Inconvenient as this was for the official despoiler, with his nice sense of quiddities, Sir Arthur saw its usefulness from another point of view, since no great owner would suffer if a confiscation were carried out. On this basis he laid his plans. Queen Elizabeth, during her nine years’ struggle for supremacy, had established war-boats on Lough Neagh, from which O’Neill’s territory was raided. The crews hindered the natives from fishing when their kine and corn were destroyed; and, after famine had enforced peace, the galleys were ordered to be kept serviceable. Hugh Clotworthy, one of Chichester’s warriors, remained in charge of them, and received from Sir Arthur the lands of Massereene, near the shore, out of his own grant, at a cheap rate. He calculated that, with proper backing, Lough Neagh might be put under his “command” as Governor of Carrickfergus, and that on this foundation a beginning might be made from which ownership could be built up. The Lord Lieutenant was not privy to this purpose; and had never conceived such an annexation, even for his own benefit. He would have been staggered by its audacity in a subordinate, but he unwittingly helped to bring about what Chichester sought. It has been told that on his visit to Court with the subjugated Earls, Devonshire secured Sir Arthur’s life appointment as Governor of Carrickfergus, with a gift of the property lying between the Castles of Carrickfergus and Belfast. This served as a basis from which Chichester operated. Most of these lands had been awarded to Sir Ralph Lane, Muster-Master-General to Queen Elizabeth, under a “custodium” (or lease) of 1598. They included Belfast Castle, with its adjacent fishery of the Lagan, and other valuable perquisites. Large areas comprised in the grant had, in Lane’s day, to be won from the natives; and in 1603 the rightful owner, Sir Con O’Neill, was held prisoner in Carrickfergus Castle by Chichester on a charge of treason invented with a view to stealing what remained of his property. Before Sir Con could be brought to trial he escaped to Scotland; and, Lane being displaced, everything in the “custodium” was given to Chichester. The King’s Letter of the 8th August, 1603, ordered his grant to be made rent free in perpetuity. Thus the soil on which the City of Belfast now stands, under the name of “the Fall, Mylone, and the Tuogh called the Sinament,” fell to a penniless freebooter with scantier ritual than would to-day mark the transfer of an acre from an African savage.