[259] Norris to Burghley, May 4 (with enclosure), and May 16, 1596; Russell to Burghley, May 16 and June 9; Bingham to Burghley, May 18 and June 11. Bingham came to Dublin on May 8.
[260] Translation of Irish letter signed O’Neill (not Tyrone), O’Donnell, O’Rourke, and Theobald Burke (MacWilliam), July 6, 1596; Chief Justice Saxey’s advertisements, January 1597, in Carew; Russell’s Journal, 1596; Joshua Aylmer to Sir J. Norris, April 26, 1596; William Cosby to Russell, May 19, 1596, and an interesting note in O’Donovan’s Four Masters; see also ‘Report concerning O’Donnell’s purposes’ to Russell by Gillaboy O’Flanagan (long prisoner with O’Donnell) May 12; ‘Words spoken by MacDonnell’ (chief of Tyrone’s gallowglasses) to Baron Elliott, June 15; Edmond and Edward Nugent to Russell, June 20; and ‘Occurrents in Wexford,’ June 26. As to Spanish and papal designs on Ireland about this time see Birch’s Memoirs, ii. 153, 177, 180.
[261] Burghley to his son Robert, Oct. 31, 1596, in Wright’s Elizabeth; Orders for the soldiers, April 18, 1596; Declaration of the state of the Pale, June 1597, and Chief Justice Saxey’s declaration already quoted, all in Carew. The Four Masters absurdly say that Norris had 20,000 men with him in Connaught this year.
[262] Four Masters, 1597. For the Enfield head see the examination of John Dewrance before Richard Chandler, J.P. for Middlesex, Sept. 21, 1597, MS. Hatfield; Russell’s Journal, and the letters in Carew for August, September, and December, 1596. Feagh was killed May 8, 1597; see also his own letter to Burghley, April 25, 1596.
[263] Russell’s Journal; Declaration by the Lord Deputy and Council (including Norris and Fenton) in Carew, No. 261, soon after Christmas 1596.
[264] Calendar of S. P. Domestic, Sept. 30 and Dec. 22, 1596; Letters in Carew from Nov. 30 to Dec. 9. On Aug. 10 Tyrone wrote to Russell that he was surprised at his reasonable offer of peace not being accepted; this was a month after his incendiary letter to the Munster chiefs. Russell answered that peace with his sovereign was a ‘proud word,’ and that he was sent to ‘cherish the dutiful and correct the lewd, of which number thou art the ringleader... thy popish shavelings shall not absolve thee’ (MSS. Lansdowne, vol. lxxxiv). Petition of Sir W. Russell in Carew, 1596, No. 253. As to the letters see Burghley to his son Robert, March 30, 1596, in Wright’s Elizabeth and elsewhere. On Oct. 22, 1596, Anthony Bacon wrote to his mother ‘that from Ireland there were cross advertisements from the Lord Deputy on the one side, and Sir John Norris on the other, the first as a good trumpet, sounding continually the alarm against the enemy, the latter serving as a treble viol to invite to dance and be merry upon false hopes of a hollow peace, and that these opposite accounts made many fear rather the ruin than the reformation of the State, upon that infallible ground, quod omne regnum divisum in se dissipabitur’; which sums up the situation very well.—Birch’s Memoirs, ii. 180.
[265] These abortive negotiations are pretty fully detailed in Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary, part ii. book i. ch. i. under 1596; Russell’s Journal.
[266] Clanricarde to Russell, Jan. 15, 1597; Oliver French, mayor of Galway, to Russell, Jan. 19; Bingham to Sir R. Gardiner, Jan. 20 and 27. These four letters are printed in Wright’s Elizabeth. Russell’s Journal; Four Masters, 1596 and 1597; the Queen to the Lord Deputy and Council, Dec. 4, 1596, in Morrin’s Patent Rolls, under 39 Eliz.: ‘As to the proceeding for the examination of the complaint against Bingham and the trial thereof, we think it meet that, after the complaints shall be made privy of our hard usage of him here, and the remitting of him to be tried in Connaught, &c.’