Hugh O'Neill was the last of that great clan who played an important part in Irish history, and he bore himself worthily. Ireton seems to have treated him personally with courtesy, but he influenced the court-martial against him because of the blood shed through his defence of Clonmel. He pleaded that the war had gone on long before he came upon the invitation of his countrymen, that he had always been a fair enemy, and that he had often advised the townsmen not to prolong a conflict which he had seen to be hopeless from the first; that he had carefully observed the capitulation by surrendering all stores, 'without embezzlement, and his own person to the Deputy'; and that he was entitled to the benefit of the articles. Many of the officers, including Ludlow, accepted his defence, and Ireton, 'who was now entirely freed from his former manner of adhering to his own opinion, which had been observed to be his greatest infirmity,' allowed a third vote after sentence of death had been twice passed. He was acquitted, sent to England in the same ship that carried Ireton's embalmed body, and well treated in the Tower. After a few months he was released at the instance of the Spanish ambassador, on the ground that he was born in Flanders a vassal of the King of Spain, that he was not concerned in the first outbreak in Ireland 'nor in the excesses which were committed at that time,' and that he would be very useful in managing the Irish soldiers whom the Commonwealth allowed to be recruited for the Spanish service; and in the end this was agreed to. After the Restoration he wrote to Charles II. pointing out that his cousin John's death had made him Earl of Tyrone, and asking the King to acknowledge him as such. The attainder was, of course, not reversed, and O'Neill, who was in bad health when he wrote, probably died not long after. The title of Earl of Tyrone was conferred on Lord Power in 1673.[218] [Sidenote: Geoffrey Barron executed.]