Tyrone received his earldom from Elizabeth I of England in 1585. He established himself as the most powerful chief in Ulster and with the support of other Catholic chiefs rebelled against Elizabeth and her religious policies in 1594. After a famous victory at the Yellow Ford (1598), the initiative slipped to the English, under Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy. Spanish support for the rebels at Kinsale (1601) proved inadequate and in 1603 Tyrone surrendered. In 1607, after another abortive insurrection the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel and their households, fled to Flanders in the celebrated “flight of the earls”, and Tyrone died in Rome.