Expenses of government.
After his return from Connaught, Sidney busied himself with the revenue and general administration. He did not conceal from himself that for every penny of rent she received it cost the Queen a shilling to hold her own. ‘Yet,’ he said, ‘I will never consent that the country should be abandoned in any sort, for held it shall be; but only hereby to note unto you by the way, what a dear purchase this is and hath been to the Crown; and, by the example of this, you may judge of the rest that are of this nature.’ Sir William Drury, the new President of Munster, and William Gerrard, the new Chancellor, were promised in April but did not come till Midsummer, and in the meantime ‘the southern like the dog, the northern like the hog, mentioned in the holy book, were ready to revolt to their innate and corrupt vilety.’[324]
O’Rourke, O’Donnell, O’Connor. Sligo. Sidney counts the heads of enemies.
O’Rourke, whom Sidney notes as the proudest man he ever saw in Ireland, came to Dublin and produced a patent of Henry VIII. which proved genuine. 20l. Irish was the rent reserved, but Sidney held out for 200l. sterling, and O’Rourke agreed to submit his cause to commissioners. O’Donnell also agreed to pay the 200 marks or 300 beeves which he had long since promised, asking only time for arrears. Sidney inquired into the very old dispute as to the tenure by which O’Connor held Sligo. O’Donnell said that 300 marks sterling had been paid to him and his ancestors since St. Patrick’s time. This was dismissed as fabulous, but a prescription of some generations was shown, while O’Connor convinced Sidney that the payment had never been made without violence, offering to give 100 marks a year to be quit of O’Donnell and to receive a sheriff peaceably, a ‘foreigner’ being preferred to an inhabitant of the country. Many other chiefs came to Dublin, and were ready to pay some yearly sum ‘all for justice; it is to be rejoiced that they so do, but more to be lamented that they have it not near to them.’ The Lord Deputy thought it very hard that he should have to do his own work and that of the President also; and, indeed, his post was no sinecure, for during the nine months that he had been in Ireland 400 men had been executed ‘by commission ordinary and extraordinary, and by slaughter in defence of the poor husbandmen.’[325]
Fresh troubles with Clanricarde’s sons.
The delay in appointing a President for Connaught, and the impossibility of the Viceroy being in two places at once, soon restored their courage to the Earl of Clanricarde’s sons. Such English officers as were in Connaught Fitton described as mean men, and as meek as mice to the Earl and his sons, and yet mean as they were too much for the young men. They suddenly crossed the Shannon, and cast off their English clothes with the remark, ‘Lie there for one year at least.’ The old Earl wrote to say that he would prevent them doing harm till he heard from the Deputy, to whom he scarcely offered any excuse. Writing to Ormonde and Lord Upper Ossory, he said that the 6,000l. which the rebuilding of Athenry would cost was too much for his country to bear, and that he himself could not raise 500l. The young men, paying but little attention to promises made in their names, destroyed the few houses which had been restored in the ill-fated town, killed or dispersed the labourers, burned the new gate, and sought for the stone with the royal arms, that they might break it, swearing that no such stone should stand in any wall there. Fearing for the safety of Galway, Sidney prepared to chastise the rebels in person.[326]
Sidney and Clanricarde.
The Lord Deputy only received the news on Tuesday, and on Friday he was at Athlone with a few officers; the bulk of his forces following as they could. Clanricarde came in on protection, which was granted unwillingly, and surrendered Loughreagh as a material guarantee. Kneeling at Sidney’s feet, the Earl besought pardon for himself and his sons, still maintaining that excessive taxation was the only cause of the rebellion. The Deputy sternly reminded him that the county had agreed to the rates imposed, and gave him leave to depart unscathed within three days. This was on Friday, and on the following Sunday Clanricarde came into the parish church and made submission on his knees, confessing the treason of his sons, and submitting himself and his cause to her Majesty’s pleasure. Sidney professed himself glad to gain an Earl and his castles instead of ‘two beggarly bastard boys,’ but tacitly admitted their power to annoy by pressing once more for a President. ‘Without a sufficient man in that office,’ he said, ‘I shall but trindle Sisyphus’ stone and bring it to the brim of the bank, and then forced to turn both head and hand, and so haply break either back or neck, but that is the least matter. In the meantime the Queen shall lose both honour and treasure, and her people lack both distribution of justice among them, surety of their lives, and saving of their goods.’[327]
Sir William Drury, President of Munster, 1576. Sidney in Connaught.
Having secured Galway and Athlone, Sidney went to Limerick, where he settled Sir William Drury in his presidency. Drury was a native of Suffolk, who had served England well by sea and land, at home and abroad. He had been Governor of Berwick, and had superintended the siege of Edinburgh Castle, where, in spite of Grange’s chivalry and Maitland’s guile, that last fortress of a falling cause had surrendered to Queen Elizabeth’s ally. He was now to try what skill and courage could effect in the service which had been, and was to be, fatal to the fortunes of so many eminent Englishmen. Meanwhile the young Burkes—the MacIarlas as they were called—held the open country with 2,000 Scots, besides their usual rabble. Captains Collier and Strange were besieged in Loughreagh, but Sidney thought the place practically impregnable by such a force, and prepared at his leisure to strike a well-aimed blow. Early in September he entered Connaught again, accompanied by Maltby, who had been appointed military Governor of the province, by a number of Ormonde’s men under the command of Edward Butler, and by his own son Philip, whose ‘sufficiency, honesty, virtue, and zeal’ made him remarkable even in his twenty-second year. Maltby and Butler chased John Burke and his rabble up and down the country, but could never come up with them. On Sidney drawing towards the borders of Mayo, the Scots, fearing to have their retreat cut off, fled precipitately into Ulster. All the English officers were agreed that the state of Connaught was owing to the lawlessness and ambition of the Earl and his sons—‘two cursed young men’—who would brook no superior. The people would gladly be rid of their tyranny, but had been taught by experience that great culprits generally escaped justice, and returned to plague those who had ventured to withstand them. No help, though much passive sympathy, could, therefore, be hoped for by viceroy or provincial governor.[328]