This contingent was originally intended to be based around Lough Foyle but, following the defeat of the English army at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, was diverted to Leinster to strengthen control over Ireland's centre.
[5] In the autumn of that year Mountjoy ordered Danvers' command to Kinsale, County Cork, where Roe and his enlarged company of 150 were embodied in Sir Oliver St John's regiment, of which he was appointed lieutenant-colonel.
On 23 December the Irish and their Spanish allies unsuccessfully attacked the English trenches and, on Christmas Eve, Lord Mountjoy prepared his army to confront the combined enemy.
[9] In April 1602 Roe and his company of 150 were "in the field for summer service" as part of the expedition that Mountjoy led north to eliminate O'Neill's forces in County Tyrone.
The fort, capable of holding a garrison of 1,100,[note 4] was named Mountjoy Castle and in June 1602 placed under the command of Francis Roe who was subsequently appointed its Governor.
[12] In September 1607 occurred the Flight of the Earls (Hugh O'Neill and Rory O'Donnell) and in response Sir Arthur Chichester, now the Irish Lord Deputy, promptly appointed seventeen commissioners to administer justice and maintain peace throughout the counties of Tyrone, Tyrconnell (i.e. Donegal) and Armagh.
[note 6] Preferred among the latter were military veterans who already had a domestic base in the areas to be "planted", and Chichester urged the case for allocating lands to Sir Francis Roe, "a gentleman of ability [who] can give good furtherance to the Plantation if encouraged to undertake upon reasonable conditions" settlement of the "fast country" adjoining the fort at Mountjoy.
[16] In preparation for such allocation, on 19 June 1610 letters patent were issued by James I granting Roe "the castle, or fort, and town of Mountjoy with 300 acres of land thereunto belonging" for a term of 21 years.
[26] The interval between death and burial may indicate that work was promptly undertaken to construct his tomb, on which a figure of him is shown wearing his scarlet robe of office.