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216 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
several Irish chiefs and the labours of historians such as the Four Masters and Geoffrey Keating. Abroad, Ireland’s cause was pleaded successfully by numerous scholars and writers of high reputation, ably supported by leading members of the military of the Irish in exile, and many of the young Irish ‘swordsmen’ who had taken service in Continental armies were anxious to return and fight for the freedom of their own country. At the head of this new patriotic movement in Ireland, ‘the moving spirit’ as he is sometimes called, was Rory O’ Moore, a man of culture, courage, and high ability, whose ancestors had lost most of their lands by the confiscation during the reign of Edward V1.
Of him Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, in his Ballad Poetry of Ireland, writes: “Then a private gentleman, with no resources beyond his intellect and his courage, this Rory, when Ireland was weakened by defeat and confiscation, and guarded with a jealous care constantly in- creasing in strictness and severity, conceived the vast design of rescuing the country from England, and even accomplished it; for, in three years, England did not retain a city in Ire- land but Dublin and Drogheda; and for eight years the land was possessed and the supreme authority exercised by the Confederation created by O’Moore. History contains no stricter instance of the influence of an individual mind.”
With O’Moore were Sir Felim O’Neill, Lord Maguire, O’Mahony, McMahon, McGuin- ness and many other heads of the Irish clans: they planned a general rising for 23 October, 1641, during which, Dublin Castle and the principal garrisoned towns throughout the coun- try were to be seized. Their aims were to destroy English power in one fell swoop and to ob- tain much needed arms and ammunition for their own forces. Furthermore, the leaders had already received pledges of help from the Anglo-Irish lords of the Pale, and were confident of receiving financial and military aid from the Continent, where their chief backer was Eo- ghan Ruadh O’Neill, a nephew of the great Hugh of Tyrone and at the time a distinguished officer in the Spanish service in the Netherlands.
The scheme to seize Dublin Castle failed owing to Sir William Parsons and Sir John Bor- lase, two of the Lord chief Justices, having been forewarned of the conspirators intentions on the night of the 22nd by a drunken informer named Eoghan Connolly. Consequently, Maguire, O’ Mahony, McMahon, and many others were arrested in the city and subse- quently tried and sent for execution to London-O’Moore managed to escape.
The rising met with its greatest success in Ulster where it was directed by Felim O Neill, and in only a few days the insurgents, 30,000 strong, were masters of the province, albeit
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