CHAP VII They too refused to serve. When required to supply 1562 provisions, they replied with complaining of the extortion December of the soldiers. They swore they would rather be 1563 An English campaign in Ulster. hanged at their own doors' than establish such a precedent. If the Deputy looked to have provisions from them he would find himself deceived;' and Sussex, distracted and miserable, could only declare that the Irish Council was in a conspiracy to keep O'Neil from falling.'1 Thus February passed and March, and M'Guyre and O'Donnell were not relieved. At last between menace and entreaty, Sussex wrung from Ormond an unwilling acquiescence; and on the 6th of April, with a mixed force of Irish and English, ill armed, ill supplied, dispirited and almost disloyal, Sussex set out for the north. He took but provisions for three weeks with him. A vague hope was held out by the farmers that a second supply should be collected at Dundalk. The achievements of an army so composed and so commanded scarcely require to be detailed. The sole result of a winter's expensive if worthless preparation was thus summed up in the report from the Deputy to the Queen : April 6. The army arrives at Armagh. April 8. We return to Newry to bring up stores and ammunition which had been left behind. April 11. We again advance to Armagh, where we remain waiting for the arrival of galloglasse and kerne from the Pale. April 14. A letter from James M'Connell, which we answer. 1 Sussex to Elizabeth, February 19. Sussex to the English Council, March 1. Sussex to Cecil, March 1.—Irish MSS. Rolls House. April 15. The galloglasse not coming, we go upon CHAP VII Shan's cattle of which we take enough to serve us; 1563 we should have taken more if we had had gallo- April glasse. April 16. We return to Armagh. April 17, 18, 19. We wait for the galloglasse. At last we send back to Dublin for them, and begin to fortify the churchyard. April 20. We write to M'Connell, who will not come to us notwithstanding his promise. April 21. We survey the Trough Mountains, said to be the strongest place in Ireland. April 22. We return to Armagh with the spoil taken, which would have been much greater if we had had galloglasse, "and because St. George's even forced me her Majesty's lieutenant to return to Divine service that night." April 23. "Divine service.' 999 The three weeks had now all but expired; the provisions were consumed; it was necessary to fall back on the Pale, and if the farmers had kept their word—if he could obtain some Irish horse-and if the Scots did not assist Shan, which he thought it likely that they would do, Sussex trusted on his next advance that he would accomplish something more. threw the blame on others. the field,' he wrote to Cecil, of money; I must lead forth an army and have no commission; I must continue in the field, and I see not how I shall be victualled; I must fortify and have no working tools.'1 Conscious of failure he I have been commanded to and I have not one penny 1 Sussex to the Council, April 24. Sussex to Cecil, April 24.-Irish MSS. April 1 CHAP VII Such after six months of preparation was the Deputy's 1563 hopeless condition; the money in which, if the complaints in England of the expenses of the Irish war were justified, he had not been stinted-all gone; and neither food, nor even spade and mattock. In the Pale he could not get a man to serve the Queen, nor a peck of corn to feed the army." At length with a wild determination to do something, he made a plundering raid towards Clogher, feeding his men on the cattle which they could steal, wasted a few miles of country, and having succeeded in proving to the Irish that he could do them no serious harm, relinquished the expedition in despair. He exclaimed loudly that the fault did not rest with him. The Scots had deceived him. The Englishry of the Pale' were secretly unwilling that the rebellion should be The expe- put down. The Ulster chiefs durst not move because against they distrusted his power to protect them. The rupture Shan totally between England and France had given a stimulus to the rebellion, and to expel Shan was but a Sisyphus dition fails. There may have been some faint foundation for these excuses. The Irish Council satisfied of the Deputy's incapacity had failed to exert themselves; while in England the old policy of leaving Ireland to be governed by the Irish had many defenders; and Elizabeth had been urged to maintain an inefficient person against his will in the command, with a hope, unavowed by those who advised her, that he would fail. Most certainly the English commander had done no injustice to his incompetency. Three hundred horses were reported to have been lost, and Cecil wrote to 1 Sussex to the Council, April 28. —Irish MSS. 2 Sussex to Cecil, May 20. 1563 May inquire the meaning of it. Sussex admitted that the CHAP VII loss was true indeed.' Being Easter-time, and he having travelled the week before and Easter-day till night, thought fit to give Easter Monday to prayer-and in this time certain churls stole off with the horses.1 The piety which could neglect practical duty for the outward service of devotion, yet at the same time could make overtures to Neil Grey to assassinate his master, requires no very lenient consideration. The news of the second failure reached Elizabeth at the crisis of the difficulty at Havre. She was straining every nerve to supply the waste of an army which the plague was destroying. She had a war with France hanging over her head. She was uncertain of Spain and but half secure of the allegiance of her English subjects. It was against her own judgment that the last enterprise had been adventured, and she reverted at once to her original determination to spend no more money in reforming a country which every effort for its amendment plunged into deeper anarchy. She would content herself with a titular sovereignty. She would withdraw, or reorganize on a changed footing, the profligate and worthless soldiers whose valour flinched for an enemy, and went no further than the plunder of a friend. The Irish should be left to themselves to realize their own ideals, and govern themselves their own way. Sir Thomas Cusak, a member of the Irish Council, came over with a scheme, which if the Queen consented to it would satisfy the people, and would ensure the return of Shan O'Neil to a nominal allegiance. The four provinces should constitute each a separate presidency. Ulster, Connaught, and Munster should be governed in 1 Sussex to Cecil, May 26.-Irish MSS. CHAP VII the Queen's name by some Irish chief or nobleman-if 1563 not elected by the people, yet chosen in compliance with August their wishes. O'Neil would have the north, the O'Briens or the Clanrickards the west. The south would fall to Desmond. On these conditions Cusak would undertake for the quiet of the country, and for the undisturbed occupation of the Pale by the English Government. Prepared as Elizabeth had almost become to abandon Ireland entirely, she welcomed this project as a reprieve. She wrote to Sussex to say that finding his expedition had resulted only in giving fresh strength to Elizabeth Shan O'Neil, she had decided to come to an end of the war of Ulster by agreement rather than by force;' and Cusak returned the first week in August, empowered to make whatever concessions should be necessary, preparatory to the proposed alteration. unable to conquer Shan will give him his desire. To Shan O'Neil he was allowed to say that the Queen was surprised at his folly in levying war against her; nor could she understand his object. She was aware of his difficulties; she knew the barbarity' of the people with whom he had to deal; she had never intended to exact any strict account of him; and if he was dissatisfied with the arrangements to which he had consented when in England, he had but to prove himself a good subject, and he should not only have those points reformed, but also any pre-eminence in that country which her Majesty might grant without doing any other person wrong. If he desired to have a council established at Armagh, he should himself be the president of that council; if he wished to drive the Scots out of Antrim, her own troops should assist in the expulsion; if he was offended with the garrison in the cathedral, she would gladly see peace maintained in a manner less expensive to herself. To the Primacy he might name the person |