Hardiman's History of Galway

Chapter 4: From 1484 to the commencement of the Irish Rebellion in 1641

Sir Henry Sidney

In the following year Sir Henry Sidney, the lord deputy, marched to Galway with an army, and established Sir Edward Fitton, knight, in the presidency of Connaught.[aa] For more than half a century before this appointment, the province was peaceable, and exhibited no other infractions of the laws, than such as were perhaps inseparable from the then imperfect state of society; but this new provincial governor was no sooner fixed in his appointment, than matters began to change. Cruel and sanguinary in his nature, his wanton severities goaded those, who were hitherto peaceably inclined, into acts of open rebellion; and particularly the sons of the earl of Clanrickard, commonly called the Mac-an-Earlas, and their numerous adherents, who were driven into those unhappy courses, which, after entailing so much misery on the country, terminated in their own destruction.

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