1 July he was examined before the council and committed to the castle. He was not brought to trial till June 1609, and in the interval he and his brothers made several unsuccessful attempts to escape out of confinement. On Friday, midsummer-eve, he was put on his trial in the king's bench; but it being understood that the jurors, after being shut up for three days, would rather starve than find him guilty, the attorney-general, ‘pretending that he had more evidence to give for the king, but that he found the jury so weak with long fasting that they were not able to attend the service,’ discharged them before they gave their verdict. Davis suggested trial by a Middlesex jury, as in the case of Sir Brian O'Rourke [q. v.] Chichester would have liberated the brothers on giving security, and also Niall's son Naghtan, ‘a boy of an active spirit, and yet much inclined to his book,’ who, after studying at St. John's College, Oxford, at the charge of the Earl of Devonshire, had been sent to Trinity College, Dublin, whence he was transferred to Dublin Castle (cf. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, where he is called Hector, and described as ‘gent. ex comitatu Turikonell). However, in October 1609 Niall and his son were sent to England and committed to the Tower, where the former died in 1626. Naghtan, too, probably died in confinement.
Niall's wife, Nuala O'Donnell, sister of Hugh Roe and Rory O'Donnell, forsook him when he joined the English against his kinsmen. She accompanied her brother Rory and the Earl of Tyrone to Rome in 1607, taking with her Grania NiDonnell, her little daughter. A poem in Irish by Owen Roe Mac An Bhaird, beginning ‘O woman who seekest the grave,’ written on seeing her weeping over the grave of her brother on St. Peter's Hill, near Rome, is preserved in Egerton MS. 111, f. 92. A metrical version of this poem by James (Clarence) Mangan [q. v.], from a literal translation furnished him by Eugene O'Curry [q. v.], was published in the ‘Irish Penny Journal,’ i. 123. In 1613 she appears to have been residing in Brussels. In 1617 Grania NiDonnell came to England to petition for some provision being made for herself out of her father's estate. Niall Garv is described by O'Clery, the biographer of Hugh Roe O'Donnell, as ‘a violent man, hasty, austere, since he was spiteful, vindictive, with the venom of a serpent, with the impetuosity of a lion. He was a hero in valour, and brave.’ He was certainly a most unfortunate and badly used man.
[Docwra's Narration, ed. O'Donovan, in Celtic Society's Miscellany, 1849; O'Sullivan-Beare's Historiæ Catholicæ Hiberniæ Compendium; O'Clery's Life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell, ed. Murphy, Dublin, 1893; Annals of the Four Masters, ed. O'Donovan; Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors; Cal. State Papers, Ireland, James I; Meehan's Fate and Fortunes of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel; Erck's Repertory of Patent Rolls, James I; Hill's MacDonnells of Antrim; Burke's Landed Gentry.]
O'DONNELL, RORY, first Earl of Tyrconnel (1575–1608), born in 1575, was the second son of Sir Hugh MacManus O'Donnell, by Ineenduv (Inghín Dhubh) MacDonnell of Cantire. He accompanied his elder brother, Hugh Roe O'Donnell [q. v.], to Kinsale in 1601, and became acting chief when the latter fled to Spain after the defeat on 24 Dec. He led the clan back to Connaught, joined O'Connor Sligo, and maintained a guerilla warfare, of which the ‘Four Masters’ give details, until December 1602, when both chiefs submitted to Mountjoy at Athlone [see Blount, Charles]. Hugh Roe had just died childless in Spain, and Rory was his natural successor.
Mountjoy went to London in June 1603, accompanied by Hugh O'Neill [q. v.], Tyrone, and O'Donnell, and the party narrowly escaped shipwreck on the Skerries. On 7 June the two Irish chiefs kissed the king's hands at Hampton Court, and were graciously received. They were present on 21 July when Mountjoy was created Earl of Devonshire. On 29 Sept. O'Donnell was knighted in Christchurch, Dublin, by Lord-deputy Carey, and was at the same time created Earl of Tyrconnel, with remainder to his brother Cathbhar; and at the beginning of 1604 he had a grant of the greater part of Donegal, leaving Inishowen to O'Dogherty and the fort and fishery of Ballyshannon to the crown. Sir Niall Garv O'Donnell [q. v.], who had done the government some service, was to have such lands as he had held peaceably in Hugh Roe's time. All this was done by Devonshire's advice; but Sir Henry Docwra [q. v.] thought that Neill Garv had been badly treated.
The new earl was not satisfied, though shrewd officials thought too much had been done for him, and within a year he sent a special messenger to Cecil to complain of the manifold injuries offered him. The situation was strained; for both Tyrone and Tyrconnel aimed at tribal independence, while the government tried to make them the means to a new state of things. In June 1605, by James's special order, Tyrconnel received a commission from Sir Arthur Chichester [q. v.], who was now lord deputy, as the king's lieutenant in Donegal county; but with the proviso that martial law should be
