[Sidenote: who are encouraged by a friar.] [Sidenote: A son of Tyrone's.] The last struggle of the Macdonalds to drive the Campbells from Isla and Cantire had some connection with the movements of the discontented in Ulster, but these intrigues are very obscure, and perhaps scarcely worth unravelling. Sir James Macdonald escaped from Edinburgh in May 1615, and by the end of the year was a fugitive in Spain, his flight having been facilitated by Jesuits in or about Galway. After evacuating Dunyveg, Coll _Keitach_ wandered from island to island, and penetrated in Ireland as far as Lough Neagh, whence he returned to Ballycastle Bay, with Sir Randal's nephew Sorley and with other Macdonnells and O'Cahans. At first he merely intended to hide from the Scotch Government in Isla and Cantire, but after conference with his Irish friends he took to piracy, in which Sorley MacJames was his active abettor. In the meantime the Irish Government detected a conspiracy which had been brewing for two years among the landless men unprovided for in the settlement, who were always a source of danger. Alexander Macdonnell, Sir Randal's nephew, was to head the insurrection, with his brother Sorley, and an illegitimate cousin named Lother or Ludar. In their case the grievance was that Sir Randal had obtained too much and his kinsmen too little, but there were plenty of O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Cahans and others who were ready to join, and some of them for the sake of religion as well as for land. Cormac Maguire, acting as a sheriff's officer in Fermanagh, was charged by a friar named Edmund Mullarkey to join Brian Crossagh and Art Oge O'Neill, who were among the chief conspirators. 'And though thou shouldst die in this service,' he added, 'thy soul shall be sure to go to heaven; and as many men as shall be killed in this service all their souls shall go to heaven. All those that were killed in O'Dogherty's war are in heaven.' The friars great object was to get possession of Tyrone's illegitimate son Con, a boy of fourteen, who was in Sir Toby Caulfield's charge. The eyes of the Irish being upon him, he was sent to Eton for safety, and in 1622 to the Tower, where he may have died, for nothing more appears to be recorded of him.[132] [Sidenote: Rory O'Cahan's plot to surprise Coleraine,] 1615. [Sidenote: Londonderry,] [Sidenote: and all the settlement towns.] [Sidenote: The plot is frustrated.]