O’Neill had followed the lord deputy to Lifford, and then marched on to the Pale, expecting to retaliate upon the invaders with impunity.  But he was encountered by Warren St. Leger, lost 200 men, and was at first hunted back over the border.  He again returned, however, with ‘a main army,’ burned several villages, and in a second fight with St. Leger, compelled the English to retire, ‘for lack of more aid;’ but they held together in good order, and Shane, with the Derry garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit.  ’Before he could revenge himself on Sidney, before he could stir against the Scots, before he could strike a blow at O’Donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was fastened in his unguarded side.’

In order to accomplish this object, he hovered cautiously about the Foyle, watching for an opportunity to attack the garrison.  But Randolph fell upon him by surprise, and after a short sharp action, the O’Neills gave way.  O’Dogherty with his Irish horse chased the flying crowd of his countrymen, killing every person he caught; and Shane lost 400 men, the bravest of his warriors.  The English success was dearly bought, for Randolph leading the pursuit, was struck by a random shot, and fell dead from his horse.

Before the Irish chief could recover from this great disaster, Sidney ’struck in again beyond Dundalk, burning his farms and capturing his castles.  The Scots came in over the Bann, wasting the country all along the river side.  Allaster M’Connell, like some chief of Sioux Indians, sent to the captain of Knockfergus an account of the cattle that he had driven, and the wives and bairns that he had slain.  Like swarms of angry hornets, these avenging savages drove their stings in the now maddened and desperate Shane on every point where they could fasten; while in December the old O’Donel came out over the mountains from Donegal, and paid back O’Neill with interest for his stolen wife, his pillaged country, and his own long imprisonment and exile.  The tide of fortune had turned too late for his own revenge:  worn out with his long sufferings, he fell from his horse, at the head of his people, with the stroke of death upon him; but before he died, he called his kinsmen about him, and prayed them to be true to England and their queen, and Hugh O’Donel, who succeeded to his father’s command, went straight to Derry, and swore allegiance to the English crown.

’Tyrone was now smitten in all its borders.  Magennis was the last powerful chief who still adhered to Shane’s fortunes; the last week in the year Sidney carried fire and sword through his country, and left him not a hoof remaining.  It was to no purpose that Shane, bewildered by the rapidity with which disasters were piling themselves upon him, cried out now for pardon and peace; the deputy would not answer his letter, and nothing was talked of but his extirpation by war only.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Froude, p.413.]