eputy
she assumed that Smith had been committed to prison and would be
brought to condign punishment. That person, after many denials, at
length confessed his guilt, and said that his object was to rid his
country of a dangerous enemy. This motive was so good in the eye
of the Government that it saved the life of the culprit. Sir Thomas
Cusack, writing to Cecil, March 22, 1564, says, 'I persuaded O'Neill
to forget the matter, whereby no more talk should grow of it; seeing
there is no law to punish the offender other than by discretion and
imprisonment, which O'Neill would little regard except the party might
be executed by death, and that the law doth not suffer. So as the
matter be wisely pacified, it were well done to leave it.' Shane was
probably aware that Smith was but an instrument, who would be readily
sacrificed as a peace-offering.

The sketch which Mr. Froude gives of Ulster and its wild sovereign at
this time is admirably picturesque. 'Here then, for the present,
the story will leave Shane safely planted on the first step of his
ambition, in all but the title, sole monarch of the North. He
built himself a fort on an island in Lough Neagh, which he called
_Foogh-ni-gall_, or, Hate of Englishmen, and grew rich on the spoils
of his enemies, the only strong man in Ireland. He administered
justice after a paternal fashion, permitting no robbers but himself;
when wrong was done he compelled restitution, or at his own cost
redeemed the harm "to the loser's contentation." Two hundred pipes of
wine were stored in his cellars; 600 men-at-arms fed at his table, as
it were his janissaries; and daily he feasted the beggars at his gate,
saying, it was meet to serve Christ first. Half wolf, half fox, he lay
couched in his Castle of Malepartuis, with his emissaries at Rome, at
Paris, and at Edinburgh. In the morning he was the subtle pretender to
the Irish throne; in the afternoon, when the wine was in him, he was
a dissolute savage, revelling in sensuality with his unhappy countess,
uncoupled from her horseboy to wait upon his pleasure. He broke loose
from time to time to keep his hand in practice. At Carlingford,
for example, he swept off one day 200 sheep and oxen, while his
men violated sixty women in the town; but Elizabeth looked away and
endeavoured not to see. The English Government had resolved to stir no
sleeping dogs in Ireland till a staff was provided to chastise them if
they would bite. Terence Daniel, the dea