CHAPTER XXXII.

REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

Religious pliancy of Statesmen and fidelity of the people.-Shane O'Neill.-Acts of the Parliament of 1559.-Laws against the Catholic religion.-Miserable condition of the Irish Church.-Discord in Thomond.-Machinations of Government against Shane O'Neill.-Capture of Calvagh O'Donnell by the latter.-War with Shane-Defeat of the English.-Plan to assassinate the Tyrone Chief. Submission of Shane, and his visit to the Court of Elizabeth-His return, further misunderstanding, and renewed peace with the Government.-O'Neill defeats the Scots of Clannaboy. -Feud between the Earls of Ormond and Desmond-The latter wounded and captured at Affane. -The Earl of Sussex succeeded by Sir Henry Sidney.-Renewed war in Ulster.-O'Neill invades the English Pale-Defeated at Derry-Burning of Derry and withdrawal of the English garrison. Death of Caivagh O'Donnell.-O'Neill defeated by Calvagh's successor, Hugh-His disastrous flight, appeal to the Scots, and murder-His character.-Visitation of Munster and Connaught, by Sidney.-Sidney's description of the state of the country-His character of the great nobles-Base policy of the Government confessed by him-His energy and severity.Arrest of Desmond.-Commencement of serious troubles in the South.-Position of the Catholics. -Sir James FitzMaurice.-Parliament of 1569-Fraudulent elections.-Attainder of O'Neill.Claims of Sir Peter Carew.-Rebellion of Sir Edmund Butler.-Sidney's military expedition to Munster.-Sir John Perrott lord president of Munster, and Sir Edward Fitton president of Connaught. -Renewed war in the South.-Rebellion of the Earl of Thomond.-Rebellion of the sons of the Earl of Clanrickard.-Battle of Shrule.-The Castle of Aughnanure taken.-Siege and capture of Castlemaine.-Submission of Sir James Fitz Maurice.-Attempted English settlements in Ulster.-Horrible massacre of the Irish in Clannaboy.-Failure and death of the Earl of Essex. -Sir Henry Sidney makes another visitation of the South and West.-Sir William Drury President of Munster, and Sir Nicholas Malby in Connaught.-Illegal tax, difficulties in the Pale. -Career and death of Rory Oge O'More.-The massacre of Mullaghmast.

COTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS AND EVENTS.

Popes: Paul IV., Pius IV., Pius V., Gregory XIII.-Kings of France: Francis II., Charles IX, Henry III.-King of Spain, Philip II.-King of Portugal, Sebastian.-Sovereigns of Scotland: Mary, James VI.-Battle of Lepanto, 1571.-Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572.

[A.D. 1558 TO 1578.]

LIANCY of conscience characterised in a remarkable degree the statesmen of the age of which it is now our duty to treat. There appears to have been no fixed principles of religion or politics among them, and the men who undertook to restore the ancient religion to its original state under the Catholic queen Mary, were found as ready and suitable instruments for its destruction at the beck of her Protestant sister and successor, Elizabeth. Thus, Thomas Radcliffe, earl of Sussex, who had been lord lieutenant of Ireland under the former sovereign, continued in office under the latter, reversing, under the altered rule, his own previous acts; and Sir Henry Sidney, the treasurer, who acted as deputy in the absence of Sussex, before the close of Mary's reign, was also appointed to the same charge, although to perform contrary duties, when Sussex

went to England after Elizabeth ascended the throne. But if those who lived within the sphere of court influence exhibited this lubricity in their religious principles, it was not so with the general population of Ireland, who viewed such fickleness with horror, and who were soon roused to a sense of their own danger by the measures taken, on the accession of the new queen, to subvert their religion and to enforce the new creed and form of worship. Thus was a fresh element of strife introduced into this unhappy country. The native population had hitherto seen in their English rulers the plunderers of their ancestral lands and the exterminators of their race; but to this character was now superadded that of the revilers and persecutors of their religion; while in regarding the English government in this latter point of view, a vast majority of the people of English descent in Ireland were now identified in sentiment with the native Irish. On the other hand, the fidelity of the Irish to the religion of their fathers became branded with the stigma of rebellion; their memories were blackened and their actions distorted by their successful enemies, and calumny was unsparingly added to spoliation and persecution. Of this ungenerous conduct we have a marked instance in the case of Shane O'Neill, the prince of Tyrone, whose character has been depicted in revolting colors by English historians. They describe him as a barbarian and as one addicted to every vice; but if he had faults, some of which we do not excuse, we know at least that he was chivalrous, confiding, and generous; that with the exhausted resources of his small territory he was able to keep the power of England at bay; that he defeated her experienced generals in the field; and foiled her statesmen in negotiation; and that he combined with no ordinary qualities of mind an undaunted bravery, and an ardent love of his country. We have already seen how he assumed the chieftaincy on the death of his father, who closed his life in captivity, and how he thus set aside the claims of the sons of his elder but illegitimate brother, Mathew or Ferdoragh, the late baron of Dungannon, who was slain at his instigation; and this course being in open defiance of English authority, which had always made common cause with Mathew, Sir Henry Sidney, as lord deputy in the absence of Sussex, now led an army to Dundalk, and summoned Shane to account for his proceedings. The haughty chief of Tyrone replied to the summons by inviting the deputy to come to his court, and stand as sponsor for his child. Whatever motive may have actuated Sidney he accepted the invitation, and was so influenced by the arguments urged by O'Neill in support of his rights, and by his protestations of loyalty, that he withdrer his army, and promised to lay the matter before the

queen. Thus for the moment were friendly relations established between the Ulster chieftain and the Pale; but the government of the latter soon found sources of uneasiness in other quarters. Rumours of invasion from France and Spain became current; the earls of Kildare and Desmond held conferences of a suspicious nature, and disaffection was more general and apparent as the principles of Elizabeth's government became intelligible to the country.

A.D. 1560.—A parliament composed of seventy-six members was summoned to meet in Dublin on the 12th of January this year.* It comprised the representatives of ten counties,† the remainder being "citizens and burgesses," says Leland, "of these towns in which the royal authority was predominant; and with such a parliament," as the same protestant historian admits, "it is little wonder that, in despite of clamour and opposition, in a session of a few weeks, the whole ecclesiastical system of queen Mary was entirely reversed. The proceedings are involved in mystery, and the principal measures are believed to have been carried by means fraudulent and clandestine; but at all events it was enacted that the queen was the head of the church of Ireland, the reformed worship was re-established as under Edward VI, and the book of common prayer, with further alterations, re-introduced. Every person was bound to attend the new service under pain of ecclesiastical censures and of a fine of twelve pence for each offence; the first fruits and twen tieths of the church revenue were restored to the crown; and the right of collating to all vacant sees by royal letters patent was established instead of the form of a writ of congé d'elire, the prelates being ordered to consecrate the person thus appointed within the space of twenty days under the penalty of premunire. The laws made in Mary's reign re storing the civil establishment of the catholic religion were repealed; all officers and ministers, ecclesiastical or lay, were bound to take the oath of supremacy under pain of forfeiture and total incapacity; and any one who maintained the spiritual supremacy of the pope was to forfeit for the first offence all his estates real and personal, or be imprisoned for one year if not worth £20; for the second offence to be liable to pre munire; and for the third to be guilty of high treason.||

* As the legal year, at this time, commenced in March, the months of January and February the natural year belonged to the preceding common or legal year; and hence this parliament 2nd Elizabeth, which was held in January, 1560, is often called the parliament of 1559.

The counties to which the writs were issued were Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Louth, Kildare Catherlough, Kilkenny, Waterford, Tipperary, and Wexford.

Leland, Hist. of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 224.

As the statute of supremacy, 28th Henry VIII., chap. 5, (A.D. 1536) was passed by the illega and arbitrary exclusion of the proctors from parliament, and by the preliminary dragooning of the

These laws against the religion of the people had little effect beyond he bounds of the Pale, while even within its precincts they were geneally met by passive resistance, and became in many instances a dead etter. When the Catholic clergy were obliged to flee from their hurches, their places were, in a majority of cases, left unsupplied, or gnorant and worthless men, who abandoned their religion for temporal dvantages, were substituted. Even those who enjoyed the rank of ishops under the Reformation showed themselves in many instances so otoriously devoid of honesty, by making away with the temporalities of heir sees, that it was soon necessary to enact a law breaking the frauduent leases which they had made, and prohibiting for the future such lienations. The sacred edifices fell into ruins, and the people were

ition by lord Leonard Gray, who, as Sir John Davis says, "to prepare the minds of the people obey this statute, began first with a martial course, and by making a victorious circuit round the ngdom, whereby the principal septs of the Irish were all terrified and most of them broken;" list. Rel.); so is there sufficient reason to believe that the statute of uniformity of the 2nd of Elizeth was obtained forcibly or surreptitiously from the parliament of 1560. "In the very beginng of that parliament," says Ware, "most of the nobility and gentry were so divided in opinion out ecclesiastical government that the earl of Sussex dissolved them, and went over to England consult her majesty on the affairs of this kingdom." From this and subsequent proceedings of e viceroy's it may be inferred that the act was not carried in a regular manner. It is even said at the earl of Sussex, to calm the protests which were made in parliament when it was found that e law had been passed by a few members assembled privately, pledged himself solemnly that would not be generally enforced during the reign of Elizabeth. (See Cambrensis Ever. also Analecta ura. p. 431.) Dr. Curry (Civil Wars, book ii. chap. iii.) has collected some curious facts in illusation of this point; but it is not true that the statute of uniformity was kept in abeyance til the beginning of the reign of James I., although not generally enforced until that me. On the 23rd May, 1561, commissioners were appointed to enforce the 2nd Eliz. against tholics in Westmeath; in December, 1562. a commission with similar jurisdiction was appointed r Armagh and Meath; and in 1564, commissioners were appointed for the whole kingdom, to quire into all offences or misdemeanors contrary to the statutes of 2nd Elizabeth, and concerning 1 heretical opinions, &c., against said statutes. Other commissions were appointed in subsequent ears, but the proceedings of none of these appear to be now ascertainable.

* See Harris's Ware's Irish Bishops, from which it would appear that the new Protestant bishops Elizabeth's time very generally plundered the sees into which they were introduced by bartering way the revenues" through fear of another change." See more particularly the articles on Miler [agrath, archbishop of Cashel; Alexander Craik, bishop of Kildare; bishop Lyon, of Ross; ishop Field, of Leighlin; bishop Devereux, of Ferns, &c. Some of these men, "by most scandalas wastes and alienations," reduced their sees to such a state that their successors were scarcely ft means to subsist, and a union of sees became necessary. The conduct of some of the first of tese “reformed” bishops appears to have been in other respects also anything but exemplary. Thus William Knight, the coadjutor of Miler Magrath in Cashel, having excited "the scorn and derision f the people" by his public drunkenness, was obliged to fly to England (Ware, p. 484). Maraduke Middleton, of Waterford, translated to St. David's, was degraded for the forgery of a will Peter Hevlin's Examan. Hist.). Richard Dixon, of Cloyne and Ross, was deprived "propter adulerium manifestum et confessum" (official paper quoted in Gilbert's Hist. of Dub., vol. i., p. 114), As to archbishop Browne, Henry VIII. charged him with "lightness in behaviour," and said at "all virtue and honesty were almost vanished from him" (State P. clxxiv.); while Bale in his wn gross manner accused him of "drunkenness and gluttony," calling him an "epicurious archFishop," a "brockish swine," a dissembling proselite," and a "pernicious papist" (The Vocacyon f Johan Bayle, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. vi.) And Dowling, in one pithy sen

obliged to worship God in secret and retired places; so that in half-adozen years from Elizabeth's accession, her deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, was able to describe the miserable condition of the Irish church, as spoiled, as well by the ruin of the temples as the dissipation and embezzlement of the patrimony, and most of all for want of sufficient ministers;" adding, that "so deformed and overthrown a church there is not, I am sure, in any region where Christ is professed!"*

Meanwhile the Irish were, as usual, a prey to discord among themselves. In Thomond, great confusion prevailed, owing to the efforts of Teige and Donough, sons of Murrough O'Brien, to wrest the chieftaincy from Conor O'Brien, earl of Thomond. Garrett, who had succeeded his father, James, as earl of Desmond, sided with the former, while Conor called in the aid of his friend, the earl of Clanrickard. The three earls, with their respective armies, met at Bally-Ally, a few miles north of Ennis, and after an obstinate fight the combined forces of Conor O'Brien and the Burkes were defeated. The proceeding of the earl of Desmond on this occasion was regarded by the English government as an act of rebellion. As to Thomond, it continued to be for some years disturbed by the rival factions. Among the claimants to the chieftaincy, under the law of tanistry, were Donnell and Teige, uncles of Conor; but in 1560 a partial settlement of these disputes was effected by a grant of the district of Corcomroe, with certain church lands, to Sir Donnell, who, some years after, served the queen efficiently as sheriff of Thomond.

The English government evinced its distrust of Shane O'Neill by a course of action well calculated to excite that chieftain's hostility. Efforts were made to alienate the neighbouring chiefs from him, and for that purpose honors were conferred on some, and promises held out to others. O'Reilly was created earl of Brenny, or Breffny, and baron of Cavan; and a messenger was sent by a circuitous route to Calvagh O'Donnell,

tence, describes Travers, Edward VI.'s bishop of Leighlin, as “cruel, covetous, vexing his clergy" (An. Hib., p. 38., ed. of 1849).

* Sir Henry Sidney's Despatches. In a letter to the queen, that deputy draws a melancholy picture of the ruinous state of the church. In Meath, which he refers to as "the best peopled diocese and the best governed country" of Ireland, he states that out of 224 parish churches 105 had fallen wholly into decay, without roofs, doors or windows, the very walls in many places being down; while the revenues were confiscated to the crown. Fifty-two others had incumbents, and as many more were private property. By a curious inconsistency, at the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, those ministers who had no knowledge of the English language were allowed to read the Liturgy in Latin; and Peter Lombard, the Catholic archbishop of Armagh, tells us, that in the first years of Elizabeth's reign many of the Irish, from ignorance, attended the new service, taking with them their rosaries and crucifixes, but that as soon as they became fully aware of the religios changes that had taken place, they shunned the churches with, horror. (Commentarius, p. 282.)