and had caused all the misery which Christendom suffered from the rovers of Sallee and Algiers. A third party were for killing some and expelling the rest. The heretics once got rid of, no religion but that of Rome was to be allowed in Ireland, the King was to be reduced to his hereditary revenue, and the clergy to have representatives in Parliament. Poynings' Law was to be repealed, and the kingdom entirely separated from England, civil authority resting in the hands of the ancient chiefs and nobility, each being absolute in his county or barony, but responsible to a native Parliament. The Earl of Kildare, who was an ardent Protestant, was to be removed, and all plantation lands restored to the previous owners. An army was devised consisting of contingents out of each chiefry, and a navy manned by an order like the Knights of Malta.[272] [Sidenote: The plot, Rory O'More.] [Sidenote: Lord Maguire] [Sidenote: Hugh MacMahon.] [Sidenote: Military conspirators.] [Sidenote: The plot discovered.] On October 21 Cole received more precise information about a plot to seize Dublin and other strong places, and he sent at once to the Lords Justices with the news; but the letter never reached them, having doubtless been intercepted by some of the conspirators. Early in 1641 it had occurred to Roger or Rory O'More that the King's difficulties in Scotland might give an opportunity to Catholic Ireland. O'More belonged to the remnant of the sept which had once ruled in Queen's County, but was settled at Ballina near the northern extremity of Kildare. He was an accomplished man and a persuasive speaker both in English and Irish, and had a great reputation in the country. By his marriage with a daughter of the noted Sir Patrick Barnewall he had many connections in the Pale. Colonel Richard Plunket was married to his wife's first cousin. The meeting of Parliament gave O'More an opportunity of speaking to Lord Maguire, an extravagant young man of twenty-five, who, having married a Fleming, had influence in the Pale as well as in Ulster, and whose embarrassments disposed him to desperate courses. 'He began,' said Maguire afterwards, 'to lay down the case that I was in, overwhelmed in debt, the smallness of my estate, and the greatness of the estate my ancestors had, and how I should be sure to get it again or at least a good part thereof; and, moreover, how the welfare and maintaining of the Catholic religion, which, he said, the Parliament now in England will suppress, doth depend on it.' These were the arguments used everywhere, and the miserable condition of the Irish gentry in Ulster made them ready listeners. Hugh MacMahon, one of the chief conspirators, complained bitterly of the 'proud and haughty carriage of one Mr. Aldrige, that was his neighbour in the county of Monaghan, who was a justice of the peace and but a vintner or tapster few years before, that he gave him not the right hand of fellowship at