covenant. As O'Neill wanted supplies, and Monck wanted his hands free to cope with the Scots, a bargain was easily struck. On 8 May a cessation of hostilities for three months was signed between them. Monck was to forward to parliament O'Neill's demands for religious and other concessions in Ireland, and to give him a fixed quantity of supplies [see Monck, George, first Duke of Albemarle]. O'Neill was to assist Monck against Ormonde and Inchiquin, who were now closely combined. In July Monck, fearing an attack by Inchiquin, summoned O'Neill to his aid, and on 23 July O'Neill sent a party of men to Dundalk to receive the promised ammunition. Unluckily they got drunk, and as they staggered out of the town with their loads were routed by Inchiquin, into whose hands the ammunition passed.
On 31 July the three months of the cessation expired, without any concession arriving from England, and early in August O'Neill made fresh overtures to Ormonde (Ormonde to Clanricarde, 8 Aug., Carte MSS. xxv. fol. 193). Before an answer had been received he had supplied himself with ammunition and provisions by an agreement with Sir Charles Coote, afterwards first Earl of Mountrath [q. v.], who was besieged in Londonderry by the Scots. On 9 Aug. the Scots broke up the siege, and Coote, according to promise, gave O'Neill the supplies which he needed. The news of Ormonde's defeat by Jones at Rathmines on 2 Aug. soon altered the conditions of the Irish war, and this was still more the case after Cromwell's landing at Dublin on the 15th. The danger from the English forces was now far greater than any danger from Ormonde and the confederate catholics, and O'Neill now offered heartily to co-operate with the latter. Yet Ormonde complained bitterly of the tardiness of O'Neill's movements. Of that tardiness there can be no question, the only difference of opinion being as to its cause. O'Neill's health was breaking down and his end approaching, but, though no evidence exists on the point, it seems unlikely that he would not have made greater efforts than he did to hasten forward his army if he had not wished Ormonde to be still further weakened before his own troops appeared on the scene. However that may have been, he advanced with extreme slowness. He suffered much, and even when carried in a litter he could only travel by easy stages. On 6 Nov. he died. No credit need be given to the assertion that he had been poisoned. A long Irish elegy on him is in Egerton MS. 171, f. 53.
O'Neill's position in Irish history is clearly marked. He is not, like his uncle, Hugh O'Neill, the Irish chieftain of a sept; he is the trained soldier who fights for the independence of his country. Whether he was a great commander there is not sufficient evidence to show. To keep an army together under the circumstances in which he fought was in itself a marvel of skill, and he succeeded in winning with it the one victory obtained by the Irish in the course of the war in which he fought. His material resources were, however, too small to enable him to conduct a successful campaign, and even if this had not been the case, the divisions between the purely Celtic population of Ireland and the Anglo-Norman landowners made resistance to an English reconquest in the long run impossible. It must, however, be remembered to his credit that the force which he had organised was the nucleus of the long and stubborn resistance offered by Celtic Ireland, which began when his nephew, Hugh O'Neill, drove back Cromwell himself from the walls of Clonmel.
A lithographed copy of a portrait of O'Neill from an original Dutch painting is in Mr. J. T. Gilbert's ‘Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland’ (i. 1).
[The greater part of the authorities for the life of Owen O'Neill have been collected by Mr. Gilbert in his Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland. There still, however, remain some gleanings in the Carte MSS. in the Bodleian Library. Other authorities are noted under O'Neill, Daniel, and O'Neill, Sir Phelim.]
O'NEILL, Sir PHELIM (1604?–1653), Irish rebel, called in Irish Feidlimidh O'Neill and Feidlimidh Ruadh, born about 1604, the eldest son of Turlough O'Neill, inherited considerable property in Armagh and Tyrone from his grandfather, Sir Henry O'Neill, who was killed in action against Sir Cahir O'Dogherty [q. v.] on 20 June 1608. Sir Phelim at that time was four and a half years old, and the lord-deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester [q. v.], in pursuance of his policy of weakening the native aristocracy by diminishing their resources, suggested that, notwithstanding Sir Henry's letters patent, his property should be divided among his heirs ‘legitimate and illegitimate,’ with special provision for Sir Phelim and his mother, Catherine ny Neill, subsequently Catherine Hovenden. Sir Phelim was said (Cal. State Papers, Irel. Jas. I, iv. 260) to have given his consent to this arrangement, which was sanctioned by the king on 31 March 1612; but the consent of a mere infant cannot have carried much weight, and it is doubtful if the arrangement was ever executed, for on 6 Aug. 1629 Sir Phelim obtained an order for a new
