them.’  Several outrages and murders perpetrated by the soldiers are enumerated; but they were such as might have been expected in a state bordering on civil war, which was then the condition of the province.  If, however, Tyrone is to be believed, the rulers themselves set the example of disorder.  Sir Henry Folliott, governor of Ballyshannon, in the second year of his majesty’s reign, came with force of arms, and drove away 200 cows from the earl’s tenants, ’and killed a good gentleman, with many other poor men, women, and children; and besides that, there died of them above 100 persons with very famine, for want of their goods; whereof the earl never had redress, although the said Sir Henry could show no reasonable cause for doing the same.’

Finally the earl saw that the lord deputy was very earnest to aggravate and search out matters against him, touching the staining of his honour and dignity, scheming to come upon him with some forged treason, and thereby to bereave him of both his life and living.  The better to compass this he placed his ‘whispering companion,’ Captain Leigh, as sheriff in the county, ’so as to be lurking after the earl, to spy if he might have any hole in his coat.’  Seeing then that the lord deputy, who should be indifferent, not only to him but to the whole realm, having the rod in his own power, did seek his destruction, he esteemed it a strife against the stream for him to seek to live secure in that kingdom, and therefore of both evils he did choose the least, and thought it better rather to forego his country and lands, till he had further known his majesty’s pleasure—­to make an honourable escape with his life and liberty only, than by staying with dishonour and indignation to lose both life, liberty, and country, which much in very deed he feared.  Indeed the many abuses ‘offered’ him by Sir John Davis, ’a man more fit to be a stage player than a counsel,’ and other inferior officers, might be sufficient causes to provoke any human creature, not only to forego a country, were it ever so dear to him, but also the whole world, to eschew the like government.  And thus he concludes his appeal to his ‘most dread sovereign:’  ’And so referring himself, and the due consideration of these, and all other his causes, to your majesty’s most royal and princely censure, as his only protector and defender, against all his adversaries, he most humbly taketh his leave, and will always, as in bounden duty, pray.’

The Earl of Tyrconnel’s statement contains no less than forty-four items under the following heading:  ’A note, or brief collection of the several exactions, wrongs, and grievances, as well spiritual as temporal, wherewith the Earl of Tyrconnel particularly doth find himself grieved and abused by the king’s law ministers in Ireland, from the first year of his majesty’s reign until this present year of 1607:  to be presented to the king’s most excellent majesty.’