by popular clamor, which accused himself of being implicated in a plot to admit soldiers to the Tower for the rescue of Strafford, gave the “royal assent.” The earl, on learning this, placed a hand upon his heart and exclaimed, “Put not your trust in Princes!” And thus the master he had but too faithfully served consigned Strafford to the block. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, May 12, 1641. When the hour of his similar doom approached, nearly eight years thereafter, Charles said that the only act of his reign he repented of was giving his assent to the bill which deprived his favorite minister of life. Some Irish historians, McGee of the number, claim that, outside of his land robberies and tributary exactions, the Earl of Strafford made an able ruler of Ireland, and that trade and commerce flourished under his sway. While this may be, to a certain extent, true, nothing can palliate the crimes against justice and liberty of which he was guilty. He was only a degree less contemptible than the treacherous master who finally betrayed and abandoned him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II Irish Military Exiles—Rory O’More Organizes a Great Insurrection SINCE Sir Cahir O’Doherty fell on the rock of Doon, in 1608, no Irish chief or clan had risen against the English interest throughout the length and breadth of the island. The masses of the Irish people had, apparently, sunk into a condition of political torpor, but the fires of former generations still smouldered amid the ashes of vanquished hopes, and needed but a breath of inspiration to fan them into fierce, rebellious flame. Most of the ancient Celtic and many of the Anglo-Norman families of Catholic persuasion had military representatives in nearly all the camps of Europe. One Irish legion served in the army of Philip III of Spain, and was commanded successively by two of the sons of Hugh O’Neill, victor of the Yellow Ford—Henry and John. In it also served the hero’s gallant nephew, Owen Roe O’Neill, who rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and made a brilliant defence of Arras in France, besieged by Marshal de Meilleraye, in 1640. Of this able soldier we shall hear more in the future. The English Government never lost sight of those Irish exiles, and, about this time, one of its emissaries on the Continent reported that there were in the Spanish Netherlands alone “twenty Irish officers fit to be colonels and a hundred fit to be captains.” The same agent reported, further, that the Irish military throughout Europe had long been procuring arms for an attempt upon Ireland, and had 6,000 stand laid up in Antwerp for that design, and that these had been bought out of the deduction of their “monthly pay.” At the defence of Louvain against the French, the Irish legion, 1,000 strong, commanded by Colonel Preston, of a distinguished Anglo-Irish family, received honorable mention, and