Being sent back to England was probably what Desmond really feared, for he afterwards said he had received letters from England hinting at such a thing. He complained of no harsh treatment in Dublin, where he was placed under the Mayor’s charge, but not closely confined. Either wishing for or dreading an escape, his gaoler told the Government that the Earl was welcome to his house and table, but that he would no longer answer for his safe keeping. Some say that he was allowed out on parole, which he kept for a fortnight and then broke. Telling the Mayor that he was going out hunting, and that he would return at night, he went to Grangegorman, and thence escaped by dint of riding into Munster. He was escorted through Kildare by Rory Oge O’More and Piers Grace, both noted brigands or guerillas, and received in the Queen’s County by 400 O’Mores, and in Limerick by James Fitzmaurice. At Lough Gur the Earl and Countess lost no time about showing themselves in Irish dress, and we cannot doubt that glibbes and rolls at once became fashionable again. All the Geraldines hastened to arms, ‘knowing no God, no Prince, but the Earl, no law but his behests.’ Desmond promptly gave out that he would allow no sheriffs, thus practically deciding the palatinate question in his own favour; and to all appearances he was soon as powerful as any of his ancestors had been. Fitzwilliam wrote to warn the fugitive that he was in great danger of losing all, but to Burghley he confessed his fear of a great conspiracy. The lawyers were afraid to go circuit in Munster, and not a single councillor could be got to go to Cork, where Perrott had lately done such execution. In a few days Castlemaine and Castlemartyr, which had taken so much pains to reduce, were again in Geraldine hands, and there was soon nothing to show for Perrott’s Presidency but the gibbeted corpses of some malefactors, and the tears of ‘the poor, the widows, the feeble, and the unwarlike.’[255]
The central district disturbed.
The general course of government was neither smooth nor glorious from the time when Elizabeth determined to restore Desmond to Ireland, until he practically carried out her first intention by escaping from Dublin. Leix and Offaly were almost as bad as they had ever been. In the former, Cosby was forced by his weakness to wink at disorder. In the latter, Henry Cowley, who was honourably distinguished as the only English officer who really tried to rule legally, had to go to Dublin to beg in vain for one hundred men. Without them he hardly knew how to get back to Philipstown, outside which he could at the best scarcely stir. The general opinion was that the Queen meant to leave all to Irish government. The miserable town of Athenry had been plundered and left utterly desolate by Clanricarde’s sons, and an alderman danced attendance on Fitzwilliam and Fitton, begging for help which they could not give. Ormonde’s country in his absence was scarcely better than the rebel districts, and the Graces, who would have obeyed the Earl but no one else, carried off Sir Barnaby Fitzpatrick’s wife and daughter. Sir Barnaby pursued and recovered the young lady, but her mother, who was in delicate health, spent some miserable weeks in captivity in Tipperary and Kilkenny. King Edward’s old companion poured forth his grief to Sidney, and signed himself ‘your poor tormented friend.’ Tremayne, who had orders to make special inquiries about this outrage, reported that Fitzwilliam had followed it up well. But Fitzwilliam could really do very little, for old Cormac O’Connor was again at the head of a Scotch and Irish band who hovered between Leinster and Connaught. The force of the country would not serve against the old chief, nor do any damage to the native gentlemen; so that the whole brunt fell on the scanty garrison and yet more scanty settlers. Athlone Castle was actually entered by the rebels, and Connaught was left to its own devices. Tremayne reported that Clanricarde was quite unable to restrain his graceless sons. Fitton thought his late subjects might, perhaps, by good management be persuaded to stay quiet as long as they liked, ‘which kind of quiet is no new thing in the politics of Ireland.’ Like everyone else, he attributed all to the Queen’s ill-judged parsimony, ‘sparing too sparely I fear will cost more spending.’[256]
Fitzwilliam and Fitton fall out.
A murder.
For most practical purposes the two chief personages in the Irish Government at this time were the Lord Deputy and Vice-Treasurer Fitton—the bearer of the sword and the bearer of the purse. The way in which they worked together was not edifying, nor calculated to impress the natives with a sense of dignity and power. Having inquired into the quarrel between Fitton and Clanricarde, the Lord Deputy and Council decided that the former had made good his case, and they patched up a precarious friendship between them. But in the daily intercourse between hostile officials it was less easy to maintain a friendly appearance. Fitzwilliam was a man of hasty temper, Fitton was said to be vain-glorious and was certainly quarrelsome and litigious. An opportunity for explosion was afforded by an affray between the Vice-Treasurer’s servant Roden, a gentleman’s son—with the expectation of one hundred marks a year, he notes, as if that had anything to do with it—and one Burnell, a follower of the Clerk of the Council, and a friend of Captain Harrington, the Lord Deputy’s nephew. Roden broke Burnell’s head with his dagger, and Harrington threatened vengeance. According to Fitton’s account, Harrington’s servant, James Meade, met Roden in the street some days afterwards, and shouting ‘Dead, villain!’ immediately ran him through the body. The coroner’s jury found that the deed was done in self-defence, but Meade was indicted for murder in the Queen’s Bench, and the Grand Jury found a bill for manslaughter, whereupon the Lord Deputy granted a general pardon, and thus defeated both law and justice entirely. Fitton asked to see the record of pardon, which he retained as evidence, and, refusing to restore it, was imprisoned in the common gaol during the Lord Deputy’s pleasure. Next day Fitzwilliam thought better of it, and summoned the Vice-Treasurer to the Council Board, but he refused to take his seat, declaring that he had done nothing wrong, and that one who had been judged a contemner of authority was unworthy to act as a councillor. He pressed hard for a full inquiry, and the noise soon reached the Queen’s ears, who exonerated Fitton, told him to take his seat again fearlessly, and to repute it praise and honour that he had suffered for doing her Majesty good service. Fitzwilliam she rebuked sharply for giving a pardon which she herself would have feared to grant, lest the blood of slain men should cry vengeance upon the realm. It was generally said in England, she informed the Irish Council, that they were the Deputy’s tools and Fitton only a true councillor. The Vice-Treasurer was not likely to hide the letter addressed to himself, and the other soon got wind in spite of every effort. To the Queen Fitzwilliam could say little but that he was undeservedly disgraced, and longed to be recalled, but he rated Fitton before one hundred persons, impeaching his truth and honesty, and saying that if he kept away from the Council Board he was but one councillor the less. Having his cue from the Queen, Fitton dutifully attended next day, and must be allowed on the whole to have got much the best of it. Fitzwilliam had not the temper to conceal his feelings, though he dared not dispute her Majesty’s decision, for he told Burghley that the other was a deep dissembler and his professed enemy. Malicious, false, and cowardly, he had given him two deadly bites, and was to be distrusted for ever. ‘God send me into the earth or to be tied into a dungeon rather than to be coupled with such a venomous person.’[257]
Death of Lord Chancellor Weston.
At this critical time death deprived the Irish Government of Lord Chancellor Weston’s services. He had held the Great Seal for six years, respected by all the official world as a father to the commonwealth; and the very Irishry lamented his loss. Weston was sincerely religious, not without a tinge of Puritanism, and was filled with anxiety at the condition of the Irish Church. Non-resident clergymen and desecrated churches were the rule, and he felt that he was giving a bad example by holding the temporalities of two deaneries, Wells in England and St. Patrick’s in Ireland. It was thus that scanty salaries were eked out both before and after the Reformation. His conscientious scruples aggravated his naturally weak health, mainly caused, as he believed, by the damp climate, more probably by the want of vegetables and by unskilful physicians. He left a widow who appears to have been worthy of him, and an equally virtuous daughter, who was married first to Brady, Bishop of Meath, and afterwards to Secretary Fenton. Catherine Fenton, the only daughter of this second marriage, whilst in her nurse’s arms, consented in childish play to be the wife of Richard Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork. Many years later Boyle, a widower of four years’ standing, actually married the ‘little lady’ with whom he had played in his bachelor days. That she inherited the virtues of her mother, grandmother, and grandfather, may be inferred from the beautiful passage in which one of the most powerful and successful men of his time has recorded his debt to his second wife. ‘I never,’ he says, ‘demanded any marriage portion, neither had promise of any, it not being in my consideration; yet her father after my marriage gave me 1,000l. in gold with her; but the gift of his daughter unto me I must ever thankfully acknowledge as the crown of all my blessings; for she was a most religious, virtuous, loving, and obedient wife unto me all the days of her life, and the happy mother of all my hopeful children, who, with their posterity, I beseech God to bless.’ Among the children were the famous Orrery, and the yet more famous Robert Boyle.[258]
Catholic intrigues. Rowland Turner.
The relations of England both with France and Spain were at this time extremely strained, and Antonio de Gueras, the Spanish Commissioner in London, thought the expedition of Essex might be turned to good purpose. The English refugees in Spain and the Low Countries kept pressing Philip to invade Ireland, and Rowland Turner, calling himself Lord Audley, an English priest from Louvain, was sent to Ulster with letters from De Gueras to Sir Brian MacPhelim. Essex, the Spaniard wrote, was about to land with 3,000 men and to exterminate the O’Neills. In order to frustrate his plan, Sir Brian was advised to put himself under the direction of Turner, a prudent, worthy, and faithful Catholic gentleman, with 500 splendidly armed men awaiting his orders in England. Turner, who had lately been in Spain, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, was well known to the English Government; and his foolish boasts about hanging all Protestants were not likely to enhance his reputation for ability or discretion. Sir Brian, though very willing to keep off Essex, had no idea of directly opposing Queen Elizabeth, nor of engaging in œcumenical plots for the extirpation of heresy. Like Archbishop Fitzgibbon, he feared that the English Catholics would make a tool of him, and throw him away when a turn had been served. He received Turner very coldly, who bitterly complained that he was not believed, though an exile for God’s sake and for that of the Irish. Captain Piers hinted to Sir Brian that Turner’s noble blood was fabulous, and the exile, while insisting upon his own stainless pedigree, retorted that Piers himself was the son of a scoundrel, and unworthy of being believed on his oath. His language, indeed, though he wrote in Latin, was almost worthy of Marryat’s boatswain. The Irish were wretched, beggarly paupers, the slaves of the English, who took their cattle and fished their waters without payment, and held all their country either by force or fraud. By listening to Turner the natives might change all this, and make the English their slaves for ever. But they would not listen; and Turner shook the dust from his feet, though Essex thought he could trace the effects of his machinations. He was afterwards employed by Alva, and received money from Philip, but he does not appear to have risked a second rebuff in Ireland.[259]