Above : Picture Of Hugh O’Neill

The news of the death of Elizabeth was welcomed with satisfaction by the Catholics of the Irish towns, and by those of the rural districts in and round the Pale. The clansmen elsewhere had not yet come to consider themselves as subjects of the Crown. Although, during the O’Neill wars, the exercise of the Catholic religion had, from motives of policy, been little interfered with, yet none of the persecuting laws had been repealed, and they might at any time be brought again into force, at the mere caprice of an official; so that there was a general feeling of insecurity as long as the old Queen lived. From James much was hoped.