LII. THE END OF THE REIGN, 1602-1603…

LII. THE END OF THE REIGN, 1602-1603

[Sidenote: The Spaniards still feared.]

Starvation by means of garrisons was Mountjoy's prescription for the Irish malady, and this treatment he pursued to the end. But he continued to dread Spanish intervention, for, in common with most Englishmen of his time, he overestimated what was really a decaying and impoverished power. Cecil knew better, and throughout the spring and early summer of 1602 he continued to write in a rather contemptuous tone of Spanish intentions. In August he was able to say positively that there would be no invasion in force, though he could not promise that Philip would not send a few forlorn companies to keep up some sort of reputation in Europe, to put the Queen to cost, and 'to fill the world with continual rumour of his undertaking humour.' To Carew he wrote in the same strain, and with still greater freedom. It was impossible to keep Spanish ships from Irish harbours, 'whereof there be more than the Queen hath ships,' but the coast of Spain might be so harassed as to give them enough to do at home. Sir Richard Leveson was better employed taking carracks in the Tagus than he could be in Ireland, and between Hollanders and Englishmen the Catholic King was not likely to have many men to spare. But the Queen would not grudge the necessary outlay to make Cork, Kinsale, and some minor posts defensible. Thus encouraged, Mountjoy was free to attack Ulster, and he proceeded slowly, but surely, to draw the net round Tyrone.[398]

[Sidenote: Docwra and Chichester in Ulster.]

Docwra was supposed to have between three and four thousand men in Derry and Donegal, Chichester nearly 1,000 at Carrickfergus; and about 800 more were in Lecale and in the garrisons at Mount Norris, Armagh, Blackwater, and Newry. Mountjoy had over 3,000 under his own command, and at the beginning of June he advanced to Dundalk. Docwra had established a post at Omagh, and had no difficulty in joining the Lord Deputy at Dungannon, while Chichester ferried his contingent over Lough Neagh. Tyrone, who had laid Dungannon in ashes, was forced out of his country into the almost inaccessible wilds of Glenconkein, and his deserted strongholds were taken. In one three guns were recovered, probably those taken at Blackwater. A new fort was built and manned at Mountjoy on Lough Neagh. Provisions falling short in July, Docwra was sent back to collect and victual a force at Omagh, with which Chichester, who now had hopes of 'soon beheading that wood-kerne Tyrone,' could co-operate from his fortified post at Castle Toome on Lough Neagh. Mountjoy retired towards Monaghan, taking all the small strengths in that direction, though not entirely without loss from sharp-shooters, and wrote home to urge the positive necessity of keeping the garrisons on foot. Tyrone was now driven from place to place like a hunted hare; but if the efforts to run him down were allowed to relax, he would gain strength quickly, and all the work would have to be done over again.[399]

[Sidenote: The Queen disinclined to spare Tyrone.]

Tyrone was now begging earnestly for mercy, but the fate of Essex warned Mountjoy against meddling with so dangerous a person. The rebel would not come in upon his bare word, nor would he give that word; for to detain him afterwards would be dishonourable, while he might be blamed for letting him go. He could only urge that while Tyrone was lowest was the best time to bring him to terms. After much hesitation the Queen was induced to promise him his life, but through Mountjoy only, and without divulging anything to the Council. Cecil saw no reason why she should not publish it to all the world. If peace could only be dreamed of, he said, 'for saving of Christian blood and of miseries of her natural people from hence hourly sent to the shambles! ... but her Majesty is the kingdom, and myself her humble vassal.' Negotiations went on through the latter half of 1602, and in the meantime Mountjoy prosecuted the war. He gave out publicly that the Queen had resolved never to pardon Tyrone, but let him know that he himself might possibly become a suitor for him. That depended on how he behaved; 'and yet,' he wrote, 'I have told him that I will cut his throat in the meantime if I can.'[400]

[Sidenote: Carew reduces Munster.]

Carew had nominally nearly 5,000 men to complete the reduction of Munster, but the real number was much less. Nearly half of the available force was sent, under Thomond's command, to ravage the country west of Kinsale and on both sides of Bantry Bay. Carew himself left Cork six weeks later, and made his first halt on Tyrone's late camping-ground near Carrigaline. Nights were spent at Timoleague, Rosscarbery, and Castle Haven, and Baltimore was reached on the fifth day. In crossing the mountains between Skibbereen and Bantry Bay slight resistance was made by some of the O'Driscolls and O'Sullivans, but Dunnemark was reached in safety on the eighth day from Cork. This place is called Carew Castle by the President, who is careful to note that it belonged to his ancestors, and that the Irish name was derived from their title of marquis. It is two miles to the north of Bantry, and was found a convenient place to collect the cattle and ponies of the neighbouring country. An O'Daly, whose ancestors had been hereditary bards of the old Carews, was here caught tampering with Owen O'Sullivan, and was sent for trial to Cork. The Spaniards in Dunboy were warned that they could expect no quarter if they remained there. If they left before the siege began they would be sent safely to Spain, and Carew suggested that they might deserve greater favour by spiking the guns or disabling the carriages before they came away. No notice was taken of this message, and the army lay at Dunnemark until all was ready for the attack on Dunboy.[401]

[Sidenote: Kerry.]

Early in February Carew sent Sir Charles Wilmot to Kerry with a force sufficient to overcome what remained of the rebellion there. Lixnaw Castle was taken, and Lord Fitzmaurice driven away into the mountains of Desmond. Carrigafoyle was found deserted and partly dismantled. The Dingle peninsula was thoroughly ransacked, the castles all taken, and the Knight of Kerry driven into Desmond. The cattle in Iveragh were also collected, and their owners forced into the woods of Glengariffe. Wilmot's road to Bantry Bay lay by Mucross and Mangerton--'a most hideous and uncouth mountain'--and great preparations were made to attack him by the way. Carew moved up as far as Carriganass, and in the end the Irish showed no fight, though trees had been felled and breastworks erected at every point of vantage. The junction of the two forces was effected, and on the same day ships came from Cork. The army had provisions left for only two days, and would have been forced to retreat but for this seasonable aid.[402]

[Sidenote: Dunboy Castle.]

Dermot Moyle MacCarthy, Florence's brother, had been in Ulster the year before, and Carew had then declared his intention to plague him on his return. He thought him both wiser and braver than Florence himself, and certainly more popular with the scattered swordsmen--half soldiers, half caterans--who still maintained the rebellion. Reduced to want by Carew and Wilmot, this chief took some cows belonging to MacCarthy Reagh, and while fighting for their possession was killed by his own first cousin. To prevent his head from being exposed at Cork, as the President had threatened, the dead man was conveyed to Timoleague Abbey and there buried by a friar with great solemnity. After this it was judged impossible to take a military train round by Glengariffe, and it was decided to cross Bantry Bay. Tyrrell seems to have understood that the game was up, and would have been ready to join Thomond; but the Jesuit Archer prevented him, and he failed to come to the parley which he had himself asked for. The weather was very bad all this time, which the superstitious attributed to Archer's conjury, but Carew said he hoped soon to conjure his head into a halter. And yet he was not altogether incredulous himself. 'The country of Bere,' he wrote, 'is full of witches. Between them and Archer I do partly believe the devil hath been raised to serve their turn.' Nevertheless Thomond established himself in Bere Island by June 1, and here he had an interview with Richard MacGeohegan, who held Dunboy for O'Sullivan. The Earl argued that the castle must fall, and urged the constable to gain credit by yielding it in time, while the latter tried to make out that the besiegers ran upon certain defeat, and could never even land in face of such strong fortifications. Neither persuaded the other, and Carew went on with his preparations.[403]

[Sidenote: Carew at Berehaven]

In spite of the witches, the army was transported into Bere Island without much difficulty. The sandy bay near Dunboy was found strongly fortified, and Carew resolved to make a false attack. The little island of Dinish was seized and two guns mounted on it, the fire of which occupied the defenders of the works on shore. The main body was then quietly ferried across Berehaven to a point westward of Dinish and close to Castletown. High ground hid the landing-place from the castle, and when the stratagem was at last discovered the Irish had to go round a deep creek. They found Carew's men ready for them, and were worsted in the skirmish which followed. Tyrrell was wounded. Archer narrowly escaped, leaving his missal behind him, as well as a servant, who was immediately executed. On the morrow a camp was pitched half a mile to the north-east. Next day the work of entrenching began, materials for gabions having to be brought from a wood nearly two miles away. The artillery was landed in full view of the castle and without damage from its fire, but Carew did not begin to batter until the eleventh day after landing. In the meantime the Irish had taken courage from the arrival of a Spanish vessel at Kilmakilloge in Kenmare Bay. She brought 12,000_l._, much ammunition, and letters urging the Irish chiefs to remain firm. But perhaps the most important part of the cargo was Owen MacEgan, Bishop-designate of Ross and Vicar Apostolic or Nuncio, for he is called by both titles, who had absolute ecclesiastical authority over all Munster. He was able to impress the defenders of Dunboy with the idea that a great Spanish force would immediately come to their relief, and they imagined that they could hold out for two or three months.[404]

[Sidenote: An island stronghold.]

The Irish had built a small fort in the island of Dursey, which they intended for their last refuge. It was defended by forty men and three pieces of Spanish artillery. Captain Bostock and Owen O'Sullivan were sent by Carew, with 160 men, to reduce this remote stronghold. The water being tolerably smooth, the Queen's pinnace was brought up near enough to attack from the sea side, and the bulk of the men were landed in boats. The soldiers showed so much dash in assaulting the fort that the garrison came out and surrendered as soon as the outwork was forced. They were taken to Carew's camp, and all executed. Owen O'Sullivan recovered his wife, who had been O'Sullivan Bere's prisoner since February. In this out-of-the way place Bostock found no less than 500 milch cows, besides wheat and oil, and the existence of such islands goes far to explain the long resistance of West Munster. Nothing could be done against them without ships, and ships were very seldom available.[405]

[Sidenote: Capture of Dunboy.]

[Sidenote: Two desperate men.]

Carew was a good artilleryman, as artillery was in his days, and he promised that Dunboy should fall within seven days after he had opened fire. Others expected a longer siege, but he was much better than his word. The fire of four guns, concentrated upon the castle, made it untenable within twenty-four hours. Tyrrell's attempt upon the camp had been fruitless, and it was plain that there was no chance of relief. After four hours' fire a turret fell in, burying many under its ruins. In another four hours the west front of the castle collapsed, and dice were cast to decide who should lead the stormers. The post of honour and danger fell to Captain Doddington's company, and his lieutenant, Francis Kirton, was the first man to enter the breach. Kirton was wounded in three places, but he made good his ground, and Carew's colours were soon planted on a commanding point of the works. The besiegers still fought, but their guns were carried with a rush, and the whole place was now commanded. Forty men tried to escape by sea, but armed boats guarded that side, and they were killed. Among them was Melaghlin O'More, the man who pulled Ormonde off his horse when he was captured two years before. Seventy-seven men were left, and would have surrendered at sunset upon promise of life only; but this was denied, and the Jesuit Dominick O'Colan came out by himself. Next morning, twenty-six more gave themselves up, including two Spaniards and one Italian, who were all that remained of the foreign gunners. MacGeohegan was mortally wounded, and Thomas Taylor, an Englishman's son, but married to Tyrrell's niece, was chosen commander in his room. Taylor shut himself up in the vault with nine barrels of powder, and with a lighted match in his hand swore to blow all up unless he and his companions were promised their lives. His men prevented this, and forty-eight surrendered at discretion with him. When the English officers entered, they found MacGeohegan still living. With a lighted candle in his hand, he staggered towards an open powder-barrel, but Captain Power held him back, and the soldiers killed him. Of the 140 picked men who composed the garrison, not one escaped. The powder was then spent in blowing up the walls, and the castle, from which so much had been expected, was laid level with the ground.[406]

[Sidenote: Fate of the survivors.]

[Sidenote: A Jesuit.]

In this, as in every such Irish siege, the actual capture was comparatively easy; the real difficulty was to reach these distant strongholds, and to maintain an army in the wilds. The garrison, champions of a lost cause and dupes of a feeble tyrant, deserved a better fate; but Carew showed no mercy. Of the survivors fifty-eight were at once 'hanged in pairs by the Earl of Thomond.' Twelve of Tyrrell's best men were respited for a time, but were also hanged when that leader declared that he would remain true to his master the King of Spain. Taylor was taken to Cork, and hanged in chains near the north gate on the discovery that he had taken a principal part in George Bingham's murder. O'Colan, whom the English called Collins, was closely examined at Cork, and Catholic accounts say that he was tortured. He gave no useful information, but freely told the strange story of his own life. Born at Youghal, and educated at a Jesuit school there, he went at the age of seventeen to France, made some money as a waiter in inns, and served the League for nine or ten years under the Duke of Mercoeur. He rose to the rank of captain; and was recommended to the King of Spain by Don Juan D'Aguila, who was then in Brittany. Coming under the influence of the Jesuit Thomas White of Clonmel, who was rector of the Irish seminary at Salamanca, he was admitted, after a time, to the Society of Jesus, whose principles, we are told, he preferred to Dominican vigour or Franciscan rigour, but not to full priest's orders; and Archer, who knew him only by reputation, asked that he might accompany him to Ireland. His military knowledge was perhaps thought useful at Dunboy. After keeping him a prisoner for about four months, Carew found that nothing would be gained by preserving his life, and he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Youghal, meeting his fate with the greatest courage and in a manner most edifying to his co-religionists.[407]

[Sidenote: O'Donnell in Spain.]

[Sidenote: Death and character of Hugh Roe O'Donnell.]

The fall of Dunboy prevented the King of Spain from sending prompt help, but he did not give up the idea. Rumours of fresh invasions were rife during the summer, and sooner or later O'Donnell might have returned with another army. That chief had sailed from Castle Haven immediately after the battle of Kinsale, and fugitives from Munster continued to join him whenever opportunity offered. He landed at Corunna, and went straight to the King at Zamora. Falling upon his knees he obtained favourable replies to three requests: that an army should be sent to Ireland; that the King, when he gained Ireland, would set no O'Donnell over him or his successors; and that he would never deny any right that the O'Donnells had ever had. Philip sent him back to Galicia, then under the government of his zealous friend, the Marquis of Caraçena. Exiles are ever sanguine, and he professed to have no doubt of ultimate success; but Spanish vacillation sorely tried his impatient spirit. When the surrender of Kinsale became known in Spain, some vessels intended for Ireland were unloaded, and Don Juan's report was unfavourable. The disgrace of that unsuccessful commander revived O'Donnell's credit, and the ship which brought over Bishop MacEgan and his 12,000_l._ was despatched. O'Donnell began to despair of a great fleet, and begged to be allowed to go with a few small vessels. He asked his friends in Ireland to let him know the whole truth, but to keep bad news from Spanish ears. This, of course, could not be done, and the arrival of Archer and a crowd of fugitives after the disaster at Dunboy, must have outweighed all his arguments. He sought the King again at Simancas, and there he died after an illness of seventeen days. His body was carried, with great pomp, to the royal palace at Valladolid, and buried in the Franciscan monastery with every mark of respect. His solemn requiem was the death-song of the Irish tribal system. Much romance cleaves to his name, but his ideas scarcely rose above those of an ordinary chief. Local supremacy was his main object, and the panegyric of the annalists fails to raise him to the height of a national hero. He was, they say, 'the vehement, vigorous, stern, and irresistible destroyer of his English and Irish opposers.' He died at thirty, but there is nothing to show that he would have even attempted the task of building a stable edifice with the shifting sands of Irish life.[408]

[Sidenote: Assassination plots.]

The Irish accounts do not suggest foul play, but Carew believed that O'Donnell had been poisoned by one James Blake, of Galway, who had announced his intention of killing him. Blake was not hired by Carew, but he would hardly have made him his confidant if he had not expected reward, and he it was who brought the first news of O'Donnell's death to Munster. John Anias, who had been implicated in a plot to murder Elizabeth, had offered to kill Florence MacCarthy, and afterwards gave out that he had been suborned by Cecil to poison that troublesome person. Cecil and Carew employed Anias as a spy, but denied that he had ever said anything about poison, and had him hanged out of the way as soon as he could be caught. Neither Blake nor Anias would have dared to speak of such things to a modern statesman, but the morality of that age was different. A similar suspicion attaches to the death of Hugh O'Donnell's brother, Rory, afterwards Earl of Tyrconnell. An Italian came to Sir Henry Wotton, who was then ambassador at Venice, and offered to kill Tyrone or Tyrconnell, but without mentioning their names or even seeming to know them correctly. Wotton said the Earls were of no importance, having run away because they could do no harm at home. No doubt proclaimed rebels might be justly slain; 'yet,' he added, 'it was somewhat questionable whether it might be done honourably, your Majesty having not hitherto proceeded to the open proscription of them to destruction abroad, neither was it a course so familiar and frequent with us as in other states.' Three months later Tyrconnell and his page died rather mysteriously at Rome, others of his party also sickening. Roman fever was probably to blame, though Wotton seems to have half-suspected poisoning, but in the interest of the papacy, and not of the King of England.'[409]

[Sidenote: Last struggles in Connaught.]

When O'Donnell sailed for Spain he left his brother Rory in charge of the clan, who led them through all Munster and Connaught. The vast herds which Hugh had taken from his neighbours were found grazing peacefully in Sligo, and Ballymote was given up by O'Gallagher to the acting chief. Sir Niel Garv was co-operating with Docwra, and kept his rival out of Donegal; but Rory allied himself with O'Connor Sligo, and sought help from Brian O'Rourke against Sir Oliver Lambert, who was pressing him from the Connaught side. Tibbot-ne-Long and others of the lower Burkes solicited Lambert's help, and he came up from Galway with a strong force, while O'Rourke fought for his own hand and refused to help O'Donnell. Lambert says he might easily have been stopped either at Ballina or Ballysadare, but he reached Sligo without serious fighting. The town had been burned by O'Connor, and the castle was in ruins. O'Donnell passed his cattle over the Curlews, and across the Shannon into Leitrim. Lambert, though camping in places 'where no Christians have been since the war begun,' could never catch him, but took 200 cows and a keg of Spanish powder. When the English were in Leitrim, and when Leitrim was invaded in turn, O'Donnell was safe in Roscommon; but Lambert established communications with his friends at Ballyshannon. The O'Malleys and O'Flaherties infested the coast, and Sir Oliver had to provide a galley with fifty mariners and fifteen oars on a side, for these pirates spared no one, and Bingham had found it necessary to take similar precautions. Lambert thought Sligo would be a dainty place for a gentleman if walled, and he placed a garrison there, which was able to maintain itself until the end of the war.[410]

[Sidenote: Progress of Docwra in Ulster.]

The absence both of Tyrone and of Hugh Roe O'Donnell in Munster left a comparatively clear field to Sir Henry Docwra; 'the country void, and no powerful enemy to encounter withal, more than the rivers.' Castle Derg and Newtown (Stewart), both lately garrisoned, had since been betrayed by Tirlogh Magnylson, a follower of Sir Arthur O'Neill, who had become a favourite with the English officers. Tirlogh first curried favour with Captain Atkinson at Newtown by helping him to seize some cattle. Having dined with this officer, he persuaded him to take a walk outside the castle. Three or four confederates suddenly appeared, who made the captain prisoner, while others got possession of the courtyard and of the hall-door. The soldiers 'lying in the Irish thatched house' were all killed. Captain Dutton lost Castle Derg by a similar stratagem. But in the absence of the great chiefs Docwra was clearly the strongest man: O'Cahan's country was harried to punish his perfidy, and even women and children were killed. Donegal was victualled, and Ballyshannon, 'that long desired place,' taken and garrisoned. Tirlogh Magnylson's turn soon came. Countrymen in Docwra's pay pursued him from place to place, and his followers were killed one by one without knowing their pursuers; those who were taken, says Sir Henry, 'I caused the soldiers to hew in pieces with their swords.' The hunted man travelled about the woods at night, sometimes occupying three or four cabins successively, and lighting fires to attract attention where he did not intend to stay. A boy was set to watch, and at last the poor wretch was seen to take off his trousers and lie down. Four men, says Docwra, 'with swords, targets, and morions, fell in upon him; he gat up his sword for all that, and gave such a gash in one of their targets as would seem incredible to be done with the arm of a man, but they dispacht him and brought me his head the next day, which was presently known to every boy in the army, and made a ludibrious spectacle to such as listed to behold it.' Captain Dutton's betrayers had better luck. They had killed no one, and were twice spared by Docwra, after swearing 'with the most profound execrations upon themselves, if they continued not true.' They broke out, nevertheless, and the ringleaders kept the woods till Tyrone's submission, when they were pardoned by Mountjoy's express command.[411]

[Sidenote: Mountjoy breaks up the O'Neill throne.]

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1602 Docwra and Chichester continued steadily to reduce small strongholds, to drive cattle, and to make a famine certain should Tyrone hold out till the spring. In August Mountjoy again went northwards and planted a garrison at Augher. At Tullaghogue, says Moryson, 'where the O'Neills were of old custom created, he spent some five days, and there he spoiled the corn of all the country, and Tyrone's own corn, and brake down the chair where the O'Neills were wont to be created, being of stone, planted in the open field.' But he could not get within twelve miles of the rebel Earl himself, who had retreated into thick woods at the lower end of Lough Erne, and who endeavoured to keep his friends together by letters in which he urged them to make no separate terms for themselves; 'if you do otherwise,' he said, 'stand to the hazard yourselves, for you shall not have my consent thereunto.' One transient gleam of success rewarded Rory O'Donnell and O'Connor Sligo. In an attempt to force the passage of the Curlews from the Roscommon side a panic seized the English soldiers, who may have remembered the fate of Sir Conyers Clifford, and they fled in confusion to Boyle, but without any great loss.[412]

[Sidenote: Last struggle in Munster.]

It was in Munster that hopes of Spanish succour were strongest; but Carew was able to send troops and supplies to help Mountjoy, and at the same time to finish his own work. Sir Cormac MacDermot, the chief of Muskerry, whose intriguing nature was well known to Carew, was found to have received 800 ducats from Bishop Owen MacEgan, and to have placed Blarney Castle at the disposal of the Spaniards. Captain Roger Harvey was sent, on pretence of hunting the buck, to call at the castle and ask for wine and usquebaugh, 'whereof Irish gentlemen are seldom disfurnished,' and if possible to get possession of the place. But the warders were on their guard, and Harvey could not even get into the courtyard. Sir Cormac himself was at Cork, not having dared to refuse attendance at the assizes, and his wife and children were also secured. Finding himself in the lion's mouth, he ordered his people to surrender Blarney, while he made preparations for his own escape. After dark on the evening of Michaelmas-day he got out of the window in his shirt, several gentlemen being outside to receive him. A passing Englishwoman raised the alarm, but the runaway was befriended by town and country and got safe away over the walls, only to find that he could do nothing. His castle of Kilcrea had already surrendered, and Macroom was taken, owing to an accidental fire which arose while the warders were singeing a pig. No Spaniards were visible, and Tyrrell, who had eaten up Bere and Bantry, proposed to quarter his men in Muskerry. At last, towards the end of October, Sir Cormac came to Carew, and sued for mercy on his knees. A protection was granted to him, for he was helpless without his castles, his eldest son was at Oxford well watched, and Tyrrell had destroyed his corn. Raleigh advised Elizabeth not to pardon him, his country being worth her while to keep, and its situation being such as to leave him always at her mercy. Orders were accordingly given that his pardon should be withheld, at least until he had provided an estate for his cousin Teig MacCormac, who had first revealed his intrigues with the Spaniards.[413]

[Sidenote: Remarkable retreat of O'Sullivan Bere.]

[Sidenote: Passage of the Shannon.]

[Sidenote: A disinterested guide.]

O'Sullivan Bere still maintained himself in Glengariffe, but his position had become hopeless. In December Tyrrell gave up the contest and marched eighty miles without a halt from near Castleisland into the King's County, 'leaving all his carriages and impediments, as they tired, scattered to hazard.' Wilmot then attacked O'Sullivan's position, and succeeded, after six hours' sharp fighting, in driving off 2,000 cows, 4,000 sheep, and 1,000 hackneys. Sir John Shamrock's son, William Burke, refused to stay a moment longer, cursing himself for lingering in Munster and losing his brave followers. O'Sullivan was thus forced to fly, and on the night of the 3rd of January he slipped away, with all his family and retinue. When Wilmot came to his late camping-ground he found only sick and wounded men, 'whose pains and lives by the soldiers were both determined.' The fugitives had a sharp skirmish with Lord Barry near Liscarroll, but reached the Shannon at Portland on the ninth day, fighting all the way and not venturing to turn aside after cattle, although often very hungry. Finding no boats, they killed twelve horses, and Dermot O'Driscoll, who was used to the canoes or curraghs of the west-coast fishermen, constructed one with osiers, twenty-six feet long, six feet wide, five feet deep, and capable of holding thirty men. Eleven horseskins were used to cover this ark, and the twelfth was devoted to a round vessel planned by Daniel O'Malley and intended to carry ten men. The O'Malleys were more given to the sea than even the O'Driscolls, but the round ferry-boat sank, while the long one answered its purpose. Ormonde's sheriff of Tipperary failed to prevent O'Sullivan from crossing the great river, and he reached Aughrim on the eleventh day from Glengariffe. Sir Thomas Burke, Clanricarde's brother, who had the help of some English soldiers, attacked him here with a superior force, but was worsted with loss after a hard fight, and O'Kelly's country was passed on the same day. On the borders of Galway and Roscommon MacDavid Burke showed the will, but not the power, to stop the fugitives, who eluded pursuit by leaving great fires in the woods near Castlereagh. They suffered horribly from snow and rain, their shoes were worn out, and their last horses furnished a scanty meal. O'Connor Kerry's feet were a mass of sores, and he reproached those members for their cowardice, which was likely to imperil his head and his whole body. He struggled on with the rest, and in a wood near Boyle, heaven, as the pious historian believed, provided them with a guide. A barefooted man, in a linen garment and with a white headdress, and carrying an iron-shod staff in his hand, came to meet them. His appearance was such as to strike terror, but he told O'Sullivan that he had heard of his glorious victory at Aughrim, and was ready to lead him safely into O'Rourke's country. O'Sullivan, who was perhaps less credulous than his kinsman, secured the stranger's fidelity with 200 ducats, which he magnanimously accepted, 'not as a reward, but as a sign of a grateful mind.' He lead them by stony ways to Knockvicar near Boyle, where they bought food and dried themselves at fires. The blood upon O'Connor's blisters hardened with the heat, and he had to be carried by four men until they found a lean and blind old horse, on whose sharp backbone the sufferer was rather balanced than laid. The Curlews were safely passed, and at daybreak on the sixteenth day of their pilgrimage O'Rourke's castle of Leitrim was in sight. Of over a thousand persons who started from Glengariffe, but eighteen soldiers, sixteen horseboys, and one woman reached the house of refuge. A few more afterwards straggled in, but the great bulk had died of wounds and exposure, or had strayed away from their leaders. 'I wonder,' says the historian, 'how my father, Dermot O'Sullivan, who was nearly seventy, or how any woman, was able to sustain labours which proved too much for the most muscular young men.' The distance traversed was about 175 miles as the crow flies.[414]

[Sidenote: Rory O'Donnell submits.]

[Sidenote: Tyrone sues for mercy.]

Like many chief governors before him, Mountjoy contemplated spending much time at Athlone, and the Queen approved of this. He went there in November 1602, and both Rory O'Donnell and O'Connor Sligo came to him there before Christmas. Rory called to mind the hereditary loyalty of his family since Henry VIII.'s days, adding that he himself had agreed with Sir Conyers Clifford to serve against his brother Hugh, and had been put in irons by him. O'Connor claimed to have brought in Rory, and to have suffered likewise for his fidelity to Clifford. His legs, he said, had never healed properly, being 'almost rotted' with the irons. Tyrone lurked in Glenconkein in very wretched case, whence he wrote in most humble terms, and, as he said, with a most penitent heart. Mountjoy had sent back his last letter because it contained no absolute submission. 'I know the Queen's merciful nature,' he now said, 'though I am not worthy to crave for mercy.... Without standing on any terms or conditions, I do hereby both simply and absolutely submit myself to her Majesty's mercy.' Sir Christopher St. Laurence conducted some negotiations on his own account, but the Lord Deputy earnestly repudiated any knowledge of these, and continued almost to the end to say that he might possibly intercede with the Queen, but would do nothing more. Elizabeth's instinct told her that Tyrone was no longer formidable unless she set him up again, and this it is most probable she would have never done. A month after the letter last quoted, and barely two months before the Queen's death, Mountjoy talked of hunting the arch-traitor into the sea. He and Carew were together at Galway soon after Christmas, and it was agreed that the latter should go to England. Both of them wished to get away, but the Queen would not hear of the Deputy quitting his post, nor would she let the President go without his superior's leave; and Cecil cleverly contrived that the suggestion should seem to come from Mountjoy himself. Never, we are told, was 'a virgin bride, after a lingering and desperate love, more longing for the celebration of her nuptial' than was Carew to go to England; but he returned to Munster and made things quite safe there before he started. Now that Tyrrell and O'Sullivan were gone, he ventured to send to Athlone 500 men out of 700, which were all he had available after providing for the garrisons and making allowances for the sick and missing. He feared that O'Sullivan might return, but of this there was no real danger. The war was now confined to a corner of Ulster, and if Elizabeth had lived the fate of Tyrone might have been like that of Desmond. To run him down was, however, a matter of extreme difficulty, and he seems to have thought that he could get out of Ireland if the worst came to the worst.[415]

[Sidenote: Tyrone driven into a corner.]

While Mountjoy was conferring with Carew at Galway, Docwra and Chichester were pressing Tyrone hard. He was confined to about 200 square miles of glens and woods in the south-eastern part of Londonderry and the easternmost corner of Tyrone, and his fighting men scarcely exceeded 50. His numerous cattle were on the inaccessible heights of Slieve Gallion, and he himself had several resting-places surrounded with felled trees and protected by streams which were only fordable in dry weather. Docwra came to Dungannon with 450 English foot and 50 horse, and with 200 O'Cahan and 100 O'Dogherty kerne. Chichester had a fortified post at Toom, where the Bann leaves Lough Neagh, and he gathered there all the forces that the Ulster garrison could spare. Letters between the two leaders for the most part miscarried, and it was found quite impossible to converge upon Tyrone. From the very entrance of the woods the O'Cahans ran away to their own country, and the O'Dogherties pronounced the travelling impossible. The men sickened fast; one guide went off to Tyrone and was followed by another, who first contrived that cattle coming to Docwra's relief should be stolen. Chichester penetrated farther into the woods, and fought two skirmishes without doing much harm to his light-footed adversary. Docwra returned to Derry two or three days after Christmas, and Chichester also abandoned the enterprise. The country about Toom was eaten as bare as an English common, and things were rather worse at Derry, which was quite out of the course of trade, and equally deprived of local supplies. It was no better in the Pale, and the whole army, now reduced to a nominal 13,000, depended entirely upon victuals sent from England. Even Dublin feared famine, and everyone was so worn out that it was difficult to get any service done.[416]

[Sidenote: Famine.]

The confusion in the currency crippled trade and caused distress in the towns. But the winter war had worked a far greater mischief among the poor rebels in the country. Mountjoy had clearly foreseen a famine, had done his best to bring it about, and had completely succeeded. Multitudes lay dead in the ditches of towns and other waste places, 'with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above ground.' Sir Arthur Chichester saw children eating their mother's corpse. Captain Trevor found that certain old women lit fires in the woods, and ate the children who came to warm themselves. Rebels received to mercy killed troop-horses by running needles into their throats, and then fought over the remains. Not only were horses eaten, but cats and dogs, hawks, kites, and other carrion birds. The very wolves were driven by starvation from the woods, and killed the enfeebled people. The dead lay unburied, or half-buried, for the survivors had not strength to dig deep, and dogs ate the mouldering remains. Some fled to France or Spain, but they were few compared to those who perished at home.[417]

[Sidenote: Tyrone and James VI.]

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and James VI.]

Had Tyrone escaped from Ireland he would have gone to Scotland, or perhaps only to the Scotch islands. In 1597 he had offered his services to James, complaining of hard treatment at the hands of Deputies, and apologising for not having paid his respects sooner. While accepting these overtures and declaring himself ready to befriend him in all his 'honest and lawful affairs,' the King, with characteristic caution, noted that the time had not come. 'When,' he wrote, 'it shall please God to call our sister, the Queen of England, by death, we will see no less than your promptitude and readiness upon our advertisement to do us service.' Tyrone took care to be on good terms with the sons of Sorley Boy MacDonnell, to one of which, Randal, created Earl of Antrim in the next reign, he afterwards gave his daughter. A channel of communication with Scotland was thus always open, and it was certainly used on both sides. Early in 1600 Tyrone thanked James for his goodwill, and assured him that Docwra's expedition was intended to end in the writer's extermination. This letter came into Cecil's hands, and no doubt he was constantly well-informed. He had a Scotch spy, one Thomas Douglas, who also acted as a messenger between James, Tyrone, and the MacDonnells, and who carried a letter from the Duke of Lennox to Ireland early in 1601. This did not prevent James from offering to help Elizabeth with Highlanders against Tyrone in the same year. The Queen thanked him heartily, but remarked that 'the rebels had done their worst already.' It is plain that she saw through her good brother like glass. 'Remember,' she once wrote to him, 'that who seeketh two strings to one bow, may shoot strong but never straight; if you suppose that princes' causes be vailed so covertly that no intelligence may bewray them, deceive not yourself; we old foxes can find shifts to save ourselves by others' malice, and come by knowledge of greatest secret, specially if it touch our freehold.'[418]

[Sidenote: The question of toleration.]

Tyrone had made an unconditional submission, so far as it was possible to make it by letter; but the Queen was very unwilling to pardon him or to grant him anything more than bare life. At the same time there was a disposition to press the matter of religious uniformity, and to revive the Ecclesiastical Commission which had long lain dormant. Vice-Treasurer Carey was not content with the mischief done by the new coin, but must needs recommend a sharper way with recusants as a means of pacifying the country, and perhaps of filling official pockets. Mountjoy, whose great object was to end the war and get home, in effect told Carey that Satan was finding mischief for his idle hands in Dublin, while the army was half-starved, and the Lord Deputy himself likely to be reduced to salt ling. 'If,' he wrote from Trim, 'you did but walk up and down in the cold with us, you would not be so warm in your religion.' Mountjoy had his way on this point, and nothing was done to frighten the Irish unnecessarily, or to drive the towns into Spanish alliances. He reminded Cecil that Philip II. had lost the Netherlands by bringing in the Inquisition, and that the States, who at one time held nearly all the provinces, had lost many of them by pressing the matter of religion too hotly. All religions, he said, grew by persecution, but good doctrines and example would work in time. In the meanwhile he advised discreet handling as the only means of avoiding a new war, of which, he said, 'many would be glad, but God deliver us from it.'[419]

[Sidenote: Death of Queen Elizabeth.]

At the beginning of March, Mountjoy received two letters from the Queen, written on February 6 and 17, and another from Cecil, written on the 18th. In the first of these despatches, which were all delivered together, Elizabeth told her Deputy to send for Tyrone on promise of life only, and to detain him; in the second she authorised him to offer life, liberty, and pardon; and in the third, speaking through Cecil, she rather enlarged his powers, while laying some stress on altering the title of Tyrone, on reducing the size of his country, and on forcing him to keep the roads into it always open. There was no difficulty about the last covenant, for the felling of a few trees would always nullify it; but Mountjoy pointed out that O'Neill, and not Tyrone, was the dangerous word, and that it was great gain to have an earl by any name instead of a chieftain by that one. As to curtailing the repentant rebel's land, he thought that obedience would be more probable from one who would lose rather than gain by change. The great Queen was no more when the letter containing this reasoning was sent, so that we cannot tell whether she would have agreed to it or not. On the very day of her death, commission was given to Sir William Godolphin and Sir Garret Moore to treat with Tyrone, and he and his adherents were protected for three weeks. Elizabeth died on March 24, and Mountjoy knew this on the 27th; but his secretary, the historian Moryson, had the address to prevent the news from being publicly known before April 5, and in the meantime Tyrone had made his submission.[420]

[Sidenote: Submission of Tyrone.]

To save time under the extraordinary circumstances in which he was placed, Mountjoy sent Godolphin to tell Tyrone that the least hesitation would probably be fatal to him, and that his former delays had much incensed the Queen. Godolphin was not in the secret, but he felt that it was no time for ceremony, and in the belief that confidence would beget confidence he rode several miles beyond Dungannon to meet Tyrone, who readily accompanied him to the fort at Charlemont. Next day the commissioners brought their prize early to Mellifont, where Mountjoy lodged. There, says the secretary, who was present, 'Tyrone being admitted to the Lord Deputy's chamber, kneeled at the door humbly on his knees for a long space, making his penitent submission to Her Majesty, and after being required to come nearer to the Lord Deputy, performed the same ceremony in all humbleness, the space of one hour or thereabouts.' He had ever preferred the substance to the shadow, and his formal humility stood him in good stead. The written submission was equally complete, and contained not one word about liberty of conscience or in favour of that Church as whose champion the Pope had sent him a crown. He renounced all dependence upon foreign principles, and especially upon Spain, abjured the name of O'Neill, abandoned all his claims over the lands of neighbouring chiefs, and agreed to accept such estates only as the Queen should grant him by patent. He promised to disclose all he knew about dealings with Spain, to bring his son back from thence if possible, and, in short, to do everything that might become a faithful subject of the English crown. Mountjoy in return promised a royal pardon, and a patent for nearly all the lands which he held before his rebellion. 300 acres were reserved for the fort of Mountjoy and 300 for Charlemont, and Ulster was to submit to a composition as Connaught had done. On April 4, Tyrone reached Dublin with the viceregal party, and on the 5th, Sir Henry Danvers arrived from England with official tidings of the great change. King James was at once proclaimed, and the people shouted for joy; but Tyrone, on whom all eyes were fixed, shed abundant tears, and he was fain to hint at grief for the loss of the mistress whom he had been fighting for the last ten years. 'There needed,' says the observant secretary, 'no Oedipus to find out the true cause of his tears; for, no doubt the most humble submission he made to the Queen he had so highly and proudly offended, much eclipsed the vain glory his actions might have carried if he had held out till her death; besides that by his coming in, as it were, between two reigns, he lost a fair advantage, for (by England's estate for the present unsettled) to have subsisted longer in rebellion (if he had any such end) or at least an ample occasion of fastening great merit on the new King, if at first and of free will he had submitted to his mercy.'[421]

[Sidenote: The conquest of Ireland Queen Elizabeth's work.]

During the last four years and a half of the Queen's reign, it was computed that the Irish war had cost her about 1,200,000_l._, and this was an enormous demand upon the slender revenue of those days. The drain upon the life-blood of England was also terrible. Droves of recruits were forced annually into the ranks, to perish among the bogs and woods, while the most distinguished officers did not escape. The three Norrises, Clifford, Burgh, Bagenal, and Bingham died in Ireland, while Essex and Spenser were indirectly victims of the war there. The price was high, but it secured the conquest of Ireland. Lawyers in the next reign might ascribe the glory to James; but the hard work was all done ready to his hand, and it would not have been done at all had it been left to him. It was by Elizabeth that the power of the chiefs was broken, and until that was done neither peaceable circuits nor commercial colonies were possible in Ireland. The method pursued was cruel, but the desired end was attained. It is easy to find fault; but none who love the greatness of England will withhold their admiration from the lonely woman who repelled all attacks upon her realm, who broke the power of Spain, and who, though surrounded by conspirators and assassins, believed that she had a mission to accomplish, and in that faith held her proud neck unbent to the last.

FOOTNOTES:

[398] Cecil to Mountjoy, Aug. 7 in Moryson; to Carew of Feb. 9, 1602, and throughout that year in Maclean; Chamberlain's Letters, June 27, 1602.

[399] Moryson, May 30 to July 19, on which day Mountjoy reached Monaghan; Chichester to Cecil, June 20 and 2_

[400] Mountjoy to Cecil, June 5, 1602, and Jan. 8, 1603; Cecil to Windebank, June 15, 1602. Windebank read the latter to the Queen.

[401] Journal among R.O. MSS. Ireland, April 23 to May 7; Pacata Hibernia, book ii. chaps. ii. and iii.

[402] Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chaps. iii. and iv.

[403] Journal, May 13 to June 1; Carew to Cecil, Aug. 6, 1601, May 29, 1602; Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. v.; Carew to Mountjoy, June 1 1602, in Carew.

[404] Journal June 1-17; Carew to the Privy Council, Jan. 22, 1603; Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chaps. vi. vii. and viii.

[405] Journal, June 12.

[406] Journal, June 17-18.

[407] Examination of Dominic Collins, July 9, 1602; Pacata Hibernia book iii. chap. ix.; Four Masters, 1602. There is a life of O'Colan in Hibernia Ignatiana, pp. 89-102.

[408] Four Masters, 1602; O'Donnell to O'Connor Kerry, May 24, in Carew; List of Irish refugees in Pacata Hibernia, book ii. chap. xxii. The extreme claim of the O'Donnells included not only Tyrconnell, but Tyrone, Fermanagh, and all Connaught; see Docwra's Narration.

[409] For James Blake's designs see Carew to Mountjoy, May 28 and Oct. 9, in Carew and Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. xv. The story of John Anias may be read in the Life of Florence MacCarthy, Maclean's Letters of Cecil to Carew, and in Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. vii. For Tyrconnell's case see Wotton to James I., April 24, 1608, in Russell and Prendergast's Calendar, and his subsequent letters in the same volume.

[410] Lambert to Mountjoy, June 18, 1602; Four Masters.

[411] Docwra's Narration, 1602 till April 20. Docwra to the Privy Council, March 11.

[412] Docwra's Narration, June to September; Tyrone to O'Connor Sligo in Moryson, book iii. chap. ii.; Mountjoy to Lambert, Sept. 12; Lord Dunkellin and Sir A. Savage to Mountjoy, Aug. 7; Mountjoy to Cecil, Oct. 12.

[413] Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chaps. xii. and xiv.; Cecil to Carew, Oct. and Nov. 4; Privy Council to Carew, Dec. 16--all in Carew.

[414] O'Sullivan Bere, Hist. Cath. tom. iii. lib. vii. chaps. viii. to xii. The Four Masters describe this wonderful march to Aughrim, and are perhaps preferable as far as they go. See also Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. xvii. The itinerary is as follows, as near as I can make it out:--1. (Jan. 4) Ballyvourney; 2. Pobble O'Keefe (near Millstreet); 3. Ardpatrick (in Limerick); 4. Solloghead (near Limerick Junction); 5 and 6. Ballinakill (in Tipperary); 7. Latteragh (eight miles south of Nenagh); 8. Loughkeen; 9 and 10. Portland; 11. Aughrim (in Galway); 12. Ballinlough (in Roscommon); 13 and 14. Woods near Boyle; 15. Knockvicar; 16. Leitrim. The dates are made clear by Carew's letter to the Privy Council, Jan. 22, 1603, in Carew.

[415] Tyrone to Mountjoy, Dec. 12/22, 1602, and March 19/29, 1603; Moryson, book iii. chap. i.; Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. xx.; Carew to the Privy Council, Jan. 22, in Carew, and Cecil's letter to Carew, passim; O'Connor Sligo to Cecil, March 1, 1603.

[416] Docwra's Narration, December; Bodley's visit to Lecale in vol. ii. of Ulster Arch. Journal; Capt. Thomas Phillips to Cecil, July 27, 1602; Mayor and Sheriffs of Dublin to Cecil, Jan. 17, 1603; Mountjoy to Cecil, Jan. 8 and 20; Docwra to the Privy Council, Feb. 23.

[417] Moryson, part iii. book iii. chaps. i. and v.; O'Sullivan, tom. iii. lib. viii. cap. 6; Four Masters, 1603. In describing his visit to Lecale at the beginning of 1603, Bodley casually remarks that the Irish soldiers ate grass--vescuntur gramine. Moryson says the wild Irish 'willingly eat the herb shamrock, being of a sharp taste, which as they run and are chased to and fro, they snatch like beasts out of the ditches.' This passage is conclusive proof that the wood-sorrel was called shamrock in the sixteenth century; see above, note to chap. xxxix. Modern claimants to the title of shamrock are the white clover, the common trefoil (medicago lupulina), and the bog-bean (menyanthes trifoliata); but none of these are edible by men.

[418] Queen Elizabeth to King James VI., June or July, 1585, in Bruce's Letters of those two sovereigns, also Dec. 2, Feb. 3, 1601-2, and 'after July,' 1602; James VI. to Tyrone, Aug. 10, 1597, in Lansdowne MSS.; Tyrone to James VI., April 10, 1600, in Scotch Calendar; and the letters printed in Ulster Arch. Journal, vol. v. pp. 205-8.

[419] Mountjoy to Cecil, Jan. 20, 1603; to Vice-Treasurer Carey, Jan. 25; Lord Deputy and Council to the Privy Council, Feb. 26 (draft in Carew).

[420] Cecil to Mountjoy, Feb. 18, 1603, in Carew; Moryson, book iii. chap. ii.

[421] Moryson, book iii. chap. ii.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

LIII. ELIZABETHAN IRELAND

[Sidenote: Natural features of Ireland.]

The physical features of a country must always have great influence on its history. Plains naturally submit to strong and centralised government, while mountains tend to isolation and to the development of local liberties. Where races have warred for the possession of a country, the weaker has been often driven into some mountainous corner, which the conquerors have been contented to bridle by castles or fortified towns. But where mountains or other natural strongholds are scattered over the face of the land, the conditions of conquest are different. It has been noted that while no country is more easily overrun than Spain, none is more difficult to occupy permanently. And this was the case of Ireland. As long as the Anglo-Norman settlement retained its vigour, the natives were driven into the less fertile districts, while fortresses protected the good land. But as the policy of the Plantagenet kings gradually weakened the colony, the castles were deserted and the native race resumed possession of the soil. Feudal law sought the protection of walled towns, which were of Danish or Anglo-Norman origin; and those nobles who retained their power did so only upon condition of more or less perfectly assimilating themselves to Irish chiefs. When the Tudor reconquest began, it was seen that two courses were open to the Crown. Englishmen were encouraged to settle, and a system of garrisons was gradually established. Sometimes the prevailing idea was to substitute English for Irish proprietors; at other times it was thought better to conciliate the native chiefs, while taking such military precautions as might prevent them from preying upon the settlers. During the whole of the sixteenth century statesmen did what they could to persuade the Irish chiefs to hold of the Crown, and thus to become liable to forfeiture.

[Sidenote: Want of communications.]

[Sidenote: Irish strongholds.]

Ireland has long been covered with a network of good roads, but a glance at any tolerable map will show how difficult it was to occupy before the roads were made. In clear weather mountains are always visible, both to the crew of a circumnavigating ship and to the sportsman who seeks snipe or waterfowl in the central bogs. It is said that when the ordnance survey was made, fires lit upon the Galties in Tipperary were answered by fires on a mountain in Cavan; and the great range of Slieve Bloom must be passed between those two points. Nor was it with mountains only that Elizabethan generals had to deal. Lord Grey is said to have introduced the first coach, but Ireland had no tolerable roads for long after his time. There were a few stone causeways, but great part of the island was covered with natural woods, and these could be crossed only by passes which the chiefs periodically agreed to cut both for troops and for peaceful travellers. When war broke out--and the doors of Janus were seldom shut for long--these rudimentary roads were easily closed. A few trees were felled, so as to prevent horse from passing at all. The branches of others were partially cut and skilfully interlaced, so that even infantry, while they struggled through the barrier, were exposed to the fire of an unseen enemy. Bridges were but few, and holes dug in the beds of rivers made the fords impassable, or at least very dangerous. When the Irish were hard pressed, they could retire to dry spots surrounded by bogs, and nearly every little lake contained a crannoge, where some oats had been stored, and which might be held until the assailants had exhausted their provisions. The little active cattle accompanied their light-footed masters, while the soldiers, whose clothes were seldom dry, perished miserably of dysentery and marsh-fever. In the absence of field artillery, very rude earthworks might be long held, and in any case they could be easily abandoned, while Tyrone made it a point of not defending castles, which experience had shown to be untenable against cannon. Garrisons, and garrisons only, could starve out the guerillas, and it was by their multiplication and maintenance that Mountjoy was enabled to accomplish Elizabeth's lifelong task.

[Sidenote: Natural defences. Ulster.]

[Sidenote: Connaught.]

[Sidenote: Leinster.]

[Sidenote: Munster.]

Ulster is, on the whole, very hilly, and it is easy to see how strong it must have been when the woods were still uncut, when there were practically no roads, and when drainage had not yet been thought of. The most inaccessible forest was that of Glenconkein, about Draperstown in Londonderry; but the whole province was a stronghold, and a mere enumeration of woods and bogs would be useless. Connaught also is a land of mountains and bogs, and was once a land of woods. It was about the Curlews that the hardest fighting took place, and the northern part of Leitrim was very difficult to attack. In Leinster Glenmalure was famous for a great disaster to the English arms, and was the chief stronghold of Feagh MacHugh O'Byrne. The oak wood of Shillelagh in Wicklow was a noted fastness, and, from having given its name to a rustic weapon, it is of all the best remembered. Both King's and Queen's Counties were full of woods and lurking places, the great bog called the Togher, near Maryborough, being one of the most important. The Slievemargy range between Monasterevan and Carlow was the frequent resort of Rory Oge O'More and of his son Owen MacRory, and the O'Byrnes were not very far off. Wexford had many bogs and woods; but the Kavanaghs and other turbulent clans were scarcely formidable towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, except during the general collapse of authority which followed the disaster of 1598. In Munster what was generally called the 'great wood' lay to the north of Mallow. Glengariffe was another great Cork stronghold, and Limerick was full of forests. In Kerry, besides Glanageenty, where Desmond was killed, there was Glenflesk near Killarney, and indeed the whole county is evidently suited for guerilla warfare. Sir Nicholas Browne reported, in 1597, that Iraghticonnor, the country of O'Connor Kerry, was wedged in between his deadly enemies, Lord Fitzmaurice and the Knight of Glin: 'his country is but small, and he is not able to make above seven score men, but by reason of his woods and bogs he was wont to hold his own in spite of them both.' But of all the Munster strongholds none was so famous as the glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. 'Who knows not Arlo-hill?' says Spenser, applying the name of the vale to the lofty peak of Galtymore which overshadows it. The poet had much to tell of a mythical golden age in those wilds, but a curse had come upon them, and in his time, he says:

'those woods, and all that goodly chase, Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound; Which too, too true that land's indwellers since have found.'

Inseparably connected as it is with his memory, that glen of Aherlow caused Spenser's ruin; for from it Owen MacRory and Tyrrell issued forth to destroy the undertakers and all their works.

[Sidenote: Field sports.]

[Sidenote: Hawks.]

[Sidenote: Hounds.]

[Sidenote: Horses.]

[Sidenote: Game.]

Fighting in Ireland was the serious business of life, but soldiers, officials, and settlers found some time for amusement also. Irish hawks, hounds, and horses were all thought worthy to be sent as presents to great men in England; and hawks were often made the subject of treaties with Irish chiefs. Falconry no doubt was practised in Ireland, but we hear much more of hunting, and the game was plentiful. Irish wolf-hounds were famous, and were considered handsome presents; the Great Mogul, Jehangir, being glad to accept some in 1615. Perrott sent a brace, one black and the other white, to Walsingham. 'This great white dog,' said Sir S. Bagenal when sending one to Cecil, 'is the most furious beast that ever I saw.' These hounds were of great size, but doctors differ as to their points, and it is not even certain whether they had rough or smooth coats. A modern club, which has tried to restore the breed, lays down that the Irish wolf-hound should be 'not quite so heavy or massive as the Great Dane, but more so than the deer-hound, which in general type he should otherwise resemble.' Red deer abounded all over the country; and martens, now almost extinct, were so plentiful that the Earl of Ossory, in Henry VIII.'s time, kept a pack of hounds for them alone. As many as twelve dozen marten-skins could sometimes be sent as a present, and even Strafford hoped to get enough to line a gown for Archbishop Laud. The ambling nags called hobbies were also much valued in England. Wolves were very common, and neither they nor the hounds which pursued them died out until the eighteenth century. Wild fowl, of course, abounded, and Moryson says he had seen sixty pheasants served at one feast; but partridges were scarce. Magpies seem to have been introduced late in the seventeenth century.[422]

[Sidenote: Agriculture.]

[Sidenote: Cattle.]

About the towns, and in the parts settled by Englishmen, tillage was carried on as in England. Many of the Irish chiefs also encouraged corn-growing, and in time of war the soldiers were much occupied in destroying these crops. No doubt the husbandry was rude, as it long continued to be, and the barbarous custom of ploughing by the tail was restrained by order in Council in 1606, but was still practised in remote places as late as Charles II.'s reign, when it was prohibited by Act of Parliament. The custom of burning oats from the straw, and so making cakes without threshing, was equally long-lived and had also to be restrained by authority. But the chief wealth of the Irish was in their cattle, and the following statement of Moryson is sustained by innumerable letters:--

'Ireland, after much blood spilt in the civil wars, became less populous, and as well great lords of countries as other inferior gentlemen laboured more to get new possessions for inheritance than by husbandry and peopling of their old lands to increase their revenues, so as I then observed much grass (with which the island so much abounds) to have perished without use, and either to have rotted, or in the next spring-time to be burned, lest it should hinder the coming of new grass. This plenty of grass makes the Irish have infinite multitudes of cattle, and in the late rebellion (Tyrone's) the very vagabond rebels had great multitude of cows, which they still (like the Nomades) drove with them, whithersoever themselves were driven, and fought for them as for their altars and families. By this abundance of cattle the Irish have a frequent, though somewhat poor, traffic for their hides, the cattle being in general very small, and only the men and the greyhounds of great stature. Neither can the cattle possibly be great, since they eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard, without so much as a lock of hay, whereof they make little for sluggishness, and that little they altogether keep for their horses. And they are thus brought in by night for fear of thieves, the Irish using almost no other kind of theft, or else for fear of wolves, the destruction whereof being much neglected by the inhabitants, oppressed by greater mischiefs, they are so much grown in numbers, as sometimes in winter nights they will come to prey in villages and the suburbs of cities.... The wild Irish feed mostly on whitemeats, and esteem for a great dainty sour curds, vulgarly called by them bonnyclabber. And for this cause they watchfully keep their cows, and fight for them as for religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no milk. Yet will they upon hunger in time of war open a vein of the cow, and drink the blood, but in no case kill or much weaken it.'

Sir Nicholas White has recorded that the first red cattle were brought to Dingle from Cornwall, and it is probably from the cross between these red Devon or Cornish beasts and the black cattle of the country that the famous Kerry breed is descended. The butter commonly made in Ireland in the sixteenth century is described as very bad.[423]

[Sidenote: Exports. Fish.]

Guicciardini says the Irish exported hides, fur, and coarse linens and woollens to Antwerp. The consumption of wine was great; and for this the chief article sent in exchange was fish. In 1553 Philip II. agreed to pay 1,000_l._ a year for twenty-one years to gain for his subjects the right to fish on the Irish coast. Fishermen of all nations resorted to Berehaven, paying O'Sullivan Bere for leave. In the North O'Donnell was called the King of Fish, and he owned the salmon-leap at Ballyshannon. A Norse writer, older than the Tudor period, had already noted that Lough Erne contained salmon enough to feed all the people in Ireland. The fisheries of the Bann and Foyle were also of great importance, and Spenser says that both the Suir and the Barrow were full of salmon. As to sea fish, we hear more of foreign than of native vessels. The few port towns certainly produced good sailors, and among native clans the O'Driscolls, O'Flaherties, and O'Malleys loved the sea. About the famous sea-Amazon, Grace O'Malley, many legends have been preserved; but of her, and of all the other Celtic rovers, it may be said that they were rather pirates than peaceful traders or fishermen.[424]

[Sidenote: Manufactures.]

[Sidenote: Woollens.]

The only Irish manufacture of much importance was that of woollens, though frequent attempts were made to introduce others. Linen was made to a limited extent, and furnished the material for the enormous shirts, 'thirty or forty ells in a shirt, all gathered and wrinkled and washed in saffron, because they never put them off till they were worn out,' which fashion died out with the sixteenth century; but flax continued to be grown and yarn exported chiefly from Ulster, and it was upon this foundation that Strafford built. Irish frieze and other coarse woollens had been famous in the middle ages. Drugget is said by French antiquaries to have been so called from Drogheda. In the sixteenth century Ireland had come to be specially famous for a kind of rug, of which Moryson says the best were made at Waterford. They were thought worthy of kings' houses, and Vice-Chamberlain Heneage asked Sir George Carew to 'provide half-a-dozen of the finest and lightest Irish rugs to lay upon beds, that can be gotten.' The little sheep of the country were numerous, but it is agreed that the wool was coarse. The making of the rugs was a craft in itself, and was probably known to few. Petty, who wrote under Charles II., remarks that the rebellion had injured the cloth trade, and that making the 'excellent, thick, spungy, warm coverlets' was a lost art. In Elizabeth's time restraints were placed on the export of wool, with a view to encourage manufactures, but the prohibition was never really effective.[425]

[Sidenote: Drinking.]

[Sidenote: Wine.]

[Sidenote: Whisky.]

[Sidenote: Ale and beer.]

Hard drinking was but too common, and the materials were abundant. The trade in claret had gone on from the time when Gascony belonged to the kings of England. But sherry and other strong vintages of the Peninsula were even more popular. 'When they come to any market town,' says Moryson, 'to sell a cow or a horse, they never return home till they have drunk the price in Spanish wine (which they call the King of Spain's daughter) or in Irish usquebagh, and till they have outslept two or three days' drunkenness. And not only the common sort, but even the lords and their wives, the more they want this drink at home, the more they swallow it when they come to it, till they be as drunk as beggars.' Usquebagh, that is whisky, was made in many places in the primitive fashion followed by illicit distillers in our own time. It was generally considered more wholesome than any spirit produced in England, and the damp climate was made the excuse for excessive indulgence. Raisins and fennel-seeds were used to flavour it. An Act of Parliament passed in 1556 recites that 'aqua vitæ, a drink nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen; and thereby much corn, grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted;' and its manufacture was prohibited except with the Lord-Deputy's licence. A fine of 4_l._ and imprisonment during pleasure were the prescribed penalties for each offence; but peers, landowners worth 10_l._ a year, and freemen of cities and boroughs were allowed to make enough for their own use; and the Act was probably a dead letter. Bodley, who wrote in 1603, tells us that it was usual for lay and cleric, churl and noble, in short 'men and women of every rank, to pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night; and that not for hilarity only (which would be praiseworthy), but for constant drunkenness, which is detestable. Beer made of malt and hops was not yet brewed in Ireland, and what the soldiers consumed was imported. But strong ale was produced in the country and was probably preferred by the people, for hops were not in general use even in 1690. Early in James I.'s reign nothing struck an Englishman more than the number of alehouses in Dublin. 'I am now,' says one, 'to speak of a certain kind of commodity that outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the selling of ale in Dublin: a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every house in the town every day in the week, at every hour in the day, and in every minute in the hour. There is no merchandize so vendible, it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole profit of the town stands upon ale-houses and selling of ale.'[426]

[Sidenote: Description of the people.]

[Sidenote: Dymmok.]

[Sidenote: Moryson.]

[Sidenote: Trollope.]

'The people,' says Dymmok, 'are of nature very glorious, frank, ireful, good horsemen, able to endure great pains, delighted in war, great hospitality, of religion for the most part Papists, great gluttons, and of a sensual and vicious life, deep dissemblers, secret in displeasure, of a cruel revenging mind and irreconcilable. Of wit they are quick and capable, kind-hearted where they take, and of exceeding love towards their foster brethren. Of complexion they are clear and well-favoured, both men and women, tall and corpulent bodies, and of themselves careless and bestial.' This is very much the view taken by English travellers generally, and in many points they are confirmed by the Spaniard Cuellar. Mountjoy complains of the want of clean linen, and his secretary has much to say on that subject. 'Many of the English-Irish,' he tells us, 'have by little and little been infected with the Irish filthiness, and that in the very cities, excepting Dublin, and some of the better sort in Waterford, where the English continually lodging in their houses, they more retain the English diet.... In cities passengers may have feather-beds soft and good, but most commonly lousy, especially in the high ways; whether that come by their being forced to lodge common soldiers or from the nasty filthiness of the nation in general. For even in the best city, as at Cork, I have observed that my own and other Englishmen's chambers hired of the citizens, were scarce swept once in the week, and the dust laid in a corner was perhaps cast out once in a month or two. I did never see any public inns with signs hanged out among the English or English-Irish; but the officers of cities and villages appoint lodgings to the passengers, and perhaps in each city they shall find one or two houses where they will dress meat, and these be commonly houses of Englishmen, seldom of the Irish; so as these houses having no sign hung out, a passenger cannot challenge right to be entertained in them, but must have it of courtesy and by entreaty.... Some of our carriage horses falling into wild Irish hands, when they found soap or starch carried for the use of our laundresses, they did eat them greedily, and when they stuck in their teeth, cursed bitterly the gluttony of us English churls, for so they term us.' And Andrew Trollope, an English lawyer, who wrote with more force than politeness, says the Irish, except in the walled towns, were almost savages, and that 'at night Mr., or Mrs., or dame, men-servants, maid-servants--women-servants I should have said, for I think there be no maids--guests, strangers, and all, lie in one little room not so good or handsome as many a hogscote in England, and when they rise in the morning they shake their ears and go their ways, without any serving of God or other making of them a-ready.' On arriving in Dublin, he says, 'I lodged in a lawyer's house, a man of my own profession, where I found my entertainment better than my welcome, as all Englishmen shall do.'[427]

[Sidenote: Tyrone's soldiers.]

[Sidenote: How they were armed.]

[Sidenote: Diet and pay.]

The gallowglasses, with their axes, and the kerne, with their darts, became gradually obsolete during the Elizabethan period, pikemen taking the place of the former and musketeers of the latter. Tyrone taught his men the use of firearms, and they became better shots than the English. The difficulty of recruiting in England was great, and deserters were habitually replaced by Irishmen, who often passed over to their countrymen, arms and all. When Tyrone was loyal he was allowed a certain number of men in the Queen's pay, and these he frequently changed, so as to increase the number of trained soldiers about him; thus anticipating on a small scale the famous expedient of Scharnhorst. From Spain there was a constant supply of arms, and the merchants in corporate towns made no difficulty about selling contraband of war to rebels with whom they had religious sympathies. Deserters sold their matchlocks, and they were resold to the Irish. Even officers were accused of selling powder. Nor were English ports closed to such good customers. 'I dare not trust any Chester man,' said the mayor of that town, and Liverpool turned an honest penny in the same way. Powder could not be made in Ulster, for there was no sulphur, but it was imported even from Dantzig. There was also a constant supply of ammunition from Scotland, and Fenton proposed that the Queen should employ factors to buy up all the powder at Glasgow and Ayr, which could only have made the trade more lucrative. Tyrone fed his men on oatmeal and butter, which was exacted, according to certain rules, from the people on whom they were billeted. The pay was at the rate of 24_s._ a quarter, and when money was scarce the deficiency was made up in milk. If a prisoner was ransomed, his captor had one-third of the amount and the rest went to the chief. Mountjoy believed that Tyrone raised a revenue of more than 80,000_l._ a year in Ulster.[428]

[Sidenote: Dress.]

[Sidenote: The Irish mantle.]

'In Ireland,' says Moryson, who spoke from actual observation, 'the English and the English-Irish are attired after the English manner, for the most part, yet not with such pride and inconstancy, perhaps for want of means: yet the English-Irish, forgetting their own country, are somewhat infected with the Irish rudeness, and with them are delighted in simple light colours, as red and yellow. And in like sort the degenerated citizens are somewhat infected with the Irish filthiness, as well in lousy beds, foul sheets, and all linen, as in many other particulars; but as well in diet and apparell, the citizens of Dublin most of all other, and the citizens of Waterford and Galway in some good measure, retain the English cleanliness. Touching the meer or wild Irish, it may truly be said of them, which of old was spoken of the Germans, that they wander slovenly and naked, and lodge in the same house (if it may be called a house) with their beasts. Among them the gentlemen or lords of countries wear close breeches and stockings of the same piece of cloth, of red or such light colour, and a loose coat, and a cloak or three-cornered mantle, commonly of coarse, light stuff made at home, and their linen is coarse and slovenly. I say slovenly, because they seldom put off a shirt till it be worn; and these shirts, in our memory before the last rebellion, were made of some twenty or thirty ells folded in wrinkles and coloured with saffron to avoid lousiness, incident to the wearing of foul linen.... Their wives living among the English are attired in a sluttish gown, to be fastened at the breast with a lace, and in a more sluttish mantle and more sluttish linen; and their heads be covered after the Turkish manner with many ells of linen: only the Turkish heads or turbans are round in the top, but the attire of the Irish women's heads is more flat in the top and broader on the sides, not much unlike a cheese-mot, if it had a hole to put in the head.' Moryson also mentions the loose mantles worn by both men and women, often as an excuse for wearing nothing else, which Spenser, who is very eloquent on the subject, calls 'a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief.' The shock-heads of curled hair called glibbs also excited the poet's wrath, 'being as fit masks as a mantle is for a thief. For whensoever he hath run himself into that peril of law, that he will not be known, he either cutteth of his glibb quite, by which he becometh nothing like himself, or putteth it so low down over his eyes that it is very hard to discern his thievish countenance.' In a contemporary drawing of Tirlogh Luineach's submission to Sidney all his followers are represented with glibbs, and it became a matter of treaty with Tyrone that he should allow none of his people to wear them.[429]

[Sidenote: Progress of civilisation. Richard, Earl of Clanricarde.]

As the tribal age passed away, Irish and Anglo-Irish chiefs became more civilised. Among the native nobility the house of Clanricarde had been remarkable for lawlessness; but Earl Richard, who succeeded in 1601, not only distinguished himself at Kinsale but also made a great figure at court. 'The affairs of Ireland,' said the French ambassador, 'prosper, so that not a single rebel keeps the field. I believe that this prosperous condition of things proceeds from the favour which that Irish Earl enjoys here. On the other hand, he is very cold by nature and in his love, and has neither understanding nor conduct to lift himself high, although there is no lack of counsel and support to him. Flatterers of the court, to curry favour, say that he resembles Essex; on the other hand the Queen declares, with equal dissimulation, that she cannot love him, inasmuch as he recalls her sorrow for the Earl; and this contest occupies the entire court.' Clanricarde, who is described by another contemporary as 'a goodly, personable gentleman, something resembling the late Earl of Essex,' spent lavishly but paid honestly. The gossips at first coupled his name with that of Lady Strange, but in the autumn of 1602 he married Frances Walsingham, widow of the unfortunate favourite whom he was thought to resemble, and of Sir Philip Sidney. In 1604 Sir John Davies saw the Earl and Countess living together at Athlone in most honourable fashion, and reported that she was very well contented, and every way as well served as ever he saw her in England.[430]

[Sidenote: Bards and musicians.]

[Sidenote: Gamblers.]

Spenser, and every other Englishman, condemned the Irish bards as stirrers of sedition and preservers of barbarism. They were often very highly paid, and were feared as well as admired, for they knew how to satirise their hosts where the cheer was not abundant or to their liking. The bagpipe was commonly used in the field, and harps became scarce towards the close of the sixteenth century, so that in 1588 Maguire said he hardly knew of a good one in his country. It sometimes formed part of the furniture of a gentleman's house, the portion of a bride in Tipperary being sworn to as 'four score cows, four-and-twenty mares, five horses, and a pair of playing tables (backgammon probably), and a harp, besides household stuff.' Professional card-players, called carrows, abounded, and Campion says they would play away their clothes, and then, wrapping themselves in straw, would stake their glibbs, or bits of their flesh, against any chance-comer's money. Captain Bodley tells how certain Irish gentlemen came masquerading to the officers' quarters at Downpatrick, asking to be allowed to play. These prudent gamblers brought ten pounds of the new debased currency wrapped up in a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and their hosts sent them empty away at two o'clock in the morning. Sometimes higher stakes were played for than a few pounds of copper, and there is a tradition that Kilbritain Castle was lost by Lord Courcey to MacCarthy Reagh, who only risked a white weasel or ferret.[431]

[Sidenote: Introduction of tobacco.]

Tobacco was still too dear to be generally used in Ireland, but English officers could enjoy this consolation. We have seen that one was killed in the retreat from the Blackwater while indulging in a pipe by the roadside. Carew was a smoker, and both Raleigh and Cecil were among those who kept him supplied with tobacco. Captain Bodley, to whom we owe so many interesting details, is most eloquent on this subject, and will not allow that the enemies of tobacco have any reason on their side. 'Almost all,' he says, 'have but one argument, that would make a dog laugh and a horse burst his halter, saying that neither our sires or grandsires took tobacco, yet lived I know not how long. Indeed they lived till they died without tobacco, but who knows whether they would not have lived longer had they used it. And if a smoker now dies of any disease, who knows if he might not have died sooner had he abstained from it.'[432]

[Sidenote: Garrison life.]

Irish warfare was full of misery, but garrison life had its pleasures, such as they were. Captain Bodley has left an account of a week's visit paid in January 1603 to Sir Richard Moryson, the historian's brother, who was in command at Downpatrick. At Newry they found only lean beef, scarcely any mutton, very bad wine, and no bread; biscuit being used even in the governor's house. Bodley, with Captains Caulfield and Jephson, halted at Magennis's house at Castle Wellan, which he calls an island. They were entertained by Lady Sara Magennis, Tyrone's daughter, 'a very beautiful woman, and the three hours' halt seemed to pass in one minute. We drank ale and whisky with our hostess, and, having all kissed her in turn, took the road again.' At Downpatrick the visitors were well treated, and their horses attended to, but they all occupied one bed-room. They washed before dinner, all in the same silver basin, and seemingly had but one towel, and this was done in the dining-room. Healths were drunk from a glass goblet of claret nearly a foot in circumference, which went from hand to hand, and there was a good deal of conviviality, whisky flowing freely as well as claret. The dishes mentioned are brawn, stuffed geese, venison pasties, and game-pies, mince-pies, and tarts--that is Bodley's word--made of beef, mutton, and veal. Besides drinking there was smoking, dicing, and a kind of horseplay which has been called cock-fighting in modern times. The Irish gentlemen who came in to gamble, and lost their money, wore long shirts decked with ivy-leaves, dog-skin masks, and paper noses, and tall paper caps with ivy wreaths. In the morning, ale or beer, with spices or toast, was taken 'to allay thirst, to steady the head, and to cool the liver,' and pipes were smoked before breakfast. The life was rough enough, but Bodley wrote in Latin, and shows a knowledge of Latin authors, and he and his friends conversed learnedly about Roman history.[433]

[Sidenote: Spenser and his friends.]

[Sidenote: How Ireland affected Spenser's poetry.]

Constant warfare and the absence of a University hindered the growth of a literary class in Ireland. Native chiefs were content to patronise bards who sang their achievements, and annalists who recorded their genealogies. But the English language was just attaining its full stature, and men could not but feel a pleasure in writing it sometimes. Of letters and treatises describing the state of Ireland there is no lack, and many of them show considerable literary force. But the cultivation of letters for their own sake was scarcely to be looked for. Sir Geoffrey Fenton, who had translated many books from the French, including the French version of Guicciardini, appears to have given up such work after he became Secretary for Ireland. Nathaniel Baxter, a long-forgotten poet, seems to have produced something while teaching a school at Youghal. Ludovic Bryskett, born in Italy, or of an Italian mother, translated Italian books directly, and not through the French. Bryskett was an official, like most of the English then in Ireland, and at his house near Dublin we find the first germ of literary society. It was here that the 'Fairy Queen' was promised by Spenser himself to a company consisting of Archbishop Long, and of several lawyers and soldiers, among which Sir Thomas Norris was perhaps the most distinguished. Raleigh, who visited Spenser at Kilcolman in 1589, saw the early part of the poem before it appeared, and he encouraged the poet. At court Spenser was befriended both by Raleigh and Sidney, and the poet seems to have thought that such kindness as he did receive from the Queen was owing to his intimacy with the latter, whose influence long outlived him. But Spenser was not a successful suitor, and he has left a bitter diatribe against the courtier's profession. He learned to look upon Ireland as his home, and to praise the country's natural beauties, while sighing for the peace and refinement of England. No doubt the woods and glens, with their wolves and robbers, furnished the poet with much of his imagery, if they did not suggest his great work; but it must be remembered that he was an undertaker and official as well as a writer. The lady whom he made so famous by his pen, and whom he married at Cork, was Elizabeth Boyle, Richard Boyle's cousin, and so connected with Secretary Fenton. Raleigh and the rest of his friends were engaged in forming estates, and his sympathies were necessarily with the settlers and not with the natives. He tries to raise the Irish rivers to a level with those of England:

Sith no less famous than the rest they be, And join in neighbourhood of kingdom near, Why should they not likewise in love agree?

But he can never forget that the woods upon their banks were haunted by men who wished him only death and destruction. He felt the weakness of his own position, and so was ready to praise Arthegal, or any other, whose severity might make the land reasonably safe. If the readers of Spenser's verses, and still more of his treatises, find fault with his truculence, they should forget that he was a poet, and remember that he was trying to improve forfeited lands.[434]

FOOTNOTES:

[422] There is a valuable paper on hawks and hounds in Ireland by Mr. J. P. Prendergast in vol. ii. of the Irish Arch. Journal, p. 144. Perrott to Walsingham, Oct. 25, 1585; Sir S. Bagenal to Cecil, MS. Hatfield, Nov. 1, 1602. In the second edition (1888) of Dalziel's British Dogs there is a very full dissertation on the Irish wolf-hound. In Payne's Brief Description of Ireland, 1590, we read that a red-deer skinned could be had for 2_s._ 6_d._, twelve quails for 3_d._, twelve woodcocks for 4_d._, and all other fowl rateably. The abundance of corncrakes is mentioned by both Moryson and Payne, and the latter says grouse (heathcock) were plentiful. Sixteen landrails (or corncrakes) were shot at Colebrooke in Fermanagh on one September day in 1884.

[423] Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, part iii. book iii. chap. v. Sir N. White to Burghley, July 22, 1580. For ploughing by the tail, &c. see Dineley's Tour, p. 162. The Scotch Highlanders bled their cattle even to the 19th century, see the Duke of Argyle's Scotland as it was and as it is, vol. ii. p. 123. Cæsar says of the Britons: 'pecorum magnus numerus.... Interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt.' (B.G. lib. v. cap. 12-14.) Payne says a fat sheep could be had in 1590 for 2_s._ 6_d._ and a fat beef for 13_s._ 4_d._ 'Filthy butter,' says Moryson; 'hairy butter too loathsome to describe,' says Andrew Trollope.

[424] Several notices are collected in Ulster Journal of Archæology, iii. 186, 187. See Grose's Antiquarian Repository, iv. 627. The lax-weir at Limerick preserves the Norse name for salmon.

[425] Moryson, III. iii. 5; Dymmok's Treatise of Ireland, about 1600; Petty's Political Anatomy, 1672; Sir T. Heneage to Carew, Dec. 22, 1590, in Carew. On July 19, 1602, the mayor of Waterford sent Cecil 'a pair of bed coverings and two rendells of aqua-vitæ.'--MS. Hatfield.

[426] Irish Statutes, 3 and 4 Ph. and Mary, cap. 7; Moryson, III. iii. 5; Dymmok; Bodley's Descriptio itineris in Lecaliam, ann. 1602; Barnaby Riche's Treatise delivered to Lord Salisbury 1610. After the journey described further on, Captain Bodley and his friends warmed themselves with sherry 'with burnt sugar, nutmeg, and ginger.'

[427] Dymmok and Moryson, ut sup.; Andrew Trollope to Walsingham (from Dublin), Sept. 12, 1581. Trollope had then been over two months in Ireland. There are some curious details in the Travels of Nicander Nucius, a Corfiote, who visited England in Henry VIII.'s time, printed (Greek text and translation) by the Camden Society.

[428] Fenton to Burghley, Aug. 26, 1595; Mayor of Chester's letter, June 18, 1597; Sir John Dowdall to Burghley, March 9, 1596, and to Cecil, Jan. 2, 1600; Proclamation by Tyrone, Feb. 2, 1601. The Irish text of the latter, with a contemporary translation, is printed from the Lambeth MSS. in Ulster Arch. Journal, vol. vi. p. 60. Mountjoy to Cecil, Aug. 10, 1602, printed by Moryson.

[429] Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, part iii. book iv. chap. ii.; Spenser's State of Ireland; Derrick's Image of Ireland, where the description of the more uncivilised natives closely resembles those of Moryson and Spenser. Articles with Tyrone, June 17, 1590, in Carew. A paper dated 1599 by Carew (No. 319) proposes that every soldier should have an Irish mantle, 'which costeth but 5_s._, to be his bed in the night and a great comfort to him in sickness and health; for being never so wet, it will with a little shaking and wringing be presently dry.' Among the properties for a play on the state of Ireland by John Heywood, performed before Edward VI. were 'three yards of grey kersey for an Irishman's coat with great and long plyghts, four yards of orange-coloured frisado at 4_s._ a yard, &c.'--Kempe's Loseley MSS.

[430] Von Raumer's Sixteenth Century, letter 60, where De Beaumont, or his translator, writes Clancarty instead of Clanricarde; Manningham's Diary, Oct. 1602 and April 1603; Chamberlain's Letters, Oct. 2, 1602; Sir John Davis to Cecil, Dec. 8, 1604.

[431] Spenser; Campion; Bodley's Voyage to Lecale in the 2nd vol. of the Ulster Arch. Journal, and articles by H. F. Hore in the same journal; Morrin's Patent Rolls, 40 Eliz. No. 54; Derrick's Image of Ireland; Smith's Cork, i. 249; and see above vol. ii. p. 65. The 'carrows' were not extinct in Charles II.'s time--see Dineley's Tour, p. 19.

[432] Bodley's Visit to Lecale, 1603; Cecil to Carew. Dec. 15, 1600; Sir John Stanhope to Carew, Jan. 26, 1601: both in Carew.

[433] 'Descriptio Itineris Capitanei Josiæ Bodlei in Lecaliam, 1602-3,' Ulster Arch. Journal, ii. 73.

[434] The identification of Elizabeth Boyle is due to Mr. Grosart. Bryskett's description of the party at his house has been reprinted by several of Spenser's biographers. For topographical matters see a most thorough article by Dr. P. W. Joyce in Fraser's Magazine for March 1878, p. 315. Dr. Joyce hesitates to identify 'the stony Aubrion,' but is it not the Burren in Carlow?

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