Page 207 - Demo

Chapter Six 207
evidence of a popish plot amongst some of the Irish, a plot in which Dublin Castle was to be seized and the Viceroy killed. Now while O’Neill was not named amongst the conspira- tors, nor could any evidence be found to support the plot theory, those who were in any way falsely associated or implicated, knew well that their days were numbered.
As the Northern chiefs anticipated being summoned to London and thrown into prison, Cúchonnaught Maguire of Fermanagh, led to Holland and with a 7,000 crown dona- tion from Albert, Archduke of Austria, the then Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, he purchased a sixteen-gun vessel of eighty tonns, which, to avoid suspicion before setting sail for Ireland, he freighted with salt and manned with marines disguised as seamen. On 14 September, 1607, the Earls with their families and kinsmen to the number of ninety-nine ‘a distinguished crew for one ship,’ it was said, stepped aboard Maguire’s newly-purchased vessel at Rathmullen in Lough Swilly, and at midnight on the same day, they sailed away from Ireland’s shores-forever.
The Four Masters said of this: “It is certain, that the sea has not borne, and the wind has not wafted in modern times, a number of persons in one ship, more eminent, illustrious, or noble in point of genealogy, heroic deeds, valour, feats of arms, and brave achievements than they. Woe to the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that conceived, woe to the council that recommended the project of this expedition.”
This incident is usually known in history as Imeacht na nIarlaí -‘the Flight of the Earls.’
After a short, though stormy voyage, the fugitives landed unhindered at Nantes in France and eventually reached Rome in the Spring of 1608. But once on dry land misfortune dogged their every step and within three months of their arrival in Rome, Rory O Don- nell and his brother Cahir had died, and in the following year Maguire and O’Neill’s eldest son were also dead. With battered conidence and prestige fallen, the great O’Neill himself lingered on until 20 July, 1616, when blind, broken in spirit, and almost penniless, he too, breathed his last and was laid beside his son in the church of St.Peter. Bernard: his second son was murdered at Brussels the same year.
In his Lectures on the History of Ireland Alexander Richey thus sums up Hugh O’Neill’s character:
“In his course of conduct he was essentially not a Celt. He possessed none of the enthusiasm or instability of his nation; he did not exhibit the reckless audacity, self-