The History of Ireland: 17th Century. Bagwell Richard

[52]

      Fate of Neill Garv O’Donnell.

      Irish juries will not find verdicts for treason.

      Neill Garv is sent to the Tower,

      where he dies.

Sir Neill Garv O’Donnell gave no effectual help against O’Dogherty, and he was really a fellow-conspirator. Lifford, Ballyshannon and Donegal were to be seized by him and his friends, while Sir Cahir took Derry and Culmore, and all plunder was to be divided equally between them. Sir Neill was to have Burt Castle and whatever rights O’Donnell had over Inishowen, as long as he could hold his own. He continued, however, to profess loyalty and to urge his claims over the whole of Tyrconnel. O’Dogherty’s country he regained by special grant, but he was an abettor, if not the principal contriver, of the Derry surprise, gave advice about the mode of attack, sent sixteen men of his own to help, and charged O’Dogherty to spare no one. All this was not certainly known until later, and Sir Neill obtained protection from Wingfield, whom he accompanied on his expedition into Donegal. He was soon again in communication with the rebels, was arrested at Glenveagh and sent a prisoner to Dublin, but it was not until June, 1609, that a Donegal jury could be sworn in the King’s Bench there. The jurors were Irishmen and not of very high position, for the English settlers and the principal natives had served on the grand jury which found the bill. Davies offered no evidence as to Sir Neill’s complicity in the Derry affair, though there could be no doubt of the fact, because it might be held that the treason was covered by Wingfield’s protection. There was good proof of the breach of that protection by aiding and abetting the King’s enemies, but the jury were shut up from Friday till Monday and almost starved to death. They refused to find a verdict of treason on the ground that Sir Neill had not been actually in arms against the King, and it was believed that they had bound themselves by mutual oath not to find the lord of their country guilty. They were discharged ‘in commiseration of their faintings and for reasons concerning his Majesty’s service.’ ‘The priests,’ said Davies, ‘excommunicate the jurors who condemn a traitor. The Irish will never condemn a principal traitor: therefore we have need of an English colony, that we may have honest trials. They dare not condemn an Irish lord of a country for fear of revenge, because we have not power enough in the country to defend honest jurors. We must stay there till the English and Scottish colonies be planted, and then make a jury of them.’ There being no hope of a verdict, the lawyers could only suggest that Sir Neill should be tried by a Middlesex jury as O’Rourke had been in 1591. In any case he should be sent to England, for Dublin Castle was no safe place for a prisoner who was always trying to escape, and who had already been found with a rope long enough to ‘carry him over the wall from the highest tower.’ Sir Neill went to London in due course, and died in the Tower in 1626.[53]

      The effects of O’Dogherty’s rising.

      Fate of O’Cahan.

The abortive rebellion of O’Dogherty made the fate of the six Ulster counties harder than it might otherwise have been. It was, say the Four Masters, ‘from this rising and from the departure of the Earls that their principalities, their territories, their estates, their lands, their forts, their fruitful harbours, and their fishful bays were taken from the Irish of the province of Ulster, and were given in their presence to foreign tribes; and they were expelled and banished into other countries, where most of them died.’ Inishowen, which O’Dogherty held by patent independently of Tyrone, was separately forfeited, and the whole of it granted to Chichester himself. The failure of trial by Jury in Neill Garv’s case prevented Davies from running a fresh risk with O’Cahan, who lay long in Dublin Castle, and was sent to the Tower late in 1609 in charge of Francis Annesley, afterwards Lord Mountnorris. Neill Garv and his son Naughton went in the same vessel. ‘The boy,’ said Chichester, ‘has more wit than either of them,’ and he had been at Oxford and at Trinity College, Dublin. No charge was made against him, but he was as proud as his father. O’Cahan remained a prisoner, and no doubt there was plenty of evidence against him, but Chichester, while carrying out the policy of the Home Government, scarcely hides his opinion that he had been badly treated, and that he had the reputation of a truth-telling man. As to the facts, the Lord Deputy’s story tallies closely with that of Docwra. Writing as late as 1614, the latter says deliberately that ‘O’Cahan, from the breach of my promise with him, derives, as well he may, the cause of all his miseries,’ and he thought he would have done nothing rebellious if faith had been kept with him. He was never tried, and spent years in the Tower, where he probably died in 1628. A thousand acres of his old territory was granted, or perhaps only promised, to his wife Honora, with reversion to her son Donell, but the young man went to the Netherlands, returned in 1642 with Owen Roe O’Neill, and was killed at Clones. His elder brother Rory was hanged for his share in the conspiracy of 1615.[54]

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [46] Docwra’s Narration; Cal. of State Papers, Ireland, for 1607; Recognisance in Chancery and Indictment of Tyrone, &c., calendared under June 1608; O’Dogherty to the Prince of Wales, February 14, 1608.

[47] Hart’s narrative enclosed in Chichester’s despatch of May 4, disproving Cox’s statement that the garrison were murdered. O’Sullivan, Tom. iv. Lib. 1, cap. 5: ‘Georgius Paletus Luci (Derry) præfectus Anglus eques auratus O’Dochartum conviciis onerat, minans se facturum, ut ille laqueo suspendatur.’ Cox, writing in 1690, mentions a report that Paulet had given O’Dogherty a box on the ear.

[48] Bodley’s letter of May 3; Chichester’s of May 4, enclosing Hart’s and Baker’s own narratives; Newes from Ireland, concerning the late treacherous action, &c., London, 1608; O’Sullivan Bere ut sup.; Four Masters, 1608.

[49] Ridgeway’s Journal, June 30, and his letter to Salisbury of July 3. O’Sullivan, Compendium, Lib. i. cap. 5.

[50] Chichester to the Privy Council, July 6, and the proclamation dated next day; Four Masters, 1608, with O’Donovan’s notes; Sir Donnell O’Cahan to his brother Manus (from the Tower), June 1, 1610. Manus gave the letter to Chichester.

[51] Davies to Salisbury, August 5, 1608; Chichester to the Privy Council, September 12.

[52] Chichester to the Privy Council, September 12 and 17, the latter enclosing Ffolliott’s narrative.

[53] Davies on the juries, State Papers, Ireland, 1608, No. 801; his and Chichester’s accounts of the trial, June 27 and July 4, 1609; abstract of evidence calendared at October 1609, No. 514; Letter to Bishop Montgomery from Ineen Duive, Hugh O’Donnell’s mother and Tyrconnel’s aunt, printed from Carte MSS. in O’Donovan’s Four Masters, 2364.

[54] Docwra’s Narration, 283. Francis O’Cahan’s petition calendared with the papers of 1649, p. 278, but evidently of a much earlier date. Hill’s Ulster Plantation, 61, 235.

      CHAPTER V