circumstances justified him in arresting him, notwithstanding he had come to him on a safe-conduct, and though his pardon under the great seal, ‘by which he was enjoined by a time prefixed to put in assurance for his further loyalty,’ had still fourteen days to run. His action was approved by Cecil. Florence was sent to England in August 1601, and committed to the Tower. There he remained, vainly petitioning to be tried or to be liberated on condition of serving against O'Neill, till Lady Day, 1604, when he was removed to the Marshalsea on account of his health, but was afterwards sent back to the Tower.
In 1606 Donal-na-Pipi, regardless of his promise to Florence and his bond of 10,000l., surrendered the lordship of Carbery and received a grant of the same to hold by English tenure. About the same time Lord de Courcy, instigated by Richard Boyle [q. v.], afterwards ‘the great Earl of Cork,’ and Lord Barry, tried to wrest his patrimonial inheritance in Carbery from him, but he succeeded in frustrating their efforts. During his imprisonment in the Tower, where he seems to have enjoyed exceptional privileges, including access to his books, he wrote a treatise on the antiquity and history of Ireland during the mythic ages, dedicated to the Earl of Thomond, and which, according to MacCarthy (Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy, p. 391), was first published and edited about 1858 by John O'Donovan, who spoke highly of it. He was again in 1608 transferred to the Marshalsea. In 1614, on finding sureties in 5,000l., he was liberated on condition that he would not quit the realm; but three years later, on the information of one of his servants, a certain Teige Hurly, as to his intimacy with Sir William Stanley, he was recommitted to the Tower. On 4 Dec. 1619 there was an order in council for his release from the Gatehouse; but in 1624 he was again confined there owing to the death of two of his sureties, the Earl of Thomond and Sir Patrick Barnwall, ‘being kept in a little narrow close room without sight of the air.’ Fresh sureties having been found, he was restored to liberty in 1626. In 1630 his old suit with the Brownes for the possession of the signory of Molahiffe was decided in his favour; but from a letter of Strafford to Secretary Coke in August 1637, it would appear that the lands were still at that time in the possession of the Brownes.
Florence MacCarthy died, it is conjectured, about 1640. He was a man of heroic stature and benignant aspect, a scholar of considerable pretension, and well versed in the traditions of his country. His rival, Donal-na-Pipi, described him as ‘a damned counterfeit Englishman, whose study and practice was to deceive and betray all the Irishmen in Ireland.’ To Carew and Cecil he seemed alternately fool and knave. Posterity will probably regard him as an ambitious, but by no means an astute man, who tried to play a difficult part at a critical time, perhaps honestly, but certainly unsuccessfully, and whose long-continued imprisonment entitles him to pity.
A rough portrait of him was carried to France about 1776 by a descendant of Donal-na-Pipi, and, having been restored, it is now said to form one of the ornaments of the city of Toulouse (MacCarthy, Life and Letters, p. 313). By his wife Ellen, daughter of the Earl of Clancar, for whom he had latterly little affection, he had four sons, viz.: Teige, the eldest, who died in his boyhood in the Tower; Donal MacCarthy Mor, who married Sarah, daughter of Randal MacDonnell, earl of Antrim; Charles, who married a daughter of the seventeenth Lord Kerry, and Florence.
[All that is known regarding Florence MacCarthy will be found in Daniel MacCarthy's Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy Reagh, Lond. 1867; a work of research and importance for the period it covers. Many of Florence's Lettsrs, some of which have not bean included in the Life and Letters, are among the Hatfield House MSS. See Hist. MSS. Comm., 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th Reps., App.]
MACCARTNEY or MACARTNEY, GEORGE (1660?–1730), general, born in Belfast about 1660, was elder son of George Maccartney, who was descended from the Maccartneys of Blackett in Scotland, and had settled in Belfast as a merchant in 1650. His mother, Martha Davies, was of the family of Sir John Davies, kt. [q. v.], attorney-general for Ireland. George was educated at home and in France. He joined the Scots guards as a volunteer, and rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In April 1703 he was appointed colonel of a regiment of foot, to be raised in Scotland (Treas. Papers, lxxxix. 33, xcviii. 109). The regiment went to Flanders, where it was present at the siege of Ostend in 1706, and was afterwards ordered to Spain. Maccartney was appointed ‘brigadier of horse and foot’ 25 Dec. 1705 (Home Off. Military Entry Book, vi. 426), and was a brigadier in Lord Rivers's expedition to the coast of France, and afterwards in Spain. He commanded a brigade at the battle of Almanza in 1707, where his regiment was ‘broken,’ i.e. destroyed (Treas. Papers, cvi. 37). Maccartney retired to the mountains with the remnant of his brigade, but had to surrender, and was made prisoner. Marlborough in-
