Sussex, affecting to dislike rebellion, and intimating that he might
help the English to get rid of his master. The lord deputy, without
the least scruple or apparent consciousness of the criminality or
disgrace of the proceeding, actually proposed to this man that he
should murder O'Neill. This villanous purpose he avows in his letter
to the Queen. 'In fine,' said he, 'I breake with him to kill Shane;
and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marcs of land by
the year to him, and to his heirs, for his reward. He seemed desirous
to serve your Highness, and to have the land; but fearful to do it,
doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and
promised to do by any means he might, escaping with his life. What he
will do I know not, but I assure your Highness he may do it without
danger if he will. And if he will not do that he may in your service,
there will be done _to him_ what others may. God send your Highness a
good end.'

This English nobleman was, it seems, pious as well as honourable,
and could mingle prayers with his plots for assassination. Mr. Froude
suggests extenuating circumstances: 'Lord Sussex, it appears, regarded
Shane as a kind of wolf, whom having failed to capture in fair chase
he might destroy by the first expedient that came to his hand.' And
'English honour, like English coin, lost something of its purity in
the sister island.' Of course; it was the Irish atmosphere that did it
all. But Sussex was not singular in this mode of illustrating English
honour. A greater than he, the chivalrous Sir Walter Raleigh, wrote to
a friend in Munster, recommending the treacherous assassination of the
Earl of Desmond, as perfectly justifiable. And this crime, for which
an ignorant Irishman would be hanged, was deliberately suggested by
the illustrious knight whilst sitting quietly in his English study.[1]
But what perplexes the historian most of all is that the Queen of