and turned upon his leader, in the interest of his brother-in-law, son of the “great earl,” who was held as a hostage in London Tower by Elizabeth, and was now used as a firebrand to stir up feud and faction among the Munster Irish. Mountjoy had not been many months in Ireland, when, to use the words of the historian Mitchel, “a network of English intrigue and perfidy covered the land, until the leaders of the (Irish) confederacy in Munster knew not whom to trust, or where they were safe from treason and assassination.” Dermot O’Connor was willing to surrender Desmond, whom he had kidnapped, to Mountjoy, for a thousand pounds, but, before he could receive his blood-money, the “Suggawn (hay-rope) Earl,” as he was called in derision by the English faction, was rescued by his kinsman, Pierce Lacy. But the White Knight—frightful misnomer—another relative of the earl—was more fortunate than O’Connor. He managed to receive the thousand pounds, delivered Desmond to Carew, and earned enduring infamy. The “Suggawn Earl” was sent to London and died a miserable prisoner in the Tower. Thus, the policy of the Lord Deputy was doing its deadly work in Munster and also in Leinster, where the Irish were of mixed race, and where racial animosity could be more easily worked upon than in Ulster and Connaught, where most of the ancient clans still remained unbroken and uncontaminated by foreign influences. Yet Ulster and Connaught had their Benedict Arnolds, too, as we have shown in the cases of O’Neill and McGuire, and will show in other cases which yet remain to be mentioned. But in these provinces the war was national as well as religious, while in Munster it was almost entirely religious. Most of the Catholic Anglo-Irish would have fought with the English rather than the Celtic-Irish, if their religion had been tolerated from the first. Among the Celtic Irish chiefs who went over to the English in Munster, were O’Sullivan More and McCarthy More (the Great). The latter had the cowardly excuse that his strong-minded wife had coerced him into treason, and refused to live with him until he came to terms with the enemy. Was there ever anything more disgraceful in the history of manhood and womanhood? They were, indeed, a couple entirely worthy of each other. The Lord Deputy, in the meantime, had ravaged the “rebellious” portions of Leinster, burning houses and crops, and doing other evil things common to the savage warfare of that period. His greatest piece of luck, however, was the killing of the brave O’More of Leix in a skirmish. (Mitchel.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI Ireland’s Fortunes Take a Bad Turn—Defeat of O’Neill and O’Donnell at Kinsale