Dr. Grosart, in editing the Lismore papers, found the original letter much damaged, a large piece of it having been torn away in the breaking of the seal. The Earl had evidently torn it open hastily in his anxiety to know what “my Robyn” was going to do. Whether or no Frank delivered the letter into his father’s hands, Frank was certainly quickly back in Ireland, and very much on the spot. By August 1 Robyn had received a letter from Frank, full of enthusiasm for Kynalmeaky’s conduct at home.
For Kynalmeaky was in his element at last. “I have left Sleeping in ye afternoone,” wrote Kynalmeaky to his old father in Youghal. The son who had shown “all the faults a prodigall inordinate young man can have, which if he take not up in tyme will be his ruine and the breaking of my hart”, was redeeming himself. Kynalmeaky’s wife (the Earl of Cork always called her “my deare deare daughter-in-law”) had not been able to live with her husband; even the younger brothers must long ago have known what Kynalmeaky was. And now Frank had written to tell Robyn in Geneva that Kynalmeaky was acting like a hero. And Robyn, so far away from home, had written off on August 1 a little letter of tender admiration to this elder brother, who had set them every bad example and yet had kept such a place in their hearts. On the margin of this letter Robyn added a little boyish postscript—only to say he could not express in words what he was feeling, and ending with “Adieu, Dearest Lewis, idle Cosin. Bon Anné, Bon Solé, bon Vespré. Adieue a Di vous commande.”
Did Kynalmeaky ever have this letter? It was dated from Geneva, Aug. 1, and it was endorsed by the Earl of Cork himself, “from my sonn Robert to his brother Kynal. Rec. 13 Oct.” Had it been sent to the Earl, with Kynalmeaky’s papers—or had it indeed come too late? For the battle of Liscarrol had been fought on Sept. 3. The Earl’s loyal son-in-law, Lord Barrymore, and all the Earl’s sons except Robert, fought in that battle.[108] And at the Battle of Liscarrol Kynalmeaky was killed; killed on his horse, by a musket-shot through the head. It was Frank—the “sweet-spirited Frank,” fresh from the fencing and dancing and vaulting lessons in Geneva and Italy—who, “carrying himself with undaunted resolution,” rescued his brother’s body and horse, and kept troop and foot together.
The old man did not know then which of these two sons to be proudest of. It was a grim satisfaction to the Earl, after all that had passed, when “Kynal” had been buried in Lismore Church, to sit down and make that entry in his diary: “Six of the rebell ensignes were carried to his widdoe.”[109]
Robyn was to hear from his father once or twice after that. The Earl held out brave hopes of being able to procure some “office” for his boy “at his coming over.” And he sent his own “choice dun mare” to Lismore, with orders that it was to be “kept and drest carefully” for Robyn, when God should send him home again. And when Broghill’s wife, “Lady Pegg,” was at last obliged to return to England, the old Earl gave her a commission to buy for him a ring “besett rownd with diamonds,” and to present it, from him, to her fair young cousin the little Lady Ann Howard, whom he thought of always, even in those dark days, as “my Robyn’s yonge Mrs.”
There is something Shakespearean in the mood in which this old fighter lived his last months and drew his last breath. Shut up in Youghal, “preserving” that town for his King, his sons away fighting, his daughters and grandchildren scattered, Kynalmeaky and Barrymore dead, and poor Lettice dying,[110] his lands despoiled, his fortune vanished, he was still the great Earl of Cork, the head of a great family, the old man of action and experience, the Elizabethan soldier-statesman to whom the younger men, statesmen and kinsmen alike, turned in this hour of extremity, and not in vain. There is nothing stronger or more human of its kind, or more characteristic of the man, than the positively last will and testament made by himself in Youghal so late as November 1642, ten months before his death.[111]
The end came, nobody knows exactly when, but about the very time of the signing of the truce at Sigginstown, in the middle of September 1643, “from infirmities incident to old age, and the want of rest and quiet.”
He was buried in the great tomb at Youghal. All his life he had believed in three things: in God’s Providence, his own integrity of purpose, and the righteousness of a Cause. And in the debacle—in his and Ireland’s darkest moment, when the clouds hung low over his native land and the land of his adoption—his belief in these three things remained unmoved.
Shakespeare has told us how Faith and Uncertainty go hand in hand—
“If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come....”