If this was so, the English deputy seemed to be determined to give the rebellion every chance of issuing as the emperor desired. The soldiers were eager for employment, but Skeffington refused to give his officers an opportunity for distinction in which he did not share,[358] and a few ineffectual skirmishes in the neighbourhood were the sole exploits which for five months they were allowed to achieve. One expedition, as far as Skeffington ventures an expedition to Drogheda, and brings back the army in safety. Drogheda, the deputy indeed ventured, towards the end of November; and in the account of it which he sent to England, he wrote as if it were matter of congratulation that he had brought his army back in safety. Nor were his congratulations, at least to himself, without reason, for he owed that safety to God and to fortune. He had allowed the archers to neglect the old precaution of taking cases for their bows. They were overtaken by a storm, which wetted the strings and loosened the feathers of the arrows; and thus, at disadvantage, they were intercepted in a narrow defile,[359] and escaped only because the Irish were weak in numbers.
He excuses himself on the ground of bad health.
He excused himself for his shortcomings on the plea that he was in bad health—an adequate apology for his own inaction, but none for his appointment on a service so dangerous. Yet perhaps his failure is explained by the scene of it. Elsewhere, Sir William Skeffington may have been a gallant soldier and a reasonable man; but the fatal atmosphere of Ireland seems at all times to have had a power of prostrating English intellect. The Protector Cromwell alone was cased in armour which could defy its enchantments. An active officer might have kept the field without difficulty. The Master of the Rolls, to prove that the country, even in mid-winter, was practicable without danger, rode to Waterford in November with only three hundred horse, through the heart of the disturbed districts, and returned unmolested.[360] The Earl of Ossory, with Sir John St. Loo, made an appointment to meet Skeffington at Kilcaa,[361] where, if he brought cannon, they might recover the castles of the government which were held by the Geraldines. He promised to go, and he might have done so without danger or difficulty; but he neither went nor sent; only a rumour came that the deputy was ill;[362] and in these delays and with this ostentation of imbecility, the winter passed away, as if to convince every wavering Irishman that, strong as the English might be in their own land, the sword dropped from their nerveless hands when their feet were on Irish Consequence of the deputy's inaction. soil. Nor was this the only or the worst consequence. The army, lying idle in Dublin, grew disorganized; many of the soldiers deserted; and an impression spread abroad that Henry, after all, intended to return to the old policy, to pardon Fitzgerald, and to restore him to power.[363]
February 16.
The clear pen of the indefatigable Allen lays the state of affairs before us with the most painful distinctness. "My lord deputy," he wrote to Cromwell on the 16th of February, "now by the space of twelve or thirteen weeks hath continued in sickness, never once going out of his house; he as yet is not recovered. In the meantime the rebel hath burnt much of the country, trusting, if he may be suffered, to waste and desolate the Inglishry, [and thus] to enforce this army to depart. Sirs, as I heretofore advertised you, this rebel had been banished out of all these parts or now, if all men had done their duties. But, to be plain with you, except there be a marshal appointed, which must do strait correction, and the army prohibited from resorting to Dublin (but ordered to keep the field), the king shall never be well served, but his purpose shall long be delayed."[364]
The wages are ill-paid. The army is mutinous.
The military stores worthless.
The wages, also, were ill-paid, though money in abundance had been provided. The men were mutinous, and indemnified themselves at the expense of the wretched citizens, whose houses they pillaged at will under pretence that the owners were in league with the rebels.[365] The arms, also, which had been supplied to the troops, were of the worst kind: they had been furnished out of ordnance which had been long on hand, and were worthless.[366]
The conduct of the king, when the representations of Allen were laid before him, was very unlike what the popular conception of his character would have led us to expect. We imagine him impatient and irritable; and supposing him to have been (as he certainly was) most anxious to see the rebellion crushed, we should have looked for some explosion of temper; or, at least, for some imperious or arbitrary message to the unfortunate deputy. He contented himself, however, with calmly sending some one whom he could trust to make inquiries; and even when the result confirmed the The Irish council desire the recal of Skeffington. The king refuses. language of the Master of the Rolls, and the deputy's recal was in consequence urged upon him, he still refused to pass an affront upon an old servant. He appointed Lord Leonard Grey, brother-in-law of the Countess of Kildare, chief marshal of the army; but he would not even send Grey over till the summer, and he left Skeffington an opportunity of recovering his reputation in the campaign which was to open with the The army leave Dublin, and commence work. spring.[367] The army, however, was ordered to leave Dublin without delay; and the first move, which was made early in February, was followed by immediate fruits. Two of the pirates who had been acting with Fitzgerald were taken, and hanged.[368] Several other offenders of note were also caught and thrown into prison; and in two instances, as if the human ministers of justice had not been sufficiently prompt, the higher powers thought fit to inflict the necessary punishment. John Teling, one of the archbishop's murderers, died of a foul disorder at Maynooth;[369] and the Earl of Kildare, the contriver of the whole mischief, closed his evil career in the Tower of London "for thought and pain."[370] He was attainted by the parliament which sat in the autumn, and lay under sentence of death when death came unbidden to spare the executioner his labour.
Death of the Earl of Kildare.
March 14. Skeffington takes the field. Siege of Maynooth Castle.
Meantime, the spring opened at last, and affairs further improved. Skeffington's health continued weak; but with the advance of the season he was able to take the field; and on the 14th of March he appeared under the walls of Maynooth. This castle was the strongest in the possession of the Geraldines. Vast labour had been recently expended on its fortifications, for which the king's subjects had been forced to pay. It was defended by the ordnance from Dublin, and held by a small but adequate garrison. It was thought to be impregnable, and in the earlier stages of the science of gunnery it might possibly have defied the ordinary methods of attack. Nay, with a retrospective confidence in the strength of its defences, the Irish historians have been unable to believe that it could have been fairly taken; they insist that it resisted the efforts of the besiegers, and was on the point of being saved by Fitzgerald,[371] when it was delivered to the English commander by treachery. A despatch to the king, which was written from the spot, and signed by the deputy and all the members of the Irish council, leaves but little remaining of this romance.