The Lord-Lieutenant was ill, of the malady which nearly proved fatal in the following year, and the results of overwork and failure were not lessened by rebukes from the Queen. An intended expedition into Leix and Offaly was noticed by her as unworthy of his rank, but yet he determined to go. Blount was first sent to victual Maryborough, and the sergeant-major to Philipstown. Captain William Williams commanded at the latter place, and he had just lost 60 men by allowing them to fall into an ambuscade. There was no difficulty in relieving the forts, but when Essex himself followed, he had some sharp fighting on the border of Westmeath. The Irish were commanded by Captain Tyrrell, a noted English or Anglo-Irish partisan in Tyrone’s pay, who always kept 200 men with him. In days long gone by, the Anglo-Norman Tyrrells had driven the O’Dooleys from Fartullagh, and now they were in arms against the Queen of England’s representative. Sir Conyers Clifford came from Connaught, to meet the Lord-Lieutenant, and his horsemen fought bravely on foot in a country where there was no place for cavalry. ‘In all this journey,’ says Harrington, who came with the Connaught troops, ‘I was comrade to the Earl of Kildare, and slept both on one pillow every night for the most part; here at the parting, my lord gave Sir Griffin Markham great commendations, and made him colonel and commander of all the horse in Connaught; and gave me and some others the honour of knighthood in the field.’
Clifford lost many men before effecting the juncture, and yet the natives were so completely surprised that they had no time even to hide their children. Many hundred cows were taken, but the result of the expedition was that Essex returned to Dublin and Clifford to Connaught.[320]
Anger of Elizabeth.
The cheap defence of nations.
At the beginning of August, the Irish Council demanded 2,000 fresh men for the expedition to the North, but before an answer came, they declared that nothing could be done for the year. It is difficult to say how far this inconsistency was caused by the fluctuations of Essex’s own temper, but it was clear that he did not inspire confidence. The Queen granted the reinforcements, while severely criticising the conduct of both Lord-Lieutenant and Council. She had been repeatedly told, and could very well believe, that a garrison at Lough Foyle was the chief thing needful. ‘We doubt not,’ she said, ‘but to hear by the next that it is begun and not in question.’ In the meantime the garrisons in Connaught and Munster and in the midland forts seemed scarcely able to maintain themselves. ‘We can hope of no success,’ she said sarcastically, ‘than to be able to keep our towns which were never lost, and some petty holds of small importance, with more than three parts of our army, it being decreed for the head of the rebellion, that our forces shall not find our way this year to behold him.’ She could not understand how no more than 5,000 men were available, instead of at least double that number; and, indeed, it is not easy to understand even now. And there were other things to make her angry. Essex had been specially ordered to make no knights except for some striking service, and he now made no less than fifty-nine, without having anything to show for it. The court news-writer, from whom we learn so much, notes that he had begun by dozens and scores, and had now fallen to ‘huddle them up by half-hundreds; and it is noted as a strange thing, that a subject, in the course of seven or eight years, should, upon so little service and small desert, make more knights than in all the realm besides; and it is doubted, that if he continues this course, he will shortly bring in tag and rag, cut and long-tail, and so bring the order into contempt.’[321]
Defeat of Sir Conyers Clifford (August).
Death of Clifford.
It may be doubtful whether Essex intended again to take the dilatory advice of his Council, or whether he would have been stung into action by the Queen’s taunts. A great disaster seems to have finally determined him, though it should probably have had the contrary effect. O’Connor Sligo had been with Essex in Munster, whence he returned to Collooney, the only castle which he had preserved from O’Donnell, and where he was at once beleaguered by him. Essex ordered Clifford to relieve him and to occupy Sligo, by which means he hoped to distract Tyrone’s attention. Clifford, with a force of something under 2,000 men, went to Boyle, and, in spite of the Lord Lieutenant’s caution against over-confidence, resolved to pass the Curlew mountains without resting his men, after two days’ march in the hot harvest weather. He does not seem to have expected any opposition, but O’Donnell had been watching the pass for weeks, and had given orders that the army should be allowed to get well on to the mountain before they were attacked. The Irish scouts saw them leave the abbey of Boyle, so that there was plenty of time for O’Donnell to bring up his forces. On arriving at the narrowest part of the pass between Boyle and Ballinafad, Clifford found it strongly defended by a breastwork, and held by 400 men, who fired a volley, and then fell back. The road up the mountain, which consisted of ‘stones six or seven foot broad, lying above ground, with plashes of bog between them,’ ran through boggy woods, from which the Irish galled the soldiers, who exhausted their powder with little effect. Sir Alexander Radclyffe, commanding the advance guard, was mortally wounded, and as no reinforcement came up, a panic ensued, and the whole array were driven pell-mell back to Boyle. Sir John Mac Swiney, an Irish officer in the Queen’s service, faced the enemy almost alone, cursing the vileness of his men, and ‘died fighting, leaving the example of his virtue to be intituled by all honourable posterities.’ Only the horse under Sir Griffin Markham behaved well, covering the retreat and charging boldly up hill ‘among rocks and bogs, where never horse was seen to charge before.’ Markham had his arm broken by a shot, and Sir Conyers Clifford was killed while trying to rally his men. Harrington thought the imagination of the soldiers was bewitched, and cites the extraordinary escape of Rory Oge from his cousin Sir Henry in 1577, when they thought ‘he had, by magic, compelled them not to touch him’; but this panic is easily explained by the moral effect of recent defeats. So far as Ireland went, people were losing their faith in Elizabeth’s star.[322]
Effects of this disaster.
O’Rourke, who remained in possession of the field, cut off Clifford’s head and sent it to O’Donnell, and MacDermot, in a letter which Harrington very justly characterised as ‘barbarous for the Latin, but civil for the sense,’ announced that, for the love he bore the governor, he had carried his headless trunk to the neighbouring monastery of Lough Cé. He was ready to exchange it for his own prisoners or to give it decent burial himself, and he would offer no obstacle to the burial of other officers. ‘The Irish of Connaught,’ say the Four Masters, ‘were not pleased at the Governor’s death, for he had been a bestower of jewels and riches upon them, and he had never told them a falsehood.’ The same authorities say the Irish did not attribute their victory to arms, but to the miracle of the Lord and to the special intercession of the Blessed Mary. Nor was superstition confined to the victorious party, for not only did the English soldiers talk of magic, but Clifford himself was said to have prophetically dreamed of his capture by O’Donnell, and of being carried by monks into their convent. The defeat was particularly disastrous, because Clifford’s troops were not raw recruits, as Harrington’s had been. Essex determined to employ them no more, except to defend walls. The immediate result of the battle was that O’Connor Sligo submitted to Tyrone, and became a loyal subject of the real king of Ireland.[323]