come in and submit to Elizabeth, and having garrisoned Newry, Dundalk, Drogheda, Wicklow, Naas, and other towns, he marched south-west at the head of 8,000 of his best troops, in direct contravention of his orders, which were, to proceed immediately against O'Neill in Ulster. The Kavanaghs, O'Mores, and O'Conors, saythe Four Masters, "made fierce and desperate assaults and furious irresistible onsets on him in intricate ways and narrow passes, in which both parties came in collision with each other, so that great numbers of the Earl's people were cut off by them." With the Earl of Ormond, he laid siege to Cahir, then held by Thomas Butler, an adherent of O'Neill and Desmond. The siege was tedious, and the garrison did not surrender until the castle was breached by heavy artillery brought up from Waterford. From Cahir he proceeded to Limerick and into Desmond, by Adare and Askeaton, where he lost many men by an attack made by the Earl of Desmond. He then retraced his steps to Kilmallock, and proceeded south to Fermoy, Lismore, Dungarvan, and Waterford, and thence into Leinster. He met a severe defeat from the native chiefs in an ambush into which he was drawn at the "Pass of the Plumes," near Timahoe, in the Queen's County. The expedition was without much result, and he returned to Dublin at the end of July, having lost nearly half his army. On the 15th August 1599 a detachment of English troops under Sir C. Clifford, Governor of Connaught, was defeated with much loss in the Curlew mountains, near Boyle, by the O'Rourkes and O'Donnells. Early in September Essex marched against Hugh O'Neill, with 1,300 foot and 300 horse. They met and had a conference on the 7th at Aanaghclint, now Aclint, on the Lagan, between Monaghan and Louth. Essex was charmed by O'Neill's frank and open bearing, and a peace was concluded between them. When Elizabeth was informed of this transaction, she wrote an angry letter to Essex, full of upbraiding, whereupon he precipitately threw up his command, and hurried across to London. The Queen received him at first in a friendly manner, but shortly afterwards ordered him to be detained prisoner in his own house. The particulars of his subsequent plots against Government, and his execution on 25th February 1601, do not come within the scope of this work. The Earl is described as "brave, eloquent, generous, and sincere; proud, imprudent, and violent, his fate is a lesson. Endowed with talents and qualities that placed him far above the majority of men, his unrestrained and ungoverned passions ruined himself and some of his dearest friends, and brought on them the traitor's doom."102 He was a poet, a scholar, and an able speaker. The locality of the "Pass of the Plumes" has probably been identified by the Rev. John O'Hanlon in a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, and that of Essex's conference with O'Neill, by a writer in Notes and Queries, 4th Series. His son, the 3rd Earl, the well-known Parliamentary general, resided for a time in the north of Ireland upon the family estates, and in 1631 built the Castle of Carrickmacross. 102 134 174
Devlin, Anne, niece of Michael Dwyer, and the faithful servant of Robert Emmet, was born about 1778. She was in Emmet's service at his residence in Butterfield-lane, Rathfarnham, and assisted him in his plans. After his failure on 23rd July 1803, and when he was in hiding in the Dublin mountains, she was the messenger between him and his friends in Dublin. When arrested, she resolutely refused to inform the military as to his whereabouts, although subjected to torture and indignity. She suffered more than two years' imprisonment. Dr. Madden gives an interesting account of his visit with her, in 1843, to the scene of her service with Emmet forty years previously. He says: "The extraordinary sufferings endured, and the courage and fidelity displayed by this young woman, have few parallels even in the history of those times… This noble creature preserved through all her sufferings, and through forty subsequent years, the same devoted feelings of attachment to that being and his memory which she had exhibited under the torture in her solitary cell in Kilmainham Gaol… Will the prestige of the heroine fade away when it is told that [in her latter days] she was a common washerwoman, living in a miserable hovel, utterly unnoticed and unknown, except among the poor of her own class?" She died in Dublin in September 1851, aged about 73, and was interred at Glasnevin, where a monument, erected through the exertions of Dr. Madden, marks her resting-place. 331
Dickinson, Charles, Bishop of Meath, was born in Cork, August 1792. At school he displayed remarkable abilities, and in 1810 entered Trinity College, where he formed close intimacies with Hercules Graves, his brother (Robert P. Graves), J. T. O'Brien, Charles Wolfe, and others who afterwards became eminent men. His mathematical talents early attracted the attention of Dr. Magee. In 113 he obtained a scholarship, in 1815
