Our Bishop was subjected to many annoyances and persecutions whilst Bingham administered the government of Connaught. This governor was a worthy agent of Elizabeth, imbued with her principles, and animated with her hatred of the Catholic faith: his cruel exactions and barbarity became proverbial in the West, and he reaped a rich harvest of maledictions from the good natives of that province. In Dowera's narrative, published by the Celtic Society in 1849, mention is incidentally made of an excursion of this governor to the episcopal town of Dr. Eugene: "he passed the mountain", says this narrative (pag. 207), "not far from an abbey called Banada, and encamped at night at O'Conroy (Achonry) a town of the Bishop Oharte". It seems to have been in some such excursion that Dr. Eugene was arrested in the beginning of 1585, and sent a close prisoner to Dublin Castle. Sir John Perrott, who was then Lord Deputy, commissioned the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Long, to visit him, and a fulsome letter of this dignitary to Walsingham, dated 4th June, 1585, reveals to us the important fact that the hopes and desires of the government of that period were precisely like those of the soupers of our own days. Dr. Long's letter is as follows: "Owen O'Hart, Bishop of Achanore, alias Achadensis, committed unto me by his Lordship to be conferred with, who was at the Council of Trent, is brought by the Lord's good direction to acknowledge his blindness, to prostrate himself before her majesty, whom he afore agreed to accurse in religion. So persuaded, I doubt not of great goodness to ensue by his means. He has resigned his Bishoprick and _no doubt_ (void of all temporizing) is thoroughly persuaded that the man of sin sitteth in Rome. I assure your honour if we used not this people more for gain than for conscience, here would the Lord's work be mightily advanced". (_Record Office, Ir. Cor._, vol. cxvii.) The Protestant primate soon found that these his desires and hopes were as groundless as his tenets, and hence, as soon as the circumstances permitted, Dr. Eugene was deprived of his temporalities, and a crown nominee was appointed to administer the see of Achonry. Perrott, however, was for the present anxious to conciliate the powerful septs of the Western Province, most of whom were closely allied to the O'Harts, and hence he gave full liberty to our Bishop on his acknowledging the sovereignty of Elizabeth. In an indenture made on 23rd September, 1585, the various members of the O'Hart family and other Western septs submitted to hold their lands from the crown, and amongst the favours granted in return by the lord deputy, we find it decreed "that the Lord Bishop of Aghconry shall have four quarters of land adjoining his house or town of Skrine in the barony of Tireragh, free, and six quarters as a demesne to his house or town of Achonry in the barony of Magheraleyny, free" (_Morrin's Calendar_, ii. pag. 150; and publications of I. A. S. 1846, pag. 345).