Sidney was looked upon as the proper Viceroy for stormy times, and to him money and troops were given grudgingly and of necessity, for he would not go to Ireland without them. Fitzwilliam was but a stop-gap, thrown into the place to serve a turn, as he bitterly expressed it. ‘For God’s sake,’ he cried, ‘let me be rid of Ireland or I perish.’ Arthur Lord Grey was chosen for the perilous post, but the appointment did not then take place, because the Queen differed from him as to a sum of 2,000l. It would all, said Fitzwilliam, have been spent in her service, and she would lose ten times the sum by denying it. Of money, indeed, there was a most grievous want. The magazines were empty. The captains were almost openly mutinous. The men were in rags and ready to desert, being forced in the meantime to sell their arms for sheer want. The victuallers were unpaid and had struck work. The Lord Chancellor’s salary was at least two years in arrears. Grey was taken seriously ill at the thought of being forced to go to Ireland on the Queen’s terms, and Sidney positively refused to return. Fitzwilliam had therefore to remain, and to make the best of it. He received the title of Lord Deputy, but neither more men nor more money than when he held the less exalted post of Lord Justice.[208]
Perrott is ill-supported. Ormonde.
After his failure at Castlemaine, Perrott said that the work of ‘trotting the mountains’ was not suited to English soldiers. He had been promised two hundred kerne at sixpence a day, but had received neither the men nor the pay. He could not do without them, even if he had to keep them at his own cost. The only real way of restoring order was to be in two places at once, as Governor and as general; that being impossible, he must have such a force as would bear dividing. ‘To follow the kerne from wood to wood your Lordship knows the soldiers are far unable. Therefore, if I should do any good here, I must have kerne against kerne, and gallowglass against gallowglass, and trained men to do what they may for the stand.’ Limerick, the garden of Munster, was too much impoverished to support an army, and the men were in dysentery from always eating beef without bread or vegetables, not forty horsemen being fit for service. The Privy Council, who had promised two hundred kerne, now murmured at being asked for a bare hundred, and the fiery President declared that he would never trust them, nor do anything in their faith again. From Ormonde alone, whom he ‘ever loved and honoured,’ did he get any real help, and he was not always satisfied that even Ormonde did his best to prosecute the rebels, for he urged him to divide his men into four divisions, and then to leave Fitzmaurice no resting-place. But even while chiding the Earl for inaction, Perrott admitted that want of provisions was a fair excuse.[209]
It is proposed to restore the Desmonds. General misery in Munster.
In his extremity Perrott was driven to ask that Sir John of Desmond might be sent over. In the absence of the Earl Sir John would then be leader of the Geraldines, and would draw all away from James Fitzmaurice. The people of the ‘poor, ruinous town of Kinsale,’ as they called themselves, begged for both brothers to help the President in saving them from the fate of Kilmallock. They of Youghal, who had yet to learn of what Desmond was capable, urged the same request. They complained of being shut up within their walls, in hourly fear of assault, and crushed by the cost of a garrison in which they had no confidence. They were worn with watching; no one could spend a night at home. Rich and poor were in the same plight, and the young would soon be as weak as the old already were. Their chance of food depended on the precarious herring fishery.
Desmond and his brother, they said, ‘in their time did right well govern these parts,’ and their return would send James Fitzmaurice beyond the seas. For Sidney they longed no less than for Desmond. Perrott was entirely against the restoration of the Earl, thinking that his further detention in London would secure the good behaviour of his brother. He advised that the Earl and Countess, who were prisoners at large, should be shut up in the Tower for a year, so as to take away all hope of their return. This, he thought, would encourage the Geraldine chiefs to make separate terms. Sir John might then be safely sent over, security having been first taken for his good behaviour. ‘I hear,’ said Perrott, ‘he is a decent gentleman.’ Fitzwilliam, who saw Munster pretty much through Ormonde’s eyes, was equally against both. ‘God keep both Sir John of Desmond and base money out of Ireland, yet are they both at the seaside to come over, if brutes be true.’[210]
Perrott proposes to decide the war by a duel.
Most people who study the acts of Sir John Perrott will probably be of opinion that he was a wise and honest man, if not always prudent for himself. But he now indulged in such an act of folly as can hardly be matched, even in the annals of Irish misgovernment. He could not catch James Fitzmaurice, and therefore he challenged him, resolving, if possible, to end the war at one blow. Had the weapons been those of the tilt-yard, the Queen’s old champion might have been pretty sure of victory, but Fitzmaurice, who at first encouraged the President’s idea, insisted upon sword and target and Irish trousers for both sides. Perrott agreed, and provided a pair of scarlet trousers for himself. Then Fitzmaurice objected to single combat, and proposed that there should be fifty a side. It was finally agreed that each party should consist of twelve horse and twelve foot, ‘with indifferent armour and weapon.’ Edward Butler was one of those picked on the President’s side. Perrott wrote to Ormonde to borrow his horse, and begged him to attend with all his force, evidently thinking that there was a danger of foul play. ‘I trust very shortly,’ he told the Earl, ‘to make end of this war, and to overthrow the rest of these Geraldines, which do so much annoy her Majesty’s subjects. My lord, I have promised that there shall be no hurt done unto him by any of your lordship’s men, until such time as the day be past, and I have promised him peace, that no man shall hurt him, nor none of his, till this matter be tried. And so he likewise hath promised to do the like unto all her Majesty’s subjects.’[211]
Ormonde at his wit’s end. Fitzmaurice refuses to fight.
It is not surprising that Ormonde was ‘almost at his wit’s end’ on receiving this extraordinary letter from his old brother-in-arms. ‘The manner of the President’s dealing herein is strange to me. I will stay his lordship (if I can by any means) from this attempt, and will with all my heart join with him myself and my company, to fight against the traitor and his whole company, rather than he should so barely hazard himself with so few.... God send us a good hour against these villains.’[212] He may have intended treachery and been foiled by Ormonde’s action, or he may have suspected treachery; but the message he sent by his Irish poet gave a very good reason for not coming. ‘If I should kill Sir John Perrott, the Queen of England can send another President into this province; but if he do kill me, there is none other to succeed me, or to command as I do, therefore I will not willingly fight with him, and so tell him from me.’ In the most disturbed times in modern Ireland officials, even policemen, have often been protected by the same consideration. Perrott, however, was very angry, and resolved to ‘hunt the fox out of his hole,’ regretting, as well he might, that he had wasted so much time and played into the hands of his crafty foe.[213]