his recovery from an illness almost mortal.  The crime was traced to an Englishman named Smith, who, if employed by Lord Sussex, did not betray the guilty secret.  Mr. Froude admits that the suspicion cannot but cling to him that this second attempt at murder was not made without his connivance; ‘nor,’ he adds, ’can Elizabeth herself be wholly acquitted of responsibility.  She professed the loudest indignation, but she ventured no allusion to his previous communication with her, and no hint transpires of any previous displeasure when the proposal had been made openly to herself.  The treachery of an English nobleman, the conduct of the inquiry, and the anomalous termination of it, would have been incredible even in Ireland, were not the original correspondence extant, in which the facts are not denied.’

O’Neill of course complained loudly to the Queen, whereupon she directed that a strict investigation should take place, in order that the guilty parties should be found out and punished, ’of what condition soever the same should be.’  In writing to the lord deputy she assumed that Smith had been committed to prison and would be brought to condign punishment.  That person, after many denials, at length confessed his guilt, and said that his object was to rid his country of a dangerous enemy.  This motive was so good in the eye of the Government that it saved