AT this time Daniel MacCarthy, chief of Clancarty and Earl of Valencia, more anxious for peace than war, and
The truly brave family of the Munster Geraldines was nearly extinct. Two other powerful chiefs of Munster (with shame be it said) fell under the contagion of heresy. O'Sullivan, chief of Bear, and his kinsman Owen were quarrelling about property. In Connaught, Ulick Burke, Earl of Clanrickarde, after he had killed his brother John, was so odious to many of the Irish that he not merely failed to secede from the English, but even kept many Connaught men in obedience to them. Other Burkes quarrelled about the chieftaincy of the MacWilliam's country. The Leinster Irish chiefs who used most constantly take part against the heretics were for the most part extinct. The Earl of Kildare, brought up a heretic from his cradle, offered no hope to his country. The Anglo-Irish chiefs of Leinster and Meath seem never to have plucked up spirit. In Ulster, Turlough O'Neill, chief of Tyrone, and Hugh O'Neill, created Earl of Tyrone by the Queen, stood jealously out against one another, so that neither did any harm to the English. We have seen that hostages against rebellion had been wrung from Hugh O'Donnell, prince of Tyrconnell and other Ulster chiefs. The more powerful being thus divided and hampered, who would believe the weaker would venture anything? Yet, although as we have shown above, there was little to hinder truculent persecution, a certain fear of the Irish chiefs haunted the heretics when they attacked the Catholic faith, after they had extirpated it in England.