Yet here is the miserably cold, _jejune_, feeble, and imperfect record which we find in the Annals of the Four Masters:--'The Lord Justice of Ireland, namely Thomas Fitzwalter (Sussex), marched into Tyrone to take revenge for the capture of Caloach O'Donel, and also for his own quarrels with the country. He encamped with a great army at Armagh, and constructed deep entrenchments and impregnable ramparts about the great church of Armagh, which he intended to keep constantly guarded. O'Neill, i.e. John, having received intelligence of this, sent a party of his faithful men and friends with Caloach O'Donel to guard and keep him from the Lord Justice, and they conveyed him from one island to another, in the recesses and sequestered places of Tyrone. After some time the Lord Justice sent out from the camp at Armagh, a number of his captains with 1000 men to take some prey and plunder in Oriel. O'Neill, having received private information and intelligence of those great troops marching into Oriel, proceeded privately and silently to where they were, and came up to them after they had collected their prey; a battle ensued in which many were slain on both sides; and finally the preys were abandoned, and fell into the hands of their original possessors on that occasion.' That is the whole account of the most signal victory over the English that had crowned the arms of Ulster during those wars! Not a word of the disparity of the forces, or the flight of the English cavalry, or the slaughter of the Englishmen-at-arms, or the humiliation and disabled condition of the garrison at Armagh. Equally unsatisfactory is the record of the subsequent march through Tyrone by Sussex, in the course of which his army slaughtered 4000 head of cattle, which they could not drive away. Of this tremendous destruction of property the Four Masters do not say a word. Such omissions often occur in their annals, even when dealing with contemporary events. Uncritical as they were and extremely credulous, how can we trust the records which they give of remote ages? CHAPTER III. O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER.