The region over which Sir Arthur Chichester thus became Governor had been known time immemorial as one of the most important in Ulster. Its original extent varied somewhat in the lapse of time and according to local circumstances, but it was generally understood to comprehend the greater portions of the present counties of Down and Antrim, stretching from Carlingford Bay in the south to the mountain of Sliev Mis in the north. Its earliest recorded name was Dalaraidhe (Dalaradia), or the country owned by the family or descendants of Araidhe a prince who lived at an early period in Ulster history. With this people were afterwards associated many members of a kindred tribe known as Cruithne (Cruthin or Pretani), or wheat-growers sometimes called Picts, or painted, from Cruith, ” colour” and descended from Irial Glunmore (son of the famous Conall Cearnach) and a daughter of Eochy, the ruler or King of the Cruithne in Scotland. Dal-Araidhe, however, continued to retain its original name, although its limits were then supposed to be Newry on the south and Glenravel on the north.

When the three Collas conquered southern Ulster in the fourth century, the dwellers on the conquered lands were obliged to seek shelter in Dalaraidhe, which from that time, although only a fragment of Ulster, was known as Ulaidh, or Ulidia. In later times, and because of some unknown territorial arrangements, the name of this section or division of Ulster appears in public records as Trian Congal, or ” Congal’s Third,” Congal being, no doubt, a prince of the royal house of the Ui Cairill (O’Carroll), and this division his allotted share. By this last name it was known on the arrival of the English under De Courcy ; but after its seizure by the O’Neills, the whole region, until the seventeenth century, was called Clannaboy Clann-Aedh-buidhe from a chieftain named Hugh O’Neill, surnamed Buidhe, “of the yellow hair.” The River Lagan divided the whole region into nearly two equal parts, the southern part being designated as Upper and the northern as Lower Clannaboy.

When Chichester entered on his work he was put in command of a strong military force of picked men, including, of course, the garrison at Carrickfergus, whilst his officers were men specially after his own heart ; in other words, thoroughly in sympathy with their commander’s policy and aims. During the seven years of his governorship at Carrickfergus, from 1597 until 1604, among his officers were Moses Hill, Fulke Conway, Hugh Clotworthy, Francis Stafford, Robert Norton, Henry Upton, Roger Langford, and John Dalway. It speaks volumes for the zeal and determination with which these men must have ” served their Queen,” that they all succeeded in carving out and obtaining large estates for themselves, and that they all, coming to Dalaraidhe, or Clannaboy, with nothing but their clothes, and perhaps their swords, accomplished, with one exception, the grand ambition of founding families throughout this celebrated portion of Ulster.

Sir Moses Hill, the founder of the Downshire family, made his home in Upper or Southern Clannaboy ; Sir Fulke Conway, the founder of the Hertford family, got possession of Killultagh, a separate district, then belonging neither to Antrim nor to Down ; Sir Hugh Clotworthy, the founder of the Massereene family, took up his quarters on the western shore of Lough Neagh ; Sir Francis Stafford’s broad lands lay a little further north-west, and along the green banks of the Lower Bann ; Sir Roger Langford selected lands on the eastern shore of Lough Neagh, opposite Massereene, and including the celebrated Irish territory of Killmacavitt ; Sir Robert Norton’s estate lay along the Six-Mile-Water, and on it stood the old town of the Temple of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (the estate, however, passed to the Upton family of Templepatrick) ; Sir John Dalway, after much wandering and many vicissitudes, found at last a resting-place on the picturesque slopes of Bellahill, near Carrickfergus ; and last of all, but certainly not least, Chichester himself, the founder of the Donegall family, secured a very great sweep of Lower Clannaboy, reaching northward from the Lagan to the boundaries of the Templetown and Langford Lodge Estates, and thence north-eastward until it included Carrickfergus and the adjoining lands.

To be continued