[349] Sir William Brereton to Henry VIII.: Ibid. p. 204.
[350] Two thousand five hundred was the smallest number which Lord Surrey previously mentioned as sufficient to do good.—State Papers, Vol. II. p. 73.
[351] Fifteen miles north of Dublin; immediately off Malahide.
[352] Sir William Brereton and Sir John Salisbury to Henry VIII.: State Papers, Vol. II. p. 203.
[353] A small harbour near Drogheda.
[354] Skeffington was prudently reserved in his report of these things to Henry. He mentions having set a party on shore, but says nothing of their having been destroyed; and he could not have been ignorant of their fate, for he was writing three weeks after it, from Dublin. He was silent, too, of the injury which he had received from the pirates, though eloquent on the boats which he burnt at the Skerries.—State Papers, Vol. II. p. 205. On first reading Skeffington's despatch, I had supposed that the "brilliant victory" claimed by the Irish historians (see Leland, Vol. II. p. 148) must have been imaginary. The Irish Statute Book, however, is too explicit to allow of such a hope. "He [Fitzgerald] not only fortified and manned divers ships at sea, for keeping and letting, destroying and taking the king's deputy, army, and subjects, that they should not land within the said land; but also at the arrival of the said army, the same Thomas, accompanied with his uncles, servants, adherents, &c., falsely and traitorously assembled themselves together upon the sea coast, for keeping and resisting the king's deputy and army; and the same time they shamefully murdered divers of the said army coming to land. And Edward Rowkes, pirate at the sea, captain to the said Thomas, destroyed and took many of them."—- Act of Attainder of the Earl of Kildare: 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 1.
[355] Skeffington to Henry VIII.: State Papers, Vol. II. pp. 206, 207.
[356] Accompanied with the number of sixty or eighty horsemen, and about three hundred kerne and gallowglass, the traitor came to the town of Trim, and there not only robbed the same, but also burnt a great part thereof, and took all the cattle of the country thereabouts; and after that assaulted Dunboyne, within six miles to Dublin; and the inhabitants of the town defending themselves by the space of two days, and sending for succour to Dublin ... in default of relief, he utterly destroyed and burnt the whole town.—Allen to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. II. p. 220.
[357] He hath sent divers muniments and precedents which should prove that the king held this land of the See of Rome; alledging the king and his realm to be heretics digressed from the obedience of the same, and of the faith Catholic. Wherefore his desire is to the emperour and the Bishop of Rome, that they will aid him in defence of the faith Catholic against the king, promising that he will hold the said land of them, and pay tribute for the same yearly.—Ibid. p. 222.
[358] My lord deputy desireth so much his own glory, that he would no man should make an enterprise except he were at it.—Ibid. p. 227.