he will chase all hers out of Ireland.  Her majesty must make up her mind to the expense, and chastise this cannibal.’  He therefore demanded money that he might pay the garrison and get rid of the idle, treacherous, incorrigible soldiers which were worse than none.  Ireland, he said, would be no small loss to the English crown.  It was never so likely to be lost as then, and he would rather die than that it should be lost during his government.  The queen, however, sent money with the greatest possible reluctance, and was strangely dissatisfied with this able and faithful servant, even when his measures were attended with signal success.

[Footnote 1:  Opinions of Sir H. Sidney, Irish MSS., Rolls House; Froude, p.385.]

In the meantime O’Neill zealously espoused the cause of Mary Queen of Scots.  His friendship with Argyle grew closer, and he proposed that it should be cemented by a marriage.  ‘The countess’ was to be sent away, and Shane was to be united to the widow of James M’Connell, whom he had killed—­who was another half-sister of Argyle, and whose daughter he had married already and divorced.  Sidney wrote, that was said to be the earl’s practice; and Mr. Froude, who has celebrated the virtues of Henry VIII., takes occasion from this facility of divorce to have another fling at ‘Irish nature.’  He says:—­’The Irish chiefs, it seemed, three thousand years behind the world, retained the habits and the moralities of the Greek princes in the tale of Troy, when the bride of the slaughtered husband was the willing prize of the conqueror; and when only a rare Andromache was found to envy the fate of a sister

    Who had escaped the bed of some victorious lord.’

After a brief and brilliant campaign, in which Shane ’swept round by Lough Erne, swooped on the remaining cattle of Maguire, and struck terror and admiration into the Irishry,’ he wrote a letter to Charles IX. of France, inviting his co-operation in expelling the heretics, and bringing back the country to the holy Roman see.  The heretic Saxons, he said, were the enemies of Almighty God, the enemies of the holy Church of Rome, the King’s enemies, and his.  ’The time is come when we all are confederates in a common bond to drive the invader from our shores, and we now beseech your Majesty to send us 6,000 well-armed men.  If you will grant our request there will soon be no Englishmen left alive among us, and we will be your Majesty’s subjects ever more.’  This letter was intercepted, and is now preserved among the Irish MSS.

Sidney resolved to adopt a new plan of warfare.  His campaigns would not be mere summer forays, mere inroads of devastation during the few dry weeks of August and September.  He would wait till the harvest was gathered in, place troops in fortresses, and continue hostilities through the winter.  He adopted this course because ’in the cold Irish springs, the fields were bare, the cattle were lean, and the weather