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To ask a question at a country station or in the street is in Connaught rather embarrassing, as all the people within earshot immediately crowd around to hear what is going on. Not impudent, but sweetly unsophisticated are the Galway folks, openly regarding the stranger with inquiring eye, not unfriendly, but merely curious.
For the conduct of the war four generals were appointed, one to lead the forces of each province, Owen O'Neil in Ulster, Preston in Leinster, Barry Garret in Munster, and John Burke in Connaught, all of them officers of experience and merit, who had relinquished their commands in the armies of foreign princes, to offer their services to their countrymen.
If the candidate had the North in his favour, and one Province of the South, he was considered entitled to take possession of Tara; if he were a Southern, he should be seconded either by Connaught or Ulster, before he could lawfully possess himself of the supreme power. The benediction of the Archbishop of Armagh, seems to have been necessary to confirm the choice of the Provincials.
If Desmond himself was slow to rise, the whole South of Ireland was in a state of wild tumult and excitement when the news of the actual arrival of Fitzmaurice and the legate became known. Nor in the south alone. In Connaught and the Pale the excitement was very little less.
When Henry quitted Ireland indeed Leinster was wholly in English hands, Connaught bowed to a nominal acknowledgement of the English overlordship, and for a while the work of conquest seemed to go steadily on. John de Courcy penetrated into Ulster and established himself at Downpatrick; and Henry planned the establishment of his youngest son, John, as Lord of Ireland.
Sir John O'Doherty in Innishowen, Sir Brian O'Ruarc at Dromahaire, and Hugh O'Neil at Dungannon, hospitably entertained and protected several hundreds who had escaped with their lives. On the iron-bound coast of Connaught, over 2,000 men perished. In Galway harbour, 70 prisoners were taken by the Queen's garrison, and executed on St. Augustine's hill.
"Captain," said a little, shrewd-looking Connaught man, "what 'ud you be willin' to give anybody, ower an' abow his free passage, that 'ud tell you how to get one half o' them out?" "I'll give him a crown," replied the captain, "together with grog and rations to the eyes: I'll be hanged if I don't." "Then I'll do it fwhor you, sir, if you keep your word wit me."
Of the enormous number of harvestmen who passed every year through Liverpool, except from the County Donegal, there were not so many from the northern province. The majority were from Connaught. They generally landed at the Clarence Dock, Liverpool, a wiry, hardy-looking lot, with frieze coats, corduroy breeches, clean white shirts with high collars, and blackthorn sticks.
The title of Earl of Ulster, created for de Courcy in 1181, was transferred in 1205, by royal patent, to Walter de Lacy, whose only daughter Maud brought it in the year 1264 to Walter de Burgh, lord of Connaught, from whose fourth female descendant it passed in 1354, by her marriage with Lionel, Duke of Clarence, into the royal family of England.
The chief of these were to allow "recusants" to practise in the courts of law, and to sue out the livery of their land, merely on taking an act of civil allegiance instead of the oath of supremacy; that the claims of the crown should be limited to the last sixty years a period long enough in all conscience; and that the inhabitants of Connaught should be allowed to make a new enrolment of their estates, to be accepted by the king.