826

Essex to Ireland;

and its re

sult.

Proceedings of the Earl of Essex in Ireland. [BOOK VI.

A.D. 1599. But the English government perceiving the Expedition alarming danger to which the country was now of the earl of exposed, at a time when a Spanish invasion was still impending, resolved on sending over to Ireland a much larger body of troops than had ever before been provided for this country; and a force of 20,000 men was therefore equipped for the Irish service, under the command of the earl of Essex, who accordingly arrived in Dublin in the month of April, 1599.* His military operations against the rebels were however of little importance; and after his having suffered some serious losses, a mischievous conference took place between him and O'Nial, in which a truce of six weeks was agreed upon between both parties, the earl of Tyrone expecting further supplies from Spain, and not wishing, with all his advantages, to engage in battle before they had arrived. Immediately after the conference, the earl of Essex, disgusted probably with his experience of military life in Ireland, and having other motives which are nothing to our purpose at present, left his Irish command and returned home to his own people.

A titular archbishop of Dublin

comes with foreign aid

for the rebels.

Scarcely had he departed when there arrived in Ireland a further instalment of the expected succours from Spain; and one Don Mattheo Oviedo, a Spanish friar, whom the pope had

*Leland, ii. 355. Phelan, 179, 180.

CH. VIII.] A Spanish titular comes with aid for the rebels.

827

nominated as his archbishop of Dublin, landed A.D. 1599. with a large supply of money and ammunition, and promises of immediate and powerful reinforcements from his own country. Of his arrival the following account is furnished by O'Sullevan:—“In a few days there came into Ulster Friar Matthew Oviedo, a Spaniard, archbishop [i.e. titular] of Dublin, and Martin Cerda, a noble Spanish knight, bringing from the pope indulgences and remission of sins for all that would take up arms against the English in defence of the faith; and for O'Nial a phoenix plume, and from his Catholic majesty Philip III. (for the second of that name was now dead) twenty-two thousand pieces of gold for the payment of soldiers." What the pope meant by pretending to send the chieftain the feathers of a fabulous bird appears not very plain; unless it was a sly intimation that he understood sufficiently the apocryphal and fabulous character of the pretences which he made of being engaged in a war for the sake of true religion.*

champion "of

His recent advantages, and the promises made o'Nial beto him so raised the spirits of the earl of Tyrone, comes the or The O'Nial, as he was now called, that he the Church recommenced hostilities as soon as the truce had of Rome. expired; and sent forth also a manifesto or

* O'Sullevan, Hist. Cath. ib. tom. iii. lib. iv. c. xii. Leland, ii. 363. Phelan, 188.

828

Many of the Irish, in spite of the efforts of Rome, [Book VI.

A.D. 1599. proclamation to all his countrymen, dated the 15th November, 1599, exhorting them to forsake heresy, and stand up for their country's liberty and the Catholic faith."* And many

Numbers of the Irish

the queen.

66

and influential were the chieftains who gladly received the summons, and attended to his call. But the first place in authority as in fame was unanimously assigned to O'Nial, and all willingly regarded him as the great champion and leader of the insurgent cause.

It would be wrong however to leave on the retain their reader's mind the impression that there preallegiance to vailed among the Irish an universal readiness to take up arms against their own sovereign at the bidding of an alien bishop. O'Sullevan himself confesses, although it was his business to represent the religious zeal of his countrymen in the most advantageous point of view, that "a considerable party among this clergy recommended a dutiful submission to government, and opposed the practices of their more intemperate brethren;" and he likewise gives a long catalogue of nobles, both native and Anglo-Irish, who after the war had commenced, adhered to the queen and fought against the pope, notwith

* A copy of this document of O'Nial's may be seen in Leland, ii. 364. Mr. Phelan in his usual inaccurate way has given the same in a mutilated form; leaving out a considerable portion without any notice to the reader of such omission. See his Policy, &c., pp.

184-186.

CH. VIII.] retain their loyalty to Queen Elizabeth.

829

standing the denunciations uttered against such A.D. 1599. "ignorant, foolish, abandoned, guilty, and souldestroying" conduct by the more loyal children of the court of Rome.*

reproof of

sons.

The very champion of the papacy also, in his O'Nial's manifesto above mentioned, indicates plainly the conduct enough the spirit of obedience to the queen of such perby which many of the Irish were influenced, and their unwillingness to be seduced into the selfish schemes of their designing agitators. O'Nial tells his countrymen that he had hitherto used extraordinary mildness† towards them, in not allowing his forces to hurt them for their indifference to his cause, a gentleness which he adopted, he says, partly because they were professedly "Catholicks," and partly because he had hoped that in course of time they would be led to consider the guiltiness which they brought on their own "consciences, in maintaining, relieving, and helping the enemies of God and our country, in wars infallibly tending to the promotion of heresie."

ens them

"But now," says he, "seeing you are so obsti- He threatnate in that in which you have hitherto con- with extertinued, of necessitie I must use severity against mination you, whom otherwise I most entirely loved, in stinate loyreclayming you by compulsion, when my long alty.

* Leland, ii. 306. Phelan, 182. O'Sullevan, Hist. Cath. 233. † Proverbs, xii, 10.

for their ob

830

Of Hugh O'Nial's traitorous Manifesto, [BOOK VI.

A.D. 1599. tollerance and happy victories by God's particular favour doubtlessly obtained, could work no alteration in your consciences. Considering notwithstanding the great calamitie and miserie whereunto you are most likely to fall, by persevering in that damnable state in which hitherto ye have lived, having thereof commiseration, hereby I thought good and convenient to forewarn you, requesting everie of you to come and joyn with me against the enemies of God and our poor country. If the same ye do not, I will use means not only to spoil you of all your goods, but according to the utmost of my power shall work what I can to dispossess you of all your lands; because you are the means whereby warres are maintained against the exaltation of the Catholic faith;" and to what he called the Catholic faith, he says he is determined to reduce the country by all means; a work which as he remarks "can never be brought to any good pass, without either the destruction or helping hands" of those whom he addresses.

Specimen of

lic faith" in

princes.

As for her majesty's authority, he disposes of his "Catho that in the following religious and Christian deposing of sentences:-" Some Catholicks," says he, "doe think themselves bound to obey the queen as their lawful prince; which is denyed, in respect that she was deprived of all such kingdoms, dominions, and possessions, which otherwise