[370] Moryson, part ii. book i. chap. ii. On Jan. 1, 1601, Mountjoy dates a letter to Carew (in Carew) ‘from the camp among the rocks and the woods in these devils’ country.’
[371] Moryson, Jan. 29 to Feb. 25, part ii. book ii. chap. ii.; Mountjoy to Carew, March 11, in Carew.
[372] Essex was arrested Feb. 8 and executed Feb. 25. Mountjoy heard the news on the 22nd and March 2 respectively. Moryson, book i. ch. ii.
[373] Nottingham to Mountjoy, May 31, 1601, enclosing Lady Rich’s letter. Notwithstanding the Lord Admiral’s playful allusion to 30 years, Mountjoy was 38 and Penelope 40. The letters are printed in Goodman’s James I. ii. 14-20.
[374] Moryson ut sup.; Mountjoy to Carew, April 10, 1601, in Carew; Edmund MacGauran, titular Archbishop of Armagh, to Captain Eustace June 18/28, 1591, MS. Hatfield; Matthew de Oviedo, ‘Spanish Archbishop of Dublin,’ to James Fitzthomas, Jan. 3/13, 1601-2, in Pacata Hibernia, book i. chap. xix.
[375] Pacata Hibernia, book ii. chap. iii. White Knight to Carew, May 29, 1601. Many of the letters &c. on this subject are collected in Irish Arch. Journal, 3rd series, vol. i. pp. 544-559. O’Daly wrongly states that the Queen’s Earl stayed on in Ireland after his rival: he returned to England two months before his capture. From State papers calendared under June and July, 1608, it appears that John Fitzthomas was then called Earl of Desmond in Spain.
[376] May 22 to Aug. 29, 1601; Moryson, part ii. book ii. chap. i.
[377] Information of Thomas Walker (taken in England), Oct. 3, 1601, MS. Hatfield; Walker to Mountjoy, Aug. 22; Mountjoy to Cecil, Aug. 23. Walker maintained that he never thought of killing Tyrone until he found himself in Ireland.
[378] The proclamation is in Morrin’s Patent Rolls, 1601, of which several original printed copies are extant, bearing date May 20, 1601. The whole story may be read in Carew, 1601-3, and in the first vol. of Russell and Prendergast’s Calendar. See also Camden and Moryson. In Feb. 1603 Mountjoy wrote: ‘the alteration of the coin, and taking away of the exchange, in such measure as it was first promised, hath bred a general grievance unto men of all qualities, and so many incommodities to all sorts, that it is beyond the judgment of any that I can hear to prevent a confusion in this estate by the continuance thereof.’
Moryson says the pretence was that the rebels would be impoverished, whereas the Queen’s servants were the real sufferers—‘we served in discomfort and came home beggars, so that only the treasurers and paymasters had cause to bless the authors of this invention.’