partial mitigation of the penal laws, in the reign of his father, and the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill during his brother’s reign, A.D. 1829. The persecuted earls clearly saw there was no hope of peace for them in Ireland, and that their presence only wrought further ill to their faithful clansmen, now reduced, for the first time, to the condition of “subjects” of the King of England. Lord Howth, a powerful Catholic noble of the Pale, was suspected of having given information to the Lord Deputy of a meeting held at Maynooth the previous Christmas at which the earls and several Anglo-Catholic noblemen were present. It was claimed that the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity was there discussed, and that another effort to overthrow the English power would be made by the parties to the meeting. This “plot,” if there were any at all, was communicated to the Clerk of the Privy Council by an anonymous letter dropped at the Castle of Dublin in March, 1607. “O’Neill,” says McGee, “was with Chichester, at Slane, in September when he received a letter from the McGuire—not the traitor of that title—who had been abroad, conveying some startling information upon which Tyrone seems to have acted at once. He took leave of the Lord Deputy, as if to prepare for a journey to London, whither he had been summoned on some false pretext; and, after spending a few days with his old friend, Sir Garrett Moore, at Mellifont, repaired to his seat of Dungannon, where he, at once, assembled all of his immediate family and all proceeded to the shores of Lough Swilly, at Rathmullen, where they were joined by Roderick O’Donnell and all of his household. They embarked immediately on the French ship which had conveyed McGuire to Ireland, and set sail for France, where, on landing, they were warmly welcomed and royally entertained by the chivalric King Henry IV, who, as became a stout soldier and able captain, greatly admired the prowess displayed in the Ulster wars by Hugh O’Neill. There sailed to France with the latter his last countess, daughter of McGenniss of Iveagh; his three sons, Hugh, John, and Brian; his nephew, Art O’Neill, son of Cormac, and many of lesser note. With O’Donnell sailed his brother Cathbar; his fair sister, Nuala, wife of Niall Garbh, who had, in righteous indignation, forsaken the traitor when he drew the sword against Ireland and her noble brother, Red Hugh; the lady Rose O’Doherty, wife of Cathbar, and, after his death, of Owen O’Neill; McGuire, Owen MacWard, the chief bard of Tyrconnel, and several others. It proved to be a fatal voyage, for it exiled forever the best and bravest of the Irish chiefs. Well might the Four Masters in their Annals of the succeeding generation say: “Woe to the heart that meditated, woe to the mind that conceived, woe to the council that decided on the project of voyage, without knowing whether they should to the end of their lives be able to return to their ancient