Note 205 — Chapter XLIII

Fitzwilliam to Burghley, March 24, 1590, with enclosures; Bingham to Burghley, April 23; Camden. Bruce’s Letters of Elizabeth and James VI., April 1591. The charges against O’Rourke are detailed in the Egerton Papers; O’Sullivan Bere, tom. iii. lib. ii. cap. 1; Four Masters, 1590 and 1591. It is stated in O’Donovan’s notes to the Annals, and in many other places, that O’Rourke begged to be hanged with a withe, and Bacon’s essays are given as an authority; but this is not what Bacon says. His words (No. 39, ‘Of Custom and Education’) are: ‘I remember in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s time of England, an Irish rebel condemned put up a petition to the Deputy that he might be hanged in a withe and not in a halter, because it had been so used with former rebels.’