This plot, so characteristic of Carew and of the turn which English history was about to take in the next reign, deserves to be particularly mentioned. There was, in the service of the Earl, one Dermid O'Conor, captain of 1,400 hired troops, who was married to lady Margaret Fitzgerald, daughter to the late, and niece to the new-made Earl of Desmond. This lady, naturally interested in the restoration of her young brother, then the Queen's ward or prisoner at London, to the title and estates, was easily drawn into the scheme of seducing her husband from his patron. To justify and cloak the treachery a letter was written by Carew to the _sugane_ Earl reminding him of _his_ engagement to deliver up O'Conor; this _letter_, as pre-arranged, was intercepted by the latter, who, watching his opportunity, rushed with it open into the Earl's presence, and arrested him, in the name of O'Neil, as a traitor to the Catholic cause! Anxious to finger his reward—1,000 pounds and a royal commission for himself—before giving up his capture, O'Conor imprisoned the Earl in the keep of Castle-Ishin, but the White Knight, the Knight of Glynn, Fitzmaurice of Kerry, and Pierce Lacy, levying rapidly 2,000 men, speedily delivered him from confinement, while his baffled betrayer, crest-fallen and dishonoured, was compelled to quit the Province. The year following he was attacked while marching through Galway, and remorselessly put to death by Theobald Burke, usually called Theobald of the ships.
Another device employed to destroy the influence of O'Neil's Desmond was the liberation of the young son of the late Earl from the Tower and placing him at the disposal of Carew. The young nobleman, attended by a Captain Price, who was to watch all his movements, landed at Youghal, where he was received by the Lord President, the Clerk of the Council, Mr. Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, and Miler Magrath, an apostate ecclesiastic, who had been the Queen's Archbishop of Cashel. By his influence with the warders, Castlemaine, in Kerry, surrendered to the President. On reaching Kilmallock, he was received with such enthusiasm that it required the effort of a guard of soldiers to make way for him through the crowd. According to their custom the people showered down upon him from the windows handfuls of wheat and salt—emblems of plenty and of safety—but the next day, being Sunday, turned all this joy into mourning, not unmingled with anger and shame. The young lord, who had been bred up a Protestant by his keepers, directed his steps to the English Church, to the consternation of the devoted adherents of his house. They clung round him in the street and endeavoured to dissuade him from proceeding, but he continued his course, and on his return was met with hootings and reproaches by those who had hailed him with acclamations the day before. Deserted by the people, and no longer useful to the President, he was recalled to London, where he resumed his quarters in the Tower, and shortly afterwards died. The capture of the strong castle of Glynn from the knight of that name, and the surrender of Carrigafoyle by O'Conor of Kerry, were the other English successes which marked the campaign of 1600 in Munster. On the other hand, O'Donnell had twice exercised his severe supremacy over southern Connaught, burning the Earl of Thomond's new town of Ennis, and sweeping the vales and plains of Clare, and of Clanrickarde, of the animal wealth of their recreant Earls, now actively enlisted against the national confederacy.