Above: A PICTURE OF THOMAS WENTWORTH The EARL OF STRAFFORD, 1641.

AFTER the fall of Strafford the Irish Government was administered by two Lord Justices, Parsons and Borlase. Both were supposed to be Puritanical in their sympathies, and soon they made themselves most unpopular. Both opposed the concessions to the Catholics, which Charles, anxious for the support of the latter, seemed now willing to grant. The whole country was in a state of dangerous unrest. Numbers of disbanded soldiers wandered about, without employment or means of support. The Connacht landowners knew not when the decrees which the late Viceroy had obtained against them might be put in force. Those of the other provinces felt that, when such remote Crown claims had been admitted, no Irish proprietor anywhere was secure of his estate.The generation which remembered the Ulster plantation was yet by no means extinct; plenty of old men and women remained to tell to their grandchildren the tales of their sufferings in those evil days ; to kindle in their minds the desire of vengeance, and the hope of wresting the fields which their ancestors had tilled from the hands of the stranger. Over in England the anti-Catholie feeling was growing. Seven priests had been executed in London, merely for saying Mass.

Above: Map of Ireland

In Parliament there were frequent complaints of the lenity shown to Irish Papists. To the Irish the example of the Scotch Presbyterians, who had frustrated, by a suc¬cessful rebellion, Charles’ attempt to force them into conformity with the English Church, was a direct encouragement to attempt something similar, for which, moreover, the growing troubles in England itself appeared to afford an excellent opportunity. Gradually the project of revolt took shape. In Ireland, its chief promoters were Rory O’More, one of the O’Mores of Leix ; Sir Phelim O’Neill, a member of a junior branch of the O’Neills ; Lord Maguire ; Col. Hugh Og Mac Mahon ; Col. Plunkett; Sir Con Magennis, and a few others of less note.

Above: Road Map Of Ireland

None of these appear to have been men of much ability, though O’More had evidently great brilliancy and personal fascination. They were, however, in constant communication with an Irish exile in Spain a trained soldier and born leader, who promised, when the time was ripe, to come to take command of their army. This was Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill, nephew of the great Hugh, who, owing to the incompetency of his cousin John, had come, by a certain instinctive tanistry, to be regarded as the head of the house of O’Neill. Eoghan was now over 50 years of age. He had left Ireland as a boy, and later had entered the Spanish service. His military reputation was already high, when he immensely enhanced it by his defence of Arras against the French in 1640. He had watched the course of events in his native country with the deepest interest, and had, by means of agents, kept himself in close touch with the promoters of the intended insurrection. In the Spanish army, at this time, there was also another Irishman, whose importance depended rather on his family than on his personal merit, Colonel Thomas Preston, uncle of Lord Gormanstown.