[Footnote 1:  Page 410.]

In the meantime Shane O’Neill, hard pressed on every side, earnestly implored the cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, in the name of their great brother the duke, to bring the Fleur-de-lys to the rescue of Ireland from the grasp of the ungodly English.  ‘Help us,’ he cried, blending Irish-like flattery with entreaty:  ’when I was in England, I saw your noble brother, the Marquis d’Elboeuf, transfix two stags with a single arrow.  If the most Christian king will not help us, move the pope to help us.  I alone in this land sustain his cause.’  To propitiate his holiness, Primate Daniel was dismissed to the ranks of the army, and Creagh received his crosier, and was taken into O’Neill’s household.

‘All was done,’ says the English historian, ’to deserve favour in earth and heaven, but all was useless.  The Pope sat silent or muttering his anathemas with bated breath.  The Guises had work enough on hand at home to heed the Irish wolf, whom the English, having in vain attempted to trap or poison, were driving to bay with more lawful weapons.’  His own people, divided and dispirited, began now to desert the failing cause.  In May, by a concerted movement, the deputy with the light horse of the Pale overran Tyrone, and robbed the farmers of 3,000 cattle, while the O’Donels mustered their forces for a great contest with Shane, now struggling, almost hopelessly, to maintain his supremacy.  The O’Neills and O’Donels met on the banks of the Foyle near Lifford.  The former were superior in number, being about 3,000 men.  After a brief fight ’the O’Neills broke and fled; the enemy was behind them, the river was in front; and when the Irish battle cries had died away over moor and mountain, but 200 survived of those fierce troopers, who were to have cleared Ireland for ever from the presence of the Saxons.  For the rest, the wolves were snarling over their bodies, and the seagulls whirling over them with scream and cry, as they floated down to their last resting-place beneath the quiet waters of Lough Foyle.  Shane’s foster-brethren, faithful to the last, were all killed; he himself with half-a-dozen comrades rode for his life, pursued by the avenging furies.  His first desperate intention was to throw himself at Sidney’s feet, with a slave’s collar upon his neck; but his secretary, Neil M’Kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope.  Sorleyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at Lough Neagh, the Countess of Argyle had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him.  M’Kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred of the M’Connells.’