Earl Hugh O'Neill, on the ground of the loose wording of the original grant to Con, claimed all Tyrone and Derry, with much of Armagh. The claim was preposterous, and directly contrary to the interpretation put on the precisely similar grants to the Earls of Thomond and Clanricarde; it was strongly resisted by O'Cahane, lord of Derry; it was equally emphatically condemned by Sir John Davies, who had been ordered to report on the matter; but the question was still undecided at the date of the Flight of the Earls.[1] O'Dogherty and O'Hanlon had both received grants from Elizabeth, which had distinctly dispossessed the clansmen of all their rights.[2]
On the other hand the Deputy and his commission had but recently decided that in Cavan and Fermanagh the chiefs had had no rights under Elizabethan grants except to the lands and other privileges attached to the lordship, and that by far the greater part of these counties was the property, not of the chiefs, but of the clansmen.
O'Dogherty's rebellion gave the Crown a further chance to remove all native claimants to lands in Donegal, Derry, and Armagh. O'Cahane and Sir Neal Garve O'Donnell were imprisoned on the charge of complicity with O'Dogherty, a charge never proved; and O'Hanlon, whose son had joined O'Dogherty, and had been attainted, was induced
- ↑ Calendar of State Papers, 1605, pp. 320 and following for claims to freeholds in Tyrone by many gentlemen of the O'Neills and other septs. "They have ordered that those ancient gentlemen in Tyrone, and in all other parts of Ulster shall continue in their possessions until further consideration may be had of their estates."
- ↑ For O'Hanlon see Fiants: Elizabeth, 5090.
