Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/447

1538.] 'Through comfort of him' O'Neil again levied black rent in Meath, Mac Morrough in Wexford and Kilkenny, O'Carroll in Tipperary. Finally, Lord Butler declared that he would never again 'take harness' under Lord Leonard, unless with special orders from the King; and the old Earl of Ormond, who four years before had saved Ireland, was with difficulty prevented from crossing the Channel, sick and dying though he was, and being carried to London in a horse-litter to lay his complaints before the throne. Ormond was true as steel; wilful falsehood never crossed his lips, and charges which he guaranteed by his own knowledge may be assumed to have been certainly true. His evidence furnishes, with Sir John Allen's, the single firm spots of ground on which we can place our feet in the quaking morass of Irish State papers.

Desmond was at this moment contriving the scheme, which he had laid before the Pope, of another insurrection, to be supported by the Spaniards, and was busy consulting the Irish chiefs, and reconciling their feuds with one another. The O'Neils in the north had been checked hitherto by their hereditary rivals the O'Donnells. Religion was rapidly obliterating this and similar