And yet Russell may have done his best. He did detach Thomond with five companies and 145 horse to Newry, besides sending Secretary Fenton to help the wounded general in administrative work. But to get supplies from the unwilling Catholics of the Pale was beyond his power. The gentry had promised to muster 1,000 foot and 300 horse at Kells for the defence of the border, but a month after the trysting-day only one-third of that number had arrived.[245] [Sidenote: Death of Tirlogh Luineach O'Neill, 1595.] [Sidenote: Tyrone is made O'Neill.] At the moment of this first fight with Tyrone in his character of proclaimed traitor, old Tirlogh Luineach died. He had already resigned the chiefry, but it now suited his successor to drop the mask, and he went at once to Tullahogue to be invested. And yet he was quite ready to renounce the name of O'Neill four months later, though objecting to take an oath on the subject. The annalists say he had been appointed heir 'ten years before at the Parliament held in Dublin in the name of Queen Elizabeth.' But it is, of course, quite untrue that Tyrone was made tanist by Act of Parliament, and the Four Masters themselves record that Tirlogh had resigned in his favour more than two years before. In 1587 it had been intended to make Tirlogh Earl of Omagh, and thus to perpetuate the division of Tyrone. The old chief had always realised, in a vague way, that an O'Neill could not stand alone, and had listened without enthusiasm to the bards who called upon him to imitate the legendary heroes of his race, and to make himself monarch of Ireland in spite of the English. The real effect of his death was to make Tyrone chief of Ulster in the popular estimation, as he had long been in real power. He also saw that the Queen would be too strong for him unless he could make foreign alliances, and he strove to excite sympathy abroad by appearing as the head of a Catholic confederacy.[246] [Sidenote: Tyrone has dealings with Spain.] [Sidenote: Conditions of peace or war.]