The earl understanding that earnest suit had been made to his majesty for the presidentship of Ulster, made bold to write to the king, humbly beseeching him not to grant any such office to any person over himself, ’suspecting it would be his overthrow, as by plain experience he knew the like office to be the utter overthrow of others of his rank in other provinces within the realm of Ireland.’  He also wrote to the Earl of Salisbury, who replied that the earl was not to tie his majesty to place or displace officers at his (the earl’s) pleasure in any of his majesty’s kingdoms.  This was not the earl’s meaning, but it indicated to him pretty plainly that he had no favour to expect from that quarter.  The office was intended for Sir Arthur Chichester, and he much feared that it would be used for his destruction without his majesty’s privity.  Therefore, seeing himself envied by those who should be his protectors, considering the misery sustained by others through the oppression of the like government, he resolved to sacrifice all rather than live under that yoke.

The next item is very characteristic.  The earl’s nephew Brian M’Art happened to be in the house of Turlough M’Henry, having two men in his company.  Being in a merry humour, some dispute arose between him and a kinsman of his own, who ’gave the earl’s nephew a blow of a club on the head, and tumbled him to the ground; whereupon, one of his men standing by and seeing his master down, did step up with the fellow and gave him some three or four stabs of a knife, having no other weapon, and the master himself, as it was said, gave him another, through which means the man came to his death.  Thereupon, the earl’s nephew and his two men were taken and kept in prison till the next sessions holden in the county Armagh, where his men were tried by a jury of four innocent and mere ignorant people, having little or no substance, most of them being bare soldiers and not fit, as well by the institution of law in matters of that kind as also through their own insufficiency, to be permitted or elected to the like charge; and the rest foster-brethren, followers, and very dear friends to the party slain, that would not spare to spend their lives and goods to revenge his death.  Yet all that notwithstanding were they allowed, and the trial of these two gentlemen committed to them, through which means, and the vigorous threatening and earnest enticements of the judges, they most shamefully condemned to die, and the jury in a manner forced to find the matter murder in each of them, and that, not so much for their own offences, as thinking to make it an evidence against the master, who was in prison in the Castle of Dublin, attending to be tried the last Michaelmas term, whose death, were it right or wrong, was much desired by the lord deputy.