D’Aquila did not justify the hopes which the Irish had entertained of his protracted resistance. He was sick of thcountry and the people, and desired nothing but to see the last of both. The disasters of the campaign he attributed to the treachery and cowardice of the Irish. Almost immediately he began negotiations with Mountjoy, who, eager ” to see his heels towards Ireland,” treated him with the utmost consideration and politeness. The conditions were soon arranged. D’Aquila handed over to the Deputy not only the town of Kinsale, but also the various castles which had been entrusted to his care by the chiefs, their owners. In February he and his men set sail, taking with them their arms, supplies and money

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For more than a year the war dragged on, but, unless speedy succours came from abroad to the Irish, its end was a foregone conclusion. O’Sullivan Beare, indignant at the treachery of D’Aquila in delivering over to the English his ancestral castle of Dunboy, succeeded in recovering it by a stratagem, and put into it a small garrison of Irish troops. In June, Carew, with a force of over 3,000, laid siege to Dunboy. The little garrison resisted bravely, but after ten days the castle, battered by red-hot shots from the English cannon, was crumbling to pieces around them. Still they fought on, retreating first to the great hall, which had remained intact, and, when driven from there, to the basement, where they made their last stand.

Fitzwalter was furnished with precise instructions in regard to the carrying out of the scheme by which Leix and Offaly were to be planted with English settlers. Only a part of the boggy western lands was to be reserved for the native Irish. All, English and Irish alike, were to hold their lands from the Crown, paying rent and dues and conforming themselves to the English laws. The settlers were not to sell their estates, or any part of them, to the Irish, nor to take them as tenants.

The purchase or use of firearms was forbidden to the Irish. It was not to be expected that this wholesale confiscation, unjustified, in the case at least of most of the lands involved, by any legal right* would be tamely submitted to, even by people far less warlike than the O’Mores and O’Connors. At first indeed things seemed to go smoothly. In September i,,c6) Donough and Barry O’Connor made their submissions to the Deputy, confessing, if the English account is to be believed, that they had wrongfully held the lands of Offaly, and promising to receive thankfully whatever estates should be granted them and their people. Connell Og, the O’More chief, followed their example.

The Deputy, with the easy optimism of the newly-arrived English official, believed that all the trouble was over, and that nothing now remained but to arrange details. He was soon undeceived ; though the disasters which followed were doubtless, to some extent, due to his own treachery. In violation of a safe conduct, he detained Donough a prisoner, and only released him on the strong protest of the Earls of Kildare and Ormond, who had been his securities.