having effected nothing.
After some more fighting, the rebels were beaten off with the loss of 100 men. Donell Spaniagh, Phelim MacFeagh, and Owen MacRory were all present, and were willing to treat upon protection being granted. Essex sent word to Phelim that he might have a safe-conduct as far as Arklow if he would come and sue for mercy as a repentant rebel, but that a messenger sent for any other purpose would be hanged. Dublin was reached without further fighting, and the Irish annalists, with whom Harrington is in almost verbal agreement, may be left to sum up the results of the expedition. While the ‘army was in Munster,’ say the Four Masters, ‘the Geraldines continued to follow, pursue, and press upon them, to shoot at, wound, and slaughter them. When the Earl had arrived in the Decies, the Geraldines returned in exultation and high spirits to their territories and houses.... In Leinster they marched not by a prosperous progress, for the Irish were pursuing and environing them, so that they slew great numbers in every road by which they passed.... They said it would have been better for the Earl if he had not gone on this expedition, as he returned back without having received submission or respect from the Geraldines, and without having achieved any exploit worth boasting of, excepting only the taking of Cahir.[316]
Severity of Essex.
Essex lost no time in holding a court-martial on the officers and men of Harrington’s force. Piers Walsh, Loftus’s Irish lieutenant, who was certainly guilty of cowardice, and perhaps of treacherously communicating with the enemy, was shot; all, or nearly all, the soldiers, had run away; they were sentenced to be hanged, and were actually decimated. The other officers, ‘though they forsook not their places assigned them, but were forsaken by the soldiers, yet because in such an extremity they did not something very extraordinary... were all cashiered’ and imprisoned. Harrington himself, being a Privy Councillor, was not tried, but was placed under arrest during her Majesty’s pleasure. His thirty years’ service were not forgotten in England, and he soon returned to his duty. The decimation was not approved of, and Wotton notes it as a piece of Roman discipline, and as an instance of Essex’s tendency to severity. On the voyage to the Azores he had thrown a soldier overboard with his own hands.[317]
Dissatisfaction of Elizabeth.
Instead of settling Leinster as announced, the Lord Lieutenant had only succeeded in getting rid of his army. ‘The poor men,’ he wrote, ‘that marched eight weeks together be very weary, and the horsemen so divided that I cannot draw 300 to a head.’ And still he promised to overthrow Tyrone, or be himself slain, if he could find him ‘on hard ground and in an open country,’ which he was as little likely to do as Glendower was to draw spirits from the vasty deep. There had been sharp letters about his making Southampton general of the horse. His commission gave him power to do this, but the Queen had expressed her personal repugnance to such promotion. She disliked the formation of what, in later Irish history, has been called ‘a family party.’ Blount was Essex’s stepfather, though about his own age, and Southampton had without leave married his cousin, Elizabeth Vernon, who was a maid of honour. Essex tried to maintain the appointment against the Queen’s will, mainly on the ground that no volunteer would adhere to him when thus discountenanced; but Elizabeth said she did not see that Southampton’s counsel or experience could be of any particular value, and refused to believe that ‘the voluntary gentlemen are so discouraged thereby as they begin to desire passports and prepare to return.’ The Lord-Lieutenant had to submit, and Southampton continued to serve as a volunteer. The account rendered for two months showed no great balance in the Queen’s favour, and it is evident that she thought pretty much as the Irish did about the futility of the Munster journey. He had, she said, ‘brought in never a capital rebel, against whom it had been worthy to have adventured 1,000 men; for of these two comings in that were brought unto you by Ormonde (namely, Mountgarret and Cahir), whereupon ensued the taking of Cahir Castle, full well do we know that you would long since have scorned to have allowed it for any great matter in others to have taken an Irish hold from a rabble of rogues with such force as you had, and with the help of the cannon, which was always able in Ireland to make his passage where it pleased.’[318]
Essex on his defence.
Before the end of May Cecil knew that Essex intended to visit Munster, so as to make things safe there before going to the North, and he expresses no opinion on the subject. But the Queen soon grew uneasy, and complained that she was giving the Earl 1,000l. a day to make progresses with. When the results of two months’ expenditure were known, her indignation burst forth. Nothing had been done but what President Norris might have done as well, and she was especially displeased ‘that it must be the Queen of England’s fortune (who hath held down the greatest enemy she had) to make a base Irish kerne to be accounted so famous a rebel.’ Ireland was in a state worse than that in which Ormonde had left it, and Tyrone was announcing to continental nations ‘defeats of regiments, deaths of captains, and loss of men of quality in every corner.’ Essex entrusted regiments to young gentlemen, and made such a fuss that the rebels were always fully prepared. This was just criticism, and indeed the Earl’s own story tallies with it. He provides the excuse also, but he had only found out what was known to hundreds of officers who had served in Ireland. The rebels, he said, were much more numerous than the soldiers, and for light warfare they were both naturally more active and better trained to fight. The Queen’s gallant officers and gentlemen of quality did more good than all the rest, and the real difficulty was to restrain their ardour, whereas the rebel leaders ‘dare never put themselves to any hazard, but send their kerne and their hirelings to fight with her Majesty’s troops.’ English officers with cavalry could always win in the open, and towns were in no danger; but in bogs and woods he was loth to ‘wager the lives of noblemen and gentlemen against rogues and naked beggars.’
These were the commonplaces of Irish warfare since Surrey’s and Skeffington’s days, and Essex was learning his lesson at an enormous cost.[319]
Campaign in Leix and Offaly.