Last struggle in Munster.
It was in Munster that hopes of Spanish succour were strongest; but Carew was able to send troops and supplies to help Mountjoy, and at the same time to finish his own work. Sir Cormac MacDermot, the chief of Muskerry, whose intriguing nature was well known to Carew, was found to have received 800 ducats from Bishop Owen MacEgan, and to have placed Blarney Castle at the disposal of the Spaniards. Captain Roger Harvey was sent, on pretence of hunting the buck, to call at the castle and ask for wine and usquebaugh, ‘whereof Irish gentlemen are seldom disfurnished,’ and if possible to get possession of the place. But the warders were on their guard, and Harvey could not even get into the courtyard. Sir Cormac himself was at Cork, not having dared to refuse attendance at the assizes, and his wife and children were also secured. Finding himself in the lion’s mouth, he ordered his people to surrender Blarney, while he made preparations for his own escape. After dark on the evening of Michaelmas-day he got out of the window in his shirt, several gentlemen being outside to receive him. A passing Englishwoman raised the alarm, but the runaway was befriended by town and country and got safe away over the walls, only to find that he could do nothing. His castle of Kilcrea had already surrendered, and Macroom was taken, owing to an accidental fire which arose while the warders were singeing a pig. No Spaniards were visible, and Tyrrell, who had eaten up Bere and Bantry, proposed to quarter his men in Muskerry. At last, towards the end of October, Sir Cormac came to Carew, and sued for mercy on his knees. A protection was granted to him, for he was helpless without his castles, his eldest son was at Oxford well watched, and Tyrrell had destroyed his corn. Raleigh advised Elizabeth not to pardon him, his country being worth her while to keep, and its situation being such as to leave him always at her mercy. Orders were accordingly given that his pardon should be withheld, at least until he had provided an estate for his cousin Teig MacCormac, who had first revealed his intrigues with the Spaniards.[413]
Remarkable retreat of O’Sullivan Bere.
Passage of the Shannon.
A disinterested guide.
O’Sullivan Bere still maintained himself in Glengariffe, but his position had become hopeless. In December Tyrrell gave up the contest and marched eighty miles without a halt from near Castleisland into the King’s County, ‘leaving all his carriages and impediments, as they tired, scattered to hazard.’ Wilmot then attacked O’Sullivan’s position, and succeeded, after six hours’ sharp fighting, in driving off 2,000 cows, 4,000 sheep, and 1,000 hackneys. Sir John Shamrock’s son, William Burke, refused to stay a moment longer, cursing himself for lingering in Munster and losing his brave followers. O’Sullivan was thus forced to fly, and on the night of the 3rd of January he slipped away, with all his family and retinue. When Wilmot came to his late camping-ground he found only sick and wounded men, ‘whose pains and lives by the soldiers were both determined.’ The fugitives had a sharp skirmish with Lord Barry near Liscarroll, but reached the Shannon at Portland on the ninth day, fighting all the way and not venturing to turn aside after cattle, although often very hungry. Finding no boats, they killed twelve horses, and Dermot O’Driscoll, who was used to the canoes or curraghs of the west-coast fishermen, constructed one with osiers, twenty-six feet long, six feet wide, five feet deep, and capable of holding thirty men. Eleven horseskins were used to cover this ark, and the twelfth was devoted to a round vessel planned by Daniel O’Malley and intended to carry ten men. The O’Malleys were more given to the sea than even the O’Driscolls, but the round ferry-boat sank, while the long one answered its purpose. Ormonde’s sheriff of Tipperary failed to prevent O’Sullivan from crossing the great river, and he reached Aughrim on the eleventh day from Glengariffe. Sir Thomas Burke, Clanricarde’s brother, who had the help of some English soldiers, attacked him here with a superior force, but was worsted with loss after a hard fight, and O’Kelly’s country was passed on the same day. On the borders of Galway and Roscommon MacDavid Burke showed the will, but not the power, to stop the fugitives, who eluded pursuit by leaving great fires in the woods near Castlereagh. They suffered horribly from snow and rain, their shoes were worn out, and their last horses furnished a scanty meal. O’Connor Kerry’s feet were a mass of sores, and he reproached those members for their cowardice, which was likely to imperil his head and his whole body. He struggled on with the rest, and in a wood near Boyle, heaven, as the pious historian believed, provided them with a guide. A barefooted man, in a linen garment and with a white headdress, and carrying an iron-shod staff in his hand, came to meet them. His appearance was such as to strike terror, but he told O’Sullivan that he had heard of his glorious victory at Aughrim, and was ready to lead him safely into O’Rourke’s country. O’Sullivan, who was perhaps less credulous than his kinsman, secured the stranger’s fidelity with 200 ducats, which he magnanimously accepted, ‘not as a reward, but as a sign of a grateful mind.’ He lead them by stony ways to Knockvicar near Boyle, where they bought food and dried themselves at fires. The blood upon O’Connor’s blisters hardened with the heat, and he had to be carried by four men until they found a lean and blind old horse, on whose sharp backbone the sufferer was rather balanced than laid. The Curlews were safely passed, and at daybreak on the sixteenth day of their pilgrimage O’Rourke’s castle of Leitrim was in sight. Of over a thousand persons who started from Glengariffe, but eighteen soldiers, sixteen horseboys, and one woman reached the house of refuge. A few more afterwards straggled in, but the great bulk had died of wounds and exposure, or had strayed away from their leaders. ‘I wonder,’ says the historian, ‘how my father, Dermot O’Sullivan, who was nearly seventy, or how any woman, was able to sustain labours which proved too much for the most muscular young men.’ The distance traversed was about 175 miles as the crow flies.[414]
Rory O’Donnell submits.
Tyrone sues for mercy.
Like many chief governors before him, Mountjoy contemplated spending much time at Athlone, and the Queen approved of this. He went there in November 1602, and both Rory O’Donnell and O’Connor Sligo came to him there before Christmas. Rory called to mind the hereditary loyalty of his family since Henry VIII.’s days, adding that he himself had agreed with Sir Conyers Clifford to serve against his brother Hugh, and had been put in irons by him. O’Connor claimed to have brought in Rory, and to have suffered likewise for his fidelity to Clifford. His legs, he said, had never healed properly, being ‘almost rotted’ with the irons. Tyrone lurked in Glenconkein in very wretched case, whence he wrote in most humble terms, and, as he said, with a most penitent heart. Mountjoy had sent back his last letter because it contained no absolute submission. ‘I know the Queen’s merciful nature,’ he now said, ‘though I am not worthy to crave for mercy.... Without standing on any terms or conditions, I do hereby both simply and absolutely submit myself to her Majesty’s mercy.’ Sir Christopher St. Laurence conducted some negotiations on his own account, but the Lord Deputy earnestly repudiated any knowledge of these, and continued almost to the end to say that he might possibly intercede with the Queen, but would do nothing more. Elizabeth’s instinct told her that Tyrone was no longer formidable unless she set him up again, and this it is most probable she would have never done. A month after the letter last quoted, and barely two months before the Queen’s death, Mountjoy talked of hunting the arch-traitor into the sea. He and Carew were together at Galway soon after Christmas, and it was agreed that the latter should go to England. Both of them wished to get away, but the Queen would not hear of the Deputy quitting his post, nor would she let the President go without his superior’s leave; and Cecil cleverly contrived that the suggestion should seem to come from Mountjoy himself. Never, we are told, was ‘a virgin bride, after a lingering and desperate love, more longing for the celebration of her nuptial’ than was Carew to go to England; but he returned to Munster and made things quite safe there before he started. Now that Tyrrell and O’Sullivan were gone, he ventured to send to Athlone 500 men out of 700, which were all he had available after providing for the garrisons and making allowances for the sick and missing. He feared that O’Sullivan might return, but of this there was no real danger. The war was now confined to a corner of Ulster, and if Elizabeth had lived the fate of Tyrone might have been like that of Desmond. To run him down was, however, a matter of extreme difficulty, and he seems to have thought that he could get out of Ireland if the worst came to the worst.[415]