Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3). Bagwell Richard

opened to fable than to historical truth. With nothing heroic about him, the unhappy Earl is still honoured as a hero; but even the fidelity of tradition to his memory is less than that of the natives to him while he yet lived. Let thus much be said in honour of the poor kerne, who stood so staunchly in a doubtful cause. The Earl’s ghost, mounted on a phantom steed with silver shoes, is said sometimes to rise at night from the waters of Lough Gur; and when the west wind comes up fitfully from the sea and makes slates and windows rattle, the Kerry people still call upon travellers to listen to the Desmond howl.106

       CHAPTER XL.

      GOVERNMENT OF PERROTT, 1583-1584

Sir John Perrott is made Lord Deputy

      As early as December 1582, Sir John Perrott had been spoken of as Grey’s successor. His actual appointment was, however, deferred for more than a year, Loftus and Wallop continuing to act as Lords Justices till June 1584. They were fortunate in seeing the end of the Desmond rebellion, but less so in having to deal with those who had been engaged in it. Lady Desmond, in her poverty, subsisted upon a pension allowed her by Ormonde, until the Queen’s pleasure should be known; and the protections which he had given to the seneschal of Imokilly, Patrick Condon, and other leaders, were respected. Wallop did not like the Lord-General, but he did not thwart him seriously. Piers Grace, an old and notorious offender in the Kilkenny district, was pardoned at the Earl’s intercession, and the Lords Justices observed that they would not have done it for anyone else.107

Archbishop O’HurleyHis treatment at Rome

      In 1581, after the death of Fitzgibbon, Gregory XIII. appointed Dermod O’Hurley to the Archbishopric of Cashel. He had spent fifteen years at Louvain and four at Rheims, and he was deeply engaged in the plans of Irish exiles against Elizabeth’s government. We get a glimpse of him at Rome not long after his appointment, and find him, like his predecessor, occupied in schemes for the invasion of Ireland. The caution of the Italian ecclesiastic is, as usual, contrasted with the sanguine temper of the exiles. Christopher Barnewall, who had been sent to the Continent by Baltinglas, was introduced by O’Hurley to Cardinal Como, and informed him that Kildare and Delvin were in prison, though both had served against the Wicklow rebels. ‘Who,’ said the Cardinal, with an expressive shrug, ‘would trust an Irishman? The Earl promised to take our part.’ O’Hurley thought he had not gone so far. ‘Wilt thou tell me?’ answered the Italian angrily, and produced a letter from Kildare and a document signed by most of the Lords of Ulster, Munster, and Connaught, which made his view good. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that we would have trusted to James Fitzmaurice and Stukeley, or to all these lords which subscribed the great letter, unless we had received this letter from the Earl of Kildare? The Pope has no money for any of your nation.’108

O’Hurley reaches Ireland, where he is tortured and hanged

      O’Hurley landed at Drogheda in September, 1583, bringing letters from Rome with him. He was harboured by Lord Slane, whose daughter was married to Ormonde’s natural son Piers, and in the latter’s company he went into Munster after a few days’ rest. The Archbishop, who was soon hunted down, with Ormonde’s help, made no secret of having been engaged in the work of the Inquisition, and charged Kildare and Delvin with the late insurrection – thus showing that Barnewall had spoken truly. Walsingham recommended the use of ‘torture, or any other severe manner of proceeding, to gain his knowledge of all foreign practices against Her Majesty’s states.’ The Lords Justices objected that they had no rack nor other such instrument of terror, and that the Tower of London would be a fitter place for the experiment. Walsingham then advised them to toast the prisoner’s feet at the fire with hot boots. A commission was accordingly made out to Fenton and Waterhouse, and the ordeal was applied with frightful severity. The letters brought by O’Hurley had been intercepted, and could not therefore be denied, but nothing of importance was elicited. A letter which he had written to Ormonde was produced, and the Lords Justices took care to hint at the Earl’s complicity, but without effect. The lawyers held that an indictment for treasons committed abroad would not lie, and in any case a trial by jury was not to be risked. The Lords Justices suggested martial law, to which, as they grimly observed, the landless Archbishop could not fairly object. Seeing that further torture would be useless Walsingham agreed to this course, and noted the Queen’s ‘good acceptation of their careful travail in this matter.’ Throughout the correspondence it is evident that Elizabeth and all her servants looked upon O’Hurley mainly as a traitor and not as a recusant; and that defence of their conduct may stand for what it is worth. The torture is indefensible; but it was only too common in those days, and O’Hurley himself had been an Inquisitor. The Archbishop was hanged privately in the Castle early on June 19, after the arrival of Perrott, but before he had been sworn in.109

Help comes from Spain, but it is too late

      There can be no doubt that the court of Rome had urged upon that of Spain the necessity of relieving Desmond. But Philip II. was never in time, and his energies, such as they were, were absorbed by Portuguese affairs. It was not until the final defeat of Strozzi’s expedition to the Azores that Irish exiles could get their business attended to. The Cardinal of Como became friendly once more, and sent for William Nugent almost as often as the post arrived from Spain, saying that he remembered him at every turn of his beads. The Pope saw Nugent every six weeks, and the intervals were spent in making interest with Gregory’s son Giacomo, whose influence over the aged Pontiff had become very great. It was confidently reported that the whole Spanish fleet would sail for Ireland on its return from the Azores, but only two ships actually arrived. The papal bishop of Killaloe, Cornelius Ryan, had been sent by Desmond to Spain towards the end of 1582. In the spring of 1583 it was announced that help was coming, but it may have been delayed until the return of Santa Cruz and his fleet. Desmond had been dead nearly two months when the tardy succour arrived. Bishop Ryan appeared on the west coast with one large ship laden with artillery. Another, also with munitions of war, anchored in Ringabella Bay outside Cork harbour, and sent a boat, which brought off a countryman. Of those on board the chief spokesman was a friar named Shane O’Ferrall, who wept bitterly on hearing of Desmond’s death. A Spaniard wrote down all the particulars. ‘Is there none of the Earl’s name,’ he asked, ‘that will take upon him to follow and maintain that enterprise? You say none. Well, if any had continued it until now, we had brought here to furnish them treasure and munition good store, and shortly they should have had more, and aid enough.’ There were three bags of silver and two of gold, each as much as a man could carry. A present was sent by O’Ferrall to a lady living close by – marmalade, lemons and figs, a poignard, and a taffeta scarf – and then finding their occupation gone, the strangers left the coast. Don Antonio and Philip Strozzi had not saved Portugal, but they had destroyed Spanish influence in Ireland.110

Murder of John Burke;his popularityClanricarde is pardoned

      Within a week of Desmond’s death the newly made Baron of Leitrim came to a violent end. Public opinion attributed the deed to his brother, and no doubt he profited largely by it. Clanricarde himself said that he had intercepted a band of traitors in the Baron’s company, and that he fell in the scuffle. His sister, Lady Mary, clamoured loudly for vengeance, but the Earl found means to silence her. A competent English observer tells us that ‘Sir John of the Shamrocks,’ as the Irish called him, was the best beloved man in Connaught, perhaps in all Ireland. ‘He was very well spoken, he was courteous, he was liberal to every man that had occasion to try him, in his house he was very bountiful, and he wrote better than any Irishman whose letters I have seen… First he would speak fair to every man, and mean no truth to any man that was honest. He had always a treasonable mind, and did ever thirst after blood. He was betrothed to one woman, and, leaving her, he was married to two others; they are all three alive. He was a common haunter of women, and men say he had a child by his own sister, and a great maintainer of thieves he was… The Earl will not steal from one to give to another. He will not spare the offender for any respects; I mean thieves: other offenders are seldom punished in Ireland, and never among the Irish.’ The Earl offered to prove the incest by irrefutable witnesses. The Lord Justice thought the simplest plan was

106

The spot where Desmond fell is on the right bank, rather low down in the glen. No doubt the cabin where he spent the night was higher up. In the survey made by Sir Valentine Browne and others, and privately printed by Mr. S. M. Hussey, is the following passage: ‘A great wood here and there, filled with oak-trees fit for house timber, but not large enough for the making of ships and castles. But the greater part of the said wood consists in underwood of the age of fifty and sixty years, filled with dotted trees – ash, hazels, sallows, willows, alders, birches, white-thorns and such like… The wood is called Glanageenty, in which the late Earl of Desmond was slain in his rebellion, containing in length about four miles, and in breadth two miles, which said woods, because no woods there are saleable, and they lie under the mountains of Slew-Logher, far from any river or navigable stream, are here valued at nil.’ I inspected the ground in June 1883.

107

Birch’s Memoirs, i. 27; Ormonde to Burghley, Jan. 26, 1584; Lords Justices to Ormonde, Dec. 31, 1583.

108

Second examination of Christopher Barnewall, Aug. 12, 1583.

109

The text is taken from the official correspondence, Lords Justices to Robert Beale, Oct. 8, 1583; to Walsingham, Oct. 20, Dec. 10, March 7 and 8, 1584, April 14, and July 9; Walsingham to the Lords Justices, April 28, 1584. It appears from the Catholic accounts that combustibles were poured into the boots. That of the Jesuit Holing, who died in 1599, may be taken as contemporary; it is printed in Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 87. ‘Tormenta nova illi parantur; nam ejus pedibus atroces hæreticorum ministri ocreas, butiro, oleo, et sale oppletas, ac – quod longe crudelius fuit – crudo ex corio conditas subjecerunt; postea, vero, catenis simul et compedibus alligatum, aperto in loco, nempe in medio castri – ubi spectaculum mundo, hominibus, et angelis – ubi ab omnibus videri potuit, lento igne apposuerunt, illicque detinuerunt, donec ipso corio consumpto, butiro, oleo, et sale ferventibus, ossa non cute pro carne tecta verum etiam omnino munda fuerint relicta… Postea in ergastulum et obscurissimum carcerem reducitur, et post sex menses tanquam traditor et reus criminis læsæ majestatis, ab iniquo judice ad mortem condemnatus est. Ad extremum, post inaudita tormenta et carceris molestias, albescente cælo, ne forte tumultus fieret in populo qui ejus exemplo, doctrina, et constantia permotus ad ejus defensionem perveniret, ignorantibus civibus patibulo suspensus martyrium consummavit Dublinii circa annum 1585, mense Maio.’ Other accounts, which agree in essentials, are collected in Brady’s Episcopal Succession, ii. 11, 599. The Valicellian MS. there quoted, says a withen rope was used to protract his agony; but Bacon tells us that this kind of halter was generally used in Ireland, and that a rebel objected to any other.

110

Ormonde to the Privy Council and to Burghley, Jan. 11, 1584, with enclosures; Wallop to Walsingham, Jan. 21.