Even the iron heart of Hugh O’Neill could not maintain its strength against conditions such as those thus described by Moryson, the Englishman, who can not be suspected of intensifying the horrid picture at the expense of his own country’s reputation: “No spectacle,” he says, “was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially of wasted countries, than to see multitudes of poor people dead, with their mouths all colored green, by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above ground.” There were other spectacles still more terrible, as related by the English generals and chroniclers themselves, but we will spare the details. They are too horrible for the average civilized being of this day to contemplate, although the age is by no means lacking in examples of human savagery which go to prove that the wild beast in the nature of man has not yet been entirely bred out. Baffled by gold, not by steel, by the torch rather than the sword, deprived of all his resources, deserted by his allies, and growing old and worn in ceaseless warfare, it can hardly be wondered at that O’Neill sent to the Lord Deputy, at the end of February, 1603, propositions of surrender. Mountjoy was glad to receive them—for the vision of a possible Spanish expedition, in great force, still disquieted him—and arranged to meet the discomfited Irish hero at Mellifont Abbey, in Louth, where died, centuries before, old, repentant, and despised, that faithless wife of O’Ruarc, Prince of Breffni, whose sin first caused the Normans to set foot in Ireland. So anxious was Mountjoy to conclude a peace, that nearly all of O’Neill’s stipulations were concurred in, even to the free exercise of the Catholic religion in the subjugated country. He and his allies were allowed to retain, under English “letters patent,” their original tribe-lands, with a few exceptions in favor of the traitors who had fought with the English against their own kindred. It was insisted, however, by the Deputy, that all Irish titles, including that of “The O’Neill,” should be dropped, thenceforth and forever, and the English titles of “nobility” substituted. All the Irish territory was converted into “shire-ground.” The ancient Brehon Law was abolished, and, for evermore, the Irish clans were to be governed by English methods. Queen Elizabeth had died during the progress of the negotiations, and a secret knowledge of this fact no doubt influenced Mountjoy in hurrying the treaty to its conclusion, and granting such, comparatively, favorable conditions to Hugh O’Neill and the other “rebellious” Irish chiefs. Therefore, it was to the representative of King James I that Tyrone, at last, yielded his sword—not to the general of Elizabeth. It is said that in the bitter last moments of that sovereign, her almost constant inquiry was: “What news from Ireland and that rascally O’Neill?” The latter’s most elaborate historian estimates