Arnold who was executed in 1590, for killing Lord Bourke of Castleconnell, and Alexander[1] who succeeded his father and trod in his footsteps, but particularly in his mode of tranquillizing the Irish. Tradition relates, that he used to hang them in groups, on a large willow tree, near the Abbey of Stradbally; and he is said to have had a common expression, that his Sallow appeared melancholy and unfurnished, whenever it was without one or more of the Irish hanging on its boughs. This circumstance gave rise to the surname Soileioge, or, of the Sallow, which the country, through reproach, bestowed on him and his descendants. For these and other acts of "necessary severity," he was at length obliged to sue out a pardon, or patent of Indemnity, which is dated the 6th of Dec. 1593. This was one of the legal indulgences for crime, which were readily obtained, at small pecuniary fines, for the most atrocious acts against the Irish; but for offences, even of a trivial nature against the English, it was both difficult and expensive to procure them. Not long after, however, Alexander Cosby fell in battle, and like his father was suddenly summoned to account before another tribunal. In the year 1596, Owny Mac Rory O'More, Chieftain of Leix, demanded a passage for his men over Stradbally bridge, and the request, being considered as a formal challenge to fight, was refused. On the 19th of May, Cosby hearing that the O' Mores were on the march, headed his kerne, and proceeded to defend the bridge, taking with him his eldest son Francis, who was married a year before to Helena Harpole of Shrule, by whom he had a son, William, born but nine weeks before this fatal battle of the bridge. Dorcas Sydney, (for she would never allow herself to be called Cosby,) and her daughter-in-law, placed themselves at a
- ↑ He married Dorcas Sydney, a relation of the Lord Deputy, and so numerous were the grants of land obtained by him and his Father, from the 28th of Feb. 1562, when the latter got the suppressed religious house of Stradballye, that they at one time possessed half the Queen's County and a Township over.—This narrative is taken from an orig. MS. of the late Admiral Cosby.
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