which had been commenced with the mutinous miscreants miscalled the English army. But the bands could not be discharged with decency till they had received their wages; without money they could only continue to maintain themselves on the plunder of the farmers of the Pale; and the Queen, provoked with the past expenses to which she had so reluctantly assented, knotted her purse-strings, and seemed determined that Ireland should in future bear the cost of its own misgovernment. The worst peculations of the principal officers were inquired into and punished: Sir Henry Ratcliff, Sussex's brother, was deprived of his command and sent to the castle; but Arnold's vigour was limited by his powers. The paymasters continued to cheat the Government in the returns of the number of their troops; the Government defended themselves by letting the pay run into arrear; the soldiers revenged their illusage on the people; and so it came to pass that in O'Neil's country alone in Ireland-defended as it was from attacks from without, and enriched with the plunder of the Pale—were the peasantry prosperous, or life or property secure. Munster was distracted by the feuds between Ormond and Desmond; while the deep bays and creeks of Cork and Kerry were the nests and hiding-places of English pirates, whose numbers had just received a distinguished addition in the person of Sir Thomas Stukeley, with a barque of four hundred tons and 'a hundred tall soldiers, besides mariners.' Stukely had been on his way to Florida with a license from the Crown to make discoveries and to settle there; but he had found a convenient halting-place in an Irish harbour, from which he could issue out and plunder the Spanish galleons.1 He had taken up his quarters at Kinsale, 'to make the sea his Florida ;" and in anticipation of the terms on which he was likely to find himself with Elizabeth, he contrived to renew an acquaintance which he had commenced in England with Shan O'Neil. The friendship of a buccaneer who was growing rich on Spanish plunder might have seemed inconvenient to a chief who had offered Ireland as a fief to Philip; but Shan was not particular: Philip had as yet shown but a cold interest in Irish rebellion, and Stukely filled his cellars with sherry from Cadiz, amused him with his magniloquence, and was useful to him by his real dexterity and courage. So fond Shan became of him that he had the impertinence to write to Elizabeth in favour 'of that his so dearly loved friend, and her Majesty's worthy subject,' with whom he was grieved to hear that her Majesty was displeased. He could not but believe that she had been misinformed; but if indeed so good and gallant a gentleman had given her cause of offence, Shan entreated that her Majesty, for his sake and in the name of the services which he had himself rendered to England, would graciously pardon him; and he, 1 Stukely's piracies are much | humani generis I like not.'-Chaloner railed at here in all parts. I hang to Cecil, Madrid, December 14,1564: down my head with shame. Alas! Spanish MSS. Rolls House. though it cost the Queen roundly, let him for honour's sake be fetched in. These pardons to such as be hostes 2 Sir Thomas Wroth to Cecil, November 17: Irish MSS. Ibid. with Stukely for a friend and confidant, would make Ireland such as Ireland never was since the world began.1 Among so many mischiefs 'religion' was naturally in a bad way. The lords and gentlemen of the Pale went habitually to mass.' The Protestant bishops were chiefly agitated by the vestment controversy. Adam Loftus, the titular Primate, to whom sacked villages, ravished women, and famine-stricken skeletons crawling about the fields were matters of every-day indifference, shook with terror at the mention of a surplice.3 Robert Daly wrote in anguish to Cecil, in dismay at the countenance to Papistry,' and at his own inability to prolong a persecution which he had happily commenced.* 1 Shan O'Neil to Elizabeth, June 18, 1565: Irish MSS. Rolls House. and of the ministers of the same, except that spark be extinguished before it grow to flame. The occa 2 Adam Loftus to Elizabeth, sion is that certain learned men of May 17 MS. Ibid. our religion are put from their 3 Adam Loftus to Cecil, July livings in England; upon what oc16: MS. Ibid. casion is not known here as yet. 'The bruit of the alteration in religion is so talked of here among the Papists, and they so triumph upon the same, it would grieve any good Christian heart to hear of their rejoicing; yea, in so much that my Lord Primate, my Lord of Meath, and I, being the Queen's commissioners in ecclesiastical causes, dare not be so bold now in executing our commissions in ecclesiastical causes as we have been to this time. To what end this talk will grow I am not able to say. I fear it will grow to | House. the great contempt of the Gospel Some kind of shame was felt by statesmen in 1565. England at the condition in which Ireland continued. Unable to do anything real towards amending it, they sketched out among them about this time a scheme for a more effective government. The idea of the division of the country into separate presidencies lay at the bottom of whatever hopes they felt for an improved order of things. So long as the authority of the sovereign was represented only by a Deputy residing at Dublin, with a few hundred ragged marauders called by courtesy 'the army,' the Irish chiefs would continue, like O'Neil, to be virtually independent; while, by recognizing the reality of a power which could not be taken from them, the English Government could deprive them of their principal motive for repudiating their allegiance. The aim of the Tudor sovereigns had been from the first to introduce into Ireland the feudal administration of the English counties; they had laboured to persuade the chiefs to hold their lands under the Crown, with the obligations which landed tenures in England were supposed always to carry with them. The large owner of the soil, to the extent that his lordship extended, was in the English theory the ruler of its inhabitants, magistrate from the nature of his position, and representative of the majesty of the Crown. Again and again they had endeavoured to convince the Irish that order was better than anarchy; that their faction fights, their murders, their petty wars and robberies, were a scandal to them; that till they could amend their ways they were no better than savages. Fair measures and foul had alike failed so far. Once more a project was imagined of some possible reformation, which might succeed at least on paper. In the system which was at last to bring a golden age to Ireland, the four provinces were to be governed each by a separate president and council. Every county was to have its sheriff; and the Irish noblemen and gentlemen were to become the guardians of the law which they had so long defied. The poor should no longer be oppressed by the great; and the wrongs which they had groaned under so long should be put an end to for ever by their own Parliament. 'No poor persons should be compelled any more to work or labour by the day or otherwise without meat, drink, wages, or some other allowance during the time of their labour;' no "earthtillers, nor any others inhabiting a dwelling under any lord, should be distrained or punished in body or goods for the faults of their landlord;' nor any honest man lose life or lands without fair trial, by parliamentary attainder, 'according to the antient laws of England and Ireland.' Noble provisions were pictured out for the rebuilding of the ruined churches at the Queen's expense, with 'twelve free grammar schools,' where the Irish youth should grow into civility, and 'twelve hospitals for aged and impotent folk.' A University should be founded in Elizabeth's name, and endowed with lands at Elizabeth's cost; and the devisers of all these things, warming with their project, conceived the Irish nation accepting willingly a reformed religion, in which there should be no more pluralities, no more abuse of patron VOL. VII. 34 |