Hugh O'Donnell, Lord Tir-Connell

Margaret Anne Cusack
1868
start of chapter | Chapter XXIV

Henry succeeded his father in the year 1509. The Earl of Kildare was continued in his office as Deputy; but the King's minister, Wolsey, virtually ruled the nation, until the youthful monarch had attained his majority; and he appears to have devoted himself with considerable zeal to Irish affairs. He attempted to attach some of the Irish chieftains to the English interest, and seems in some degree to have succeeded. Hugh O'Donnell, Lord of Tir-Connell, was hospitably entertained at Windsor, as he passed through England on his pilgrimage to Rome. It is said that O'Donnell subsequently prevented James IV. of Scotland from undertaking his intended expedition to Ireland; and, in 1521, we find him described by the then Lord Deputy as the best disposed of all the Irish chieftains "to fall into English order."