At this time the Gunpowder Plot shook England, and emboldened in guile the officials entrusted with the administration of Ireland. Trumpeting a tale of Popish treason, the action of Guy Fawkes and his gang deafened the ears of the King to the complaints of Irish Catholics. Whatever lingering tenderness James might have retained for them the Plot whiffed away. The severe measures which it excused gave Chichester a larger command of power; and he used it to advance his grasping policy. Having the Auditor-General in his pocket, he soon prepared a dazzling stroke. The self-styled “Admiral,” who purported to have received in 1604 a life-estate in the fisheries of Lough Neagh and the Bann, gave them to Hamilton by Patent in derogation of his own rights, on the 14th February, 1606. Using the Thomas Irelande Letter as his authority, he presented “the Scot” with these coveted waters in fee simple, and included in the grant gigantic stretches of territory in Antrim, Down, Carlow, and Roscommon, as well as a couple of abbeys and the advowsons of half-a-dozen rectories. All was done in alleged compliance with a warrant entitling its possessor to £100 a year. A haul so comprehensive seldom weighted a single Patent. To-day it would be worth a million of money. No Inquisition warranted this, and there was nothing to show that the property belonged to the Crown, but by Parsons’ dexterity the Inquisition at Antrim of the 12th July, 1605, was made to serve as a shaky foundation for what was done, although the Commission authorising the inquiry confined it to the estate of Con O’Neill and to “concealed” lands to provide for Thomas Irelande’s £100. The Inquisition was then carefully tucked away, and lay in concealment nearly eighty years, while the Commission is defaced in a style unusual amongst the records of the period. The inclusion in Hamilton’s Patent of Lough Neagh and the Bann exposes the hollowness of their pretenced donation for the Deputy’s life in 1604. Had Chichester’s Patent been a reality, why should he abandon them to Hamilton two years later without even paying the existence of his life-estate the compliment of a “recital” in the Inquisition over which his creature Parsons presided? It was the counterpart of his device as to the River Lagan which he at the same time made over to Hamilton with a like understanding as to its being reconveyed to himself with, as he hoped, a less infirm title.