‘The conditions demanded by Tyrone,’ says Essex himself, ‘I was fain to give my word that I would only verbally deliver.’ The consequence was that there is not and cannot be any absolutely authentic statement of those conditions. There is, however, a paper printed in a collection of repute, and immediately after one of Cecil’s letters, which professes to be a statement of ‘Tyrone’s Propositions, 1599.’ The Queen herself says that Essex, on his return, acquainted her with Tyrone’s offers, but in so confused a manner as could only be explained by supposing that ‘the short time of their conference made him not fully conceive the particular meaning of Tyrone in divers of those articles.’ What probably happened was that Tyrone talked big, and that when Essex came to think over it afterwards, he could not clearly distinguish between extreme claims which had been mentioned, and serious proposals which had been made. But the 16th article in ‘Tyrone’s Propositions’ is clearly not invented by the writer, who was probably hostile to Essex. It demands ‘that O’Neill, O’Donnell, Desmond, and their partakers, shall have such lands as their ancestors enjoyed 200 years ago.’ Whether Tyrone ever demanded any such thing is doubtful, but it is certain that this, or something very like it, was what Essex told the Queen. ‘Tyrone’s offers,’ she says, ‘are both full of scandal to our realm, and future peril in the State. What would become of all Munster, Leix, and Offaly, if all the ancient exiled rebels be restored to all that our laws and hereditary succession have bestowed upon us?’ And again, ‘we will not assent in other provinces [than Ulster] to the restitution of all traitors to their livings, or the displantation of our subjects that have spent their lives in the just defences of their possessions which they have taken and held from us or our ancestors.’ It is quite evident then that Essex actually laid before Elizabeth a proposal which involved the reversal of every attainder and the expropriation of all settlers upon forfeited lands. After this it hardly seems worth discussing matters of commerce, or proposals that Englishmen should be debarred from all preferment in Church and State in Ireland, while all statutes prejudicing the preferment of Irishmen in England should be repealed.’[332]
What Tyrone meant by ‘liberty of conscience.’
Liberty of conscience was what Tyrone continually asked for, but not what he or his friends were prepared to grant. He undertook generally to ‘plant the Catholic faith throughout Ireland,’ and when did Rome bear a rival near her throne? In a letter to the King of Spain he acknowledged his object to be the ‘extirpation of heresy,’ and recalcitrant chiefs were reminded that present ruin and eternal damnation would be their lot if they did not help to ‘erect the Catholic religion.’ Jesuits boasted that his victories had already made it impossible for Protestants to live in certain districts. Tyrone claimed personal inviolability for priests, and treated the imprisonment of one as a breach of the cessation. In the paper already discussed he is said to have demanded that the Catholic religion should be openly preached, the churches governed by the Pope, cathedrals restored, Irish priests released from prison and left free to come and go over sea, and that no Englishmen should be churchmen in Ireland. The article about the release of clerical prisoners is just such a coincidence as Paley would have urged in proof that ‘Tyrone’s Propositions’ form a genuine document. But here again it is probable that this was only laid before the Queen as Tyrone’s extreme claim, and that Essex gave her some reason to suppose that he would be satisfied with less. ‘For any other personal coming of himself,’ she wrote, ‘or constraint in religion, we can be content, for the first, that he may know he shall not be peremptorily concluded, and in the second that we leave to God, who knows best how to work his will in these things, by means more fit than violence, which doth rather obdurate than reform. And, therefore, as in that case he need not to dread us, so we intend not to bind ourselves further for his security than by our former course we have witnessed; who have not used rigour in that point, even when we might with more probability have forced others.’[333]
FOOTNOTES:
[300] Parallel between Essex and Buckingham in Reliquiæ Wottonianæ.
[301] Reliquiæ Wottonianæ; Camden; Essex to the Queen in Devereux’s Earls of Essex, i. 493. The letter quoted in the text is the best proof that Camden’s story is substantially true. See also Spedding’s Life of Bacon, ii. 91, 103. For Spanish popular notions on Philip III. see Carew, Aug. 23, 1602. Beaumont, the French ambassador in 1602, says the Queen told him, in a broken voice, that she had warned Essex long since ‘qu’il se contestast de prendre plaisir de lui déplaire à toutes occasions, et de mepriser sa personne insolemment comme il faisait, et qu’il se gardast bien de toucher à son sceptre.’—Von Raumer, Letter 60.
[302] Spedding, ii. 124-126; Essex to John Harrington in Park’s edition of Nugæ Antiquæ, i. 246.
[303] Bacon’s advice to Essex immediately before his going to Ireland, Spedding, ii. 129; Essex to Southampton, Jan. 1, 1599, printed by Abbott; Bacon’s Apology, first printed in 1604.
[304] The letter of advice is in Spedding, ii. 129; Apology concerning the Earl of Essex; Essex to Southampton in Abbott’s Bacon and Essex, chap. ix. Jan. 1, 1599. Essex wrote to the Queen, just before starting, as follows: ‘From a mind delighting in sorrow, from spirits wasted with passion, from a heart torn with care, grief, and travail, from a man that hateth himself and all things also that keepeth him alive, what service can your Majesty expect? since my service past deserves no more than banishment and proscription into the cursedst of all other countries.’ The letter ends with some verses in praise of a contemplative life, and Essex signs himself ‘your Majesty’s exiled servant.’—MS. Harl. 35, p. 338.
[305] The progress of the negotiations may be traced in Chamberlain’s Letters (Camden Society). Essex to Southampton, Jan. 1, 1599; and Charles Blount (afterwards Lord Mountjoy) to Essex, Jan. 3, both in Abbott, chap. ix.