Even the Earl’s widow became the victim of Chichester’s rapine. Bequeathed everything springing from the Royal Letters to John Wakeman and John King, she received nothing after her husband’s death. Being out of favour at Court because of her divorce and re-marriage, Lady Rich was further prejudiced by the fact that Devonshire’s estate-broking had been furtive and illicit. The Deputy availed of this to divert the profits from her into his own pocket. Every official knew that the King’s Letters mentioned in the will were over-spent, but Devonshire fondly supposed he could rely on them to create grants for her benefit. Chichester tricked the widow, as he had tricked the husband; and kept everything for himself. He even used the death of his patron to saddle him with abuses committed in his own interest. In Chichester’s earlier dispatches after Devonshire’s death no coarse suggestion of confiscation directed against the estates of the Ulster lords appears. Ostensibly his sole concern was lest the chiefs (who, as O’Neill complained, could not quaff a cup of wine without chronicles of carouse being sent up by spies to Dublin Castle) should suddenly amass force to overwhelm the might of England. His dispatches are worded to suggest that he could hardly sleep o’ nights in his alarmed loyalty for the safety of the kingdom. Diurnally by post he trembled lest scathe should befall the interests of the princely Scotchman whom he loved. He reported everyone who had anything to lose by treason, as hourly engaged in plotting against a benign Sovereign—with a view to pocketing the escheats. CHAPTER VI. THE ULSTER LORDS. Hugh O’Neill owned in fee the counties now styled Derry and Tyrone, with parts of Armagh and Monaghan. In Elizabeth’s reign he tried, after defeating her troops, to bring in King James as Monarch of Ireland; but, when the Scottish ruler came to lawful sway over the Three Kingdoms, the Earl was discerned by Chichester to be an ingrate traitor. O’Neill had just got back his lands by Royal orders after much travail, and had received proof of the clemency of the new King. He was over sixty years of age, and war-worn after a nine years’ campaign. Many of his own clan hated him. Yet he was supposed to harbour fierce designs of “rising out” against the son of Mary Stuart, who had re-invested him in his earldom and estate, and to whom he lent money freely. A sheriff’s report on his position tells of his weakness, and was thought so important that Sir George Carew made a copy with his own hand:—