The Queen, however, thought it more prudent to let Shane have his way in Ulster.  To oblige him, she would remove the Protestant primate, Loftus, to Dublin, and appoint his own nominee and friend, Terence Daniel.  The Pope had sent a third archbishop for the same see, named Creagh; but, when passing through London, he was arrested, and incarcerated in the Tower, ’where he lay in great misery, cold, and hunger, without a penny, without the means of getting his single shirt washed, and without gown or hose.’  At last he made his escape by gliding over the walls into the Thames.  The events of 1565 made the English Government more than ever anxious to come to terms with the chieftain ‘whom they were powerless to crush.’  Since the defeat of the Earl of Sussex, continues Mr. Froude, ’Shane’s influence and strength had been steadily growing.  His return unscathed from London, and the fierce attitude which he assumed on the instant of his reappearance in Ulster, convinced the petty leaders that to resist him longer would only ensure their ruin.  O’Donel was an exile in England, and there remained unsubdued in the North only the Scottish colonies of Antrim, which were soon to follow with the rest.  O’Neill lay quiet through the winter.  With the spring and the fine weather, when the rivers fell and the ground dried, he roused himself out of his lair, and with his galloglasse and kerne, and a few hundred harquebussmen, he dashed suddenly down upon the Red-shanks, and broke them utterly to pieces.  Six or seven hundred were killed in the field, James M’Connell and his brother, Sorleyboy, were taken prisoners, and, for the moment, the whole colony was swept away.  James M’Connell, himself badly wounded in the action, died a few months later, and Shane was left undisputed sovereign of Ulster.’

Primate Daniel announced to the Queen this ’glorious victory over a malicious and dangerous people’ who were gradually fastening on the country; and Sir Thomas Cusack urged that now was the time to make O’Neill a friend for ever, an advice which was backed up by the stern Arnold.  ‘For what else could be done?  The Pale,’ he pleaded, ’is poor and unable to defend itself.  If he do fall out before the beginning of next summer, there is neither outlaw, rebel, murderer, thief, nor any lewd nor evil-disposed person—­of whom God knoweth there is plenty swarming in every quarter among the wild Irish, yea and in our own border too—­which would not join to do what mischief they might.’

But Shane did not wait for further royal overtures.  He saw that with the English Government might was right, and that the justice of his cause shone out more brightly in proportion to the increase of his power.  Thus encouraged in his course of aggression and conquest, he seized the Queen’s Castles of Newry and Dundrum.  He then marched into Connaught, demanding the tribute due of old time ’to them that were kings in that realm.’  He exacted pledges of obedience from the western chiefs, and