In whatever capacity, however, Arthur Chichester was originally employed during the first year or two after his coming to Ulster, it is very certain that he must have had ample opportunities of knowing well the condition of this province, and it is equally evident that he availed himself very fully and freely of those opportunities ; in fact he must have made Ulster a special subject of study, as he afterwards, when occasion required, was able to depend upon his practical knowledge of all its leading physical features, as well as of the leading families by which the province was inhabited. He was thus able to draw up attractive and thoroughly intelligible reports for the Queen and her Council, not only on the general state of Ulster, but on any, or indeed every, part thereof; for no servitor had previously made himself so well acquainted with its mountains and glens ; its rivers, loughs, islands, and sea-coasts ; its arable lands and vast sweeps of pasturage for the rearing of young cattle ; its bogs, morasses, woods, and extensive forests. In a quiet and comparatively unobtrusive way he must also have gone about collecting information respecting the affairs, public and private, of all the great leading houses, such as those of the O’Neills (in their several branches), the O’Donnells, the O’Cahans, the O’Reillys, the O’Hanlons, and the O’Dohertys ; the Maguires, MacMahons, and even the MacDonnells, a Scottish clan who had possession of the Route and Glynns in Antrim.

All this spying out of the land, and painstaking on the part of Chichester to obtain the necessary information respecting its owners and inhabitants, were undertaken for a very special purpose ; for before he left England it was distinctly understood that Elizabeth’s policy of plantation, which was then being carried out in Munster, would be adopted also in Ulster on the defeat of the Northern Lords. The great house of Desmond, with all its numerous vassals and adherents, had been brought down to utter desolation in the course of a lengthened and bloody struggle, and now Elizabeth’s needy soldiers were dividing amongst themselves the fair lands of the Geraldines. Thus the same class of adventurers in Ulster had here before their eyes a grand precedent, and an almost illimitable reward for their toil. Chichester saw the situation at a glance ; and although there occurred several serious hitches and delays in bringing about his Ulster programme, yet he eventually succeeded in working it out according to his own will, and, as we shall see, largely to his own advantage.

He encouraged all his friends to keep gathering on the Irish spoils instead of spending themselves in the distant colonies of America, maintaining that it would be better ” to work with their hands in the plantations of Ulster than to dance and play in the plantations of Virginia.” The great deeds of Drake or the heroism of Gilbert had little charm for him. He envied not Raleigh and his arcadian dreams of a kingdom in the setting sun, whose great natural wealth should outshine the most opulent of eastern nations ; no, he preferred the more certain reward nearer home, no matter how their acquisition might be brought about, nor even the instruments he used in bringing them to pass. The poetic glamour and Queen-worship which dazzled many of the great sea pirates of Elizabeth’s time shed no ray upon him : his dark evil countenance and morose disposition shadowed forth all the bad and none of the good in that puritanic wave which, half a century later, was to sweep over the face of England. To some extent he may be styled the forerunner of Oliver Cromwell.

Certain events occurred in the year 1597 which brought Chichester to the front more prominently than hitherto, and served to show very plainly to friends and foes what manner of man he was. His brother, Sir John Chichester, at the date named was defeated and slain in a skirmish with the Antrim Scots under Sir James MacDonnell of Dunluce. Although the latter who was the eldest surviving son and heir of the renowned Sorley Boye did not co-operate with the Northern Lords against the Government, he warmly sympathized with them ; and indeed his brothers and leading kinsmen throughout the Route and Glynns took a prominent place in the actual fighting. This course exasperated the English officials in Ulster against the Lord of Dunluce, as they would have naturally felt much more pride in attacking him as an open enemy than in conferring with him as a doubtful friend. Sir James refused point blank to permit his vast estates to be taxed for war purposes on behalf of the Government, and he also refused emphatically to surrender to Sir John Chichester certain noble young Spaniards whose lives he had saved, or hand over some pieces of cannon which he and his brethren had rescued from the wrecks of Spanish galleons and mounted on his castle of Dunluce, which the former had demanded as booty belonging to the Crown, requiring them for the fortress of Carrickfergus.

To be continued