ing, the English prevailed; and the body of Allen is said to have been found by the conquerors among a heap of slain.1

The Earl of Desmond had been, for some time past, suspected of disloyalty; and his complicity in the rebellion was fully established by several papers discovered among the baggage of this emissary of Rome.2 Finding it useless to attempt a continuance of the system of equivocation, the Earl now openly avowed his hostility: and Munster was, in consequence, long involved in the miseries of war. A fresh supply of seven or eight hundred Spanish and Italian troops-who landed at Limerick in the autumn of 1580sustained only for a time the hopes of the insurgents. These foreigners succeeded in completing the erection of a fort; and, when summoned to surrender, returned a defiant answer. But a tremendous cannonade quickly obliged them to demand a parley. When the Italians were asked why they had landed in Ireland, they replied "that they were sent by the Pope for the defence of the Catholic faith."5 The whole party surrendered at discretion, and were all cruelly massacred. Some time before, Sir James Desmond, brother of the Earl, had been badly wounded in an action near Cork. He was taken to that city, and executed as a traitor. His brother, Sir John, in the beginning of the year 1581, also perished. Sanders, the Jesuit,-one of the chief concocters

1 Leland, ii. 275. It is quite clear that the Jesuit here spoken of could not have been the famous Cardinal Allen, as he lived many years afterwards. See Froude, xii. 452.

2 Leland, ii. 275.

8 Ibid. 281.

• They are reported to have said, in the first instance, that " they held the fort for the Pope and the King of Spain," and that they were sent "to extirpate heresy, and to reduce the land to the obedience of King Philip.”—Cox, 1st Part, p. 368; Leland, ii. 282.

5 Froude, xi. 236.

6 According to the reports of Romish writers "the lives and liberties of the foreign soldiers were guaranteed by the deputy."-HAVERTY, p. 424. The poet Spenser, who was present, and who had the best opportunity of knowing the facts, denies this statement most positively. Haverty admits that Spenser is supported by the report of the deputy himself made at the time. See also Ware's Annals, A.D. 1580. The massacre was sufficiently atrocious without any such aggravation.

of the rebellion,-worn out with hunger and fatigue, died in miserable circumstances. No one was with him in his last moments his body was mangled by beasts:1 but, when at length discovered by his partizans, it received the tribute of an honourable funeral. On the 11th of November, 1583, the Earl of Desmond himself finished his career. Deserted by almost all his followers, and hunted from place to place, he was in the end overtaken and killed in a wretched cabin a few miles from Tralee. His estates of upwards of half a million of acres, spreading over the counties of Limerick, Cork, Kerry, Waterford, Tipperary, and Dublin, were subsequently forfeited to the Crown. Thus was extinguished the greatness of the house of Desmond, a family which had flourished in Ireland in rude splendour since the time of the English invasion, and which had long proved formidable to the Colonial government.

The death of this Earl virtually put an end to the commotions which, for so many years, had disturbed the South of Ireland. The country-long before so desolate—was now reduced to the last degree of wretchedness. Each party, in its turn, swept, like a destroying angel, over the land. The Geraldines "proceeded to destroy, demolish, burn, and completely consume every fortress, town, corn-field, and habitation between those places to which they came, lest the English might get possession of them, and dwell in them; and, on

1 Leland, ii. 287; Ware's Annals, A.D. 1582.

2 The statement that the R. C. Bishop of Killaloe administered the last sacraments to him appears to be without foundation. See Froude, xi. 240. Peter Walsh speaks of Sanders as "wandering alone in the mountains of Kerry and starving there to death under a tree.”—History of the Remonstrance. Address to the Catholics, p. xxxiv.

Cox, first part, p. 368.

4 Cox gives the rental of the Desmond estates at the time of their forfeiture as upwards of seven thousand per annum. Cox, first part, p. 392. About the same time the rental of all Ulster is calculated by Spenser at eighteen thousand per annum. View of the State of Ireland, p. 200. Dublin, 1809. Sir Walter Raleigh obtained a large grant of the Desmond property, including a great part of the town of Youghal. He was the first to introduce the culture of the potato into the country. The poet Spenser himself obtained a grant of 3,000 acres at Kilcoleman in County Cork, and composed there part of his Faery Queene. The entire population of Ireland in 1581 was computed at 600,000. See Froude, xi. 247.

the other hand, the English consigned to a like destruction every house and habitation, and every rick and stack of corn, to which they came, to injure the Geraldines, so that, between them, the country was left one levelled plain, without corn or edifices."1 "Countless and indescribable were the injuries mutually done upon each other by the English and the Geraldines during this time."2 The Irish annalists who make these statements, though Roman Catholics themselves, condemn, in the strongest terms, the proceedings of the great southern rebel. Speaking of the year in which Desmond died, they tell how, "when the long nights had set in, the insurgents and robbers of Munster began to collect about him, and prepared to rekindle the torch of war. But God," say they, "thought it time to suppress, close, and finish this war of the Geraldines . . . . Were it not that he was given to plunder and insurrection, as he really was, this fate of the Earl of Desmond would have been one of the mournful stories of Ireland . . . . It was no wonder that the vengeance of God should exterminate the Geraldines for their opposition to their sovereign." The monks who bear this testimony evidently repudiated the idea that such men as the Earl of Desmond should be celebrated as martyrs for Catholicity.

We may often demur to the conclusions of these Irish annalists when they pronounce upon the spiritual significance of particular occurrences: but, in the fate of the Earl of Desmond, we feel bound to concur with them in recognizing the judgment of heaven. This great Anglo-Irish chief was alike ignorant and vindictive, cruel and unprincipled. By the rebellions of himself and his kinsmen, Ireland was involved in unutterable misery. The poet Spenser about this time settled in the country: and there is not perhaps in all history a more terrible picture than that of the state of Munster at the period before us drawn by his graphic pen. "Notwithstanding," says he, "that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have

1 O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 1579, vol. v., p. 1723.

2 Ibid. A.D. 1580, vol. v., p. 1735.

3 Ibid. vol. v., pp. 1793, 1795, 1797.

thought they should have been able to stand long; yet, ere one year and a half, they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued (mourned) the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens, they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions-happy where they could find them—yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and, if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; in short space there was none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast."1 "At this period," add the Irish annalists, "it was commonly said that the lowing of a cow, or the voice of the ploughman, could scarcely be heard from Dunqueen (the most western part of Kerry) to Cashel in Munster."2 "There hath died by famine only," said a high government official, "not so few as thirty thousand in this province in less than half a year, besides others that are hanged and killed." Munster was now in the lowest state of moral and spiritual degradation; superstition and crime were united in close fellowship: and a large number of the chieftains were very little better than so many leaders of banditti. As any man of Christian feeling gazed on the melancholy scenes presented in the southern province, he could scarcely fail to recognise a most awful illustration of the truth that God "turneth a fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein."4

1 View of the State of Ireland, p. 166.

2 O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 1582, vol. v., p. 1785.

3 Sir Warham St. Leger to Sir John Perrot, April 22nd, 1582. Froude, xi. 249. 4 Ps. cvii. 34.

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF DESMOND TO THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. A.D. 1583 TO A.D. 1603.

THE great religious awakening of the sixteenth century was inaugurated amidst scenes of martyrdom. In Scotland, Patrick Hamilton, and others who were the heralds of the Reformation, perished in the flames. Henry VIII. consigned to the same cruel fate those who refused to believe in the existence of purgatory, or who denied the dogma of transubstantiation. In the reign of Queen Mary, Cranmer and Ridley stand at the head of crowds of victims who were burnt to death for the profession of Protestantism. When we turn our eyes to the Continent about the same period, we behold still more appalling scenes. In the Low Countries, in Italy, and elsewhere, the demon of intolerance appears in hideous form: and Romish priests are ever and anon presented to us as among the keenest bloodhounds of persecution. During the reign of Elizabeth some of the most awful tragedies recorded in the annals of human suffering were enacted in France and Spain. Who has not been told of the horrors of the Bartholomew massacre? Who does not know that Pope Gregory XIII.-the same who excommunicated the Queen of England and patronized James Fitzmaurice-heard with delight of the slaughter of the good Coligni and the Huguenots, and ordered a medal to be struck to commemorate the butchery? In the reign of Philip II., the Spanish Auto da Fè-where troops of heretics were committed to the fire-was an affair of frequent occurrence. The King and his Court were sometimes present at the