[290] Fitton to Burghley, July 30; Fitzwilliam and Ormonde to the Queen, Sept. 3; Lord and Lady Desmond to the Queen, Sept. 12. Feoffment, &c., by the Earl of Desmond, Sept. 10, in Carew. The Derrinlaur affair was on Aug. 19; the Four Masters say the Desmondians were executed after capture.
[291] Privy Council to Essex, Sept. 19; Essex to Privy Council, Oct. 8; Waterhouse to Burghley, Sept. 23. Plot of the Garrison, &c., Oct. 8; Four Masters, 1575.
[292] Essex to Burghley, June 14, 1574; to the Privy Council, Oct. 8.
[293] The Privy Council to Essex, Nov. 8; to Fitzwilliam, Nov. 9; the Queen to Essex, Nov. 9; Essex to Burghley, Jan. 12, 1575.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ADMINISTRATION OF FITZWILLIAM, 1574 AND 1575, AND REAPPOINTMENT OF SIDNEY.
Unjustifiable seizure of Sir Brian MacPhelim, who is executed.
If violence were vigour and a readiness to act on rumour decision, then the next exploit of Essex would entitle him to a high place among the leaders of men. There is no difficulty in believing that Sir Brian MacPhelim had been plotting with Tirlogh Luineach and other enemies of English rule, and it is quite possible that he or his followers had committed some barbarous outrages. He had all along been hostile to the Earl’s enterprise, and it is not surprising that he should have sought to frustrate it. But he came to meet Essex at Belfast in friendly guise, and he brought his wife and other relations with him. It is plain from this that he intended no immediate treachery, but Essex, who was getting soured, could only see evidence of dissimulation. He proposed to arrest his visitors, and his officers made no opposition. The O’Neills defended their chief, and much blood was shed. ‘I have,’ Essex wrote to the Privy Council, ‘apprehended Sir Brian, his half-brother Rory Oge MacQuillin, Brian’s wife, and certain of the principal persons, and put others to the sword, to the number of 200 in all places, whereof 40 of his best horsemen.’ Sir Brian, his wife, and other prisoners were sent to Dublin, and Essex announced that they would be tried according to law. It is only certain that they were executed. There was, be it observed, no state of war between O’Neill and the Earl. The chieftain was not a proclaimed traitor, and there was no warrant against him. And even if it be granted that he was technically guilty of treason, could his wife be considered equally guilty? The Earl’s own account does not justify him, while the Irish annalists charge him with the blackest treachery. ‘Peace, sociality, and friendship,’ say the ‘Four Masters,’ ‘were established between Brian, the son of Phelim Bacagh O’Neill, and the Earl of Essex; and a feast was afterwards prepared by Brian, to which the Earl and the chiefs of his people were invited; and they passed three nights and days together pleasantly and cheerfully. At the expiration of this time, as they were agreeably drinking and making merry, Brian, his brother, and his wife, were seized upon by the Earl, and all his people put unsparingly to the sword—men, women, youths, and maidens—in Brian’s own presence. Brian was afterwards sent to Dublin, together with his wife and brother, where they were cut in quarters. Such was the end of their feast. This unexpected massacre, this wicked and treacherous murder of the lord of the race of Hugh Boy O’Neill, the head and the senior of the race of Owen, son of Nial of the Nine Hostages, and of all the Gaels, a few only excepted, was a sufficient cause of hatred and disgust of the English to the Irish.’ Some praised the Earl’s conduct, and there seems to have been no official blame, but Ormonde hinted his dislike of what had been done. Essex meant well, he said, God send it so: ‘I am loth to speak of the North, which has cost her Majesty much, but I pray God a worse come not in Sir Brian’s place.’ The Earl himself boasted ‘that this little execution hath broken the faction and made them all afeard;’ and that two of Sir Brian’s kinsmen were competitors for his inheritance, and had applied to Captain Norris, each offering to live in peace. The knight-errant who had started with visions of creating an Eden in Ulster, now thought it a triumph to make men of two minds in an house.[294]
Vacillation of the Queen.
Essex believed that 2,000 soldiers would suffice for Ireland, 1,300 of them being stationed in Ulster while permanent fortified posts were being built and garrisoned, and that when the building was done 500 men would easily hold the province. To this arrangement the Queen, with much hesitation, agreed. Garrisons cost money, as she knew by the experience of Maryborough and Philipstown, and like them they might after all be but very moderately successful.