Threats, penalties and force were to be employed to enforce compliance.  Every effort of the Queen and her emissaries was directed to despoil the Irish Catholics of their property, and exterminate them.  More than once did they attempt this, for they knew that not otherwise could the Catholic religion be suppressed in our island, unless by the extermination of those in whose hearts it was implanted; nor could their heretical teachings be propagated, while the natives were alive to detest and execrate them."[419]

In 1561 Sussex returned from England with reinforcements for his army, and marched to Armagh, where he established himself in the Cathedral.  From thence he sent out a large body of troops to plunder in Tyrone, but they were intercepted by the redoubtable Shane O’Neill, and suffered so serious a defeat as to alarm the inhabitants of the Pale, and even the English nation.  Fresh supplies of men and arms were hastily despatched from England, and the Earls of Desmond, Ormonde, Kildare, Thomond, and Clanrickarde assembled round the Viceregal standard to assist in suppressing the formidable foe.  And well might they fear the lion-hearted chieftain!  A few years later, Sidney describes him as the only strong man in Ireland.  The Queen was warned, that unless he were speedily put down, she would lose Ireland, as her sister had lost Calais.  He had gained all Ulster by his sword, and ruled therein with a far stronger hand, and on a far firmer foundation, than ever any English monarch had obtained in any part of Ireland.  Ulster was his terra clausa; and he would be a bold, or, perhaps I should rather say, a rash man, who dare intrude in these dominions.  He could muster seven thousand men in the field; and though he seldom hazarded a general engagement, he “slew in conflicts 3,500 soldiers and 300 Scots of Sidney’s army."[420] The English chronicler, Hooker, who lived in times when the blaze and smoke of houses and haggards, set on fire by Shane, could be seen even from Dublin Castle, declares that it was feared he intended to make a conquest over the whole land.

Even his letters are signed, if not written, in royal style.[421] He dates one Ex finibus de Tirconail, when about to wage war with the neighbouring sept of O’Donnell; he dates another, Ex silvis meis, when, in pursuance of his Celtic mode of warfare, he hastened into his woods to avoid an engagement with the English soldiers; he signs himself Misi O’Neill—­Me, the O’Neill.  As this man was too clever to be captured, and too brave to be conquered, a plan was arranged, with the full concurrence of the Queen, by which he might be got rid of by poison or assassination.  Had such an assertion been made by the Irish annalists, it would have been scouted as a calumny on the character of “good Queen Bess;” but the evidence of her complicity is preserved in the records of the State Paper Office.  I shall show presently that attempts at assassination were a common arrangement for the disposal of refractory Irish chieftains during this reign.