Great loss of life.
Donegal.
Connaught.
Munster.
According to Fenton’s account 6,194 men belonging to the eighteen ships whose loss he records, were ‘drowned, killed, and taken.’ This does not include those who escaped, nor the men belonging to ships not comprised in his list. At the end of October the number of Spaniards alive in Donegal alone was not far short of 3,000. About 500 escaped from Ulster to Scotland—‘miserable, ragged creatures, utterly spoiled by the Irishry’—and some of their descendants remain there to this day, and preserve the tradition of their origin. Very few of them reached Spain, and on the whole, we may believe that the number of subjects lost to Philip II. out of that part of the fleet which was lost in Ireland, cannot have been much short of 10,000. ‘In my province,’ says Bingham, ‘there hath perished at the least 6,000 or 7,000 men, of which there hath been put to the sword by my brother George, and executed one way and another, about 700 or 800, or upwards. Bingham spared some Dutchmen and boys, as probably engaged against their wills, but these were executed by the Lord Deputy himself when he visited Athlone. Twenty-four survivors from a wreck were executed at Tralee, but this was done in a panic, and was quite unnecessary. Munster was indeed too thoroughly subdued to make the presence of a few Spaniards dangerous. In Ulster the arm of the Government scarcely reached the castaways until they were no longer of much importance. Even the native Irish did not always spare those who had come to deliver them. The MacSwineys killed forty at one place in Donegal. Plunder was no doubt the object, as it had been in Tyrawley and in Clare island, but a desire to curry favour with the Government had also a good deal to say to it. It was only in those parts of Ulster and Connaught where the power of the chiefs was still unbroken, that the Spaniards received any kind of effectual help.[180]
Tyrone and O’Donnell.
The Spaniards powerless.
Tyrone did what he could for the Spaniards by sending them provisions, and he bitterly reproved O’Donnell, who with his eldest son had helped the Government against them. Other O’Donnells joined the strangers, and the chief does not seem to have carried his country with him. His MacDonnell wife made no secret of her intention to employ the foreigners for her own purposes. Tyrone himself was careful not to commit any overt act, and indeed professed the utmost loyalty, but he took the opportunity to renew his complaints against Tirlogh Luineach. Two brothers named Ovington or Hovenden, who were partly in his service and partly in the Queen’s, skirmished with the Spaniards wrecked in Innishowen and brought most of them prisoners to Dungannon; but many of their soldiers ran away, and their own good faith was much suspected. The MacSwineys all helped the Spaniards more or less, and O’Dogherty complained that they transferred them to his country as soon as their own had been eaten up. With men and boats he had saved many hundreds from a wreck, but this was little more than common humanity demanded. There were at one time about 3,000 Spaniards alive in Ulster. O’Rourke had given them arms; MacClancy interrupted the communications; Ballymote, where George Bingham had a house, was burned by the O’Connors, O’Dowds, and O’Harts, who said they were making way for King Philip, and it was thought that Sligo must inevitably fall into their hands. Bingham’s vigour disconcerted the plans of the confederates, and a good many of the Spaniards made their way to Scotland. A few continued to lurk in different parts of Ireland, down to 1592 at least, but it is hardly possible to believe, what is so often stated, that they were in numbers sufficient to leave traces upon the features and complexions of the natives. Spanish blood there may be in Ireland, but it is surely more reasonable to attribute it to the commerce which existed for centuries between a land of fish and a land of wine.[181]
Wreck in Lough Foyle.
Officers ransomed.