This unhappy result teaches a harsh, but useful, political lesson: Never to confide a secret that concerns a great cause to a dubious “hanger-on,” and to avoid the cup that inebriates when one is the possessor of such a secret, or whether one is or not. O’Connolly’s treachery was rewarded by a grant of lands from “the crown,” and he was afterward a colonel in Cromwell’s army. His ultimate fate is involved in obscurity. But his name is embalmed in the annals of enduring infamy. The Lords Justices of England, in Dublin, once made aware of the situation, lost no time in putting the Castle and city at large in a posture of defence. The guards were doubled and reinforcements were summoned, by special messengers, from neighboring garrisons. Two tried soldiers were invested with the military power—Sir John Willoughby, who had been Governor of Galway, assumed command of the Castle; and Sir Charles Coote—one of the blackest names in Irish annals—was made military governor of the city. The Earl of Ormond—afterward Duke—was summoned from Carrick-on-Suir to assume chief command of the royal army. Thus, the Irish capital was again preserved, through folly and treason, to the English interest. MacMahon made no vain boast before the Privy Council, when he declared that the rising was beyond the power of man to prevent. Ulster did its full duty, and, on the morning of October 23, the forts of Mountjoy and Charlemont and the town and castle of Dungannon were in the hands of Sir Phelim O’Neill or his chief officers. Sir Connor MacGennis captured Newry; the MacMahons took Carrickmacross and Castleblaney, the O’Hanlon’s, Tandragee, while O’Reilly and McGuire—a relative of the lord of that name—“raised” Cavan and Femanagh. (McGee.) Rory O’More supplemented a brief address of the northern chiefs, wherein they declared they bore no hostility to the king, or to his English or Scotch subjects, “but only for the defence and liberty of themselves and the native Irish of the kingdom,” with one more elaborate, in which he ably showed that a common danger threatened the Protestants of the Episcopal Church with Roman Catholics. In all the manifestos of the time, there was entirely too much profession of “loyalty” to a king who was constitutionally incapacitated for keeping faith with any body of men whatsoever. Never was the adage that “Politics makes strange bedfellows” more forcibly illustrated than during this period of Irish history. The manliest of all the declarations issued was that of Sir Connor MacGennis, from “Newry’s captured towers.” “We are in arms,” wrote he, “for our lives and liberties. We desire no blood to be shed, but if you (the English and their allies) mean to shed our blood, be sure we shall be as ready as you for that purpose.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III