stoned by the English populace for having dared to defend the rights and the patrimony of their people. The Catholic religion continued to be tolerated by James until 1605, when, suddenly, a penal statute of the time of Elizabeth was unearthed and put into operation with full force. Treaty obligations of England with the Irish chiefs were also systematically violated. The lands of Ulster were broad and fair, and the great body of military adventurers who had come into Ireland from England during the long wars of the preceding reign, were greedy for spoil. These and the Irish traitors—Art O’Neill, Niall Garbh O’Donnell, the false McGuire, and the rest—pestered the government and made never-ending charges of plots and “treasons” against “the earls,” as the Irish leaders of the late war now came to be called. The plotters were ably assisted by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, ancestor of the late Marquis of Salisbury, who was also his namesake. Another able English conspirator against the Irish chiefs was Sir Arthur Chichester, who became one of the chief beneficiaries of the subsequent “confiscations,” and whose descendants still hold, as “titled nobility,” a very comfortable slice of ancient Ulster. Some “Reformed” bishops also took great interest in getting the earls into hot water with the government. Finally an alleged plot on the part of O’Neill and O’Donnell to overthrow the King of England’s government in Ulster—an absurdity on its face, considering their fallen and helpless condition—was made the pretext for summoning them to appear before the English courts established in Ireland, in whose justice they had no confidence, remembering the ghastly fate of MacMahon Roe. A hired perjurer, named O’Cahan—the unworthy scion of a noble house—was to be chief “witness” against O’Neill, and no secret was made of the fact that others would be forthcoming, hired by Chichester, to finish the work begun by the principal informer. Meanwhile the free exercise of the Catholic religion—so solemnly guaranteed by Mountjoy—was strictly prohibited, under the penal enactment of Elizabeth, known as the “Act of Uniformity,” already referred to; and again began those horrid religious persecutions, for politics’ and plunder’s sake, which had no termination in Ireland, except for one brief period, during nearly two centuries. Such Catholics as desired to practice their faith had to betake themselves to the mountain recesses, or the caves of the seacoast, where, before rude altars, Mass was celebrated by priests on whose heads a penal price was set. Sheriffs and judges, attended by large bands of soldiers, made circuit of the new Ulster “counties” and succeeded in completely terrifying the unfortunate Catholic inhabitants. Education, as far as Catholics were concerned, was prohibited, and then began that exodus of Irish ecclesiastical students to the Continent of Europe, which continued down to the reign of William IV, notwithstanding the