At the beginning of March, Mountjoy received two letters from the Queen, written on February 6 and 17, and another from Cecil, written on the 18th. In the first of these despatches, which were all delivered together, Elizabeth told her Deputy to send for Tyrone on promise of life only, and to detain him; in the second she authorised him to offer life, liberty, and pardon; and in the third, speaking through Cecil, she rather enlarged his powers, while laying some stress on altering the title of Tyrone, on reducing the size of his country, and on forcing him to keep the roads into it always open. There was no difficulty about the last covenant, for the felling of a few trees would always nullify it; but Mountjoy pointed out that O’Neill, and not Tyrone, was the dangerous word, and that it was great gain to have an earl by any name instead of a chieftain by that one. As to curtailing the repentant rebel’s land, he thought that obedience would be more probable from one who would lose rather than gain by change. The great Queen was no more when the letter containing this reasoning was sent, so that we cannot tell whether she would have agreed to it or not. On the very day of her death, commission was given to Sir William Godolphin and Sir Garret Moore to treat with Tyrone, and he and his adherents were protected for three weeks. Elizabeth died on March 24, and Mountjoy knew this on the 27th; but his secretary, the historian Moryson, had the address to prevent the news from being publicly known before April 5, and in the meantime Tyrone had made his submission.[420]
Submission of Tyrone.
To save time under the extraordinary circumstances in which he was placed, Mountjoy sent Godolphin to tell Tyrone that the least hesitation would probably be fatal to him, and that his former delays had much incensed the Queen. Godolphin was not in the secret, but he felt that it was no time for ceremony, and in the belief that confidence would beget confidence he rode several miles beyond Dungannon to meet Tyrone, who readily accompanied him to the fort at Charlemont. Next day the commissioners brought their prize early to Mellifont, where Mountjoy lodged. There, says the secretary, who was present, ‘Tyrone being admitted to the Lord Deputy’s chamber, kneeled at the door humbly on his knees for a long space, making his penitent submission to Her Majesty, and after being required to come nearer to the Lord Deputy, performed the same ceremony in all humbleness, the space of one hour or thereabouts.’ He had ever preferred the substance to the shadow, and his formal humility stood him in good stead. The written submission was equally complete, and contained not one word about liberty of conscience or in favour of that Church as whose champion the Pope had sent him a crown. He renounced all dependence upon foreign principles, and especially upon Spain, abjured the name of O’Neill, abandoned all his claims over the lands of neighbouring chiefs, and agreed to accept such estates only as the Queen should grant him by patent. He promised to disclose all he knew about dealings with Spain, to bring his son back from thence if possible, and, in short, to do everything that might become a faithful subject of the English crown. Mountjoy in return promised a royal pardon, and a patent for nearly all the lands which he held before his rebellion. 300 acres were reserved for the fort of Mountjoy and 300 for Charlemont, and Ulster was to submit to a composition as Connaught had done. On April 4, Tyrone reached Dublin with the viceregal party, and on the 5th, Sir Henry Danvers arrived from England with official tidings of the great change. King James was at once proclaimed, and the people shouted for joy; but Tyrone, on whom all eyes were fixed, shed abundant tears, and he was fain to hint at grief for the loss of the mistress whom he had been fighting for the last ten years. ‘There needed,’ says the observant secretary, ‘no [OE]dipus to find out the true cause of his tears; for, no doubt the most humble submission he made to the Queen he had so highly and proudly offended, much eclipsed the vain glory his actions might have carried if he had held out till her death; besides that by his coming in, as it were, between two reigns, he lost a fair advantage, for (by England’s estate for the present unsettled) to have subsisted longer in rebellion (if he had any such end) or at least an ample occasion of fastening great merit on the new King, if at first and of free will he had submitted to his mercy.’[421]
The conquest of Ireland Queen Elizabeth’s work.
During the last four years and a half of the Queen’s reign, it was computed that the Irish war had cost her about 1,200,000l., and this was an enormous demand upon the slender revenue of those days. The drain upon the life-blood of England was also terrible. Droves of recruits were forced annually into the ranks, to perish among the bogs and woods, while the most distinguished officers did not escape. The three Norrises, Clifford, Burgh, Bagenal, and Bingham died in Ireland, while Essex and Spenser were indirectly victims of the war there. The price was high, but it secured the conquest of Ireland. Lawyers in the next reign might ascribe the glory to James; but the hard work was all done ready to his hand, and it would not have been done at all had it been left to him. It was by Elizabeth that the power of the chiefs was broken, and until that was done neither peaceable circuits nor commercial colonies were possible in Ireland. The method pursued was cruel, but the desired end was attained. It is easy to find fault; but none who love the greatness of England will withhold their admiration from the lonely woman who repelled all attacks upon her realm, who broke the power of Spain, and who, though surrounded by conspirators and assassins, believed that she had a mission to accomplish, and in that faith held her proud neck unbent to the last.
FOOTNOTES:
[398] Cecil to Mountjoy, Aug. 7 in Moryson; to Carew of Feb. 9, 1602, and throughout that year in Maclean; Chamberlain’s Letters, June 27, 1602.
[399] Moryson, May 30 to July 19, on which day Mountjoy reached Monaghan; Chichester to Cecil, June 20 and 2_
[400] Mountjoy to Cecil, June 5, 1602, and Jan. 8, 1603; Cecil to Windebank, June 15, 1602. Windebank read the latter to the Queen.
[401] Journal among R.O. MSS. Ireland, April 23 to May 7; Pacata Hibernia, book ii. chaps. ii. and iii.