But how did Queen Elizabeth receive the news of the treacherous and atrocious massacre at Belfast?
She was not displeased.

'Her occasional disapprobation of severities of this kind,' says Mr.Froude, 'was confined to cases to which the attention of Europe happened to be especially directed.

She told Essex that he was a great ornament of her nobility, she wished she had many as ready as he to spend their lives for the benefit of their country.' Thus encouraged by his sovereign, and smarting under the reproach of cowardice cast on him by Leicester, Essex determined to render his name illustrious by a still more signal deed of heroism.

After an unprovoked raid on the territories of O'Neill in Tyrone, carrying off cattle and slaughtering great numbers of innocent people whom his soldiers hunted down, he perpetrated another massacre, which is certainly one of the most infamous recorded in history.

A great number of women and children, aged and sick persons, had fled from the horrors that reigned on the mainland, and taken refuge in the island of Rathlin.