plied that the earl was not to tie his
majesty to place or displace officers at his (the earl's) pleasure in
any of his majesty's kingdoms. This was not the earl's meaning, but it
indicated to him pretty plainly that he had no favour to expect from
that quarter. The office was intended for Sir Arthur Chichester, and
he much feared that it would be used for his destruction without
his majesty's privity. Therefore, seeing himself envied by those who
should be his protectors, considering the misery sustained by
others through the oppression of the like government, he resolved to
sacrifice all rather than live under that yoke.

The next item is very characteristic. The earl's nephew Brian M'Art
happened to be in the house of Turlough M'Henry, having two men in his
company. Being in a merry humour, some dispute arose between him and
a kinsman of his own, who 'gave the earl's nephew a blow of a club
on the head, and tumbled him to the ground; whereupon, one of his men
standing by and seeing his master down, did step up with the fellow
and gave him some three or four stabs of a knife, having no other
weapon, and the master himself, as it was said, gave him another,
through which means the man came to his death. Thereupon, the earl's
nephew and his two men were taken and kept in prison till the next
sessions holden in the county Armagh, where his men were tried by a
jury of four innocent and mere ignorant people, having little or no
substance, most of them being bare soldiers and not fit, as well by
the institution of law in matters of that kind as also through their
own insufficiency, to be permitted or elected to the like charge;
and the rest foster-brethren, followers, and very dear friends to the
party slain, that would not spare to spend their lives and goods to
revenge his death. Yet all that notwithstanding were they allowed,
and the trial of these two gentlemen committed to them, through which
means, and the vigorous threatening and earnest enticements of the
judges, they most shamefully condemned to die, and the jury in a
manner forced to find the matter murder in each of them, and that,
not so much for their own offences, as thinking to make it an evidence
against the master, who was in prison in the Castle of Dublin,
attending to be tried the last Michaelmas term, whose death, were it
right or wrong, was much desired by the lord deputy.

Again, the earl had given his daughter in marriage to O'Cahan with
a portion o