CARRIG-A-HOOLY—GRACE O'MALLEY'S CASTLE.
Sir William Drury was made Lord President of Munster, 1576, in place of Sir John Perrot. Sir Nicholas Malby was installed in the same office in Connaught; but the barbarities enacted by his predecessor, Fitton, made the very name of president so odious, that Sidney gave the new Governor the title of Colonel of Connaught. The Earl of Desmond and Drury were soon at variance. Sidney says, in his Memoir, that the Earl "was still repyning at the government of Drury." After causing great apprehension to the governors, the Lord Deputy sent the whole party to Kilkenny, and found the "Earl hot, wilful, and stubborn; but not long after, as you know, he and his two brothers, Sir John and Sir James, fell into actual rebellion, in which the good knight, Sir William Drury, the Lord Justice, died, and he, as a malicious and unnatural rebel, still persisteth and liveth."
In 1577 serious complications were threatened, in consequence of the pecuniary difficulties of the crown. An occasional subsidy had been granted hitherto for the support of the Government and the army; an attempt was now made to convert this subsidy into a tax. On previous occasions there had been some show of justice, however little reality, by permitting the Parliament to pass the grant; a scheme was now proposed to empower the Lord Deputy to levy assessments by royal authority, without any reference to Parliament. For the first time the Pale opposed the Government, and resisted the innovation. But their opposition was speedily and effectually silenced. The deputies whom they sent to London to remonstrate were committed to the Tower, and orders were despatched to Ireland that all who had signed the remonstrance should be consigned to Dublin Castle.
It is said that Elizabeth was not without some misgivings as to the injustice with which her Irish subjects were treated, and that she was once so touched by the picture presented to her of their sufferings under such exactions, that she exclaimed: "Ah, how I fear lest it be objected to us, as it was to Tiberius by Bato, concerning the Dalmatian commotions! You it is that are in fault, who have committed your flocks, not to shepherds, but to wolves." Nevertheless, the "wolves" were still permitted to plunder; and any impression made on the royal feelings probably evaporated under the fascinating influence of her next interview with Leicester, and the indignation excited by a "rebel" who refused to resign his ancestral home quietly to some penniless adventurer. There had been serious difficulties in England in 1462, in consequence of the shameful state of the current coin; and the Queen has received considerable praise for having accomplished a reform. But the idea, and the execution of the idea, originated with her incomparable minister, Cecil, whose master-mind applied itself with equal facility to every state subject, however trifling or however important; and the loss and expenditure which the undertaking involved, was borne by the country to the last penny. Mr. Froude says it was proposed that the "worst money might be sent to Ireland, as the general dust-heap for the outcasting of England's vileness."[[440]] The standard for Ireland had always been under that of England, but the base proposal above-mentioned was happily not carried into execution. Still there were enough causes of misery in Ireland apart from its normal grievances. The Earl of Desmond wrote an elaborate and well-digested appeal to Lord Burleigh, complaining of military abuses, and assuring his Lordship that if he had "sene them [the poor who were burdened with cess], he would rather give them charitable alms than burden them with any kind of chardge." He mentions specially the cruelty of compelling a poor man to carry for five, eight, or ten miles, on his back, as many sheaves as the "horse-boies" choose to demand of him; and if he goes not a "good pace, though the poor soule be overburdened, he is all the waye beaten outt of all measure."
Cess was also commanded to be delivered at the "Queen's price," which was considerably lower than the market price. Even Sidney was supposed to be too lenient in his exactions; but eventually a composition of seven years' purveyance, payable by instalments, was agreed upon, and the question was set at rest. The Queen and the English Council naturally feared to alienate the few nobles who were friendly to them, as well as the inhabitants of the Pale, who were as a majority in their interest.
The Pale was kept in considerable alarm at this period, by the exploits of the famous outlaw, Rory Oge O'More. In 1577 he stole into Naas with his followers, and set the town on fire; after this exploit he retired, without taking any lives. He continued these depredations for eighteen years. In 1571 he was killed by one of MacGillapatrick's men, and the Pale was relieved from a most formidable source of annoyance. But the same year in which this brave outlaw terminated his career, is signalized by one of the most fearful acts of bloodshed and treachery on record. The heads of the Irish families of Offaly and Leix, whose extirpation had long been attempted unsuccessfully, were invited in the Queen's name, and under the Queen's protection, to attend a conference at the great rath on the hill of Mullach-Maistean (Mullamast). As soon as they had all assembled, they were surrounded by a treble line of the Queen's garrison soldiers, and butchered to a man in cold blood.
This massacre was performed with the knowledge and approval of the Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney. The soldiers who accomplished the bloody work were commanded by Captain Francis Crosby, to whom the chief command of all the kerne in the Queen's pay was committed. We have already related some incidents in his career, which show how completely destitute he was of the slightest spark of humanity.[[441]]
Sir Henry Sidney retired from office finally on the 26th of May, 1578. He dates his Memoir from "Ludlow Castell, with more payne than harte, the 1st of March, 1582." In this document he complains bitterly of the neglect of his services by Government, and bemoans his losses in piteous strains. He describes himself as "fifty-four yeres of age, toothlesse and trembling, being five thousand pounds in debt." He says he shall leave his sons £20,000 worse off than his father left him. In one place he complains that he had not as much ground as would "feede a mutton," and he evidently considers his services were worth an ampler remuneration; for he declares: "I would to God the country was yet as well as I lefte it almost fyve yeres agoe." If he did not succeed in obtaining a large grant for his services, it certainly was not for want of asking it; and if he did not succeed in pacifying the country, it was not for lack of summary measures. Even in his postscript he mentions how he hanged a captain of Scots, and he thinks "very nere twenty of his men."
It seems almost needless to add anything to the official descriptions of Ireland, which have already been given in such detail; but as any remark from the poet Spenser has a special interest, I shall give some brief account of his View of Ireland. The work which bears this name is written with considerable prejudice, and abounds in misstatements. Like all settlers, he was utterly disgusted with the hardships he endured, though the poet's eye could not refuse its meed of admiration to the country in which they were suffered. His description of the miseries of the native Irish can scarcely be surpassed, and his description of the poverty of the country is epitomized in the well-known lines:—
"Was never so great waste in any place,
Nor so foul outrage done by living men;
For all the cities they shall sack and raze,
And the green grass that groweth they shall burn,
That even the wild beast shall die in starved den."[[442]]
Yet this misery never touched his heart; for the remedy he proposes poses for Irish sufferings is to increase them, if possible, a thousandfold; and he would have troops employed to "tread down all before them, and lay on the ground all the stiff-necked people of the land." And this he would have done in winter, with a refinement of cruelty, that the bitter air may freeze up the half-naked peasant, that he may have no shelter from the bare trees, and that he may be deprived of all sustenance by the chasing and driving of his cows.
It is probable that Spenser's "view" of Irish affairs was considerably embittered by his own sufferings there. He received his property on the condition of residence, and settled himself at Kilcolman Castle. Here he spent four years, and wrote the three first books of the Faerie Queene. He went to London with Sir Walter Raleigh to get them published. On his return he married a country girl, named Elizabeth—an act which was a disgrace to himself, if the Irish were what he described them to be. In 1598, during Tyrone's insurrection, his estate was plundered, his castle burned, and his youngest child perished in the flames. He then fled to London, where he died a year after in extreme indigence.
His description of the condition of the Protestant Church coincides with the official account of Sidney. He describes the clergy as "generally bad, licentious, and most disordered;" and he adds: "Whatever disorders[[443]] you see in the Church of England, you may find in Ireland, and many more, namely, gross simony, greedy covetousness, incontinence, and careless sloth." And then he contrasts the zeal of the Catholic clergy with the indifference of "the ministers of the Gospel," who, he says, only take the tithes and offerings, and gather what fruit else they may of their livings.
