The Irish Council made Sir Thomas Norris sole Lord Justice, very much against his will. He had succeeded his brother as Lord President of Munster, and left Captain Thornton there to do the work, and to draw most of the salary. This temporary arrangement was altered by the Queen, who appointed Archbishop Loftus and Chief Justice Gardiner Lords Justices, gave the supreme military command to Ormonde, with the title of Lieutenant-General, and ordered Norris back to his own province. The appointment of Ormonde involved fresh negotiations, and Tyrone was more likely to agree with him than with any English Deputy. ‘You now,’ the Queen wrote to her general, ‘represent our own person, and have to do with inferior people and base rebels, to whose submission if we in substance shall be content to condescend, we will look to have the same implored in such reverend form as becometh our vassals and such heinous offenders to use, with bended knees and hearts humbled; not as if one prince did treat with another upon even terms of honour or advantage, in using words of peace or war, but of rebellion in them, and mercy in us; for rather than ever it shall appear to the world that in any such sort we will give way to any of their pride, we will cast off either sense or feeling of pity or compassion, and upon what price soever prosecute them to the last hour.’[279]
Ormonde’s futile negotiations with Tyrone,
Tyrone himself sought an interview with Ormonde, and submitted humbly enough to him at Dundalk. ‘I do,’ he said, ‘here acknowledge, upon the knees of my heart, that I am sorry for this my late relapse and defection.’ He begged a truce for two months, and undertook not to prevent the Blackwater fort from being victualled in the meantime. In the negotiations which followed, ‘free liberty of conscience for all the inhabitants of Ireland’ was demanded by Tyrone; but while placing this claim in the forefront, he never really insisted upon it, and no doubt its main object was to make an impression abroad. In 1591 he had taken care to be married to Mabel Bagenal by a Protestant bishop, ‘according her Majesty’s laws,’ and he now undertook not to correspond with Spain or any foreign nation. Another promise was to victual the garrison at Blackwater, and he did actually furnish forty beeves, ten of which were rejected by the inexorable Williams, though the leanest beef was probably better than the horseflesh upon which he and his brave men had lately lived. In the end Tyrone refused to give up his eldest son, or any hostage; but he agreed to accept a sheriff provided a gentleman of the country was appointed, to maintain and victual Blackwater fort, to renounce the name of O’Neill, to renew his submission to Ormonde in some public place, and to pay a fine of 500 cows. On receipt of his pardon, he further agreed to disperse all his forces, and send Scots or other hired strangers out of the realm.
who despises a pardon.
These terms were accepted, and a pardon passed under the great seal of Ireland; but the result was only a truce, and open hostilities were resumed within two months. At the very moment that the pardon was given, Tyrone was encouraging his confederates to believe in an imminent Spanish invasion of Munster, and it is evident that he had never intended to yield upon any essential point.[280]
Munster brigandage, 1597. Florence MacCarthy.
Munster had lately been pretty quiet, but there were not wanting signs of the tremendous storm which was soon to burst over it. The MacSheehys, the remnant of the Desmond gallowglasses, ‘preyed, spoiled, and murdered’ over eighty English families. Of three brothers, one was sentenced ‘to have his arms and thighs broken with a sledge, and hang in chains, so was he executed without the north gate of Cork;’ the second was killed by an Irish kerne, and the third fell by an English hand when Spenser’s house at Kilcolman was sacked. Donnell MacCarthy saved himself by coming under protection and behaving well for a time. His father, the wicked Earl of Clancare, died late in 1596, and Sir Thomas Norris advised that some small property should be assigned to ‘his base son of best reputation,’ while Florence might be given the bulk of the remote and barren heritage of McCarthy More. Florence and Donell both went to plead their own causes in London, while the widowed countess complained that she and her daughter were ‘prisoners there for their diet.’ The poor lady begged for her thirds, ‘notwithstanding any wrangling between my son-in-law, Nicholas Browne, Donell MacCarthy, and the rest.’ She gained her cause, and Donell was given some lands which his father had conveyed to him. Ormonde thought the presence of Florence important for the peace of Munster, and asked Cecil not to detain him, while Florence himself begged the Secretary to let him serve her Majesty in Ireland, instead of keeping him in London at her cost. When the news of the outbreak arrived, he received 100l. for his journey to Ireland, but he lingered in the hope of getting all the late Earl’s estate, and Essex had left Ireland before his return.[281]
FOOTNOTES:
[267] Sir T. Wilkes to Sir Robert Sidney, Jan. 17, 1597; Rowland Whyte to same, Feb. 21, March 4, April 13, in Sidney Papers, vol. ii.; Motley’s United Netherlands, ch. ix. The explosion of powder was on March 13, and is recorded by the Four Masters and in Russell’s Journal.
[268] Rowland Whyte to Sir R. Sidney in Sidney Papers, May 4, 1597; Lord Burgh to Cecil, April 26 and May 4, MSS. Hatfield, and to Burghley, May 23. R. O. Burgh left London May 3, and reached Dublin on the 15th. He suffered from a wound or hurt received in Holland in 1595, see his letter to Essex of Aug. 27, and that year in Birch’s Memoirs, i. 285.