Page 183 - Demo

Chapter Six 183
By that time the English had been driven from their last continental possession, Calais, and as it stood against the two superpowers of the time, France and Spain, a heretofore unseen pugnacious spirit of national unity arose.
Now while this belligerent and ambitious royal government viewed Ireland as a land of opportunities, a large fertle island, potentially rich and prosperous, if ruled, and controlled properly by loyal English lords and settled with a loyal English tenantry, English Laws and English Manners. Also, as a direct upshot, they further reasoned that the strategic threat would be snufed out by a loyal, competent, and trained militia, well able to cope with any invasion from Europe. But that said, as the revenues and taxes from Ireland were not col- lected in a concerted manner, Ireland had become a massive drain on the English treasury, added to which the cost of maintaining an army in Ireland was immense. Sure Ireland was a land of plenty, but ‘full of costly running sores,’ as one writer refered to it, and if Elizabeth was to complete what the Normans had begun four hundred years previously, much tighter control and new tougher methods of governance needed to be emoployed and the military efort stepped up.
But before she could put these methods into practice, three Irish rebellions had to be dealt with and suppressed. The irst was the rebellion of Seán O’Neill, son of Con Bacach and known to posterity as Seán a’ Díomais-‘Shane the Proud’; the second Geraldine Rebel- lion; and the third, the rising of the two Hughs-Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell.
As mentioned previously, under the policy of ‘Surrender and Regrant,’ Con Bacach O’Neill and his eldest son, Ferdoragh, or in English, Matthew, were created Earl of Tyrone and Baron of Dungannon, respectively. Soon there arose, however, a well-founded belief that Matthew, named by the English as the successor to the title O’Neill, was not Con’s son at all, but the child of a peasant who was passed of upon him as his own. As a result, Conn’s second son, the aforementioned ‘Shane the Proud,’ claimed that he himself was the rightful heir supported by the people of Cinéal Eoghan, the present counties of Derry and Tyrone. He is reputed to have declared ‘My ancestors were Kings of Ulster and Ulster is mine and shall be mine.’ After much wrangling the Earl of Tyrone supported his son Shane’s claim, while Matthew appealed to the Government for assistance, which he readily received.
So it came to pass that Shane, as one chronicler said ‘went into rebellion’ and attacked both Matthew and his supporters. During the years 1551 and 1552 no fewer than three English armies marched into Ulster to assist Matthew, but Shane, with strategic superiority