It was to accomplish either of these objects, that Mountjoy marched to the frontier of the north.  ’Among those employed to murder O’Neill in cold blood, were Sir Geoffry Fenton, Lord Dunsany, and Henry Oge O’Neill. Mountjoy bribed one Walker, an Englishman, and a ruffian calling himself Richard Combus, to make the attempt, but they all failed.’[1] Finding it impossible to procure the assassination of ’the sacred person of O’Neill, who had so many eyes of jealousy about him,’ he wrote to Cecil from Drogheda, that nothing prevented Tyrone from making his submission but mistrust of his personal safety and guarantee for maintenance commensurate to his princely rank.  The lords of Elizabeth’s privy council empowered Mountjoy to treat with O’Neill on these terms, and to give him the required securities.  Sir Garret Moore and Sir William Godolphin were entrusted with a commission to effect this object.  But while the lord deputy, with a brilliant retinue, was feasting at Mellifont, a monastery bestowed by Henry VIII. on an ancestor of Sir Garret Moore, by whom it was transformed into a ’fair mansion,’ half palace, half fortress, a courier arrived from England, announcing the death of the queen.  Nevertheless the negotiations were pressed on in her name, the fact of her decease being carefully concealed from the Irish.  Tyrone had already sent his secretary, Henry O’Hagan, to announce to the lord deputy that he was about to come to his presence.  Accordingly on March 29, he surrendered himself to the two commissioners at Tougher, within five miles of Dungannon.  On the following evening he reached Mellifont, when, being admitted to the lord deputy’s presence, ‘he knelt, as was usual on such occasions;’ and made penitent submission to her majesty.  Then, being invited to come nearer to the deputy, he repeated the ceremony, if we may credit Fynes Moryson, in the same humiliating attitude, thus:—­

’I, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, do absolutely submit myself to the queen’s mercy, imploring her gracious commiseration, imploring her majesty to mitigate her just indignation against me.  I do avow that the first motives of my rebellion were neither malice nor ambition; but that I was induced by fear of my life, to stand upon my guard.  I do therefore most humbly sue her majesty, that she will vouchsafe to restore to me my former dignity and living.  In which state of a subject, I vow to continue for ever hereafter loyal, in all true obedience to her royal person, crown, and prerogatives, and to be in all things as dutifully conformable thereunto as I or any other nobleman of this realm is bound by the duty of a subject to his sovereign, utterly renouncing the name and title of O’Neill, or any other claim which hath not been granted to me by her majesty.  I abjure all foreign power, and all dependency upon any other potentate but her majesty.  I renounce all manner of dependency upon the King of Spain, or treaty with him or any of his confederates,