Fitzmaurice and the Pope.
But at Rome, Fitzmaurice was received by Gregory with open arms. He was on very friendly terms with Everard Mercurian, the aged general of the Jesuits, who was, however, personally opposed to sending members of the order to England, Ireland, or Scotland; a point on which he was soon overruled by younger men. What the life of a Jesuit missionary was may be gathered from a letter written to the General about this time.
‘Once,’ wrote Edmund Tanner from Rosscarbery, ‘was I captured by the heretics and liberated by God’s grace, and the industry of pious people; twelve times did I escape the snares of the impious, who would have caught me again had God permitted them.’
But the harvest, though hard to reap, was not inconsiderable. Tanner reported that nobles and townsmen were daily received into the bosom of Holy Church out of the ‘sink of schism,’ and that the conversion would have been much more numerous but that many feared present persecution, and the loss of life, property, or liberty.
This chain still kept back a well-affected multitude, but the links were worn, and there was good hope that it soon would break.[4]
Fitzmaurice expects to free Ireland.
We know from an original paper which fell into the hands of the English Government, what were Fitzmaurice’s modes and requirements for the conquest of Ireland. Six thousand armed soldiers and their pay for six months, ten good Spanish or Italian officers, six heavy and fifteen light guns, 3,000 stand of arms with powder and lead, three ships of 400, 50, and 30 tons respectively, three boats for crossing rivers, and a nuncio with twenty well-instructed priests—such were the instruments proposed. He required licence to take English ships outside Spanish ports, and to sell prizes in Spain. Property taken from Geraldines was to remain in the family, and every Geraldine doing good service was to be confirmed by his Holiness and his Catholic Majesty in land and title. Finally, 6,000 troops were to be sent to him in six months, should he make a successful descent.
As sanguine, or as desperate, as Wolfe Tone in later times, he fancied that England could be beaten in her own dominion by such means as these. Sanders, who was probably deceived by his Irish friends as to the amount of help which might be expected in Ireland, had no belief in Philip, whom he pronounced ‘as fearful of war as a child of fire.’ The Pope alone could be trusted, and he would give 2,000 men. ‘If they do not serve to go to England,’ he said, ‘at least they will serve to go to Ireland; the state of Christendom dependeth upon the stout assailing of England.’[5]
Fitzmaurice and Stukeley.
Stukeley appears to have got on better with Fitzmaurice than with Archbishop Fitzgibbon, which may have been owing to the mediation of Sanders or Allen. The Pope agreed to give some money, and Fitzmaurice hit upon an original way of raising an army. ‘At that time,’ says an historian likely to be well informed about Roman affairs, ‘Italy was infested by certain bands of robbers, who used to lurk in woods and mountains, whence they descended by night to plunder the villages, and to spoil travellers on the highways. James implored Pope Gregory XIII. to afford help to the tottering Catholic Church in Ireland, and obtained pardon for these brigands on condition of accompanying him to Ireland, and with these and others he recruited a force of 1,000 soldiers more or less.’ This body of desperadoes was commanded by veteran officers, of which Hercules of Pisa (or Pisano) was one, and accompanied by Sanders and by Cornelius O’Mulrian, Bishop of Killaloe. Stukeley kept up the outward show of piety which he had begun at Waterford and continued in Spain, and he obtained a large number of privileged crucifixes from the Pontiff, perhaps with the intention of selling them well. It must be allowed that an army of brigands greatly needed indulgence, and fifty days were granted to everyone who devoutly beheld one of these crosses, the period beginning afresh at each act of adoration. Every other kind of indulgence might seem superfluous after this, but many were also offered for special acts of prayer, a main object of which was the aggrandisement of Mary Stuart.