That Ulster was lost, that the English were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostile nations was at hand, was proclaimed from all the altars of three and twenty counties.

One last chance was left; and, if that chance failed, nothing remained but the despotic, the merciless, rule of the Saxon colony and of the heretical church.

The Roman Catholic priest who had just taken possession of the glebe house and the chancel, the Roman Catholic squire who had just been carried back on the shoulders of the shouting tenantry into the hall of his fathers, would be driven forth to live on such alms as peasants, themselves oppressed and miserable, could spare.

A new confiscation would complete the work of the Act of Settlement; and the followers of William would seize whatever the followers of Cromwell had spared.

These apprehensions produced such an outbreak of patriotic and religious enthusiasm as deferred for a time the inevitable day of subjugation.