When Essex, baffled and discontented, made his desperate return to England, he singled out Chichester for the post of sergeant-major-general of the English army in Ireland. On 4 Nov. Chichester wrote to Cecil expressing his preference for hb old post of danger at Carrickfergus. 'This enemy,' he declared, 'can never be beaten but by dwelling and lodging near him, and in his own country. Journeys are consumptions of men more hurting ourselves than those we seek to offend.' Having thus foreshadowed the tactics which, in the hands of Mountjov, proved ultimately fiuccessful, and having the good word of his superiors as a thoroughly efficient officer, he was allowed, some time after Mountjoy's arrival, to have his way, and on 22 May 1600 he Again wrote from Carrickfergus, though he was subsequently again made major-general when the war, being carried on in Ulster, enabled him to attend to the duties of the post without abandoning active service (Fortescue, 13). In June he was obliged to visit England on private business, when he carried with him a letter from Mountjoy to Cecil, commending him to the secretary m the warmest terms as being the ablest and most unselfish of her majesty's servants in Ireland.
On 21 Oct. Chichester was back in Ireland. He took a subordinate but active part in the war of extermination which was being waged against Tyrone and his adherents in the north. His letters show him ready to deal fairly and mercifuUv with all, Irish or English, who supported the queen's cause, but with his heart hardened against rebels.' On 2 Oct. 1601 Mountjoy repeated his good opinion of the governor of Carrickfergus : 'You must make,' he wrote to Cecil, 'one governor of all Ulster, and the fittest man that can be chosen in England or Ireland is Sir Arthur Chichester.'
Of any sympathy with the Irish character there is no trace in Chichester's letters. Like every Englishman of that day, he had no other recipe for Irish misery than the enforced adoption of English habits. 'We follow,' he wrote on 5 Oct., 'a painful, toilsome, hazardous, and unprofitable war, by which the queen will never reap what is expected until the nation be wholly destroyed or so subjected as to take & new impression of laws and religion, beins; now the most treacherous infidels ot the world, and we have too mild spirits and good consciences to be their masters. He is a well-governed and wary gentleman whom their villany doth not deceive. Our honesty, bounty, clemency, and justice make them not any way assured to us ; neither doth the actions of one of their own nation, though it be the murder of father, brother, or friend, make them longer enemies than until some small gift or buyinff [?] be given unto the wronged party.' With these sentiments Chichester had nothing but commendation to bestow on Mountjoy's mode of carrying on the war. 'I wish,' he wrote on 14 March 1602, 'the rebels and their countries in all parts of Ireland like these, where they starve miserably, and eat dogs, mares, and garrons where they can get them. No course . . . will cut the throat of the grand traitors, subject his limbs, and bring the country into quiet, but famine, which is well begun, and will daily increase. When they are aown, it must be good laws, severe punishment, abolishing their ceremonies and customs in religion, and lordlike Irish government, keeping them without arms more than what shall be necessary for the defence of the honest, and some port towns erected upon these northern harbours that must bridle them, and keep them in perpetual obedience.'
The first part of this programme Chichester was for some time longer actively employed in carrying out. A plot which he seems to have tavoured in December 1602 for the murder of Tyrone would, were it successful, at least bring to an end the wholesale starvation of Tyrone's followers (Sir G. Fenton to Cecil, 14 Dec. 1602, State Papers, Ireland). Irish rebels were in those days regarded, like foxes in England, as noxious beasts to whom no law was to be allowed. The war, however, if war it is to be named, was brought to an end shortly before Elizabeth's death without Tyrone s murder. On 19 April 1603, shortly after the accession of James, Chichester was admitted to the Irish privy council, and on 15 Oct. 1604 he was called on — no doubt through the influence of Mountjoy, who was now earl of Devonshire, and James's chief adviser on Irish affairs — to carry out the second part of his programme as lord deputy of Ireland.
On 3 Feb. 1606 Chichester entered upon the duties of his new office. Three proclamations gave evidence of the spirit in which he intended to govern. On 20 Feb. he revoked by one of them the greater number of the existing commissions for the execution of martial law, and by another he directed, with certain special exceptions, the disarmament of the population. Of greater importance was the third, issued on 11 March, in which, after promising to protect the poor, the new lord deputy abolished the loose payments exacted oy the Irish chiefs, and declared the tenants to be free and immediate subjects of his majesty, ' to depend wholly and immediately upon his majesty . . . and not upon any other inferior lord or lords,
