There were four great rebellions during this period: the Rebellion of Shane O’Neill; the Geraldine Rebellion; the Rebellion of Hugh O’Neill; and the Rebellion of 1641; besides many smaller risings.

The causes of rebellion were mainly two: First, the attempt to extend the Reformation to Ireland: Second, the Plantations, which, though the consequence of some rebellions, were the cause of others. These and other influences of less importance will be described in a general way in the next chapter, and in more detail in those that follow.

Whenever a rebellion took place, the invariable course of events may be briefly summed up as: Rebellion, Defeat, Confiscation, Plantation.

The Plantations began immediately after the Confiscation of Leix and Offaly (pp.399, 435), and continued almost without a break during the whole of this period - that is, for a century and a half.

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Chapter I: New Causes of Strife

If there had been no additional disturbing influences after the reign of Henry VIII, it is probable that Ireland would have begun to settle down, and that there would have been no further serious or prolonged resistance. But now two new elements of discord were introduced; for the government entered on the task of forcing the Irish people to become Protestant; and at the same time they began to plant various parts of the country with colonies of settlers from England and Scotland, for whom the native inhabitants were to be expelled. The Irish on their part resisted, and fought long and resolutely for their religion and their homes; and the old struggle was intensified and embittered by religious rancour. The Plantations succeeded, though not to the extent expected: the attempt to Protestantise the Irish, though continued with determined persistency for three centuries, was a failure. These two projects were either directly or indirectly the causes of nearly all the dreadful wars that desolated this unhappy country during the period comprised in the present part of our history.

Two other evil influences also began to make themselves felt about this time.

The titles conferred by Henry VIII on the native chiefs, with the accompanying land grants, gave rise to long and bitter disputes in the succeeding reigns. It was commonly the acknowledged chief of the district at the time who received the royal title. His successor, both in title and in position as head, was, according to English law, his eldest son or his next heir; but according to the Irish law of tanistry, that member of the family whom the tribe selected was the person to succeed to the chiefship. This was mixed up with the question of land, a further and a worse complication. According to English law, the chief who relinquished his land to the king, and

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to whom the king regranted it, became the owner, and it would descend to his heir after his death. But according to Brehon law, as the chief well knew, he had no right of ownership; and the person to succeed him in possession was the tanist. Thus when this titled chief died, English and Irish law came, in a double sense, into direct antagonism; and there was generally a contest, in which the government supported the heir, and the tribe the tanist. This was mainly the origin of the disturbances among the O’Briens of Thomond and the O’Neills of Tyrone, to be related in Chapter III; as well as of many others.

The disturbing influence next to be mentioned was in some respects the most general and far reaching of all. Ireland was then, as it has always been, the weak point of the empire in case of invasion from abroad: and there was some truth in the old rhyme:

He who would England win,
In Ireland must begin.

For some time before the accession of Elizabeth, and all through her reign, there were continual rumours, both in England and Ireland, of hostile expeditions from Spain or France to Ireland. These rumours, some of which, as we shall see, were well founded, generally caused great terror, sometimes panic, on the part of the government.

To provide against this danger, the government, in dealing with the Irish people, might have adopted either of two courses: one a policy of reasonable conciliation, governing them so as to attach them to the empire and make them ready to rise in its defence; the other a government by force, keeping them down to prevent them from giving aid to an invader. The first was not only possible but easy: ‘The policy of conciliation graciously carried out would have been the only wise alternative.’ But the government deliberately chose the other, and carried it out consistently and determinedly. And not only did they rule by force but they made themselves

1. Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, x. 208.

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intensely unpopular by needless harshness. Even their own colonists turned against them, and became some of the bitterest and most dangerous leaders of rebellion. So odious was their treatment of the people that any invader, no matter from what quarter, vvould have been welcomed and aided: ‘The Irish were not to be blamed if they looked to the Pope, to Spain, to France, to any friend in earth or heaven, to deliver them from a power which discharged no single duty that rulers owed to subjects.’ [1] The existence of this universal feeling of detestation is found repeatedly set forth in the letters of officials as published in the State Papers, so that it was perfectly well known to the government: and ‘the hostility of the English against the natives became a madness.’ [2]

There was here no room for half-hearted measures. If a chief, encouraged by the prospect of help from abroad, rose in rebellion, it was not enough, as it would be under ordinary circumstances, to reduce him to submission, inflict reasonable punishment, and take guarantees for future good behaviour. It was necessary to crush him utterly; and such thorough precautions were taken as that an invader should have neither help nor foothold in the country. The chief was executed, or banished, or brought prisoner to London; and the people, who were mostly blameless, were expelled or exterminated, and the whole district turned into a desert. [3]

And so were the unhappy destinies of this country in great measure shaped; not by what was needed for the protection and welfare of the people, but merely that Ireland might be made unsuitable as a point of attack. The views of the government on this point are exactly expressed by the earl of Sussex, lord lieutenant, in a letter to the queen, when he says that the possibility of danger ought to be guarded against,’not so much for the

1. Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. l870,x. 262.
2. Richey, Short History, p.493.
3. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, pp.220, 221; Spenser, View, ed. 1809, p.166. See also the end of Chap. XVI. infra for Carew’s declaration of policy, and for his description of his operations in Munster.

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care I have of Ireland, wMch I often wished to be sunk in the sea, as for that if the French should set foot therein, they should not only have such an entry into Scotland as her majesty could not resist, but also by the commodity of the havens here, and Calais now in their possession, they should take utterly from England all kinds of peaceable traffic by sea, whereby would ensue such a ruin to England as I am afraid to think on.’ [1]

A disquieting agency less serious than any of the preceding, but still a decided element of disturbance, was the settled policy of the Tudors to anglicise the Irish people. It would appear indeed that in the time of Elizabeth, the government were more anxious to change the people’s language and dress than to change their religion. In the Act of 1569 establishing free schools, the master should be an Englishman; and as not understanding one word of the language spoken by the children, his first and main effort would be, not to learn Irish himself, for Irish was an abomination to the government, but to teach his little scholars to speak English - a thing impossible under the circumstances - and then probably to instruct them in the Protestant faith. And in the same parliament it was ordained that in certain districts, all of them Irish speaking, no clergyman should be appointed unless he could speak English, where English could be of no use to him. The persons contemplated in the act would be of course Englishmen, who could not speak Irish: though Irish was the only possible medium of communication.

To anglicise the people the government employed all the agencies at their disposal, and employed them in vain. Acts of parliament were passed commanding the natives to drop their Irish language and learn English, and to ride, dress, and live after the English fashion. The legislators undertook to regulate how the hair was to be worn and how the beard was to be clipped; and for women, the colour of their dresses, the number of yards of material they were to use, the sort of hats they were to wear, with many other such like silly provisions. There had been

1. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.302, letter written 11th Sept. 1560.

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occasional legislation in the same direction in older times: but the Tudor s, with all their strong will and despotic power, made a more determined attempt than any of their predecessors. These laws were, as might be expected, almost wholly inoperative; for the people went on speaking Irish, shaving, riding, and dressing just the same as before. But like all such laws they were very exasperating, inasmuch as they put it in the power of any illgrained English resident to insult his Irish neighbours without the possibility of redress; and they were among the causes that rendered the government so universally odious in Ireland.

Chapter II:
Mutations of the State Religion

It will be convenient in this place to tell briefly how the state religion fared in Ireland after the time of Henry VIII

King Henry died in 1547 and was succeeded by his son Edward VI., then a boy of nine years old. His death removed all check to the Reformation, which was now pushed forward vigorously in England by the young king’s protector the duke of Somerset, and by Archbishop Cranmer.

In the fifth year of Edward’s reign (1551), the chiet Protestant doctrines and forms of worship were promulgated in Ireland by Sir Anthony Sentleger. He did so much against his will, not on account of any religious scruples, but because he foresaw that this innovation if attempted in good earnest to be carried out, would obstruct and disturb the civil government of the country and undo all his skilful work of pacification (p.387): ‘This measure may be fairly considered to have been introduced as part of the established policy of assimilating Ireland to England, without the slightest reference to the feelings or wants of the people, or the propriety of the innovation.’ [1]

1. Richey, Short History, p.100.

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George Brown archbishop of Dublin exerted himself to spread the new doctrine: but the movement was resolutely opposed by the archbishop of Armagh, George Dowdall, a man of the highest character; whereupon the lord deputy Croft, acting on the orders of the king and council of England, deprived him of the primacy of all Ireland, which had hitherto been held by the archbishops of Armagh, and conferred it on Brown and his successors in the see of Dublin (1552). On this, Dr. Dowdall left the country and went to the Continent.

The destructive spirit of the Puritans of later times began about this time to manifest itself among the English soldiers. We find it recorded that the venerable monastery of St. Kieran at Clonmacnoise was plundered by the English of Athlone; so that, as the Four Masters (1552) express it,’there was not left a bell small or large, an image, an altar, a gem, or even glass in a window that was not carried off.’ But there was on the whole little disturbance in Ireland on the score of religion during Edward’s short reign. The government officials of Dublin, whose religion was the religion of the king or queen for the time being, adopted the new form of worship without hesitation. But no serious attempt was made to impose it on the general body of Catholics, either of Dublin or elsewhere, and the Reformation took no hold on the country.

Queen Mary, who succeeded Edward VI in 1553, restored the Catholic religion in England and Ireland. Archbishop Dowdall was recalled and reinstated; those of the bishops who had conformed in Edward’s reign were removed, or anticipated removal by flight; and, in 1557, the Irish parliament restored to the church the first fruits and tenths. There was as little disturbance in Ireland now as there had been on the accession of Edward; for the castle officials once again conformed without any trouble; and the body of the people, being Catholic all through, were not affected, by the change. The property of the monasteries which had been confiscated by Henry VIII was not restored. On the contrary, those who held

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the ecclesiastical lands were now confirmed in possession of them; and the Catholic church in Ireland, though it had full freedom, was very much poorer and weaker than it had been before the suppression of the monasteries.

During Mary’s reign Ireland was quite free from religious persecution. The Catholics were now the masters; but neither the Catholic authorities nor the Catholic people showed any disposition whatever to molest the few Protestants that lived among them. There were no insulting proclamations; and Protestants were not forced to attend Roman Catholic worship. Ireland indeed was regarded as such a haven of safety, that many Protestant families fled hither during the persecutions of Mary’s reign. [1]

On the death of Mary in 1558, Elizabeth became queen. Henry VIII had transferred the headship of the church from the Pope to himself; Edward VI. had changed the state religion from Catholic to Protestant; Mary from Protestant to Catholic: and now there was to be a fourth change, followed by results far more serious and lasting than any previously experienced. A parliament was assembled in Dublin in 1560, to restore the Protestant religion; and in a few weeks, though after much opposition and clamour, the whole ecclesiastical system of Mary was reversed.

The firstfruits and tenths were again taken from the church and given to the queen. The act of supremacy was put in force: all clergymen and persons holding government appointments were required to take the oath declaring the queen spiritual head of the church; and those that refused were dismissed. Any person openly maintaining that the Pope was spiritual head was liable to fine and imprisonment; and if he committed the offence three times he was adjudged guilty of treason. The regulations for forcing the Catholic people into Protestantism were much more stringent and far reaching than had been ever before experienced. The act of uniformity was re-introduced, by which the use of the Book of Common Prayer (the Protestant Prayer Book), was ordained; and

1. Ware’s Annals, 1554, where several are named.

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all persons were commanded to attend the new service on Sundays under pain of censure and a fine of twelve pence for each absence - about twelve shillings of our money. How far these regulations were carried into practice will be told as we go along.

The queen being by law now head of the Irish church, was supposed to have the appointment of all the Irish bishops. But as the English power reached only a small part of the country, many bishops were appointed by the Pope; so that in most of the dioceses a regular succession of Catholic bishops can be traced from the old Catholic times to the present day. Those appointed by the queen were, with few exceptions, men of a very unworthy stamp, distinguished more for greed than for piety, who made it their chief object, not to advance religion [1] but to plunder their several dioceses. [2]

Wherever these new regulations were enforced, the Catholic clergy had of course to abandon their churches, for they could not hold them without taking the oath. At the same time, as there was no adequate provision made for the support of the new Protestant pastors, those that were induced to come were poor, ignorant, and rude. But the crowning folly of the government was exhibited in the regulation that none were to be appointed except those who could speak English, which in those days meant that they could not speak Irish; so that these new ministers, not being able to make themselves understood, went about as mere dummies among their parishioners. [n] It came to this: that the government, while proscribing one religion, rendered the ministration of the other impossible; thus doing all that lay in their power to deprive the people of religion altogether.

But the Catholic religion, though proscribed by law, was well cared for. The priests, who had been turned out

1. Abundant examples will be found in Harris’s Ware’s Bishops: in which see for instances pp.416, 462, 484, 634, &c. See also Richey, Short History, 502.
2. Ball, The Reformed Church of Ireland, p.84; Spenser, View, 139 to 142.

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of their parishes, and the inmates of the suppressed monasteries who had been sent adrift on the world, especially the ‘mendicant friars,’ who lived on alms and cared nothing for privations, went about among the people; and while they actively and successfully opposed the reformed doctrines, they ministered to the people in secret and kept alive the spirit and practice of religion. Meanwhile, numbers of the churches being neglected, fell to ruin. Half a century later Sir John Davies found them in ruins all through the Pale. But in some places at least the Catholic clergy must have gradually returned, or more probably, never left, for Davies writes (in 1607) that in those parts of Ulster he visited, the churches were utterly waste, and the incumbents were ‘popish priests.’

In many places the new statute of uniformity was now brought sharply into play. In Dublin fines were inflicted on those who absented themselves from church; and to avoid the penalty, many went to Mass in the morning and to church in the evening. But the churchwardens tried to prevent even this by calling a roll of the parishioners at the morning service. [n] In Kilkenny lord justice Drury bound the chief men to attend service with their wives and children under a penalty of £40. [n] And Sir Henry Malbie writes: ‘At this sessions [in Galway] a great number of malefactors were indicted for a Solemn Mass they were at for welcoming William Burcke.’ [n]

This persecution prevailed however only in the Pale. and in some few other places. In far the greatest part of Ireland the government had no influence, and the Catholics were not interfered with. Even within the Pale the great body of the people took no notice of proclamations, the law could not be enforced, the act of uniformity was a dead letter, and the greater number of the parishes remained in the hands of the priests.

It is worthy of mention, as illustrating the government way of managing Irish affairs in those days, that

1. Ware, Annals, 1563.
2. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.145; Cox, i. 354. £40 meant about £500 of our present money.
3. Ibid. p.264.

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the several proclamations, which are still extant, calling on the Koman Catholics to conform, are worded in terms as coarse and insulting as possible to themselves and their religion; which as anyone might foresee, so far from converting, only exasperated them, and tended to fill them with hatred for the very name of the Protestant religion.

From the time of Elizabeth, Protestantism remained the religion of the state in Ireland, till the disestablishment of the church in 1869.

Chapter III:
Shane O’Neill

On the accession of Edward VI. in 1547, Sentleger was continued as deputy. As there were some serious disturbances in Leinster, Edward Bellingham, an able and active officer, was sent over in May this year as military commander, bringing a small force of 600 horse and 400 foot. His first expedition was against O’Moore and O’Conor, who had again broken out and burned and plundered part of the county Kildare. He and Sentleger desolated all Leix and’ Oifaly; proclaimed the two chiefs traitors; and as many of the people as they could reach they hunted from house and home - a new way of dealing with the peasantry. The chiefs, fleeing from place to place, and reduced to the verge of starvation, were at last forced to give themselves up. Sentleger treated them mercifully - other governors would have hanged them; and when he was recalled next year, he brought them to England, where they were received on the whole kindly, and each got a pension of £100 a year; but they were retained in London. O’Moore died in the first year of his exile. After some time - in 1553 - Queen Mary permitted O’Conor, at the intercession of his daughter, to return to Ireland. He was however arrested by the lords justices on his arrival in Dublin, and imprisoned in the castle. Meanwhile the two territories were annexed to the Pale, and Bellingham built a number of castles to keep down the people for the

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future. How land and people were dealt with is told in Chapter V.

We have seen (p.387) that when Conn Bacach O’Neill was created earl of Tyrone, his (reputed) illegitimate son Ferdoragh or Matthew was made baron of Dungannon, with the right to succeed to the earldom. Conn had adopted this Matthew - who was a bold dashing young fellow and a tried soldier - believing him to be his son, though there was then, as there has been to this day, a doubt whether the boy was the son of O’Neill or of a Dundalk blacksmith named Kelly. The whole story of his O’Neill paternity rests on the word of the mother, Kelly’s wife; and she never made the claim till on her deathbed, long after the death of Kelly, and when the boy was fully sixteen years of age.

The earl’s eldest legitimate son Shane, afterwards well known by the name of Shanean-diomais or John the Proud, was a mere boy when Matthew was made baron. But now that he was come of age and understood his position, he claimed the right to be his father’s heir and to succeed to the earldom, alleging that Matthew was not an O’Neill at all, but merely the son of a blacksmith. On this question there was at first a good deal of quarrelling between Shane and his father; but in the end they became reconciled, and the earl was won over to favour the claims of Shane as against the baron.

On this, the baron laid his complaints before the authorities, rightly expecting that they would support him, as being the heir according to English law (p.391); the result of which was that the earl was allured to Dublin, where he was seized by the lord deputy Sir James Croft, in 1551, and detained within the Pale in a sort of honourable captivity. [n] Shane was instantly up in arms, determined to avenge his father’s treacherous capture, and to maintain what he conceived to be his right against Matthew and the English: and so commenced a quarrel that cost England more men and money than any single struggle they had yet undertaken in Ireland. ‘Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.234,

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The O’Neills of Tyrone were at this time, as they had been from the earliest historic period, the most powerful family in Ulster. They commonly claimed, and often exercised, sovereignty over the other Ulster tribes, all except the O’Donnells of Tirconnell, who, claiming to be of equal dignity, [n] never acknowledged their sway, and who were generally able to hold their own. Hence the O’Neills and the O’Donnells regarded each other with mutual hostility, and were nearly always at war.

Croft now undertook to reduce the young rebel chief to obedience, and it came to open war: the deputy and the baron on the one side, against Shane and his adherents on the other. Croft made three several attempts in Ulster in quick succession, and failed in all. He first, in 1551, sent an expedition of four ships to attack the Scots of Rathlin Island - the Mac Donnells, who were Shane’s allies; but they unexpectedly fell on his army and destroyed them utterly, only one man escaping alive, who was taken prisoner and afterwards ransomed. "- [n] Again, the following year, he marched north, but his advance party received a severe check at Belfast by one of Shane’s adherents; and Matthew on his way to join the deputy was surprised at night by Shane himself, and routed with heavy loss. His third attempt was made in the autumn of the same year (1552); but the only injury he was able to inflict, a serious one for the poor people, was to destroy a great extent of standing corn. [n] These hostilities went on till a great part of Ulster became waste. Still O’Neill showed not the least disposition to yield. On the contrary, the authorities complain that when they went to ‘parle’ with him (in 1553) they ‘found nothing in Shane but pride and stubbornness.’ "* At last they thought it as well to let him alone, and for five or six years after this no serious attempt was made to reduce him.

Meantime the earl was released at the end of 1552,

1. The O’Neills or Kinel-Owen were descended from Eoghan (Owen), and the O’Donnells or Kinel-Connell from Couall Gulban, both sons of Niall of the Nine Hostages.
2. Four Masters, 155L [n] Four Masters, 1552.
3. The Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.214.

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though not till he had engaged not to make war on the baron of Dungannon or on any other of the adherents of the government. [n] But scarce had he arrived home when he and his sons wrangled and fought, so that a large district round Armagh was turned into a wilderness. To end this the earl and countess were brought once more to Dublin in 1553, where they were retained till the earl’s death in 1559. And the deputy sent soldiers north to restore quiet; but - as the State Paper expresses it - ‘that country was not amended but reduced to a worse state than before.’

Shane now got mixed up - to his own loss - in a bitter family feud among the O’Donnells. Manus O’Donnell chief of Tirconnell, and his eldest son Calvagh, had been at war with each other for some time; and at last Calvagh, aided by the Scots, defeated the old man in 1555, placed him in captivity, and made himself chief instead. Two years later (1557) O’Neill collected a large army of Irish and English to invade Tirconnell, hoping to bring the whole of Ulster under his sway, or as he said himself,’that there should be but one king in Ulster for the future.’ Being joined by Calvagh’s brother Hugh, who seems to have been exasperated at the ill treatment of his father, he marched westwards and finally pitched his camp at Balleeghan on the shore of Lough Swilly, in the heart of Tirconnell.

Calvagh seeing that with his small force he was not able to meet this attack in open fight, asked the advice of his father, whom he still held captive. Old Manus, remembering how he and his father Hugh had surprised Shane’s father at night in his camp at Knockavoe thirtyfive years before (p.359), advised another surprise now. Calvagh accordingly sent two trusty friends who, passing off as Tyrone men, mingled with the crowd in O’Neill’s camp at the beginning of the night without being detected; and when supper-time came round, they got for their share a helmetful of meal and some butter. Slipping out from the camp, they returned safely with the 1 Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.235.

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news that the invading army, confident in their strength, had become quite careless, and that the camp was not properly guarded: and they showed the oatmeal and butter as a proof that their story was true.

Calvagh instantly ordered his small band to arms, and came silently on the camp. The tent of Shane himself was easily distinguished. At the door stood a huge torch thicker than a man’s body, blazing bright amid the glimmer of the camp fires; and near it, as guard over the tent, stood sixty tall galloglasses armed with battleaxes, and sixty grim-looking Scots with claymores ready drawn. But all were now taken completely by surprise. One party of the O’Donnells made a dash for the blazing torch to capture the chief; but he was beforehand with them, and escaped in the darkness and confusion with two of his followers. They fled on foot and swam across three rivers, the Deel, the Finn, and the Derg, all now swollen to torrents, as there had been a rain-storm; and so they made their way to a place of safety. O’Neill’s whole army was routed and scattered; and Calvagh remained in possession of the camp with all its spoils. [n]

Shane appears to have soon recovered from this disaster, and without much delay turned his attention to other enemies. In the very next year, 1558, the year of the death of Queen Mary and of the accession of her halfsister Elizabeth, some of his people killed the baron of Dungannon in a manner that some writers do not hesitate to describe as assassination. It does not appear that Shane himself was present, though he was accused by the English of the murder of his hrother: but he always maintained that Matthew Kelly was killed according to the laws of war. 2 As the earl his father died in captivity in Dublin in the following year, 1559, Shane assumed the

1. Four Masters, 1557.
2. The Four Masters’ record of the transaction is:- ‘A.D. 1558. The baron O’Neill (Ferdorach the son of Conn Bacach) was slain (a deed unbecoming kinsmen) by the people of his brother John.’ From the State Paper accomit also it appears obvious that he was killed by Shane’s people, while Shane himself was absent. See also Campion, ed. 1809, p.188.

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old title - ‘The O’Neill’ - and was acknowledged chief of Tyrone without any opposition.

The government looked on these movements of the great northern chief with deep uneasiness. The assumption of the chieftainship was an open defiance of the English law, according to which Matthew’s eldest son became baron of Dungannon at his father’s death, and should now succeed to the chieitainship and lands of Tyrone (p.391). So the lord justice Sir Henry Sydney, leading his army to Dundalk, sent to Shane requiring him to come and explain his conduct. But the chief’s adroitness averted the threatened storm. Taking no notice of the lord justice’s imperious summons, he sent him a friendly invitation to come and stand sponsor for his child, which Sydney thought it better to accept. While he remained at Shane’s castle, in February 1559, the chief gave such convincing explanations of his conduct, showing that he had acted in strict accordance with Irish law and custom, and at the same time he made such protestations of loyalty, that the lord justice seems to have been quite won over. Promising to lay the whole matter before the queen in this new light, and advising Shane to keep quiet meantime, he withdrew his army and returned to Dublin. Shane followed the advice, and there was peace during Sydney’s stay in the country.

The earl of Sussex, the next governor, was appointed lord deputy in August 1559. Sydney’s policy had been one of conciliation, and as long as he remained O’Neill was quiet enough. But Sussex had scarce any policy at all except one of general hostility; his military operations were nothing but mere destructive exasperating raids, leading to nothing; and in the end he drove Shane to renew the war. [n] But at the time of his arrival in Ireland, the chief had become so formidable that it was thought advisable not to attempt to reduce him just then. Accordingly the queen instructs Sussex that although the son of the late baron is the true heir, yet inasmuch as Shane is legitimate, and is now in possession, it is better to

1. Carew Papers [n] 1515-1574, pp.366-7.

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leave him undisturbed. [n] But this apparent respect for legitimacy was mere pretence, which the queen threw aside when it suited her purpose, as may be seen in next page.

At this time there was great strife and confusion in Thomond, as there had been ever since the traitor Donogh O’Brien had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his uncle, Murrogh O’Brien the first earl (p.387). After Donogh’s death - he was slain by his own brother - his son Conor became earl by English law; and for many years he maintained his position, but only by continual fighting, against rivals who claimed the chieftainship by the law of tanistry. Among others the two sons of Earl Murrogh rose up against him, and were aided by Garrett earl of Desmond, while the earl of Clanrickard and the Burkes took the part of Conor. After a good deal of skirmishing they fought a bloody battle in 1559, at Spancel Hill in Clare, where Conor and Clanrickard were driven off the field with great loss. This did not end the feud; for Thomond continued for years to be disturbed by rival claimants. But Conor ultimately recovered his earldom.

The laws passed by parliament for the spread of Protestantism (p.396), which were now in full swing in Dublin, produced great excitement among the Catholics throughout the country; and the government saw with alarm many signs of coming trouble. It was known that one of the O’Briens had just returned (in 1560) from France with promises of aid; O’Conor had escaped from Dublin Castle (p.399); the earl of Desmond had refused to pay cesses and had masses imhlidy celebrated; and mysterious messengers were continually passing from one great chief to another - Shane O’Neill, O’Brien, and the earls of Kildare and Desmond. There arose among the English colonists a general uneasy feeling that the Irish were bent on a rebellion this year. All this and much more is stated by the queen in her letter of instructions to the earl of Sussex when she sent him over as lord

1. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.287, 288.

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lieutenant in 1560; and in Sussex’s reports to the queen after his arrival.*

Perhaps it was these ominous signs that renewed the queen’s dread of O’Neill, and induced her to issue fresh instructions to Sussex that ‘Shane O’Neill may either by fair means or by force be compelled to be obedient to us’; and that the young baron of Dungannon,’ being the heir in right,’ should be reinstated. [n] Meantime Shane was not idle: he maintained a voluminous correspondence, now with the queen, now with the government, in which he proved himself their match in diplomatic craft as well as in war. In one of his letters to the queen he requests her to procure him an English wife, and to give him [n]3,000 to enable him to go to England and explain his conduct personally. [n]

Rivals were now, by the queen’s instructions, raised up all round him: O’Reilly of Brefney was made an earl, and it was proposed to create Calvagh O’Donnell earl of Tirconnell. It was arranged that he should be attacked at various points simultaneously. O’Donnell and O’Reilly were to fall on him from the west; the Scots were to be won over to assail him from the north and east, under Sorley Boy Macdonnell and his brother James; and Sussex prepared to march against him from the south.’*

But Shane was too quick for them, and thwarted the whole scheme in his own fierce and decisive fashion. He first entered Brefney (1560) and laid it waste till he forced O’Reilly to submit and give hostages for obedience in the future. Next hearing that Calvagh and his wife were in the monastery of Killodonnell on the shore of Lough S willy with only a few attendants, he swooped down from the hills and carried them both off*. He owed Calvagh an old grudge (p.403), and he now threw him into prison, where he detained him till he was ransomed. His subsequent conduct in this affair was very disreputable: he

1. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.296 to 304.
2. Ibid., p.292.
3. Some of his letters are in Latin; some in Irish. Several of them have been printed by Dr. J. T. Gilbert in his National MSS.
4. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.310.

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kept the lady living with him in a state of dishonour from that time till the day of his death. And what rendered the crime all the more loathsome was the fact that his own wife was Calvagh’s daughter by a former marriage, and therefore stepdaughter to the abducted lady. She was living at the time: and the Four Masters tell us that she died of horror and grief at the imprisonment of her father and the misconduct of her husband.

Calvagh’s wife was sister to the earl of Argyle - she herself being commonly known as the countess of Argyle; and through her influence the intended attack of the Scots was averted, and they returned to their alliance with Shane. About this time, by way of venting his feelings, he built a castle on an island, to which he gave the name Fooa-na-Gall, the ‘Hatred of the English.’

In this same year (1560) he made an irruption southwards into the Pale, wasting and destroying everything. He did not leave food enough even for his army, so that on the approach of winter he had to withdraw to his own territory.

In the summer of next year, 1561, Sussex marched north with the forces of the Pale and with some reinforcements he had brought from England, and fortified himself in the cathedral of Armagh, from which he sent a party of 1,000 men to ravage Tyrone. All went well till they were returning laden with booty, when Shane dogged them silently mile after mile; and falling on them suddenly at a favourable opportunity, he routed them and forced them to relinquish all their spoils, which he restored to the owners. He next made another furious raid into the Pale and wasted Meath and Louth. Turning his attention to Tirconnell, which had at this time no ruler except the infirm old chief Manus - Calvagh being still a prisoner - he made himself master of it, and now assumed the sovereignty of all Ulster,’ from Drogheda to the Erne.’ [n]

At last the lord lieutenant Sussex hit on a plan, which

1. Four Masters, 1561, where Sussex’s expedition and defeat are related.

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if it had been successful, would have most effectually quieted the dreaded chief for evermore: he hired a man to murder him. The intended assassin was a fellow named Nele Gray, one of O’Neill’s own servants: and the whole plot is detailed in a letter written on the 24th August 1561 by Sussex himself to the queen: ‘In fine I brake with him [Nele Gray] to kill Shane, and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marks of land. ... I told him the ways he might do it, and how to escape after with safety.’ [n] It fell through because Gray got afraid in the end and backed out of the business. The plot afterwards came to the knowledge of O’Neill. ‘Elizabeth’s answer - if she sent any answer - is not discoverable. It is most sadly certain however that Sussex was continued in office; and inasmuch as it will be seen that he repeated the experiment a few months later, his letter could not have been received with any marked condemnation.’ [n]

In the autumn (1561), Sussex made another attempt to reduce him: a legitimate attempt this time. At the instance of Calvagh O’Donnell, whom O’Neill had released on ransom a little time before, he marched with a large army into Tyrone, attended by the five earls of Desmond, Kildare, Ormond, Thomond, and Clanrickard, and wasted the whole country as far as Lough Foyle. But this was a mere useless foray; for O’Neill retired out of the way, and the deputy had to return, having done much harm and no good. [n]

Finding that force was of no avail, the queen resolved to bring about Shane’s long promised visit to London, hoping that a personal interview would settle matters. She sent the earl of Kildare, his near cousin (p.351), to

1 Hamilton, Calendar, 1509-1573, Preface, xvi. and pp.179, 208. The full text of the letter may be seen in Froude, History of England, ed. 1870, vii. p.133. Moore {History of Ireland, iv. 33) remarks on this ‘frightful letter,’ as he calls it, that there is not in it ‘a single hint of doubt or scruple as to the moral justifiableness of the transaction.’

2 Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, vii. 133. [n] Four Masters. 1561, p.1587.

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treat with liim, with a letter from herself inviting him to visit her court. This succeeded for the time, for Shane was himself anxious to visit the queen. As a preliminary step, peace was now concluded between him and Sussex, in which it was agreed that he was to be chief of Tyrone till such time as the claims of Matthew’s eldest son should be investigated. The English were to be withdrawn from Armagh; but here an intentional ambiguity was slipped in: it was indeed nothing better than a discreditable bit of knavery, described by Sussex himself to the queen: ‘The earl of Kildare was put as surety for the fetching away the soldiers from Armagh; and no word forbiddiwj otlters to he at any time hr ought thither ‘: and he adds that this trick ‘with such a traitor might very well be allowed.’ [n] This part of the stipulation, as we might expect, was not carried out. A safe conduct was brought to him by Kildare, in which it will be seen there was another crooked twist, and an engagement that no injury was to be done to his territory or people during his absence.

In December (1561) he went to Dublin on his way to England. Sussex, who was opposed to the journey, detained him there as long as he could, and he wrote to the minister Cecil suggesting that the queen should treat him coldly. But this spiteful recommendation was disregarded, and she received him very graciously. The redoubtable chief and his retainers, all in their strange native attire, were viewed with curiosity and wonder. He strode through the court to the royal presence, between the two lines of wondering courtiers; and behind him marched his galloglasses, their heads bare, their long hair curling down on their shoulders and clipped short in front just above the eyes. They wore a loose wide-sleeved saffron-coloured tunic, and over this a short shaggy mantle flung across the shoulders. [n] On the 6th January 1562 he

1. Hamilton, Calendar, 1509-1573, Preface, xix. and p.182, No. 71.
2. Camden, AmiaU, ed. 1639, p.69, from which the above description of the appearance and dress of Shane and his retinue is translated.

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made formal submission in presence of the court and the foreign ambassadors.’

Shane was perfectly well aware of the danger he incurred by going to England; he had no reason to trust those who had attempted his assassination only a few months before. Yet it had been a favourite project with him for a long time to have a personal interview with the queen, trusting probably to his adroitness to get from her the most favourable terms. As a matter of fact it was the settled intention of the government to entrap him, and they deliberately drew out his safe-conduct with a cunning flaw. Sir William Cecil expressed this intention even before the visit: ‘In Shane’s absence from Ireland something might be cavilled against him or his for nonobserving the covenants on his side; and so the pact being infringed the matter might be used as should be thought fit’ [n] - that is to say, Shane might be arrested. ‘The submission being disposed of,’ says Mr. Froude,’ the next object [of the government] was to turn the visit to account. Shane discovered that, notwithstanding his precautions, he had been outwitted in the wording of his safe-conduct. Though the government promised to permit him to return to Ireland, the time of his stay had not been specified.’ [n]

He was kept in London on various pretences: and it was decided that the young baron of Dungannon was to come over so that the rival claims might be investigated. But what they wanted was delay, so as to detain Shane as long as possible: and they carried on the dishonest trick by publicly summoning the baron to London while they privately directed that he should remain in Ireland. ‘’ Shane understood perfectly well the game that was being played, and he took the course of all others most likely to succeed: he wrote letter after letter to the queen, flattering and cajoling her; again asking her to procure an English

1. Carew Papers. 1515-1574, p.312
2. Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, vii. 135.
3. Ibid.. p.137.
4. Hamilton, Calendar. 1509-1573. p.188, No. 44, and p.190, No. 28.

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wife for him, promising to crush all her enemies in Ireland, assuring her of his admiration for her greatness, requesting to be taught the English manner of dressing, shooting, riding, and hunting, and telling her she was his only refuge. And he seems to have succeeded in winning her to his side. At length matters were brought to a crisis by the news that the young baron of Dungannon had been killed in a skirmish by Turlogh Lynnagh O’Neill. Whereupon the queen and government permitted Shane to return, and paid all his expenses. The queen issued a proclamation to the effect that O’Neill’s submission had been accepted, and that he was now to be regarded as a good and faithful subject.

These terms were regarded by both himself and his people as a triumph over his enemies; and it was considered that he had obtained from the English court all that he had demanded. Yet, taking advantage of his detention, they forced him to agree to and sign certain severe conditions, the principal of which were that he was to claim no sovereignty or levy contributions or hostages outside Tyrone; that he should keep no soldiers in pay except those of his own principality, which would oblige him to dismiss his Scottish mercenaries; that he was not to wage war without the sanction of the Irish deputy and council; and that he was to reduce to obedience to the queen certain of the surrounding tribes, including the Scots, his allies, which would of course convert them from friends to enemies. He was merely permitted to retain for the present his lordship over Tyrone, till the claim of the remaining son of the baron of Dungannon should be investigated. [n]

He returned to Dublin in May 1562 with the proclamation in his pocket, and making no delay in this dangerous place, he hastened to Ulster, where he was welcomed with unbounded joy by the people of Tyrone. Considering all the circumstances it was marvellous that he was permitted to leave London so easily. Others before him, like the earl of Kildare, had worn out their lives in Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.818, 314.

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the Tower. We may perhaps account for his escape partly by his skilful flattery of the queen, and partly that the government knew that if he were put out of the w [n]ay, Turlogh Lynnagh would succeed to the chieftainship, and might prove equally or more troublesome. ‘To whatever he owed his escape,’ observes Dr. Richey,’ it was not to the justice, magnanimity, or honour of the English government.’

If the London authorities had acted straight, O’Neill would probably have returned loyally disposed, and all might be well. They took a different course; and the natural result followed. He resented being forced to sign conditions under compulsion and in violation of agreement; and probably he never meant to carry them out. It was craft against craft, and the queen and her crooked ministers met their match. His position and his intentions are very clearly set forth in his own speech made afterwards to the commissioners Stukely and DowTlall (p.416): ‘Whom am I to trust? When I came unto the earl of Sussex upon safe-conduct, he offered me the courtesy of a han [n]dlock. When I w [n]as with the queen, she said to me herself that I had, it was true, safe-conduct to come and go; but it was not said when I might go; and they kept me there until I had agreed to things so far against my honour and profit, that I would never perform them while I live. That made me make war; and if it were to do again I would do it.’ [n]

He now pursued just the same course as before, as if he had never signed any conditions. Maguire of Fermanagh had made himself obnoxious by his alliance with Calvagh O’Donnell and by his subserviency to the English government. Assisted by Hugh O’Donnell, who aspired to the chieftainship of Tirconnell as against his brother Calvagh, Shane now, in direct disregard of the conditions, invaded Fermanagh, and brought Maguire to utter ruin.

Sussex having in vain expostulated with him, at length laid another plot for his destruction. In 1563, he sent

1 Hamilton, Calendar, 1509-1573, p.289, No. 33; Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, vii. 544.

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him an urgent request to meet himselt and some other English captains for a parley at Dundalk, enclosing him a safe-conduct, cunningly worded so as to leave a loophole for his arrest. Sussex himself describes this treacherous piece of double-dealing in a letter to the queen. [n] But O’Neill, taught no doubt by his London experience, did not present himself at the meeting.

This having failed, Sussex next threw out a more tempting bait. Shane had often expressed a wish for an English wife (pp.406, 410) and seems to have cast his choice on Sussex’s sister. When Sussex came to hear of this he wrote to him (1563), ‘that if he would come [to Ardbraccan] and see her, and if he liked her and she him, they should have his good will’; all which was simply a trap. ‘The present sovereign of England’ - writes Mr. Froude - ‘would perhaps give one of her daughters to the king of Dahomey with more readiness than the earl of Sussex would have consigned his sister to Shane O’Neill. ... Had he trusted himself to Sussex he would have had a short shrift for a blessing, and a rough nuptial knot about his neck.’ O’Neill got warning of danger from some friend living in the Pale, and never came to claim the lady.

These repeated attempts only the more exasperated him, and he made a series of crushing raids on those Ulster chiefs that had declared against him. Sussex marched north once more in May 1563; but he had no pay and but poor provisions for his soldiers, who were mutinous and unmanageable; and he effected nothing but the capture of some herds of cows and horses. [n]

At length the queen, heartily sick of this interminable war, instructed Sussex to end it by any reasonable concessions; and peace was signed, on the 8th November 1563, in O’Neill’s house at Benburb, on terms very favourable to him. He was confirmed in the old name,’The Ogallerys’Neill’,’until the queen should decorate him by another honourable name.’ He was not bound to come in person to the

1. Hamilton, Calendar, 1509-1574, p.202, Nos. 72, 73.
2. Carew Papers, 1515-157.3, pp.349-352.

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supreme governor of Ireland.’ The said Lord O’Neill was to have all pre-eminence, jurisdiction, and dominion, which his predecessors had ... over all who w [n]ere accustomed to pay service to his predecessors.’ The English garrison to be removed from Armagh. All spoils taken from Tyrone while Lord O’Neill was in England were to be restored. [n]

Almost immediately after this a determined attempt was made to poison him, and well nigh succeeded. The time was skilfully chosen - after the peace - when Shane would naturally be unsuspicious, and there is scarce a doubt that it was planned by Sussex, though there is no absolute proof. Sussex had in his employment a man named Smith, whom he often sent as a confidential messenger to O’Neill. [n] This man was the agent in the attempt. He sent the chief some wine from Dublin as a present, which Shane and his family and guests unsuspectingly drank at table. But the assassin missed the main mark; for though all that drank were taken sick, and nearly the whole household were brought to death’s door, no one actually died. The crime was traced to Smith, who confessed his guilt, but protested that he did it on his own responsibility - w [n]hich no one believed. He was of course arrested, and much noise was made about his ‘horrible attempt’ as the queen called it: but he well knew he had nothing to fear; and early in the following year he was set at liberty. [n]

For some time after this, Shane was left very much to himself; w [n]e read of no further attempts to assassinate him; and the country enjoyed unusual quiet.

It will be necessary here to pause in our narrative to say a few words about the Scots of Antrim, who in those times figured much in Irish affairs. The Irish colonists who had settled in early days in Scotland ultimately, as has been related (p.151), obtained the sovereignty of the whole

1 Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.352, 353, 362.
2 Ibid. pp.349, 350.
3. See also Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870. vii. 156, where the whole transaction is related: and Richey, Short Hist. p.476.

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country. Like their kinsmen in Ireland they were divided into tribes and septs, of whom the most distinguished were the Mac Donnells of the Hebrides - ‘the Lords of the Isles.’ A little before the time we are now treating of, these Mac Donnells and others had begun to form settlements in Antrim, the home of their ancestors. They were a bold, brave, pugnacious race; and they leagued with the Irish chiefs and took part in their wars, as naturally as if they had never left the old country. The English government looked on them with an unfriendly eye, and their increasing power gave great uneasiness; for not only were they themselves formidable, but being enemies of the English, they fanned disaffection through the whole province. Expeditions were sent against them from time to time, which sometimes made great havoc, and were sometimes repulsed. But these expeditions and losses in no way deterred the Islesmen: fresh swarms of ‘Redshanks,’ as they were often called, poured in; and year by year they obtained firmer footing in the Glens of Antrim. They often hired themselves as mercenaries to the Irish chiefs; and part of Shane O’Neill’s bodyguard usually consisted of a company of gigantic Scottish galloglasses.

O’Neill had a twofold ambition. He meant to make himself king of Ulster like his forefathers, and to rule altogether independently of the English, though still acknowledging the queen as his sovereign. And he aimed at bringing all the Ulster tribes, great and small, under his absolute dominion. The English on their part were equally resolved to extend and maintain their authority over Ulster, and they tried every means at their disposal, fair or foul - force, craft, assassination - to crush him. If he had united the Ulster chiefs in friendly alliance with himself, he might have withstood the English to the end. But in his efforts to subjugate, he created enemies all round him; and the defeat that finally crushed him was inflicted, not by the English, but by his neighbours the O’Donnells.

The London treaty bound him to reduce certain tribes, including the Scots. We know how little this treaty

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influenced him. But anyhow he now broke with the Scots and made preparations to attack them, whether to please the queen, as he himself asserted, or more probably thinking that they were growing too powerful to be safe as neighbours. In 1565 he crossed the Bann in curraghs, and after several conflicts, gained a decisive victory over them at Glenshesk near Ballycastle, where 700 of them were slain. Of their three leaders - the Mac Donnells, brothers - Angus was slain, and Sorley Boy and James were made prisoners; but James died of his wounds. [n]

The news of this victory at first gave great joy to the English, and the privy council sent to congratulate him. But seeing how much it increased his power, their joy soon turned to jealousy and fear. The queen directed Sir Henry Sydney, who had been again appointed deputy in the beginning of this year (1565), to call on O’Neill for an explanation why he went to war without leave, and why he kept the prisoners and the castles he had taken, instead of handing them over to the government, acting as if the country were altogether his own. In the meantime, to make matters worse, he made a successful raid on Tirconnell early in the following year (1566), spoiled Clanrickard, expelled Shane Maguire chief of Fermanagh, and plundei*ed that part of the Pale lying near Newry; and he also burned the cathedral of Armagh to prevent the English getting shelter there again.

In this same year, two commissioners, j iistice Dowdall and Thomas Stukely were sent to have an interview with him. But he gave them no satisfaction, and uttered this speech, alluding in it contemptuously to the fact that Mac Carthy of Desmond had recently been made earl of Clancarty: ‘I care not to be made an earl, unless I may be better and higher than earl; for I am in blood and power better and higher than the best of them; and I will give place to none but my cousin of Kildare, for that he is of my house. You have made a wise earl of M’Carty More; I keep a [servant-] man as good as he is. For the queen I confess she is my sovereign; but I never made

1. Four Masters, 1565, p.1605}

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peace with her but at her own seeking. My ancestors were kings of Ulster, and Ulster is mine, and shall be mine. O’Donnell shall never come into his country, nor Bagenall into Newry, nor Kildare into Dundrum or Lecale. They are now mine. With the sword I won them; with this sword I will keep them.’ [n]

Sir Henry Sydney, a much abler and more far-seeing man than Sussex, now (1566) took decisive and wellplanned measures to reduce the great rebel chief. He recalled all the sub-chiefs who had been expelled by O’Neill, aud who now - every man - engaged to make war on Shane, [n] threatening him on all sides: he sent a garrison to Derry - in O’Neill’s rear - under a brave and experienced officer, Colonel Randolph, and he put Dundalk in a state of defence. Shane now - 1566 - made an inroad into the Pale, doing immense damage, but he met with a serious repulse when he attempted to take Dundalk. He was also defeated with great loss at Derry; though here the English purchased victory dearly by the death of the brave Colonel Randolph: and to complete the tragedy his men were soon afterwards attacked by some mysterious deadly plague, which carried off almost the whole garrison. Sydney next marched into Tyrone, which he wasted as he went along: and he restored to their castles many of the chiefs whom he had recalled, including Calvagh O’Donnell; [n] but O’Neill himself retired to his fastnesses, and the deputy had to return without bringing him to terms.

When Calvagh O’Donnell died he was succeeded in 1567 by his brother Hugh. This was the same Hugh who some years before had been in alliance with Shane; but he was now an enemy, and on the side of the English: and in the year of his inauguration, acting probably at the instance of Sydney, he led a plundering expedition into Tyrone, and committed great damage. Shane retaliated by crossing the Swilly into Tirconnell; but he was met by O’Donnell at the other side and utterly routed. The fugitives, attempting in their flight to recross the Swilly, were

1. See references in note, p.412.
2. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.373.
3. Ibid. 1575-1574, p.335.

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drowned in great numbers, as the tide had risen in the meantime; and Shane himself, crossing a ford two miles higher up, barely escaped with his life and made his way into Tyrone.’

This action, in which 1,300 of his men perished, utterly ruined him. He lost all heart, and the annalists say ‘his reason and senses became deranged,’ in which they are not far wrong: for the chief now formed the insane resolution of placing himself at the mercy of the Scots, whose undying enmity he had earned by the defeat at Glenshesk two years before. He came to their camp at Cushendun (in 1567) with only fifty followers, trusting in their generosity, having previously sent them his prisoner Sorley Boy to propitiate them. They received him with a show of welcome and cordiality; but in the midst of the festivities, they raised a dispute, which was probably preconcerted, and suddenly seizing their arms, they massacred the chief and all his followers. [n]

The body of O’Neill was wrapped up in a shirt and thrown into a pit. Four days afterwards. Captain Pierce, commander of Carrickfergus, who is strongly suspected of having a hand in the plot that led to Shane’s destruction, brought the head to Dublin to the deputy, who gave him 1,000 marks, the reward offered in the proclamation. And the deputy caused the head to be impaled on a spike over one of the towers of Dublin Castle. O’Neill’s rebellion cost the government £147,407, about a million and threequarters of our present money, besides the cesses laid on the country, and the damages sustained by the subjects. [n] At the time of his death he was only about forty years of age.

Of all the Irish chiefs, the English most feared and hated Shane O’Neill. English writers persistently defamed him, and they continue to do so to this day. ‘So thoroughly has Shane’s personal character been blackened that the Irish have never attempted to make him a

1. Four Masters, 1567.
2. Campion, Historie, 191, 192; Four Masters, 1567.
[3.] Ware, Annals, 1568.

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national hero; and he enjoys the unfortunate position, between the two nationalities, of being defamed by the one and repudiated by the other. ... No possible charge against him has been omitted: but though they all contain some element of truth, they are manifestly exaggerated, and generally made by men who were themselves, with less excuse, open to similar imputations.’ [n]

We know that his life was stained by one black crime. But taking him all in all, there is no reason to believe that he was worse than the general ran of Irish chiefs and English noblemen of the time; and he certainly never practised secret assassination. In his manner of ruling his principality he compared favourably with the contemporary chiefs in other parts of Ireland. Of this we have the testimony of several writers, among others the Jesuit Campion, a contemporary and rather hostile writer: ‘[O’Neill] ordered the north so properly, that if any subject could approve the losse of money or goods within his precinct, he would assuredly either force the robber to restitution, or of his own cost redeeme the harme to the looser’s contentation. Sitting at meate, before he put one morsell into his mouth, he used to slice a portion above the dayly almes, and send it namely to some beggar at his gate, saying it was meete to serve Christ first.’ [n] Sydney when he went north was surprised at the prosperous look of the country, and says Tyrone was so well inhabited as no Irish county in the realm was like it ‘; which statement may be contrasted with his account of the state of Leinster and Munster at the same period, under the government of the earls of Desmond, Ormond, and Kildare (p.421). If in private life be was much like his contemporary chiefs, he rose head and shoulders above them all in military genius, in the arts of diplomacy, and in administrative ability.

[n] Dr. Richey, the writer of these words, has, after a searching examination of the slate Papers, vindicated the character of Shane O’Neill; and from his valuable and suggestive lecture I have derived material help in writing this account of the great Irish chief. (Short History of Ireland, chap. xvii).

1. Historie of Ireland, ed. 1809, p.189.

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Chapter IV:
The Geraldine Rebellion - First Stage

While the North was convulsed by the war of Shane O’Neill, the South was kept in a state of unspeakable confusion and misery by the never-ending feuds of the Butlers and Geraldines. These two great families, it will be remembered, had taken opposite sides all along, the Butlers being for the English, the Geraldines for the Irish. They had now an additional incentive to quarrel: for the earl of Ormond had conformed to the Protestant faith, while Desmond - Gerald the ‘rebel earl’ - was regarded as the great champion of Catholicity. Sussex writes in 1560 that all the evil-disposed (i.e. disloyal) persons depended on the Geraldines: all the loyal people on the Butlers. [n]

On one occasion Desmond, who claimed jurisdiction over Decies in Waterford, crossed the Blackwater with his army to levy tribute in the old form of coyne and livery. The chief of the district, Sir Maurice Fitzgerald, a relative of the Butlers, resisted the claim, and called in the aid of the earl of Ormond. Desmond, taken unawares, was defeated in a battle fought in 1565 at Affane in the county Waterford, beside the Blackwater; many of his men were slain; and he himself was wounded and taken prisoner. It is related that while he was borne from the field on a litter, one of his captors tauntingly asked him: ‘Where is now the great earl of Desmond? ‘To which he instantly replied,’ Where he ought to be: on the necks of the Butlers! ‘

In this same year the earl of Sussex, who was then in England, sent a report to the queen, with a long catalogue of Desmond’s misdeeds: his lawless invasion of Decies, disobedience to the deputy’s orders, refusal to aid the queen’s forces, and several spoilings of Ormond’s territories

1. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.301.

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during the time Ormoncl himself was serving the queen. [n] Matters at last came to such a pass between the two earls that the queen commanded both to her presence to have their differences settled. Ormond was permitted to return almost immediately, but Desmond was detained for some time. He was at last pardoned and set at liberty: but he had to bind himself to certain conditions, among others to assist the government in pacifying the country, to abolish the Brehon law, coyne and livery, and all such imposts, and to discourage minstrels, rhymers, and storytellers. He was made to promise in short to anglicise himself and his people; but all this had little result, for on his return matters went on much the same as before.

Not only did these two earls desolate the country by their contentions, but they crushed and ruined the people, by impressing men for their wars, by levying coyne and livery, and by every other possible form of tyranny. Sir Henry Sydney the deputy at last made a journey south early in 1567 to reduce Desmond, and to investigate the causes of quarrel. He found the country all ruined. In a letter to the queen he gives a vivid description of the desolation and misery he witnessed with his own eyes on his way through Munster and Connaught; and it may well astonish a reader how things could have come to such a pass in any civilised land having even the name of a government. The farther south he went the worse he found the country. Speaking of the districts of Desmond and Thomond he states that whole tracts, once cultivated, lay waste and uninhabited: the ruins of burned towns, villages, and churches everywhere: ‘And there heard I such lamentable cries and doleful complaints made by that remain of poor people which are yet left, who hardly escaping the fury of the sword and fire of their outrageous neighbours, or the famine which their extorcious lords have driven them unto either by taking their goods from them or by spending the same by their extort taking of coyne and livery, make demonstration of the miserable estate of that country. ... Yea, the view of the bones’

1. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.370-3.

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and skulls of the dead subjects, who partly by murder, partly by famine, have died in the fields, as in troth liardly any Christian with dry eyes could behold.’ [n] The smaller chiefs imitated their more powerful neighbours, and impoverished by their grinding extortion the few people that were left.

During his progress he hanged or imprisoned great numbers of those he deemed the worst criminals; and acted throughout with excessive and imprudent harshness. While sternly reproving the chiefs whom he found in fault as he went along, he looked upon Desmond as the greatest culprit of all, and treated him more severely than the others; though he was indeed in little or nothing worse than Ormond. At great risk, he arrested him publicly in Kilmallock - his own capital town - and brought him to Limerick, where he had him indicted for breaking the peace against Ormond, and for unlawfully levying men, and fined him £20,000. At the same time, having knighted the earl’s brother John Fitzgerald, or John of Desmond as he is usually called, he appointed him seneschal and ruler of the Desmond princij)ality during the earl’s absence in captivity. [n]

In South Connaught the whole country had been kept in a state of constant strife on account of the mutual wrangling of the earl of Clanrickard’s sons, and also of Clanrickard himself with the other chiefs of the province. The deputy in his way through Connaught forced all these to a temporary peace, and left the province quiet for the time. He returned to Dublin through Athlone, bringing Desmond and other prisoners, whom he consigned to the castle on his arrival.

Sydney’s endeavours to settle matters between Ormond and Desmond satisfied neither. Ormond was related to queen Elizabeth, and had been educated with her; and she now insisted that rig-ht or wrongs he should be sustained. Accordingly Sydney’s decisions went generally against Desmond; but Ormond was incensed that they

1. Carew Papers, 1589-1600, Pref. lVIII
2. Ibid. 1575-1588. p.337.

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were not still more favourable to himself; and he sent continual complaints of the deputy. [n] This, coupled with the commotion caused by Sydney’s unsparing severity, turned the queen against him; and finding it impossible to please all, he asked and obtained permission to retire. He returned to England in 1567, bringing several of the Irish chiefs, and leaving the earl of Desmond in Dublin Castle, whose brother John continued to govern South Munster in his place.

Ormond persisted in his mischievous complaints of the Fitzgeralds to the queen: and he now accused John of Desmond of practising gross injustice towards the Butlers. The consequence of these representations was that without consulting or advising with Sydney, who knew best what course to adopt, or with anyone else, John of Desmond was treacherously arrested, and both he and the earl were brought over to London this same year (1567) and consigned to the Tower, where they were detained for six years. Whatever show of justice there was in the arrest of the earl of Desmond, there was none at all in the treatment of his brother: and when Sydney subsequently heard of the proceeding he strongly condemned it: pronouncing it the origin of the rising under Fitzmaurice - about to be related. John of Desmond had been in fact well affected towards the government up to that time: but his wanton arrest and imprisonment converted him from a loyal subject to an irreconcilable rebel. [n]

After a year’s absence Sir Henry Sydney returned to Ireland as deputy in 1568; and by the queen’s command he summoned a parliament early in the following year. He wished to pass certain measures which he knew would be vehemently opposed: and in order to make sure of success he had the elections carried on in a most irregular and unconstitutional way. Some mayors and sheriffs elected themselves members; some members represented non-corporate towns, i.e. towns that had no right to have members at all; and many were returned for places which

1. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.336.
2. Ibid. p.341, where all this is related in detail.

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they had never even seen. A large number of Englishmen were elected merely to vote with the deputy - men who knew nothing of the country, and had no interest in it.

There was a powerful opposition headed by a very able man, Sir Christopher Barnewell, who was seconded and aided by Sir Edmund Butler, the earl of Ormond’s brother, whose motive for opposing the government will be seen farther on. The opposition insisted on an inquiry into the gross illegality of the elections; which was granted, with the result that those who elected themselves and those elected for non-corporate towns were all disqualified. But still it was a packed house, and the court party - ‘the English faction,’ as the opposition called them - had a majority.

Then, during three sessions, which were held in 1569, 1570, and 1571, Sydney had his measures passed, though with great difficulty. The principal were: one for suspending Poynings’ law while the present parliament lasted, so that acts could be passed without consulting the English council: one for attainting Shane O’Neill, for confiscating his lands, and for abolishing the title of The O’Neill, making it high treason to use it. There was also an act for the erection of free schools, or ‘charter schools,’ whose teachers were to be Englishmen, and of course Protestants: the precursor of all those attempts to proselytise the Irish through the instrumentality of education, which were continued with great persistency far into the present century. Sydney would have brought forward measures still more stringent and sweeping if the opposition had not been so determined.

The discontent and alarm caused by the turn of the tide against the Catholic religion, and by the high-handed and harsh proceedings of Sydney, had been brought to a crisis by the arrest of Desmond and his brother. The nearest representative of the Desmond family remaining in Ireland was James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald the earl’s first cousin. He keenly resented their arrest, but took no immediate steps, as he expected to see them released after a short imprisonment. But when he found that Sydney returned

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to Dublin the following year without bringing them, he went among the southern chiefs in 1569 exhorting them to combine in defence of their religion. This Fitzmaurice was a man of great ability, both in civil and military affairs, enthusiastic in temperament, of active habits, a scorner of luxury and ease, who preferred the bare ground to a bed after a hard day’s fighting.

About this time or a little before, a project to colonise a large part of Ireland was seriously entertained by the English government: it was a matter of secrecy, but the secret leaked out; disquieting rumours ran through the country; and there was a ferment of alarm among the chiefs both native and Anglo-Irish. That these reports were not without foundation was brought home to them in a manner not to be mistaken by the proceedings of an English adventurer, Sir Peter Carew. He was a Devonshire knight who had lately come to Ireland to claim large territories in Leinster and Munster, in virtue of his descent from Robert Fitzstephen who had lived 400 years before, and who as a matter of fact left no heirs. On this fraudulent claim, which he supported by a forged roll, Carew harassed the owners with crooked legal proceedings pertinaciously pursued for years, encouraged by the weak and corrupt law courts: so that many were induced to offer compromises. Moreover he expelled the old inhabitants of several districts, and in doing so was guilty of many acts of great cruelty. But in the end most of his ridiculous claims were disallowed and came to nothing: and he died in 1575 before he had time to do more mischief. [n] It may be added here that the projected extensive colonisation was turned aside for a time by the course of events.

Fitzmaurice, acting on the request of the earl of Desmond and his brother John, which was conveyed to him privately from London, issued a manifesto in 1569 to the ‘relates, princes, lords, and people of Ireland,’ proclaiming himself the leader of a holy league for the

1. See Four Masters, 1580, p.1730, note b; and Cox, Hist. of Irel. A.D. 1576.

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defence of the Roman Catholic religion. [n] The grounds set forth in the manifesto are purely religious: but the Irish chiefs all over the country were as we have seen already well disposed to combine; and thus arose the second Geraldine league. [n] The distinction of race was forgotten: both Anglo-Irish and native Irish joined this league to defend their religion and their homes, till it included ‘all the English and Irish of Munster from the Barrow to Mizen Head.’ [n] Among the noblemen was the newly created earl of Clancarty, who now renounced his allegiance and claimed his position as Mac Oarthy More, native chief of Desmond.

Among the lands seized by Carew was a large district belonging to Sir Edmund Butler, brother of the earl of Ormond, Ormond himself being at this time in England. Butler, who was ‘a cholerick man,’ as Cox describes him, a man of a restless pugnacious disposition, at once resented Carew’s impudent intrusion: and he and his two brothers Pierce and Edward, both of whom acted under his influence, joined the league. Sir Edmund had a bitter personal quarrel with the deputy in the parliament, and Sydney’s stinging insults formed an additional motive for rising in rebellion. But the Butlers were not very earnest, and their action was in a great measure a fit of ill-temper. They had no religious grievances like the others, and at no time did they contemplate anything more than to recover their lands and take revenge on Carew. They never dreamed of throwing off altogether their allegiance to the queen. They were very active at first; but they soon retired and made submission.

On the surface, however, the Geraldine rebellion was purely a religious one, which is plain, not only from Fitzmaurice’s manifesto, but also from the statements of Sir Nicholas Malbie and other English officers.’ [n] The archbishop of Cashel and the bishop of Emly, with James

1. See Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.397, for full text.
2. For the first Geraldine League see page 376, supra.
3. Four Masters, 1569, p.1631.
4. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, pp.310, 314.

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Fitzgerald the youngest brother of the earl, were sent to the Pope and to the king of Spain for aid ‘ to rescue the country from the tyranny and oppression of Queen Elizabeth.’

Sir Edmund Butler began hostilities by traversing a great part of Leinster, wasting and destroying the English settlements. Then marching to Enniscorthy, where the people were assembled at the annual fair, he spoiled the town and brought away a vast quantity of booty.

When Sydney heard of the alarming combination of the southern chiefs, and of the proceedings of Sir Edmund Butler, he proclaimed them all traitors (1569), and prepared for a campaign in Munster to break up the confederation. Carew, whom he commissioned to proceed against Sir Edmund Butler, began his operations by taking the Butlers’ strong castle of Clogrennan near Carlow. Next marching to Kilkenny, which was then besieged by Sir Edmund, he attacked the Butlers unexpectedly and routed them, killing 400 and relieving the city; after which he marched to Sir Edward Butler’s house and massacred all he found in it, men, women, and children. [n]

Sydney himself set out for the south in the autumn oi this year (1569), and after a week’s siege he took Castlemartyr in (]ork, one of Desmond’s strongholds; after which he marched to Cork city, where he received the submission of several of the weaker and more timid confederates. Leaving Cork he proceeded towards Limerick, burning and destroying everything on his way, and executing every man he found in arms. In this campaign he was severe, often merciless: but he was mercy itself compared with one of his subordinates, Colonel Gilbert, who himself describes his exploits in a letter to Sydney: ‘After my first summoning of any castle or fort, if they would not presently yield it, I would not afterwards take it of their gift, but win it perforce, how many lives soever it cost, putting man, woman, and child of them to the sword.’ [n] And for all this Sydney had nothing but praise for him.

1. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, pp.310, 314.
2. Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, x. 252.

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At Limerick Sir Edmund Butler made submission to Sydney, and after some time lie and his brothers were pardoned by the queen. The deputy next proceeded through Thomond to Galway, taking many castles as he went along, and returned through Athlone to Dublin.

By Sydney’s advice it had been determined a few years before, to place Munster and Connaught under the government of ‘presidents,’ each with a council, so as to bring these provinces more directly within the range of English law; which, it was hoped, would remedy the disorder that everywhere prevailed. And he now (1569) left Sir Edward Fitton at Athlone as president of Connaught. These presidents with their councils were invested with almost unlimited power: they were instructed to prosecute with fire and sword all rebels or those they considered rebels, and for this purpose they could levy men in any numbers they pleased and force them to serve; they held sessions and heard and adjudicated on all manner of cases; they could use torture in examining witnesses; they could execute martial law, which to all intents and purposes gave them power of life and death over the people they governed. It will be seen as we go along that they generally used their terrible powers to the fullest extent.

Sir William Drury, who was appointed president of Munster in 1576 may be taken as a fair average representative of the class, neither the best nor the worst. In the first year of his office he made a circuit through his province, holding courts as he went along for the trial of those brought before him as evil-doers. In Cork he hanged forty-three and pressed one to death; in Limerick, twenty-two; in Kilkenny, thirty-six, besides a blackamoor and two witches who were executed without any regular trial, by natural law, as he found the law of the realm did not reach them. In his second year of office he hanged 400. Yet he thought it necessary to apologise to the government for his excessive mildness and moderation.

But these presidents tortured, hanged, and quartered all to no purpose; for, as might be expected, they utterly failed in the main object for which they were appointed.

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’The history of each president is merely a monotonous recital of petty battles, sieges, and executions, by which not a step was gained towards the settlement and civilisation of the country; all local authorities which might have assisted, and who would have been interested in assisting in good government were ignored and destroyed, and the whole population insulted and exasperated to the utmost. Thirty years of presidential government did not establish order in Munster.’ [n]

This circuit of Sydney’s went a good way to break up the confederacy; many of the leaders were terrified into submission, among others the earl of Clancarty, who excused himself to Sydney by saying that he had been led into rebellion by Sir Edmund Butler.

At the approach of winter Fitzmaurice, deserted now by so many of his confederates, retired to the inaccessible fastnesses of the Galtys, and established himself in the great wooded glen of Aherlow. It never entered into his head to yield. On the contrary he renewed the war early next year (1570) by suddenly appearing before Kilmallock, which had been held by an English garrison ever since the arrest of Desmond (p.422). Scaling the walls before sunrise, he plundered the town; after which he set it on fire and retired to Aherlow, leaving the stately old capital a mere collection of blackened walls.

The reckless and overbearing conduct of president Fitton roused the people of Connaught to resistance everywhere: even Conor O’Brien earl of Thomond, hitherto the friend of the English, was driven to revolt, and Fitton had to fly for life, pursued as far as Galway by the enraged earl. But the deputy Sydney intervened, and the earl was in his turn forced to fly to France. Here through the mediation of the English ambassador Norris wdth the queen, he obtained his pardon; after which he returned to Ireland and again became a loyal subject. Meantime Connaught, under Fitton’s rule, continued as disturbed as ever; and a bloody battle was fought in the summer of this year (1570) at Shrule on the borders of Galway, by

1. Richey, Short History, p.516,

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Fitton and the Galway Burkes under Lord Clanrickard on the one hand, against the Mayo Burkes and the O’Flahertys on the other. This appears to have been a senseless affair, and resulted in nothing but great slaughter on both sides, for each party claimed the victory. [n]

Many members of the league surrendered during this year (1570); and as time went on it became more and more clear that Fitzmaurice’s cause was growing hopeless. Sir John Perrott, a bluff, brave, hasty-tempered old soldier, was appointed president of Munster in 1571, and entered on his first campaign against the insurgents with extraordinary energy, hanging, burning, shooting, and quartering all before him like the others. Fitzmaurice sent him a challenge to single combat, like the knights of old, which Perrott accepted; but the challenger, fearing treachery, failed to appear; and Perrott resumed his murderous progress, threatening ‘to hunt the fox (Fitzmaurice) out of his hole.’ He battered down with his powerful siege train castle after castle of the Geraldines, and pursued the insurgents through woods, glens, and bogs with untiring activity. He failed in his first attempt on Castlemaine in Kerry, Desmond’s chief stronghold in that district; but he laid siege to it again next year, 1572; and after a gallant defence of three months, the garrison were forced to surrender by sheer starvation. Meantime at the end of the preceding year Sir Henry Sydney had been recalled at his own request, and was succeeded by Sir William Fitzwilliam.

Sir Edward Fitton summoned a court in Galway in March 1572, to which came, among many others, the earl of Clanrickard and his sons. These were the same two young men who had formerly given so much trouble (p.422): and now hearing some rumour of evil designs on the part of Fitton, they fled from the town; whereupon the president arrested their father and brought him to Dublin to the lord deputy. This did harm instead of good. The sons were enraged; and they and Fitzmaurice, who joined them from the recesses of Aherlow, aided by

1. Four Masters. 1570.

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1,000 Scots, traversed Connauglit and Leinster for more than four months, burning and wasting the settlements of the English and their adherents. Fitton took the field against the rebels; and the sort of warfare he carried on we know from his own mouth. Describing his capture of one of their castles, he says: ‘And the ward, being sixteen men, besides women and children [n] all put to the sword saving one.’ [n] The council in Dublin thought better now to liberate the earl; and as the rebels about the same time met with some serious reverses, there was a brief lull in those Connaught disturbances.

A small company of Scots had been serving as mercenaries under James Fitzmaurice. With these he crossed the country from the Galtys to Kerry in this same year (1572); but finding on his arrival that Castlemaine, his last stronghold, had been taken, he made his way back to Aherlow after indescribable perils and hardships. In October, the garrison which Perrot had left in Kilmallock surprised his party at night, and slew a number of his Scots. This blow crushed his spirit: he was worn out body and mind; and on an intimation being sent to him that he would be pardoned if he promised loyalty, he sent to the president early in 1573 to proffer his submission. Two days later, in the ruined church of Kilmallock, he made his submission in humiliating fashion on bended knees before the president, who held a naked sword at the suppliant’s breast. Soon after this he fled to France.

Some little time after the earl of Desmond and his brother had been sent to London the countess joined them, and remained with them during the rest of their stay. They were not imprisoned: they went at large on parole with a small allowance for support from the queen. But it was not near enough; and all three were exposed to great privations, not having as much of their own as would buy them a pair of shoes. As the insurrection was now considered to be at an end, they were set free immediately after Fitzmaurice’s submission, and returned to Ireland: but Desmond was forced to promise that he

1.Carew Papers. 1515-1574, p.421.

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would suppress the authority of the Pope and help the Reformation. On his arrival in Dublin with the others, he was for some reason - O’Daly [n] says by private direction of the queen - again placed under arrest, and severer conditions were required of him. But he refused to make any further promises; and he considered that his unjustifiable arrest in Dublin absolved him from those forced from him in London. He managed to escape, making his way during the dark nights to his own territories in Kerry: whereupon the government proclaimed him a traitor, and offered a large reward for his apprehension. So ended the first episode of the Geraldine rebellion.

Sir Henry Sydney came to Ireland as deputy for the third time in September 1575. He found the country in a deplorable state, and the English if possible worse than the natives; for the plague was raging in Dublin and all through the Pale, while rebellion was seething throughout the rest of the kingdom. He set out on a military progress through the provinces; and going first to Ulster received the submission of Turlogh Lynnagh and other Ulster chiefs; after which he proceeded through Manster and Connaught. At Dungarvan the earl of Desmond came to him and made his peace. Sydney remained for six weeks in Cork, where he spent the Christmas; after which, at the opening of the new year (1576), he proceeded through Limerick to Galway. Both in Cork and Galway a large number of the leading gentry, Irish and Anglo-Irish, wearied out with the perpetual state of turmoil, expressed to him their anxious desire that all should be placed under the protection of English law; but this request, like others of the same kind in former times (p.298 supra) [n] came to nothing. During this journey also he was as free of the rope as before, causing great numbers of malefactors to be hanged.

Clanrickard’s two sons had been at their old work, and had reduced the whole country round Galway almost to a desert. He brought them prisoners to Dublin; but

1. History of the Geraldines, translated by the Rev. C. p.Meehan, ed. 1878, p.72.

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soon released them, merely administering a severe rebuke. Scarcely had they crossed the Shannon however when they resumed their evil courses, and matters became as bad as ever. On this Sydney marched rapidly west in midwinter (1576) and seized many of Clanrickard’s towns and castles, burning the corn and slaying every human being the soldiers could find; and he sent the earl himself, who was suspected of encouraging his sons, a prisoner to Dublin. But the young men fled to the hills where the deputy could not get at them. He next appointed Sir William Drury president of Munster, whose talent for hanging and quartering has already been glanced at (p.428); while he made Sir Nicholas Malbie ‘colonel’ of Connaught, dropping the title ‘president,’ which had become odious from the tyranny of Fitton.

No sooner had the deputy quieted the outlying provinces than he raised a new trouble at home on the question of taxes. Ireland had been all along a continual source of heavy expense to the English sovereigns. During the fifteen years that had elapsed from the queen’s accession to the year 1573, she had sent over £490,779, or about six millions of our present money; while the total revenue of Ireland during the same period did not amount to quite one-fourth of that sum. [n] It would seem that Sydney now resolved to remedy this state of things by making Ireland pay its own expenses. Having obtained the consent of the English court, and without consulting the Irish parliament, which he knew would never agree, he proceeded, in 1577, to impose a new cess on the people of the Pale, who were already grievously overburdened with exactions. This tax, which was quite as illegal as that for which in after times Charles I. lost his head, caused violent commotion all through the Pale. And when the lords and leading gentlemen sent representatives to lay their complaints respectful!}/ before the queen, she committed the delegates to prison. At the same time the leaders at home were, by the queen’s command, brought before the deputy and thrown into the Castle prison for daring to

1. Ware, Annals. 1573.

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question the royal prerogative. Thus at a time when there was a ferment of rebellion all over the country, and when the government were kept in continual alarm by rumours of a foreign invasion under James Fitzmaurice, the authorities, with blind iDertinacity, did all in their power, by harshness and tyranny, to exasperate the loyal gentlemen of the Pale and turn them into rebels; and in the case of some, as we shall see, they succeeded.

At last the clamour rose to such a pitch that the queen sent word to Sydney to settle matters as best he could. Then a compromise was agreed to, by which the j)eople consented to pay by instalments an amount sufficient for seven years; the agents were released; and the disturbance quieted down. This transaction earned much odium for Sydney, who was justly blamed for the imposition of this tyrannical cess. He ended his third deputy ship in the following year (1578), and returned to London, bringing Clanrickard with him as prisoner.

Chapter V:
The Plantations

The Geraldine rebellion slumbered for some years after the submission of Fitzmaurice: let us employ the interval in sketching the earliest of the plantations.

In the time of Queen Mary, who succeeded Edward VI. in 1553, an entire change was made in the mode of dealing with Irish territories whose chiefs had been subdued. Hitherto whenever the government deposed or banished a troublesome chief, they contented themselves with putting in his plac another, commonly English or Anglo-Irish, more likely to be submissive: while the general body of occupiers remained undisturbed. But now when a rebellious chief was reduced, the lands, not merely those in his own possession, but also those occupied by the whole of the people over whom he ruled, [n] were confiscated - seized by the

1. See pp.67, 68, infra.

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crown - and given to English adventurers, undertaJiers as they were commonly called. These men got the lands on condition that they should bring in plant on them a number of English or Scotch settlers. It was of course necessary to clear off the native population; for which the undertakers got military help from the government.

The Irish nation formed a part of the population over which the kings of England claimed sovereignty: so that here the government colonised by banishing or exterminating one portion of their people to make room for another portion, a kind of colonisation which the world has seldom witnessed. Not one tenth of the people under the rule of a chief ever take part in a rebellion; and it should be the business of a government to find out the actual rebels and to punish them according to their deserts. But in Ireland whole tribes, nine-tenths of whom had no hand in rebellion, and all of whom were subjects, the innocent and guilty, men, women, and children alike, were all doomed to one coiumon destruction - all extirpated - because a small proportion of them, headed by the chief, had risen in rebellion. And not unfrequently even this excuse was wanting, for districts were sometimes cleared and planted in which there had been no rebellion or provocation of any kind. All this was quite unnecessary. The humane and sensible course would have fully answered the needs of the case, would have been much easier, and would have spared all concerned immeasurable woe and misery, viz., having punished the actual rebels where there had been rebellion, to let the native tillers remain and live under the ordinary law.

Our first example of this kind of colonisation occurred in Leix and Offaly. After the banishment of 0’Moore and O’Conor in 1547 (p.399 sup-a) [n] these two territories were given to an Englishman named Francis Bryan and to some others, who proceeded straightway, with all their might, to expel the native people and parcel out the lands to new tenants, chiefly English. ‘To these intending colonists they [the Irish] were of no more value than their own wolves, and would have been [and were] exterminated

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with equal indifference.’ [n] But the natives resisted; and the fighting went on during the whole of the reign of Edward VI., with great loss of life to both sides, and with enormous expense to the government, who supplied soldiers to help the work of extermination. The settlement, exposed to constant vengeful attacks, decayed year by year: and in the early part of Mary’s reign all the English had been driven out, and all the castles built by Bellingham (p.399j destroyed. [n]

If the Catholic O’Moores, O’Conors, and others, expected peace and protection after the accession of Mary, they soon found thenmistake: for now they were if possible more ruthlessly hunted down than before. And there was no mitigation of harshness in the dealings of the government with the Irish chiefs in general, but rather the reverse. Now came the new departure (p.434); and the course so often vainly urged on Henry VIII by the Irish officials (p.388) was adopted. Leix and Offaly were made crown property and formed (in 1555-6) into two counties, Leix being included in Queen’s County and Offaly in King’s County. The old fortress of Campa or Port Leix was called Maryborough, and the fort of Dangan Philipstown: these four names given in honour of Queen Mary and her husband Philip.

All this district was now to be re-planted; and the lord deputy - the earl of Sussex - was empowered, in 1558, to build castles in place of those that had been destroyed, and to make surveys and divide into estates and farms which were to be let to new settlers. [n] Many came; but they had to fight for their lands from the day of their arrival. For the natives struggled for their homes as determinedly as ever; and during Mary’s reign, as well as subsequently, a war of extermination was carried on against them. Driven to desperation, the Irish retaliated in fierce and savage reprisals. Some clung to their homes despite every effort of the undertakers; and those who were expelled hung

1. Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, x. 233-4.
2. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, p.344.
3. Ware’s Annals, 1557; Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.291, 292, 302.

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round the borders, sheltering themselves in woods and bogs, and made harrying and plundering inroads at every opportunity.

‘The warfare which ensued,’ writes Dr. Richey, describing this miserable struggle, ‘resembled that waged by the early settlers in America with the native tribes. No mercy whatever was shown [to the natives], no act of treachery was considered dishonourable, no personal tortures and indignities were spared to the captives. The atrocities of western border warfare were perpetrated year after year in those districts; and the government in Dublin acquiesced in what was done and supported their grantees. Atrocities were committed which have not yet been forgotten. In retaliation, the natives robbed, burned, and slew the settlers when opportunity offered. The merciless struggle went on far into Elizabeth’s reign, until the Celtic tribes, decimated and utterly savage, sank to the level of banditti, and ultimately disappeared.’ [n] The State Papers afford us appalling glimpses of the effects of the inhuman career of Sussex here and elsewhere: " A man may ryde Southe, West, and Northe 20 or 40 myles, and see neither house, corne, ne cattell ‘: and again: ‘Many hundreth of men, wymen, and chill dren are dedde of famyne.’ [n]

The sort of warfare carried on against the natives can perhaps be better understood from the following narrative of a transaction which took place in the nineteenth year of Elizabeth’s reign (1577); and those who read it will not be surprised that the Celtic tribes, as Dr. Eichey says, ultimately disappeared. The strife had at this time somewhat quieted down; and many Irish families who had successfully resisted expulsion were living in Leix and Offaly at peace with the settlers all round them. The heads of these families were on one occasion invited by the settlers to a friendly conference at the hill of Mullamast near the village of Ballitore in Kildare, with as many of their followers as they could muster. They came to the number

1. Richey, Short Hist. 440.
2. Hamilton, Calendar, 1558, p.145, No. 45.

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of 400 - the O’Moores, O’Lalors, O’Kellys, O’Dowlings, and others, quite unsuspicious of treachery; and they were received by the Cosbys, the Hartpools, the Hovedens, and other undertakers and adventurers.

On the summit of the hill is an ancient circular fort, with the usual low earthen wall enclosing a level space. Here the conference was to be held; and as soon as the last of the Irish had filed in through the entrance, they were surrounded by four lines of soldiers, who opened fire on them and massacred them all. It would appear from a document written by an English officer of the time, Captain Thomas Lee, that this deed of horror was planned and perpetrated with the knowledge and connivance of the lord deputy Sir Henry Sydney: but this may be doubted. Anyhow it is remarkable and suspicious that there never was any investigation or any attempt to bring the miscreants to justice. The Irish chroniclers simply record the event without offering any explanation. Eeligion had nothing to do with it; for more than half the murderers were Anglo-Irish Catholics, and with them, helping in the foul work, was one native Irish Catholic family. It was obviously an outcome of the plantations: a sure and ready way of getting rid of the old proprietors in order to gain possession of their lands. [n]

The desperation of those who were driven from their homes, and their tremendous reprisals on the settlers, are well exemplified in the career of Rory Oge O’Moore. He was chief of the O’Moores of Leix; and for many years he waged incessant and unrelenting warfare on the settlers who had taken possession of his principality. In conjunction with the O’Conors the ancient owners of Offaly, he kept the borders of the Pale in a continual state of alarm. His movements were astonishingly rapid, and he appeared at places far distant from one another at incredibly short intervals. Sir Henry Sydney, in a letter to the council, expresses a doubt whether such feats ‘were performed by swiftness of footmanship, or rather, if it be lawful

1. Four Masters, 1577, p.1695; and O’Donovan’s interesting and valuable note at p.169 i.

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So to deem, by sorcery or enchantment.’ On many occasions when his pursuers thought he was securely surrounded he escaped in some unaccountable way.

In the course of one year (1576) he and Conor O’Conor desolated a large part of the English settlements of Leinster, Meath, and Fingall. The next year, the very year of MuUamast, he suddenly appeared before Naas in the dead of night - the night of the annual patron festival: and while the wearied townspeople were sunk in deep sleep after their festivities, his men entered the town at some unguarded point, carrying lighted torches on long poles, and set fire to the houses, which were all roofed with thatch. Eory himself sat coolly at the market-place to enjoy the spectacle of the blazing houses: but he did not suffer his kern to injure or insult the terrified inhabitants. In this same year he burned Carlow, Leighlin Bridge, and many other English towns and villages in Leinster.

He was, as I have said, the lawful prince of Leix; yet Sydney, knowing this perfectly well, speaks of him as ‘an obscure and base varlet called Rorye Oge O’Moore [who] stirred and claimed authority over the whole country of Leish.’ [n] Sydney put forth all his efforts to hunt him down and capture him, but for a long time without success. ‘The only gall,’ he writes in 1578,’ is the rebel of Leinster: I waste him and kill of his men daily. To repress the arch-traitor James Fitzmaurice and that rebel Rory Oge, I am forced to employ no small extraordinary charge.’ [n]

On one occasion (in 1577) O’Moore seized Sir Henry Harrington - Sydney’s nephew - and one of the Cosbys, and carried them off to his fastness in the woods. Sydney strove to get them released; but Rory would not give them up except on conditions that Sydney declined to grant. At last one of his own servants betrayed him; he led Robert Hartpool constable of Carlow in the middle of the night to his retreat; and the house was surrounded before the inmates were aware of danger [n] On the first

1. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.355. Ibid. p.127.

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alarm of attack, Rory, instantly divining how matters stood, rushed into Harrington’s room and struck at him furiously in the dark till he nearly killed him. He would no doubt have killed him downright but for the darkness; and he had besides to look to his own safety. Rushing out he cleft a way through the military and escaped with four companions. But his wife and all the others were killed; and Harrington and Cosby were rescued.

His daring and his confidence in his powers of escape amounted to rashness, and led in the end to his destruction. Mac Gilla Patrick baron of Upper Ossory, a strong partisan of the government - the title had purchased his loyalty - had long been on the watch for him with a party of royal troops and woodkern. It happened (in 1578) that Rory, at the head of a few of his men, incautiously reconnoitring, met them in one of their excursions; when Brian Oge Mac Gilla Patrick, the son of the baron, rushed towards him and thrust his sword through his heart. After a sharp fight his body was borne away by his followers: but his head was subsequently sent to Sydney, who after the usual fashion spiked it on Dublin Castle.

After the attainder of Shane O’Neill, more than half of Ulster was confiscated; and the attempt to clear off the old natives and plant new settlers was commenced without delay. In 1570 the peninsula of Ardes in Down was granted, without the least thought of the rights of the actual owners, to the queen’s secretary Sir Thomas Smith, who sent his illegitimate son with a colony to take possession. But this plantation was a failure, for the owners, the O’Neills of Clandeboy, not feeling inclined to part with their rights mthout a struggle, attacked and killed the young undertaker in 1573.

The next undertaker was a more important man, Walter Devereux earl of Essex. In 1573 he undertook to plant the district now occupied by the county Antrim, together with the island of Rathlin; and he was joined by several English nobles, all expecting to make their fortunes. The better to enable him to carry out the project with facility, he was given power to make laws; to make

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war; to harry and destroy the castles, houses, and lands ot ‘Irish outlaws’ - i.e. of the natives in general, and to annoy them by fire and sword; to impress them to work as slaves in his service: and as we shall see he took advantage of his powers to the fullest extent. He was to get for himself half the lands: the rest was to be given to settlers at a rent of twopence an acre: and the planting was to go on till two thousand English families were settled. [n]

He selected for his first attempt Clandeboy, the territory of Brian O’Neill, in which at this time large numbers of Scots were living. From that time forward during the two years or so that he remained in the north,’ his dealings with the native chiefs seem almost a counterpart of those of the Spaniards with the Mexican caciques.’ [n]

On his arrival he gave out that he came merely to expel the Scots, and that he meant no harm to the Irish: and by orders of the queen the deputy Fitzwilliam spread a report to the same effect. But the northern chiefs were not to be hoodwinked by such shallow knavery. Brian O’Neill had at first unsuspectingly submitted: but it was not long till he and his neighbours - Turlogh Lynnagh, the Mac Mahons, Sorley Boy chief of the Mac Donnells, and others - saw good reason to be alarmed for their lands: and open hostilities commenced and never ceased while Essex remained. He waged savage war on the natives, stopping short at no amount of slaughter and devastation - burning their corn and depopulating the country to the best of his ability by sword and starvation. Most of the nobles who had come over with him grew tired of this sort of life, and after a time left him; and he found it hard to hold his ground; for his men, being most of them mere farmers and artisans, were quite unfit for service as soldiers.

At last when open warfare failed him he adopted other means to retrieve his failing fortunes. He induced Conn O’Donnell son of Calvagh (chief of Tirconnell) to enter into alliance with him (1573); but no sooner had the

1. Carew Papers, 1515-1574, pp.439 to 443.
2. Richey, Short History, 517.

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young chief come to the English camp than the earl, on some pretence or another, seized him, sent him to Dublin a prisoner, and took possession of his castle of Lifford.

Finding that he was unable to wrest Clandeboy from Brian O’Neill, he made peace with him in 1574; after which O’Neill, glad no doubt to have an end of the strife, invited the earl with a large party to a banquet. When they had spent three days very pleasantly, the festivities came to a sudden and tragical termination. The earl suddenly called in his guards, and - in the words of the Four Masters - ‘Brian, his brother, and his wife, were seized upon by the earl, and all his people put unsparinglyto the sword, men, women, youths and maidens, in Brian’s own presence. Brian was afterwards sent to Dublin together with his wife and brother, where they were cut in quarters.’ [n]

But all the other deeds of this planter are thrown into the shade by his treatment of the Scots of Clandeboy and Rathlin Island. How he dealt with these is related in detail by himself in one of his letters to the queen. He first attacked those of Clandeboy, who do not appear to have at that time given any provocation, and defeated them several times, killing them mercilessly whenever they fell under his power; of which he relates many revolting details. At last their chief, Sorley Boy, finding himself unable to resist any longer, made an offer of submission, asking to be allowed to keep his lands in the service of the queen; and he sent day by day suing for peace.

At this period, and for a long time before, the Scots had a settlement on the island of Rathlin. It seems that Sorley Boy, having come to hear of the impending attack on Clandeboy, had sent his children and valuables, and the wives and children of the neighbouring gentlemen, with all the old and the sick, to the island for safety, so that the place now swarmed with defenceless people. None of those living on the island had given any provocation whatever; yet while the offer of their chief was

1. Four Masters, 1574.

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pending, an expedition was secretly and suddenly sent by the earl on the 20th July, 1575, from Carrickfergus, with orders to attack the island and kill all that could be found there. This expedition was commanded by Captain John Norris - of whom more will be heard further on in this book. Essex himself did not accompany it. The Scots defended themselves bravely for some time, but were at last driven to take refuge in their stronghold, now a ruin known as Bruce’s Castle. The garrison consisted of about fifty men, with about 150 refugees, chiefly women and children. The rest of the transaction is best told in Essex’s own words in his letter to the queen:

’Before day they called for a parle, which Captain Norreys, wisely considering the danger that might light upon his company, and willing to avoid the killing of the soldiers ... was content to accept and hear their offers ... upon which he [the constable or captain of the castle] came out, and made large requests, as their lives, their goods, and to be put into Scotland, which request Captain Norreys refused, offering them as slenderly as they did largely require - viz. to the aforesaid constable his life, and his wife’s, and his child’s, the place and goods to be delivered at Captain Norreys’ disposition; the captain to be a prisoner one month; the lives of all within to stand upon the courtesy of the soldiers. The constable, knowing his estate and safety to be very doubtful, accepted the composition, and came out with all his company. The soldiers being moved and much stirred with the loss of their fellows that were slain, and desirous of revenge, made request, or rather pressed to have the killing of them; which they did, all saving the persons to whom life was promised. There were slain, which came out of the castle of all sorts [i.e. refugees and noncombatants as well as soldiers] 200.’ [n]

The massacre did not end here, however. The rest of the people of the island, including the crowds of women and children, were hunted down day after day and slaughtered. ‘News is brought me,’ the earl continues,

1. Lives of the Earls of Essex, i. 115, 116.

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’that they be occupied still in killing, and have slain, that they have found hidden in caves and cliffs of the sea, to the number of 300 or 400 more.’

While this frightful work was going on the old chief Sorley Boy stood on the shore of the mainland, from which he could plainly see - some four miles off - the movements of the soldiers; the smoke of their guns; the blaze of burning houses; and the groups of refugees as they rushed to the shelter of the sea-caves; and he ran about distracted, tearing himself in the madness of his grief and despair. Essex got a full account of the expedition immediately after, including the pathetic incident of the old man’s grief, all which he describes in a letter to an English friend. ‘Sorley then also,’ he writes, ‘stood upon the mainland of the Glynnes, and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, as the spy sayeth.’ It appears from this letter that, as Dr. Richey [n] observes,’ far from being indignant at this butchery, he thought the conduct of the soldiers highly commendable.’

But Essex’s prospects did not grow the brighter for all this villainy. The native tribes still proved too strong for him; he was thwarted by his enemies at court; and after many attempts to obtain further support, he returned to Dublin, broken in spirit, where he died in 1576: some say poisoned by his rival the Earl of Leicester. A bystander has left us a most sanctimonious description of this man’s death: ‘More like that of a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man’; ‘he never let pass an hour without many most sweet prayers ‘; [n] he piously bewailed the general prevalence of infidelity, but not a word about his own murderous career; and he passed from the world as calmly as if he had lost all memory of the

1. A Short History of the Irish People, p.521. Dr. Richey writes with fairness to both sides; but having told here with natural indignation the whole story of Essex’s atrocities, he has a note at p.122: ‘Irish writers naturally misrepresent the earl of Essex,’ which reads like grim irony. Where is the need for misrepresentation.
1. Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, p.545,

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shrieks of the women and children in the sea-caves of Eathlin.i

In order to make the reader understand what the plantations were, I have described the foregoing in some detail: the others will be told more briefly. They kept the country in a state of civil war, incited and fostered by the government: civil war of the worst kind, because its object was not so much victory on either side as mutual extermination. They all from first to last present much the same general features: massacre and extirpation on the one hand; resistance, desperate, vengeful, and persistent, on the other. It is doubtful whether, within the range of history, any government ever decreed a measure dealing with its own people that caused such wholesale destruction of human life, such widespread and long-continued misery, as these plantations. The massacres of Kathlin and Mullamast and the great rebellion of 1641 were only a part of their tremendous consequences. They left to posterity a disastrous legacy of strife and hatred; and to their malign influence we owe in part the long and bitter landwar that still continues to convulse the country.

Chapter VI:
The Geraldine Rebellion - Second Stage

James Fitzmaurice had resided in France since the time of his flight from Kilmallock (p.431). His mind continued as active as ever, and his whole thought was to obtain aid from the Catholic sovereigns for his fellowcountrymen at home. In 1579 he applied to Henry III. of France and to Philip II. of Spain, but got no help from either, as both happened then to be at peace with Queen Elizabeth. Philip however recommended him to Pope Gregory XIII; and to Rome he next bent his way. The Pope fitted out for him a small squadron of three ships

1. For a detailed account of Essex’s proceedings see The Macdonnells of Ajitrim, by the Rev. George Hill, pp.152-185.

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with 700 Italian soldiers; and at the request of Fitzmaurice it was placed under the command of one Thomas Stukely: the same Stukely who had formerly figured as a commissioner to Shane O’Xeill (p.416). He was a clever, unprincipled English adventurer, who managed to hoodwink his employers into a belief of his sincere attachment to the cause of Ireland. On the voyage he touched at Lisbon. Here he met with King Sebastian of Portugal, who was at this very time preparing an expedition against the king of Morocco. Captivated by the brilliancy of this new adventure, the volatile Stukely was easily persuaded to join it; and the Irish never heard any more of him or his squadron.

Meantime Fitzmaurice embarked for Ireland (1579) in three small ships which he had procured in Spain, with about eighty Spaniards, accompanied by Dr. Allen, a Jesuit, and by Dr. Sanders, a celebrated English ecclesiastic, the Pope’s legate. Expecting to meet Stukely on the Irish coast, he landed in 1579 at the little harbour of Smerwick in Kerry, and took possession of a fort called Dunanore - the fort of gold; which the Spaniards, translating the name into their own language, called Fort-del-or; perched on top of a rock jutting into the sea. Here he was joined by Desmond’s two brothers, John and James Fitzgerald, and by 200 of the O’Flahertys of West Connaught, who had come round by sea expecting all Munster to rise in arms.

The earl of Desmond himself, who was timid and vacillating, still held aloof; and though his heart was in the cause, he took great pains to convince the authorities of his loyalty. Long before the expedition of Fitzmaurice, the government had received through their spies alarming information of a projected invasion; and a month before his arrival at Smerwick, three strangers were landed from a Spanish ship at Dingle: Dr. Patrick O’Haly bishop of Mayo, the Rev. Cornelius O’Rourke, and another. They were instantly seized by the government officials and brought before Desmond, who sent them straight to president Drury, a man, as he well knew, of merciless severity. By him they were put to horrible torture to force them

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to tell what they knew of Fitzmaurice; and when he found that they either could not or would not tell him anything, he had them hanged.

While Fitzmaurice was in Dunanore Sir Henry Davells constable of Dungarvan, and Arthur Carter provostmarshal of Munster, were sent by the lord justice Sir William Drury to the Earl of Desmond, directing him to attack Dunanore. On their return journey they stopped at an inn in Tralee, whither John Fitzgerald followed them, and forcing his way into the inn at night, murdered them both in their beds. It is difficult to discover the motive for this deed, which could not in any possible way serve the cause of the confederates; and what made it all the blacker was the fact that Fitzgerald and Davells had been before that intimate friends. It was hard for an undertaking to succeed that began with so foul a crime.

About a week after the expedition had landed, the O’Flahertys, seeing that the Munster people did not rise as they expected, sailed away home; and on the 26th July (1579) Fitzmaurice saw his own three vessels captured before his eyes by a government war-ship. And now the doomed little band, abandoning Dunanore in desperation, fled northwards under the three Fitzgeralds, John, James, and Fitzmaurice, to reach the great wood of Kylemore near Charleville, which had often afforded Fitzmaurice a safe asylum in days gone by. Desmond had invested the fort in accordance with Drury’s directions; but the government believed he was not in earnest, and that he intentionally allowed the little garrison to escape. Nevertheless he now closely pursued them, so that the fugitives were forced at last to separate into three parties headed by the three Fitzgeralds.

Fitzmaurice with his men made for the Shannon, intending to cross into Clare; but while passhig through Clanwilliam in the county Limerick, their horses became so jaded that they had to seize the horses from a plough belonging to William Burke of Castleconnell, who was nearly related to Fitzmaurice. Burke’s two sons with

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O’Brien of Ara pursued them to recover the animals. When they had come up with them at Barrington’s Bridge, Fitzmaurice appealed to them not to quarrel with their cousin for the sake of a couple of garrons: but the Burkes fired on the little party, and Fitzmaurice was mortally wounded. Rushing into the midst of his assailants, with two furious blows he slew the two Burkes, whose followers instantly fled; and he died in a few hours in the arms of Dr. Allen, from whom he received the last sacraments. His body was afterwards found by the English, who cut it into quarters, which they hung on the gates of Kilmallock. William Burke was soon after created baron of Castleconnell, with a pension, as a reward for the destruction of Fitzmaurice, and in some sort as a recompence for the loss of his sons.

James Fitzmaurice was a man of noble mind and of pure patriotic motives, able, active, and steadfast in purpose; he was the life and soul of the movement, and his death was an irreparable loss to the Geraldine league. John Fitzgerald now took command of the Munster insurgents; and soon collected a considerable force, which was disciplined by the Spanish ofiicers who had come over with Fitzmaurice. As for the earl of Desmond, he came to lord justice Drury, who was then at Kilmallock, to assure him he had nothing to do with the rebellion; but his conduct had been so suspicious that Drury had him arrested. He was liberated however in a few days, on giving up his only son James - then a child in charge of a nurse - as a hostage for his loyalty in the future: and a promise was made that his territory should be respected.

Drury now mustered his forces, and dividing them into several bodies, he despatched them in different directions in search of the insurgents. One of these parties came upon the Irish army under John and James Fitzgerald, at a place called Gort-na-tubbrid or Springfield in the south of the county Limerick; and after a desperate fight the English were defeated with a loss of 300 men. After this Drury, quite worn out by fatigue, anxiety, and worry, took sick; and, leaving Sir Nicholas Malbie in

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command of the army, he retired to Waterford, where he died early in October. Malbie soon after came up with the rebel army to the number of 2,000 at Monasteranenagh near Groom. Here was fought another battle in which the English retrieved their recent loss; for the Irish were defeated with a loss of 260 killed, among whom were Dr. Allen and several of Desmond’s kinsmen. Desmond witnessed this battle from the top of Tory Hill about a mile distant, but made no move to join either party. After the battle he sent to congratulate Malbie, who, we are told, received the message with coldness and contempt.

Up to the present the earl had not joined the insurgents: but Malbie was determined to goad him into rebellion; and with this object he marched -without any provocation and in violation of the engagement made with him - through his territories, wasting and ruining town and country, abbey and homestead; and as usual killing all whom the soldiers could find. Malbie was now joined by Sir William Pelham, the newly appointed lord justice, with the earls of Ormond and Kildare; and Ormond, who had been appointed general of the army, including large reinforcements that had just arrived from England, was sent to the earl wdth a summons that he should present himself at the camp; join the royal forces against the rebels; deliver up the papal legate Dr. Sanders, as well as the Spanish strangers; and surrender his castles of Askeaton and Carrigafoyle. Judging from the earl’s response, he could have been managed easily enough if Pelham had wished for peace. Knowing the men he had to deal with, he naturally refused to come to the camp. But he sent his countess (in the end of October 1579) and wrote letters complaining of the wrongs Malbie had inflicted on him, and offering, if his castles - those taken by Malbie - were restored and his losses recompensed, to serve in the royal army ‘ against my unnatural brethren, the traitor Dr. Sanders, and their adherents.’ Pelham’s reply was to issue a proclamation after two days, declaring him a traitor. His crimes and misdemeanors are enumerated, many of them, such as the murder of Davells, being matters he had

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nothing to do with; and there was really no sufficient reason at all for proclaiming him. [n]

At last Desmond, driven to desperation, joined his brothers and rose in open rebellion; but his accession was of small advantage to the confederates, for he had no firmness of character, and was quite unfit to command. The frightful civil war broke out now more virulently than before; and brought the country to such a state as had never yet been witnessed. It was indeed hardly a war at all in the proper sense of the word. Several hostile bands belonging to both sides traversed the country for months, destroying everthing and wreaking vengeance on the weak and defenceless, but never meeting, or trying to meet, in battle. [n]

Desmond, passing through the territories of the Barrys and the Roches in Cork - who, looking on passively, made no attempt to prevent him and gave no information [n] - plundered, burned, and utterly ruined the rich and prosperous town of Youghal, at Christmas 1579, so that not a house was left fit to live in. So thorough had been the work of destruction, that when the earl of Ormond, in his fearfnl march of havoc, fire, and slaughter, through Desmond’s territories, came round that way a little later, he found no human being in the town but one poor friar, who had charitably brought the body of Davells all the way from Tralee to Waterford to have it interred in the family sepulchre. But the town was rebuilt soon afterwards.

Pelham and Ormond carried fire and sword through the country, sparing no living thing that fell in their way. The rebels burned and spoiled; but we find no evidence that they massacred. Hear now the account Pelham himself, writing in March 1580, gives of his manner of carrying on hostilities. In a single day’s march from Shanid Castle towards Grlin: ‘Finding the country plentiful and the people but newly fled ... there were slain that day by the fury of the soldiers above 400 people

1. See all this related in Carew Papers, 1575-1588, pp.160-164. Four Masters, 1580.
3. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.189.

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found in the woods [i.e. the poor common people fleeing with their families from the destroyers], and wheresoever any house or corn was found, it was consumed by fire.’ [n] Here also is the Four Masters’ account [n] of the same journey: ‘He [lord justice Pelham] sent forth loose marauding parties into Kylemore (in Cork), into the woods of Clonlish (in Limerick), and into the wilds of Delliga (in Cork). These, wheresoever they passed, showed mercy neither to the strong nor to the weak. It was not wonderful that they should kill men fit for action: bat they killed blind and feeble men, boys and girls, sick persons, idiots, and old people.’ Those of the country people that escaped the sword, who had nothing to do with the rebellion, being deprived of their means of subsistence, died in hundreds of mere starvation. Great numbers of the English also perished, partly by famine and partly by the avenging reprisals of the peasantry.

Before the end of the year (1580) the queen received a full account of what was passing in Ireland. She was incensed at the conduct of Pelham in needlessly proclaiming Desmond, and at the destruction of Youghal; and she wrote him angry letters of censure. [n]

For the rebels it was a losing game all through. Pelham and Ormond took Desmond’s strongholds one by one. Carrigafoyle Castle on the south shore of the Shannon was his strongest fortress. It was valiantly defended by fifty Irishmen and nineteen Spaniards, commanded by Count Julio an Italian engineer: but after being battered by cannon till a breach was made, it was taken by storm about the 27th March. Without delay the whole garrison, including Julio with six Spaniards and some women, were hanged or put to the sword. [n] And here it may be observed that the general practice of the English commanders throughout this rebellion was to execute all persons found in castles surrendered after siege. In a few days after the capture of this fortress the garrisons of some others of

1 Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.23G. ~ A.D. 1580, p.1731.
3 Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.186.
4. This is Pelham’s own account: Carew Papers, 1575-1588, pp.237-8

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Desmond’s castles, including Askeaton, abandoned them, terrified by the fate of Carrigafoyle. They attempted to blow up Askeaton: but they only injured, not destroyed it. [n]

James Fitzgerald, the earl’s youngest brother, was captured while making a raid on the territories of Sir Cormac Mac Carthy the sheriff of Cork. He was straightway sent to Cork where he was hanged and quartered; and his head was spiked over one of the city gates.

How thoroughly odious the authorities had made themselves in Ireland is evidenced all through the State Papers of this time: [n] even their own servants secretly sympathised with the rebels. Pelham writes repeatedly that there was a settled hatred of the English government, and believed that if only a fair opportunity should offer, such as the landing of even 1,000 Spaniards, the whole body of chiefs, native and Anglo-Irish, would rise in rebellion. His manner of providing against this contingency was quite characteristic. He invited the lords and gentlemen of Munster to a conference at Limerick; men who had never given any indication of sympathy with the rebels: and no sooner had they unsuspectingly presented themselves than he had them all arrested; and he kept them locked up till such time as he thought they could be liberated with safety. [n]

Meantime while Pelham and Ormond still traversed Munster, burning, destroying, and slaying, from Limerick to the remote extremities of the Kerry peninsulas, the insurrection blazed up in Leinster under James Eustace viscount Baltinglass, who, exasperated by the illegal and oppressive cess imposed by Sydney as well as by his imprisonment - for he was one of those thrown into jail at the time (p.433) - and alarmed at the steps taken by the government to force Protestantism on the people, flew to arms. And he had for his allies the O’Byrnes under their chief the famous Fiach Mac Hugh O’Byrne - ‘the firebrand of the mountains’ - as well as the O’Tooles, the Kavanaghs,

1. Carew Papers, 1575-1588, pp.241, 243.
2. Ibid. pp.189, 209, 220, 258, 284.
3. Ibid. pp.280, 282.

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the O’Moores, and some of the Fitzgeralds. But this rising was an insane proceeding; for considering the complete isolation of the rebels and the slender means at their disposal, they might have foreseen that there never was the remotest chance of success.

The newly appointed justice, Lord Grey of Wilton, who succeeded Pelham, at once mustered his men, including 600 he had brought from England, and in August 1580 marched into the heart of Wicklow in pursuit of this insurgent army, who had retired into the recesses of Glenmalure. He had with him the earl of Kildare, James Wingfield, and two brothers, George and Peter Carew, nephews of Sir Peter Carew already mentioned (p.425). This glen was the most savage and inaccessible of all the defiles of Wicklow. Shut in by steep hills and frowning crags, it was then clothed with woods from the hill-tops down to the very torrent - the Avonbeg - by which it is traversed. Hooker, a contemporary English writer, who was probably present, [n] describes it as: ‘Under foot boggy and soft, and full of great stones and slippery rocks, very hard and evil to pass through; the sides are full oi great and mighty trees upon the sides of the hills, and full of bushments and underwoods.’

Into this dangerous defile Lord Grey, with foolish confidence, eager to signalise himself by some glorious exploit, ordered the main body of his infantry, while he himself encamped on an eminence towards the mouth. Meantime Fiach and the others had placed their men in ambush high up the valley, among the trees on both sides of the stream. The English made their way with the greatest difficulty, perplexed with bogs, rocks, and thick brushwood. Suddenly the silence was broken by a deadly volley, which was repeated over and over again, though not an enemy was to be seen. The advance party were almost all shot down without the possibility of striking a blow, and among them fell four distinguished officers: Colonel John Moore, Francis Cosby general of the kern

1. He was agent to Sir Peter Carew, and wrote a History of Ireland from 1546 to 15S6.

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of Leix, Sir Peter Carew, and another named Audley. And Grey with the remnant of his army hastily returned crestfallen to Dublin. After this, Baltinglass plundered and devastated the Pale almost to the walls of Dublin, without any opposition.

The dying hopes of the Munster insurgents were somewhat revived by the news from Glenmalure; and now their fortune seemed to take another favourable turn. The long expected aid from the Continent at length arrived: 700 Spaniards and Italians landed about the 1st October 1580 from four vessels at Smerwick, bringing a large supply of money and arms. They took possession of the ill-omened old fort of Dunanore, and proceeded to fortify it. They expected to see the people join them in crowds: but Ormond and Pelham had done their work so thoroughly that the peasantry held aloof, trembling with the fear of another visitation.

After nearly six weeks’ effort to collect forces, Lord Grey, breathing vengeance after his recent defeat, arrived at Smerwick, having been joined on the way by the earl of Ormond; and accompanied also by Sir Richard Bingham and many other experienced captains. At the same time admiral Winter arrived early in November with the English fleet, so that the fort was invested both by sea and land. The siege was now carried on vigorously: trenches were dug and cannons battered the defences; and at the end of a few days the garrison, seeing they could not hold out, surrendered. The Irish authorities, including the Four Masters, say that they were promised their lives: the English, including Grey himself, assert they surrendered at discretion; which is very improbable, inasmuch as they had plenty of arms, ammunition, and provisions. But all this seems of small consequence in face of the episode of horror that followed, which may be told in the deputy’s own words: ‘I sent streighte certeyne gentlemen to see their weapons and armoires laid down, and to guard the munitions and victual then left from spoyle; then put I in certeyne bandes who streighte fell to execution. There were 600 slain.’ After the execution

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the few women found there were hanged. Leland, who, though not an unprejudiced historian, always recoiled from inhumanity by whomsoever perpetrated, concludes his description of the siege with these words: ‘The Italian general and some officers were made prisoners of war; but the garrison was butchered in cold blood; nor is it without pain that we find a service so horrid and detestable committed to Sir Walter Raleigh. The usual and obvious excuses were made for this severity. ... But such pretences and such professions could not excuse the odiousness of this action. On the Continent it was received with horror.’ [n]

Many of the rebels would now gladly make submission; but Pelham attached a horrible condition: ‘I do not receive any’ - he writes - ‘but such as come with bloody hands or execution of some person better than themselves.’ [n]

During the next year (1581) Grey and his officers carried on the w [n]ar with relentless barbarity. ‘I keep them from their harvest’ - Pelham writes - ‘and have taken great preys of cattle from them, by which it seemeth the poor people that lived only upon their labour, and fed by their milch cows, are so distressed that they follow their goods and offer themselves with their wives and children rather to be slain by the army than to suffer the famine that now in extremity beginneth to pinch them.’ [n]

None seem to have been spared, whether rebels or those well affected to the government; and Grey drove many loyal men, both old English and native Irish, to rebellion and ruin. David Purcell, the owner of Ballyculhane, who had hitherto’ assisted the crown from the very commencement of the Geraldine war,’ on one occasion went out to resist a number of soldiers from Adare who were plundering his lands; and he slew nearly the whole party. Whereupon, when the few survivors arrived with their story. Captain Achen who commanded at Adare, marching straight to Ballyculhane, took the castle in Purcell’s

1. Leland: History of Ireland, ii. 283.
2. Carew Papers 1575-1588, p.287.
3. Ibid. p.293.

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absence, and ‘slew 150 women and cliildren, and every sort of persons lie met with inside and outside the castle.’ Purcell was captured soon after in Scattery Island by Mac Mahon of Corcobaskin in Clare, who hanged all his followers and sent David himself to Limerick where he was executed. [n] ‘Thus from year to year the plundering and killing went on, until there was nothing left to plunder, and very few to kill.’ [n]

A report now (1581) went round of treason even within the Pale: that there was a plot to seize Dublin Castle and massacre the English. When this came to Grey’s ears he took up a number of the supposed conspirators and, as the mania for hanging still possessed him, he sent forty-five of them straight to the gallows; among others Lord Nugent baron of the Irish exchequer. He also arrested on suspicion the earl of Kildare and his son, and the baron of Delvin, and being probably afraid to hang these powerful persons, sent them for trial to England. But they proved their innocence; and now indeed it was made clear that many or all of those he had hanged were equally innocent.

The fortunes of the Munster insurgents sometimes rose and sometimes fell; but gradually, as time went on, their cause became weaker. John Fitzgerald, the earFs brother, still maintained a desperate struggle in Cork. But on one occasion, in 1582, as he rode attended by a few followers, their steps were dogged by a spy, who gave information to Zouch, governor of Munster. Quite suddenly they found themselves surrounded by soldiers; and in attempting to escape, Fitzgerald was cut down and killed: and his head was sent to Dublin, where it was spiked on the Castle. His death extinguished the last hopes of the insurgents.

But the massacre at Dunanore and the savage cruelty of lord deputy Grey got noised all through England; and it began to be felt that instead of quieting Ireland he was rather fanning rebellion by his barbarities. In the words

1. Four Masters, 1581, p.1759.
2. Richey, Short Hist. p.494.

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of Leland: [n] - ‘Eepeated complaints were made of the inhuman rigour practised by Grey and his officers. The queen was assured that he tyrannised with such barbarity that little was left in Ireland for her majesty to reign over but carcases and ashes. And such was the effect of these representations that a pardon was offered to those rebels who would accept it [from which however the earl of Desmond was excluded]: Lord Grey was recalled (1582): and Loftus archbishop of Dublin, and Sir Henry Wallop, treasurer at war, were appointed lords justices.’

And now (1582) the great earl of Desmond, the master of almost an entire province, the inheritor of vast estates, and the owner of numerous castles, was become a homeless outlaw, with a price on his head, dogged by spies everywhere, and hunted from one hiding place to another. Through all his weary wanderings he had been accompanied by his faithful wife and by Dr. Sanders. The unhappy countess never left him except a few times when she went to intercede for him. On one of these occasions she sought an interview with lord justice Pelham himself, and on her knees implored mercy for her husband: [n] but her tears and entreaties were all in vain. In the preceding winter he had lost his faithful friend Dr. Sanders, who sank at last under the cold and hardship of their miserable life.

Sometimes we find him with not more than four followers, sometimes at the head of several hundred. Hear the description of their mode of life left us by the contemporary Anglo-Irish writer Hooker: ‘Where they did dress their meat thence they would remove to eat it in another place, and from thence go to another place to lie. In the nights they would watch: in the forenoon they would be upon the hills and mountains to descry the country: and in the afternoon they would sleep.’

On one occasion in the depth of winter, in January 1583, when he was hiding in the wood of Kilquegg near his own old capital, Kilmallock, a plan was laid to capture

1. Hist. of Irel. ii. 287.
2. So writes Pelham, Carew Papers, 1575-1588, p.293.

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him and earn the reward. The soldiers, led by the spy, John Walsh, had actually arrived at the hut, when the earl heard the noise of footsteps, and he and the countess rushed out in the darkness to the river that flowed hard by, which was swollen by rains; and plunging in, concealed themselves under a bank with only their heads over the water, till the party had left.

Another time, when he had a com [n] [n]any of sixty galloglasses. Captain Dowdall surprised them in the glen of Aherlow while they were cooking part of a horse for their dinner. Many of the galloglasses were killed in their master’s defence: twenty were captured and executed on the spot; and the others with the earl himself escaped.

At last he got among his own mountains of Kerry; and a party of the O’Moriartys, from whom the earl’s people had taken some cows for subsistence, traced him to Glanageenty, about five miles east of Tralee. Late on a November evening, Donall O’Moriarty, with a company of soldiers and some others, ascended an eminence and saw a light in the glen beneath; and one of them going down, discovered a small party in a hut. He returned noiselessly with the news, and they remained there till the dawn of next morning, when they approached the hut and suddenly rushed in with a loud shout. They found however only one venerable looking man, a woman, and a boy: all the rest had made their escape. One of the soldiers named Kelly broke the old man’s arm with a blow of his sword; on which he cried out - ‘I am the earl of Desmond; spare my life! ‘But Kelly dragged him forth and cut off his head. The head was afterwards sent for a present to the queen, who had it spiked on London Bridge.

The Geraldine rebellion as well as the rising in Leinster may be said to have ended with the death of the earl of Desmond. Viscount Baltinglass fled to Spain, where he died broken-hearted. The war had madeMunster a desert. IN the words of the Four Masters: ‘The lowing of a cow or the voice of a ploughman could scarcely be heard from Dunqueen in the West of Kerry to Cashel.’

To what a frightful pass the wretched people had been

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brought by the constant destruction and spoiling of their crops and cattle, may be gathered from Edmund Spenser’s description of what he witnessed with his own eyes: ‘Notwithstanding that the same [province of Munster] was a most rich and plentiful countrey, full of corne and cattle, yet ere one yeare and a halfe they [the people] were brought to such wretchednesse as that any stony hart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glynnes they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legges could not beare them; they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eate the dead carrions, happy where they could finde them, yea and one another soone after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks there they flocked as to a feast for the time: that in short space of time there were none [i.e. no people] almost left, and a most populous and plentifull country suddainely left voide of man and beast.’ [n]

It is but justice to observe that Spenser did not write these words - sympathetic as some of them are - with any kind or merciful intention. On the contrary, he suggested, plainly enough though indirectly, that the same thing should be done over again: that the means of subsistence should be destroyed and the people killed off by starvation, not only in Munster but all over Ireland, as the best way to reduce the country to subjection.

One other individual tragedy formed a fitting close to the gory horrors of the rebellion. The Pope had consecrated as archbishop of Cashel, Dermot O’Hurly an Irish priest then resident in Rome, who immediately proceeded to Ireland to take up his dangerous duties, knowing well his fate if he should be arrested. His arrival was known and the spies were on his track, but for two years he eluded them through the faithful watchfulness of his people. He was at length taken; and some suspicious papers being found on him, he was brought before the Dublin council consisting of Loftus archbishop of Dublin and Sir

1. View of the State of Ireland, ed. 1809, p.166.

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Henry Wallop, and examined; but he positively refused to give information. Archbishop Loffcus, who had the chief management of the business, writes: ‘Not finding that easy method of examination to do any good, we made commission to put him to the torture such as your honour [Walsingham in London] advised us, which was to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots.’ [n] There is hardly need to go beyond this: but the Irish accounts say that the boots were of tin, into which boiling oil was poured till the flesh fell off the bones. As he would confess nothing material, Loftus and Wallop, having obtained permission from England, had him executed in June 1584.

Chapter VII:
The First Plantation of Munster

There was a calm, the calm of exhaustion, all over the country; and in June, 1584, Sir John Perrott was appointed lord deputy. At the same time Sir Thomas Norris was made president of Munster, and Sir Richard Bingham governor of Connaught, in place of Sir Nicholas Malbie, who had recently died at Athlone. Perrott’s first proceeding was to make a circuit through the west and south; and as he had the reputation of being a just man, he was well received everywhere. Yet he was not able to lift his mind above the brutal customs of the times. At Quin in Clare the sheriff brought to him Donogh Beg O’Brien, who had been active in the rebellion. By order of the deputy he was first hanged from a car, and, while still living, his bones were broken with the back of a heavy axe; after which he was taken, half dead, and tied with ropes to the top of the steeple of Quin Abbey, and left there to die: a spectacle to all rebels and evil-doers. [n] Perrott proceeded to Limerick, resolved to follow up the executions, when news was brought to him that Sorley Boy

1 Froude, Hist. of Eng. ed. 1870, x. 619.
2 Four Masters, 1554, p.1819.

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Mac Donnell of Antrim had risen in revolt and was plundering the country. Whereupon he proceeded north, and reduced Mac Donnell without much difficulty.

Munster was now, as we have seen, almost depopulated; and at the end of all the fearful work described in last chapter, the deputy, in order to prepare for the subsequent steps - confiscation and plantation - convened a parliament in Dublin in 1585. This was attended by a great number of native chiefs, who were summoned in order to lend importance to the proceedings. [n] One of its first acts was to attaint James Eustace viscount Baltinglass for his part in the rebellion, and of course to confiscate his lands. In the second session (1586J an act was passed, though with much opposition, attainting the earl of Desmond and 140 of his adherents, all landed proprietors. By this act all their vast estates - 574,628 acres’ [n] - were confiscated to the crown; and their owners, or those of them that survived the rebellion, were to be sent adrift on the world without any provision.

Proclamation was now (1586) made all through England, inviting gentlemen to’undertake’ the plantation of this great and rich territory. Every possible inducement was held forth to tempt settlers. Estates were offered at two pence or three pence an acre; no rent at all was to be paid for the first five years, and only half rent for three years after that. Every undertaker who. took 12,000 acres was to settle eighty-six English families of various trades and occupations as tenants on his property, and so in proportion for smaller estates down to 4,000 acres. No native Irish were to be taken either as tenants or as under-tenants,’ and in no family are any mere Irish to be entertained.’ [n]

Many of the great undertakers were absentees: English noblemen who never saw Ireland. Those who came over to settle down on their estates generally took up their

1. Chiefs and territories are given in detail in the Foiir Masters, A.D, 1585, with valuable notes and identifications by O’Donovan.
2. This is the estimate as we find it in the parliamentary papers; but it amounted probably to a million of our present English acres.
3 The whole scheme is detailed in Carew Papers, 1575-1588 pp 412-420.

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abode in the castles of the attainted lords and gentlemen. Two of them are well known: Sir Walter Ealeigh got 42,000 acres in Cork and Waterford, and resided at Youghal, where his house is still to be seen; and if incessant activity in destroying the peasantry is to be regarded as a merit, he well deserved the reward. Edmund Sjoenser the poet received 12,000 acres in Cork, and took up his residence in one of Desmond’s strongholds, Kilcolman Castle, the ruin of which, near Buttevant, is still an object of interest to visitors.

In the most important particulars, however, this great scheme turned out a failure. No provision was made for the natives that were to be expelled; but the English farmers and artisans did not come over in sufficient numbers - 20,000 had been expected; and the undertakers, finding it the cheapest and easiest plan, received the native Irish everywhere as tenants, in violation of the conditions. Some English came over indeed; but they were so harassed and frightened by the continual attacks of the dispossessed owners, that many of them abandoned their settlements and returned to England. And lastly, more than half the confiscated lands remained in possession of the owners; as no others could be found to take them. So the only result of this plantation was to root out a large proportion of the old gentry, and to enrich a few undertakers; the body of the population - that is, the remnant that survived the slaughter - remained much the same as before.

The deputy Sir John Perrott treated the Irish chiefs with some consideration; and he sought peace rather than war. But this was not what the people of the Pale wished for; they hated him for his moderation, and the military were dissatisfied that he did not seek out occasion for war. His violent temper also turned many against him; and the earl of Ormond, Bingham of Connaught, and Sir Nicholas Bagenal were his deadly enemies. His character was blackened in the eyes of the queen by every possible misrepresentation; even treasonable letters were forged in his name and sent to her majesty. And so far was she

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turned against him by these calumnies that when, in 1586, he asked for leave to go to England to clear himself, he was refused. Yet he continued to discharge his duties with zeal and ability.

His governor of Connaught, Sir Richard Bingham, was a man of a very different stamp, as may be gathered from the following sketch of some of his proceedings. He held a sessions in Galway in January 1586, and seventy men and women were executed. In the same year he laid siege to Cloonoan Castle, near Corofin in Clare, held by one of the O’Briens, who had shown symptoms of disloyalty; and when the garrison surrendered after a brave defence, they were all massacred on the spot.

He next attacked the Hag’s Castle situated on an island in Lough Mask, in which two of the Burkes had fortified themselves to escape his oppression. In this attack many of his men perished; but the defenders, believing that they could not hold out, escaped by night in two boats with their wives and children. Then Bingham razed the castle and hanged Richard Burke, one of the defenders who had fallen into his hands. After this he sent seven or eight companies of soldiers through West Connaught in search of other insurgents; and not succeeding in catching those they wanted, they plundered and ruined the whole country, and slaughtered all they met, young and old, not sparing even those under government protection.

Perrott was very indignant at all this savagery, and endeavoured more than once to put a stop to it. But the council in Dublin took Bingham’s part, who consequently had his own way. There was now another uprising of the Burkes (1586), and Bingham, having first hanged their hostages, proceeded against them in his usual fashion, chasing them from their fortresses and hanging or hacking to pieces all of them that fell into his hands.

While this was going on in Connaught, a fleet of Scots had, at the instigation of the Burkes, landed in Innishowen (1586), and marching south-west they arrived at Lough Erne. Here they were met by messengers from the Burkes, who guided them towards Connaught. Bingham,

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hearing of their arrival, marched against them, and there was some skirmishing; till at last, by a quick and wellconcerted movement, he came on them as they lay in camp quite unprepared, at Ardnaree on the river Moy, beside Ballina. Here he defeated them utterly; great numbers were drowned in attempting to cross the river, and altogether 2,000 of them perished.

After this victory the usual executions followed. Edmond Burke, whose two sons were implicated, was hanged merely because he was their father, though he was so old and decrepit that he had to be carried to the gallows on a bier. Another session was held in Galway in December (1586), and many were executed, both men and women. IBut perhaps the reader has had enough for the present of Bingham’s frightful career.

The great Geraldine rebellion and all the minor disturbances resulting from it had now been crushed, and there was no longer even the semblance of resistance. The miseries endured by the people in those times from the soldiery are beyond description. Even within the Pale, where some protection and safety might be expected, this was the state of things, as we find it described in a State Paper. Each man of the horse companies kept two horses with a boy for each. Bands of these horsemen with their horseboys, and also companies of foot-soldiers with their attendants and idle followers, traversed the Pale, marching leisurely hither and thither as the humour seized them, living entirely on the people, using up their provisions, and beggaring them with all sorts of extortion. They even took their clothes and farming utensils; and if they met with any resistance, they beat and sometimes even killed the poor people. [n] In the towns and villages all through Ireland there were detachments of military, who did whatever they pleased among the inhabitants of the surrounding districts. And when the state of things described above existed in the Pale, we can perhaps imagine how it fared with the people of the rest of Ireland.

1. Carew Papers, 1589-1600, p.260-265.

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Chapter VIII:
Hugh Roe O’Donnell*

So long as Shane O’Neill was an object of dread, the government favoured and supported his enemies the O’Donnells. But no sooner had he fallen than there was a change of tone; and the O’Donnells found themselves treated with coldness and suspicion. Among other measures adopted by the government, sheriffs were sent to Tirconnell; but the chief. Sir Hugh O’Donnell - the same Hugh who defeated Shane O’Neill in 1567 (p.417) - refused point blank to admit them. This indeed could scarcely be wondered at, seeing that the sheriffs of this period were generally corrupt, knavish petty tyrants, who made it their chief aim to enrich themselves by plundering and outraging the people. The council in Dublin were sorely puzzled how to act. They happened at this time to be particularly weak in soldiers, so that they were scarcely in a position to enforce their order; and as Hugh O’Neill (whose early career will be sketched in next chapter) was married to Sir Hugh O’Donnell’s daughter, there was danger that these two great families, the O’Neills and the O’Donnells, might combine against them. There was another and a worse source of inquietude; for all this time the Armada was in course of preparation, and might any day descend on the Irish or English coasts.

The deputy. Sir John Perrott, in anticipation of hostilities with Spain, had already secured hostages from many of the Irish chiefs, but none from the O’Donnells, whom he feared more than all; for the loyalty of the O’Neills

*The narrative in this chapter is founded main! on that of the Four Masters, who have copied into their Annals a great part of O’Clery’s Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell (see p.81, infra). Philip O’Sullivan Beare, in his Histories Catholicce lbernice Compendium has given many circumstances omitted by the Four Masters, which 1 have also used. The treacherous capture of Red Hugh by Perrott is found in the same authorities; but this is related also by English writers, including Perrott himself.

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seemed secure so long as they were let alone. In this strait he bethought him of a treacherous plan to seize either Sir Hugh or his son and heir, it mattered little which.

Sir Hugh O’Donnell chief of Tirconnell had a son Hugh, commonly known as Hugh Roe (the Red), who was born in 1572, and who was now (1587) in his fifteenth year. Even already at that early age, he was remarked for his great abilities and for his aspiring and ambitious disposition.’ The fame and renown of the above-named 3 [n]outh, Hugh Roe, had spread throughout the five provinces of Ireland even before he had come to the age of manhood, for his wisdom, sagacity, goodly growth, and noble deeds; and the English feared that if he should be permitted to arrive at the age of maturity, he and the earl of Tyrone [his brother-in-law] might combine and conquer the whole island.’ [n]

Perrott’s plan for entrapping young Red Hugh was skilfully concocted and well carried out. In the autumn of 1587 he sent a merchant vessel laden with Spanish wines to the coast of Donegal on pretence of trafiic. The captain entered Lough Swilly and anchored opposite the castle of Rathmullan; for he had ascertained that the boy lived there with his foster father Mac Sweeny, a powerful chief, the owner of the castle. When Mac Sweeny heard of the arrival of the ship, he sent to purchase some wine. The messengers were told that no more was left to sell; but that if any gentlemen wished to come on board they were quite welcome to drink as much as they joleased. The bait took. A party of the Mac Sweenys, accompanied by Hugh, unsuspectingly went on board. The captain had previously called in all his men; and while the company were enjoying themselves, their arms were quietly removed, the hatchway door was closed down, and the ship weighed anchor. When the people on shore observed this they were filled with consternation, and flocked to the beach; but they were quite helpless, for they had no boats ready. Neither was it of any avail when Mac Sweeny

1. Four Masters, 1587, p.1861.

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rushed to the point of shore nearest the ship, and cried out in the anguish of his heart, offering any amount of ransom and hostages. Young Hugh O’DonneU was brought to Dublin and safely lodged in Bermingham Tower in the Castle, where many other nobles, both Irish and old English, were then held in captivity.

This transaction however, so far from tending to peace, as Perrott no doubt intended, did the very reverse; for, as Leland justly observes, it was ‘equally impolitic and dishonourable.’ [n] It made bitter enemies of the O’Donnells, who had been hitherto for generations on the side of the government. In young O’Donnell himself more especially, it engendered feelings of exasperation and irreconcilable hatred; and it was one of the causes of the O’Neill war, which brought unmeasured woe and disaster to both English and Irish. Years afterwards O’Donnell gave to the English commissioners, as one of his reasons for entering on rebellion, his imprisonment in Dublin Castle. [n]

Three years and three months passed away: Perrott had been recalled, and Sir William Fitzwilliam was now, 1590, lord deputy; when O’Donnell, in concert with some of his fellow prisoners, made an attempt to escape. Round the castle there was a deep ditch filled with water, across which was a wooden bridge opposite the door of the fortress. Early one dark winter’s evening, before being locked into their sleeping cells, and before the guard had been set, they let themselves down from a window on the bridge by a long rope, and immediately fastened the door on the outside. They were met on the bridge by a youth of Hugh’s people with two swords, one of which Hugh took, the other was given to Art Kavanagh, a brave young Leinster chief. They made their way noiselessly through the people along the dimly lighted streets, guided by the young man, while Kavanagh brought up the rear with sword grasped ready in case of interruption. Passing out through one of the city gates which had not yet been closed for the night, they crossed the country towards the

1. Hist. of Irel. ii. 310.
2. Carew Papers, 1589-1600, p.142. See also chap. x. p.485, infra.

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hills, avoiding the public road, and made their way over the eastern face of Slieve Eoe [n] - that slope of the Three Rock Mountain overlooking Stillorgan. They pushed on till far in the night; when being at last quite worn out, they took shelter in a thick wood, somewhere near the present village of Roundwood, where they remained hidden during the remainder of the night. When they resumed their journey next morning O’Donnell was so fatigued that he was not able to keep up with his companions; for the thin shoes he wore had fallen in pieces with wet, and his feet were torn and bleeding from sharp stones and thorns. So, very unwillingly, his companions left him in a wood and pursued their journey, all but one servant who went for aid to Castlekevin, a little way off, near the mouth of Glendalough, where lived Felim O’Toole, one of Hugh’s friends. O’Toole was rejoiced at O’Donnell’s escape, and at once took steps for his relief and protection.

Some considerable time after the fugitives had left the castle, the guards going to lock them up in their cells for the night missed them, and instantly raising an alarm, rushed to the door; but finding themselves shut in, they shouted to the people in the houses at the other side of the street, who with some delay removed the fastening of the door and released them. They were not able to overtake the fugitives, who had too much of a start, but they traced them all the way to the hiding-place. O’Toole now saw that his friend could no longer be concealed, for the soldiers had surrounded the wood; and making a virtue of necessity, he and his people arrested him and brought him back to Dublin. The council were delighted at his capture; and for the better security they shackled him and his companions in the prison with heavy iron fetters.

Another weary year passed away. On Christmas night 1591, before supper time, Hugh and his two companions Henry and Art O’Neill, the sons of Shane O’Neill, who were also in the prison, cut through their iron fetters

1. Slieve Roe, or the Red Mountain, was the name of the range extending from the Three Rock Mountain to Glenasmole.

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with a file which had somehow been conveyed to them, and let themselves down on the bridge by a long silken rope, which had been sent with the file. Art O’Neill when descending was struck on the head by a loose stone which had become dislodged, and was greatly hurt; but he was able to go on. They crept through the common sewer of the castle, and making their way across the ditch, were met at the other side by a guide sent by the great chief Fiach Mac Hugh O’Byrne of Glenmalure.

They glided through the dim streets as in their former attempt at escape, the people taking no notice of them; and passing out at one of the city gates which had not been closed, they made their way across the country; but in this part of their course they lost Henry O’Neill in the darkness and did not meet him again. Greatly distressed at this, they still pressed on; but they found it hard to travel and suffered keenly from cold; for the snow fell thick, and they had thrown aside their soiled outer mantles after leaving the castle. They crossed the hills, shaping their way this time more to the west, up by Killakee, and along the course of the present military road.

But Art O’Neill, who had grown corpulent in his prison for want of exercise, and who still felt the effects of the hurt on his head, was unable to keep pace with the others: and Hugh and the attendant had to help him on at intervals by walking one on each side, while he rested his arms on their shoulders. In this manner they toiled on wearily across the snowy waste through the whole of that Christmas night and the whole of next day without food, hoping to be able to reach Glenmalure without a halt. But they became at last so worn out with fatigue and hunger that, although Glenmalure was only a few miles off, they had to give up and take shelter under a high rock, while the servant ran on for help. Fiach, with as much haste as possible, despatched a small party with a supply of food, who found the two young men lying under the rock to all appearance dead: ‘Unhappy and miserable was the condition [of the young chiefs] on their arrival. Their bodies were covered over with white

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bordered shrouds of hailstones freezing around them, and their light clothes and finethreaded shirts adhered to their skin, and their large shoes and leather thongs to their legs and feet: so that, covered as they were with snow, it did not appear to the men who had arrived that they were human beings at all, for they found no life in their members, but just as if they were dead.’ [n]

They raised the unhappy sufferers and tried to make them take food and drink, but neither food nor drink could they swallow, and while the men were tenderly nursing them Art O’Neill died in their arms. And there they buried him under the shadow of the rock. Hugh, being hardier however, fared better: after some time he was able to swallow a little ale, and his strength began to return. But his feet still remained frozen and dead so that he could not stand: and when he had sufficiently recovered, the men carried him on their shoulders to Glenmalure. Here he was placed in a secluded cottage where he remained for a time under cure, till a young chief named Turlogh O’Hagan, a trusty messenger from Hugh O’Neill earl of Tyrone, came for him.

Meantime the council hearing that O’Donnell was in Glenmalure with O’Byrne, placed guards on the fords of the Liffey to prevent him from passing northwards to his home in Ulster. Nevertheless, as O’Neill’s message was urgent, Fiach sent O’Donnell away with O’Hagan, and a troop of horse for a guard; but the young chief’s feet were still so helpless that he had to be lifted on and off" his horse. They crossed the Liffey at a deep and dangerous ford just beside Dublin, which had been left unguarded; passing unperceived near the green of Dublin Castle. Here OByrne’s escort left them; and from Dublin they made their way northwards, attended by Felim O’Toole and his brother. Having escorted them to a safe distance beyond Dublin, the O’Tooles ‘bade Hugh farewell, and having given him their blessing, departed from him.’

There were now only two, O’Donnell himself and

1. Four Masters, 1592, p.1919.

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O’Hagan, and they rode on till they reached the Boyne a little above Drogheda, at a place where a man kept a ferry: here O’Donnell crossed in the boat while O’Hagan brought the horses round by the town. They next reached Mellifont, where resided a friend, Sir Garrett Moore, a young Englishman, with whom they remained for the night; and in the evening of the following day set off with a fresh pair of horses.

They arrived at Dundalk by morning, and instead of taking the byways, which were all guarded, they rode through the town in open day without attracting any notice: and at last they reached the residence of Hugh O’Neill’s half-brother, Turlogh Mac Henry O’Neill, chief of the Fews in Armagh. Next day they crossed Slieve Fuad and came to the city of Armagh, where they remained in concealment for one night. The following day they reached the house of Earl Hugh O’Neill at Dungannon, where O’Donnell rested for four days; but secretly, for O’Neill was still in the queen’s service.

The earl sent him with a troop of horse as an escort to Enniskillen Castle, the residence of O’Donnell’s cousin Maguire of Fermanagh, who rowed him down Lough Erne, at the far shore of which he was met by a party of his own people. With these he arrived at his father’s castle at Ballyshannon, where he was welcomed with unbounded joy.

There is good reason to believe that the deputy Fitzwilliam, who was avaricious and unprincipled, was bribed by the earl of Tyrone to connive at the escape of O’Donnell and the two O’Neills; for the earl, suspecting that a struggle was impending, was anxious to have the help of his brother-in-law O’Donnell; and he wished to secure the sons of Shane O’Neill lest they might give trouble by claiming the chieftainship. Some years afterwards the queen plainly stated in a letter to lord deputy Borough that O’Donnell escaped ‘by practice of money bestowed on somebody’; [n] both Cox and Moryson say that a certain

1. Carew Papers, 1589-1600, p.219; see also Four Masters, 1590, p.1898, note z.

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great man was privy to their escape; and Leland expressly names Fitzwilliam.

An incident that occurred immediately after O’Donnell’s arrival well illustrates how the miserable people had been oppressed and terrorised by the military. Two English captains, Willis and Oonwell, with a party of 200 soldiers from Connaught, had taken possession of the monastery of Donegal after expelling the monks, and also of the castle of Ballyboyle near the town; and from these two robbers’ nests they sent out parties day by day to plunder the surrounding country. Young O’Donnell, without loss of time, proceeded with a party of his people to Donegal, and sent an imperative message to the two captains to march off and leave behind them all their prisoners and plunder. So terrified were they at this mandate that they did exactly as they were bidden, very thankful to escape with their lives: and the monks returned to the monastery [n].

At Ballyshannon Hugh remained under cure for two months. The physicians had at last to amputate his two great toes; and a whole year passed away before he had fully recovered from the effects of that one terrible winter night in the mountains.

In May this year, 1592, a general meeting of the Kinel-Connell was convened; and Sir Hugh O’Donnell, who was old and feeble, having resigned the chieftainship, young Hugh Roe - now in his twentieth year - was elected The O’Donnell, chief of his race, and was inaugurated amid the acclamations of his people.