between them and great slaughter often by both parties committed." Shane McBrian O'Neill of Lower Clandeboye (Belfast) was a Member of Parliament for Antrim County in 1585. He briefly rebelled against the Crown during Tyrone's Rebellion in 1598 but was soon reconciled and was pardoned as a result. The English authorities were unable to hold back the forces of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and so when his nephew Brian MacArt O'Neill was sent into Clandeboye to control its military affairs, it brought the area into collaboration. This conflict, in alliance with Habsburg Spain, was a predominantly Ulster-based Irish Rising against Protestant English rule and brought together what were usually enemies such as the O'Neills of Tyrone and the O'Donnells of Tyrconnell in common cause. The Earl of Tyrone had been married to Shane McBrian's sister Katherine O'Neill for a time but the marriage was annulled. Only minor engagements, no major battles, took place as the area had suffered significant depopulation due to the conflicts brought about by Essex and Smith's attempted colonisation. The main negative effect on Clandeboye was the actions of Arthur Chichester after 1601, who set about burning destroying crops and animals as well as killing men, women and children without scruple. Historical records of the period say that in Clandeboye as a result of Chichester's acts, the people were reduced to cannibalism, corpses had green-mouths from eating grass and dead bodies were piled by the roadsides. This destruction was supposedly to stop Clandeboye being used as a supply base for Tyrone, but had a secondary purpose as, Chichester, in financial difficulties from his estates Devon, sought land to take in Ireland. Conn McNeill O'Neill, the Lord of Upper Clandeboye, who was based at Castlereagh, was arrested around Christmas of 1602 (a year after his father Niall McBrian had been killed by Captain Malby). Chichester had arrested him and held him at Carrickfergus Castle, on account of one of O'Neills men having killed a Crown soldier. Chichester offered to execute him without trial, potentially as a pretext to taking land for himself. Fortune favoured Conn McNeill as, on the death of Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland ascended to the thrones of England and Ireland in July 1603, with the opportunity of a clean slate. Conn McNeill's wife approached Hugh Montgomery, a Scotsman with extensive political connections and agreed if he could break Conn out of jail