The lord deputy and his officers, able, energetic, farseeing men, working together persistently for the accomplishment of a well-defined purpose, were drawing the great net of English law closer and closer around the heads of the Irish clans, who struggled gallantly and wildly in its fatal meshes.  The episode of Sir Cahir O’Dogherty is a romance.  On the death of Sir John O’Dogherty, the O’Donel, in accordance with Irish custom, caused his brother Phelim Oge to be inaugurated Prince of Inishowen, because Cahir, his son, was then only thirteen years of age, too young to command the sept.  But this arrangement did not please his foster brothers, the M’Davitts, who proposed to Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Derry, that their youthful chief should be adopted as the queen’s O’Dogherty; and on this condition they promised that he and they would devote themselves to her majesty’s service.  The terms were gladly accepted.  Sir Cahir was trained by Docwra in martial exercises, in the arts of civility, and in English literature.  He was an apt pupil.  He grew up strong and comely; and he so distinguished himself before he was sixteen years of age in skirmishes with his father’s allies, that Sir Henry wrote of him in the following terms:  ’The country was overgrown with ancient oak and coppice.  O’Dogherty was with me, alighted when I did, kept me company in the greatest heat of the fight, behaved himself bravely, and with a great deal of love and affection; so much so, that I recommended him at my next meeting with the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, for the honour of knighthood, which was accordingly conferred upon him.’  The young knight went to London, was well received at court, and obtained a new grant of a large portion of the O’Dogherty’s country.  He married a daughter of Lord Gormanstown, a catholic peer of the Pale, distinguished for loyalty to the English throne, resided with his bride at his Castle of Elagh, or at Burt, or Buncranna, keeping princely state, not in the old Irish fashion, but in the manner of an English nobleman of the period; hunting the red deer in his forest, hawking, or fishing in the teeming waters of Lough Foyle, Lough Swilly, and the Atlantic, which poured their treasures around the promontory of which he was the lord.  His intimate associates were officers and favourites of the king.

Docwra had given up the government of Derry and retired to England.  He was succeeded by Sir George Paulet, a man of violent temper.  Sir Cahir had sold 3,000 acres of land, which was to be planted with English; and, in order to perfect the deed of sale, it was necessary to have the document signed before the governor of Derry.  It had been reported to the lord deputy that Sir Cahir, not content with his position, intended to leave the country, probably with the design of joining the fugitive earls in an attempt to destroy the English power in Ireland.  He was therefore summoned before the lord deputy; and Lord Gormanstown, Thomas Fitzwilliam