1591 and the indictment was translated for him into Irish by a native speaker. One observer said he declined to plead, but the record states that a plea of not guilty was entered (probably at the direction of the court). The defendant was asked how he wished to be tried and answered that he would submit to trial by jury if he were given a week to examine the evidence, then allowed a good legal advocate, and only if the Queen herself sat in judgment. The judge declined these requests and explained that the jury would try him anyway. O'Rourke responded, "If they thought good, let it be so". The trial proceeded and O'Rourke was convicted and sentenced to death. On 3 November 1591, O'Rourke was drawn to Tyburn. On the scaffold Miler Magrath, Archbishop of Cashel, sought the repentance of the condemned man's sins. In response, he was abused by O'Rourke with jibes over his uncertain faith and credit and dismissed as a man of depraved life who had broken his vow by abjuring the rule of the Franciscans. O'Rourke then suffered execution of sentence by hanging and quartering. In his essay on Customs, Francis Bacon refers to an Irish rebel hanged in London, who requested that the sentence be carried out, not with a rope halter, but with a willow – a common instrument amongst the Irish: it is probable that O'Rourke was the rebel referred to. Legacy O'Rourke's experience as a rebel Irish lord is not remarkable in itself. What is remarkable is the combination used in his downfall: first, the campaign conducted under Fitzwilliam to bring pressure to bear on the borders of Ulster; and then the co-operation of the Scots king with the English, resulting in the first extradition within Britain and a trial for treason committed "beyond the seas". Evidence of his treason was used in the trial of Perrot later in the year, which also resulted in a conviction, and the subsequent pursuit of an aggressive policy against the lords of Ulster led to the outbreak of the Nine Years War. In the end, O'Rourke had fallen prey to forces that were moving to establish a new polity in Britain, of which James VI became the first monarch little more than a decade later. His eulogy, as recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters, reads: He remains an influential figure in the