In 1565 Sydney came again as Deputy, and endeavoured to negotiate with Shane with a view to a permanent peace, but he found him more exacting in his demands, and haughtier in speech, than ever. ” For the Queen, I confess she is my sovereign lady, yet I never made peace with her but by her own asking,” he said. ” My ancestors were Kings of Ulster. Ulster was theirs and shall be mine. . . . With this sword I won (the lands), and with this sword I shall keep them.” Sydney at once renewed the war, and marched northward into Tir Owen. Very little except cattle spoils was gained. Finally, Sydney returned homeward, and, more candid than Sussex, did not even pretend to have achieved any notable success.

Still, Shane’s position was a perilous one. Many of his neighbours were jealous of him, and his policy had ever been rather to crush than to conciliate those who opposed him. He now invaded the O’Donnell territory, and Hugh, the newly-elected O’Donnell chief, defeated his army with great slaughter at Farsetmore near Letterkenny. Shane and a small band of soldiers with difficulty crossed the Swilly and escaped.

The once powerful chief seemed now reduced to extremity. Uncertain what to do, he at last decided to trust himself to the Ulster Scots. He released Sorley Boy Macdonnell, and sent him to convey a message to Alaster, his brother, who was now in command of the Scottish forces. It was scarcely likely that Alaster should forget the death of his brothers at Glenshesk ; yet, for the time, he dissembled his feelings, and when Shane, with some fifty followers only, came to his camp at Cushendun (Co. Antrim) he was received with apparent friendliness.

There was, however, in Alaster’s camp a certain Captain Pierce, most probably an English spy, and it can scarcely be doubted that whatfollowed was, in part at least, due to him.

After supper, a quarrel rose between Shane’s secretary and a nephew of the Macdonnells, and this

gradually developed into a general combat. In the course of it Shane was slain (June 2nd, 1567), by whom, of course, is not known. His body was thrown, wrapped in a shirt, into a pit, and Pierce sent his head

to Dublin, to figure, empaled, on the Castle battlements, as the head of a traitor.

Thus perished, in the prime of his manhood, Shane O’Neill, one of the greatest, as he was almost the last, of the Irish Celtic chiefs. By English writers he has generally been represented as little better than a

treacherous and brutal savage. But, though his private character is far from blameless, and though he assuredly, in his dealings with the English officials, met deceit by deceit, the stories told to his discredit

rest for the most part on a very slender foundation.

Even those who, like Sydney, were his enemies, or, like Campion, bore no love to Ireland or her people, have admitted his steadfastness in friendship ; his good rule of Tir Owen ; his charity to the poor. That he was highly educated, and an accomplished linguist, his correspondence shows. Of his abilities as a diplomatist and a warrior we need no further proof than that which the history of his life affords us.