AFTER the retreat of the royal armies, O'Donnell determining to avenge Maguire's losses, without delay, and being especially incensed by the cruel slaughter of the old men, women and children, hastened to besiege and storm Enniskillen. As he had no brass cannon to batter the Castle it was easily defended by the English. O'Donnell perceiving this, and thinking within himself that it would be hard to liberate Ireland and the Catholic religion from the heresy and tyranny of the English without the help of foreign princes, he sent James O'Healy, Archbishop of Tuam, a man of approved learning and innocence of life, as ambassador to lay before Philip II., Monarch of the Spains, the state of affairs in Ireland, to beseech him to send to the well nigh failing Catholic faith in Ireland, the succour he had promised through the Primate of Ireland, and to assure him of the co-operation and allegiance of O'Donnell and other Irish chiefs. The bishop was most graciously and with more than royal generosity, received by the King, to whom he explained the feelings of O'Donnell and other Irish chiefs towards the Spaniards; their faith; constancy; bravery and military skill. Also the island's climate, salubrity, fertility, harbour accommodation, rich cities and towns, beauties of river and lake and many other advantages, adding, what now no one who knows the island doubts, that Ireland once possessed, Scotland, England, Holland or Batavia, and all Belgian France might with little difficulty be assailed and conquered. He then begged the king (as was the end and object of his mission) to help the Catholic religion. The King could at first scarcely credit the bishop's speech because of the contradictory reports on Ireland spread by the English who hid its glories in a cloud of lies, lest that most promising island celebrated for its many indigenous charms, and from which England, the nurse of error, might be destroyed, should be sought after by the Spaniards. He therefore summoned to his presence, Richard Stanihurst, who, to curry favour with the English, had published a book in disparagement of Ireland, but he would not contradict the Bishop in anything he had said, for it was entirely true, and the King then believing the Bishop's account began to admire and pay
Meanwhile O'Donnell, confident that his Catholic Majesty, the greatest bulwark of Christianity, would send help to the Irish in good time as he had promised by the Primate, made no delay in enrolling Irish and Scotch troops and cut off Enniskillen from supplies.