Hyde.
Barkley.
Arthur Hyde was in England when the rebellion broke out, but his wife and children were at his castle of Carriganeady, or Castle Hyde, on the Blackwater. On the day that Owen MacRory and the rest entered Munster, the country people rose ‘instantly before noon,’ and began plundering all round. Hyde’s own cattle and those of his English tenants were taken at once, but his wife and children escaped to Cork with Lord Barry’s help, and his eighteen men held the castle for three weeks. Hyde landed at Youghal, but could do nothing, and his garrison, seeing that there was no chance of relief, yielded on promise of life and wearing apparel. They were stripped naked, but not killed, by Lord Roche’s tenants before they had gone a mile. The Sugane, who was present in person with an overwhelming force, appointed Piers Lacy seneschal of Imokilly, and the castle was surrendered to an Irishman who claimed it. Forty persons depending on Hyde were left destitute, and he sought to form a company. Sixty-four muskets and other arms, with much ammunition, had been provided, and it is probable that things would have gone differently had Hyde been himself at home. A more successful defence was that of Askeaton, by Captain Francis Barkley. The revolt was sudden and unexpected, and he had only the provisions suitable to a gentleman’s house in those days. On October 6, more than 500 English of all sorts—men, women, and children—accustomed to a decent life and nearly all householders, flocked into Askeaton at nine in the evening. The panic was so sudden that they came almost empty-handed. ‘I protest unto your lordships a spectacle of greatest pity and commiseration that ever my eye beheld, and a most notable example of human frailty.’ An English barque lay in the Shannon, and Barkley was fortunate enough to get rid of some useless mouths that way. Others were conveyed to Limerick, where the mayor and citizens used them well. By Ormonde’s advice 120 able men were retained. With soldiers who knew the country, and who burned for revenge, this brave captain announced that he would hold out till death. Corn and beef were still to be had, and he only asked for the means to keep his men together. Askeaton did not fall.[294]
The native gentry make terms with Tyrone.
Religious animosity.
Why the settlement failed.
The White Knight, Patrick Condon, Lord Barry’s brother John, and Lord Roche’s son David, quickly came to terms with the rebels, and Norris believed that the rest would follow from love or fear. Lord Barry, indeed, held out bravely; but most of his neighbours had no choice, for the Government could do nothing to protect them. The Lord President could not trust his Irish troops, and had to retire from Kilmallock without fighting. Four days later, after effecting a junction with Ormonde, he was able to victual the little garrison town, but had to fall back again immediately to Mallow. Tyrone had warned his friends not to fight a pitched battle, but only to skirmish on difficult ground. After several days’ desultory warfare in the woods about Mallow, Ormonde was recalled to the defence of Kilkenny and Tipperary, and Norris went back to Cork, leaving the rebels to do as they pleased. An English prisoner with Desmond could report but one family of his countrymen spared. A priest told the new-made Earl that they were Catholics, and proclamation was made that they were not to be hurt. They were robbed of all, but carried their lives to Cork. After Ormonde’s departure Owen MacRory went back to Leinster with Cahir MacHugh. He had been ten days in Munster, and left all the other counties at the Sugane’s mercy. The Queen was much chagrined, and blamed both Norris and Ormonde for not giving more effective support to the undertakers. But it does not appear that they were to blame, for the revolt was extremely sudden, and the settlement had not been so managed as to afford the means of resistance. ‘For whereas,’ says Moryson, ‘they should have built castles and brought over colonies of English, and have admitted no Irish tenant, but only English, these and like covenants were in no part performed by them. Of whom the men of best quality never came over, but made profit of the land; others brought no more English than their own families, and all entertained Irish servants and tenants, which were now the first to betray them. If the covenants had been kept by them, they of themselves might have made 2,000 able men, whereas the Lord President could not find above 200 of English birth among them when the rebels first entered the province. Neither did these gentle undertakers make any resistance to the rebels, but left their dwellings and fled to walled towns; yea, when there was such danger in flight as greater could not have been in defending their own, whereof many of them had woeful experience, being surprised with their wives and children in flight.’ So much for the weak defence, as well-informed Englishmen understood it. The causes of the outbreak, as seen from a Protestant and English point of view, are told by Chief Justice Saxey. Seminaries and Jesuits haunted the towns, of which the mayors were recusants, though shielded by being joined in the commission; the judges of assize were also recusants for the most part, and in charging grand juries they never spoke against foreign power, nor to advance the Queen’s supremacy; the English tenants were too scattered, owing to the undertakers’ slackness; and, lastly, the late exaction of cess, instead of the customary composition, had bred discontent. O’Sullivan, as usual, makes the contest one between Catholics and royalists, and the annalists, who were more emphatically Irish than Catholic, make it a war of races only. ‘In the course of seventeen days,’ they say, ‘the Irish left not, within the length and breadth of the country of the Geraldines, from Dunqueen to the Suir, which the Saxons had well cultivated and filled with habitations and various wealth, a single son of a Saxon whom they did not either kill or expel.’[295]
Rebellion in Leinster and Tipperary.
The Jesuit Archer.