In all official letters from the Queen and the Privy Council much indignation was expressed at the idea of the royal prerogative being called in question. Sidney was instructed to deal sharply with the gentlemen who had deputed Netterville and his colleagues, and stiffly to assert the principle of the cess. Failing, after repeated arguments, to yield the point at issue until the result of their agents’ mission was known, and standing in the meantime on high constitutional ground, Lords Baltinglass, Delvin, Trimleston, and Howth, with many others of the best gentlemen in the Pale, were committed to the castle. This was strictly in accordance with the Queen’s orders, but in writing directly to Sidney she reprimanded him for choosing so bad a time to raise the question of the cess, and for drawing an inconvenient amount of public attention to undeniable grievances. At Court Philip Sidney accused Ormonde of thwarting his father, and contemptuously held his tongue when the Earl addressed him. Ormonde refused to quarrel, saying magnanimously that the young man was bound to take his father’s part, and that he was endowed with many virtues. Indeed, nothing could be said against Ormonde but that he was a general defender of the Irish cause, like all the rest of his countrymen at Court. He hated Leicester and did not like Sidney; but, as the latter himself expressed it, ‘love and loving offices’ are matters of favour, not of justice. How little sympathy there was between them may be judged from the passage in which the Lord Deputy defends himself against the Queen’s private strictures on his conduct. ‘I am condemned, I find,’ he writes to Leicester, ‘for lack of policy, in that in this broken time, and dread of foreign invasion, I should commit such personages as I detain in the castle.... While I am in office I ought to be credited as soon as another; and this is my opinion, if James Fitzmaurice were to land to-morrow, I had rather a good many of them now in the castle should still remain than be abroad.’[340]
Composition for cess.
The envoys, after tasting the hospitalities of the Tower, submitted humbly enough in form, but did not abandon their case, and the Queen, though she spoke boldly about prerogative, had evidently some sympathy with them. The prisoners in Dublin also submitted, and the Crown, having thus saved its credit, a composition was arrived at, which seems to have been substantially Burnell’s work, and to which Ormonde, Kildare, and Dunsany, who were in London, gave a preliminary adhesion. The counties of Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Louth, Kildare, Carlow, Wexford, and Kilkenny acknowledged themselves bound to victual as many of the 1,000 soldiers and officers as the Lord Deputy should appoint, and to pay 1d. a day for each man of that number whether present or no, deducting that sum in the case of those men whom they were required to victual fully. They were to furnish 9,000 pecks of oats to the horsemen at 10d. sterling, and to sell fresh provisions to the Lord Deputy at reasonable prices for ready money. The Queen consented thoroughly to repair the old store-houses, but not to build new ones, and no other charge of any kind was to be made against her, except for damage by sea or fire; but she promised that purveyors should be punished if they abused their power. To this arrangement the cess-payers submitted with a tolerable grace, but officials complained that the Queen had made a very bad bargain.[341]
FOOTNOTES:
[312] Ormonde to Burghley, July 16, 1574 and Aug. 3, 1575; Privy Council to Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, July 25, 1575; Fitzwilliam to Burghley, Aug. 3.
[313] Ormonde to Burghley, July 16, 1574, July 24, 1575, and Aug. 23; the Queen to Ormonde, April 12, 1575.
[314] The Queen to Sir P. Carew, April 12, 1575; Fitzwilliam to Sidney, Dec. 9, 1575; Hooker’s Life of Carew; Carew died, Nov. 27, 1575.
[315] This tour is described in a letter from Sidney to the Privy Council, Dec. 16, 1575; in the Sidney Papers, written from Waterford.
[316] Sidney to the Privy Council, April 27.
[317] All the above from Sidney to the Privy Council, Feb. 27, 1575-6, in the Sidney Papers.