Strange scene at Kilmallock.
The Geraldine who held Castlemaine for the Sugane Earl now gave it up to the real Desmond, and this was the only important result of his restoration. The Queen was half-hearted about the matter, hesitated to bestow an estate, and did not care to provide the means for much show. Five hundred pounds a year was not a bad allowance in those days, but the young Earl was inclined to extravagance, and he felt acutely that he could do nothing unless he were trusted with the command of men. His adherents among the people might give information as to his rival’s whereabouts, but there was no chance of catching him if he had to apply to the nearest garrison for means to follow up the clue. In the meantime Greame’s victory had made the fugitive insignificant, and Carew had little doubt about being able to hunt him down. The true Desmond spent part of his time at Mallow, where some supposed him to have become enamoured of Lady Norris. Carew sent him to Kilmallock in the company of Archbishop Magrath, and of his friend Boyle, who was to report privately as to his reception by the people. At Youghal men, women, and children had upset each other in the streets to see the restored exile, but at Kilmallock the excitement was still greater. A guard of soldiers lined the street between his lodgings and Sir George Thornton’s house, where he went to sup; but the crowd broke the line, and the short walk took half an hour. Doors, windows, and roofs were filled with people, ‘as if they came to see him, whom God had sent to be that comfort and delight their souls and hearts most desired, and they welcomed him with all the expressions and signs of joy, everyone throwing upon him wheat and salt (an ancient ceremony used in the province upon the election of their new mayors and officers) as a prediction of future peace and plenty.’ Next day was Sunday, and the Protestant Earl went to church. On his way the country folk shouted to him not to go, and when he came back after service they abused and spat upon him. The multitude which had flocked the little garrison town soon deserted it, and he whom they had come to welcome might walk the empty streets and sup where he pleased with as little danger of being mobbed as any private gentleman. He oscillated between Kilmallock and Mallow, but felt himself powerless, and the murder of his brother-in-law, Dermot O’Connor, made him think that his life was not safe. The poor lad soon expressed his desire to be back in England, and to live there quietly, in preference to any Irish greatness which the Queen might intend for him. Cecil rather encouraged him to return, at least for a time, and till the question of an estate could be settled, and held out some hopes of an English wife, ‘a maid of noble family, between eighteen and nineteen years of age, no courtier, nor yet ever saw you, nor you her.’[367]
The end of the house of Desmond.
In 1598 Tyrone announced, and possibly believed, that Desmond had escaped ‘by means of the Lieutenant of the Tower’s daughter, who had gone with him,’ that he had reached Spain, and that he would be in Munster within a month, with men, munitions, and treasure. Had this been true, he could hardly have done Elizabeth more harm than the Sugane; but coming, as he did, with an Earl’s patent and a Protestant archbishop, he neither hindered Tyrone nor served the Queen, and he slunk back to England almost unnoticed. He did not marry, nor was his allowance at all lavish, but he was kindly treated and not shut up in the Tower; and his last days seem not to have been unhappy. ‘If I turn me,’ he wrote from Greenwich, ‘into time past, I behold a long misery; if into the present, such a happiness in the comparison of that hell as may be a stop to any further encroachment.’ He died nine months after his return from Ireland, leaving five sisters, for whom the Queen made some provision until they found husbands. The eldest, Lady Margaret, was married to Dermot O’Connor, and his murder left her a widow; she received a pension of 100l. Catharine, the third, was the wife of Lord Roche, and the three unmarried ones had pensions of 33l. 6s. 8d. The second, Lady Joan, was destined by her mother, who had married O’Connor Sligo, to match with Hugh Roe O’Donnell. Her brother opposed this, as well as Carew, and she seems to have had no great mind for it herself; but the plot cost her a short detention with the Mayor of Cork, who again made what difficulties he could. Lady Joan afterwards married Dermot O’Sullivan Bere. Lady Ellen, the fourth sister, married three times, her last husband being Edmund Lord Dunboyne, and she lived till 1660, when her stepson was restored to his country but not to his property. Lady Ellice, the fifth, married Sir Valentine Browne the younger, of Ross Castle at Killarney, and thus, as the wife of an undertaker’s son, enjoyed some portion of the vast estates which had been forfeited by her father’s rebellion. The title of Desmond was given by James I. to a Scotch courtier, upon whom he also bestowed the only daughter and heir-general of the great Earl of Ormonde. It was Buckingham’s plan to depress the Butlers by separating their title and estates, and by giving the latter to a favourite like himself. But Lady Elizabeth Butler defeated this scheme by marrying her cousin, the future Duke; and thus, through the greatest of the cavaliers, the long strife between Ormonde and Desmond was ended at last.[368]
FOOTNOTES:
[334] Mountjoy to the Queen, printed in Goodman’s James I. (ed. Brewer) ii. 23; Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, Oct. 31, 1599, to Jan. 12, 1600, in Sidney Papers.
[335] Rowland Whyte to Sir R. Sidney, Nov. 29, 1599, to Feb. 9, 1600, in Sidney Papers; Fynes Moryson, book ii. chap. i.
[336] Letters in Carew, Dec. 31, 1599, and Feb. 13, 23, and 26, 1600; Tyrone to Barry with the answer, in Pacata Hibernia, Feb, 26, 1600; Four Masters, 1599 and 1600.
[337] Docwra’s Narration; Pacata Hibernia, lib. i. cap. 1.