Such was the case of the English Government presented to the world by the king and his ministers.  Let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves.  The Rev. C.P.  Meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the ’old historic rolls,’ in the Public Record Office, London.  These documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[1] O’Neill’s defence is headed, ’Articles Exhibited by the Earl of Tyrone to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, declaring certain Causes of Discontent offered Him, by which he took occasion to Depart His Country.’  The statement is divided into twenty items, of which the following is the substance:  It was proclaimed by public authority in his manor of Dungannon, that none should hear mass upon pain of losing his goods and imprisonment, and that no ecclesiastical person should enjoy any cure or dignity without swearing the oath of supremacy and embracing the contrary religion, and those who refused so to do were actually deprived of their benefices and dignities, in proof of which the earl referred to the lord deputy’s answer to his own petition, and to the Lord Primate of Ireland, who put the persecuting decree into execution.  The Earl of Devon, then lord-lieutenant, had taken from him the lands of his ancestors called the Fews, in Armagh, and given them to other persons.  He was deprived of the annual tribute of sixty cows from Sir Cahir O’Dogherty’s country called Inishowen, which tribute had never been brought into question till James’s reign.  The same lord-lieutenant had taken from him the fishings of the Bann, which always belonged to his ancestors, and which he was forced to purchase again.  Portions of his territory had been taken ’under colour of church-lands, a thing never in any man’s memory heard of before.’  One Robert Leicester an attorney had got some more of the earl’s land, which he transferred to Captain Leigh.  ’So as any captain or clerk had wanted means, and had no other means or device to live, might bring the earl in trouble for some part or parcel of his living, falsely inventing the same, to be concealed or church-land.’  The Archbishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Derry and Clogher claimed the best part of the earl’s whole estate, as appertaining to their bishoprics, ’which was never moved by any other predecessors before, other than that they had some chiefry due to them, in most part of all his living, and would now have the whole land to themselves as their domain lands, not content with the benefit of their ancient registers, which the earl always offered, and was willing to give without further question.  O’Cahan, ’one of the chiefest and principalest of the earl’s tenants, was set upon by certain of his majesty’s privy council, as also by his highness’s counsel-at-law, to withdraw himself and the lands called Iraght-I-Cahan