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Chapters towards a History of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth (Author: Philip O'Sullivan Beare)

Chapter 6

The Emissaries sent by O'Neill and O'Donnell into Munster return. On Earl Clanrickarde and Dermot the Bishop.

WHILE O'Neill and O'Donnell were in these straits, they nevertheless sent over 1,000 men under Donough MacCarthy, claimant to the chieftaincy of Duhallow, Thady O'Rourke, and Raymond, Baron of Leitrim, to renew the war in Munster and assist Earl Desmond, whose forces were now shattered. However, while on the march, Donough was unfortunately killed by a leaden bullet fired by one of two musketeers who fired from ambush two shots, at the army as it passed, and it was rumoured that Desmond had been captured. Hereupon Thady and the Baron abandoned the journey to Munster. Earl Clanrickarde, to prevent


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their return, followed them closely with his forces, but they wheeled about and defeated him in the open plain and he died within fifteen days after. As to his death two reports went out, some saying that he had died of a wound received in this battle, others asserting that he succumbed to disease. His son succeeded him. The Catholics lost in these days, Thady O'Brien, son of Turlough, a youth of the highest nobility who fell fighting bravely for the Catholic faith.

Amongst the Catholics' misfortunes at this time must be accounted the death of a most upright and illustrious man, Dermot MacCarthy, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, who had for more than 20 years laboured with great pains to preserve the faith in this Island and had displayed much zeal and energy during this war in animating the Catholics to take up arms for Christian piety. By his death the resources of Irishmen were not a little weakened. For his services to the Church of God and realm of Ireland, his head was long vainly sought for by the English, who offered a large sum of money to whoever would slay or arrest him. With such insatiable hatred did they pursue him that they did not hesitate to destroy his kinsmen. Amongst these they seized Thomas MacCarthy, the Bishop's nephew by his brother, Thomas, and endeavoured by threats and bribes to make him desert the Catholic faith. Disappointed in this attempt they beheaded this man of noble and Catholic spirit. But since we have alluded to the bishop, we must not omit mentioning this great and peculiar trait of his, that although he wrote with the greatest difficulty, and no one ever saw him write even one letter otherwise, nevertheless he turned out so accomplished and learned that he was advanced to Doctor in utroque jure, and publicly taught Sacred Theology at Louvain for some years, for such was his intellectual keenness and so strong his memory that even as a pupil he had no occasion to take notes. He left to posterity a work on Christian doctrine written in Irish, whose precepts the youth still study in that Island.