'utZ/v^L^ 5 . / /^ '?^ ^:j^^j:^:^^ ^JL^ey^Jl^ /C^^ I J 9 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND BY SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY " To see that buried dust of living favie LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, ^ CO MDCCCLXXXIII 1)A BOSTON CSLLESE US8ARV CHESTNUT HM, MA 021*7 |^yg 8 1990 CONTENTS I Sir Walter's Study and the Geraldine College II Ralegh and the Historians III Arrives in Ireland IV The Slaughter at Smerwick V Elizabeth^ s Approval . VI Ralegh's Courage VII His Hardships . VIII The Queen and Ralegh IX The Success of his Bands X Practises the Assassination of Irish Chiefs XI Elizabeth's Complicity in Assassination Plots XII Bw'ghley disapproves of Oppression XIII Burghley's Policy thwarted . XIV Irish Council and Judges oppose Burgh ley's Policy ...... 5 8 lo 14 18 28 30 32 35 40 46 52 CONTENTS XV Ralegh's Agrarian Troubles . XVI His Queenstown Estate . XVII Jlis Blackwater Estate . XVIII His Educational Policy . XIX The National Cause and the Land Question XX '' This Loste Land" XXI Land Commission to Fix Rents XXII Destruction of Lrish Woods XXIII Burghley and Ralegh Anti-Papal . XXIV The *' last National Archbishop of Cashel XXV Ralegh opposes Meiler Magrath XXVI Ralegh'' s Testimony in the Lords in 1882 XXVII Ralegh and Cromwell . XXVIII Ralegh and Ormond XXIX Ii'ish Self-government XXX Florence McCarthy XXXI His last Advice to the Queen . XXXII The Emigration and Re-peopling Plajis XXXIII Dedication of the Irish Wars . XXXIV The National Traditions XXXV Spenser and Ralegh XXXVI Introduces Tobacco and the Potato XXXVII The Old Cotmtcss of Desmotui . XXXVIII The Two Widows .... PAGB 54 59 61 65 67 71 74 75 79 81 84 88 90 95 98 100 103 105 no 112 114 117 119 122 CONTENTS XXXIX Ralegh opposes Essex's Irish Policy XL ''^ Desthuy stronger than CouncelV XLI On the Scaffold XLII His Irish Residences XLIII Irish Portraits of Ralegh . XLIV Retrospect of RalegJi's Irish Policy PAGE 126 133 137 139 144 146 LETTERS OF SIR WALTER RALEGH FROM IRELAND, OR RELATING TO IRISH AFFAIRS I To Lord Burghley 151 II To Sir Francis Walsingham 154 III To Sir Francis Walsingham 157 IV To the Lord Deputy . 162 V To the Erie of Leycester 167 VI To Sir George Carew . 170 VII To Sir R. Cicill . 173 VIII To Sir Robert Cecill . 176 IX To Sir Robert Cicill . 178 X To Lord Burghley . 182 CONTENTS PAGE XI To Sir Robert Cecil 185 XII To Sir Robert Cecill . 187 XIII To Sir Robert Cecill . 189 XIV To Sir Roberte Cecill . 192 XV To Sir Robert Cecil . 194 XVI To Sir Robert Cecyll . 195 XVII To Sir Robert Cecyll . 196 XVIII To Sir Robert Cecyll . 198 XIX To Sir Robert Cecyll . 200 XX Testamentary Note written by Sir Walter Ralegh on the night before his execution. Nove7?iber, 16 18 203 APPENDIX I Official Report of Proceedings at Smerwicke . 207 II Queen Elizabeth's Letters about the Affair at Smenvick . . . . . .212 III Ralegh's Reckonings 217 IV Ralegh's Pay 222 ".;^ CONTENTS xi PAGE V Ralegh's Muster-Roll, 1587 . . . . 225 VI Lord Burghley's Notes of Ralegh's Opinions as to the Forces to be kept in Munstcr , .227 VII Ralegh's Lease of Cuil-na-clocfionna {^^ the Nook of the Wliite Stone") . . .233 VIII Royal Warrant, tinder the Sign Manual and Sig}tet, petisioning the Countess of Desmond . 240 IX Ralegh and Florence McCarthy in the Tower together ....... 243 X Ralegh and the Eighteenth Earl of Desmond iji the Tower ...... 245 Index 247 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Sir Walter's Study and the Geraldine College A FEW years ago a desultory correspondent wrote to a friend : — " I have returned from the tropical seas where Ralegh's fleet suffered from tornados and fever, and I am resting for a few weeks in ' Sir Walter's study ' — in the same room where he looked at the charts of Verazzano before his voyage, and where he first smoked tobacco in Europe on his return. The room is much the same as it might have been in those times. The original painting of the first governor of Virginia is there, and a contemporary r, enofravinof 2 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND engraving of Elizabeth Queen of Virginia. The long table at which he wrote, the oak chest in which he kept papers, the little Italian cabinet, the dark wainscoting with fine carvings rising up from each side of the hearthstone to the ceiling, the old deeds and parchments, some with Ralegh's seal, the original warrant, under the autograph and signet of Queen Elizabeth, granting a pension to the Countess Elinor of Desmond, and the two book- cases of vellum-bound and oak-bound books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — for there is nothing in the room (except the writer of these lines) that was not born when Ralegh lived here — all these things compel me to think of him, and I do my best to think well of him, but how can I ? Who could think well of him here? As I look through the deep window where he often stood, I see the ruined tower of St. Mary's and the remains of the College of Youghal. They were built a hundred years before his time, as well as the warden's house in which he lived, by the eighth Earl of Desmond. In this spot I cannot think of Ralegh SIR WALTER'S STUDY Ralegh without thinking of Thomas Fitzgerald — a contrast not favourable to Ralegh," The great Earl, to whom the modern occupant of Sir Walter's study thus referred, was the chief personage in the Pale for some years. He was Lord Deputy, but whilst he did his duty conscien- tiously to the foreign lord of Ireland, he was not insensible to the fact that there were people in Ireland who lived beyond the Pale. He called the first Parliament in which a real effort was made to establish something like fair dealing with the Irishry. He encouraged the commerce with the southern parts of Europe which had sprung up about the time that Edward the Second had farmed out the customs revenue of Cork, Youghal, and Waterford to Gerardo, a Florentine merchant, and the Friscobaldi had begun to send their wines from Livorno to Youghal. Like his contemporary Lorenzo de' Medici, he played a part in the revival of letters. He could not restore all the ruined seats of learning from Armagh to Cashel and Lismore that had fallen before civil war and foreign B 2 invasion. 4 Sm WALTER R A LEGIT IN IRELAND invasion, but he founded a college at Youghal in 1464 and gave the warden and fellows an endow- ment of ;£'6oo per annum — a more generous endowment, looking to his income and the value of money in those days, than the Parhament has given to the Queen's Colleges and the Irish people them- selves have given to the Catholic University in our time. Some of the specimens of early printing — 1479 to 1483 — which were found fifty years ago in a recess in the house built by the great Earl for the Warden of the College, were no doubt a part of the library then collected. The contrast between this generous effort to revive the ancient civilisation of the country and the Philistine policy, as Mr. Matthew Arnold would call it, of later times is remarkable. II II Ralegh and the Historians Ralegh's career in Ireland determined his fate more perhaps than is usually supposed. On the other hand, his proceedings and those of his companions in Munster made a deep mark in Irish history. In fact he was one of the most daring and active of those eminent Englishmen who have done much to render British government per- manently difficult — if not more than difficult — in Ireland. British historians have touched but slightly on Ralegh's Irish exploits. Beyond the fact of his planting the potato for the first time in his garden near the old town-wall of Youghal, his smoking tobacco under the four intertwisted yew-trees that still remain there, and his musings with Edmund Spenser, little is published of his Munster life. And yet 6 S/J? WALTER RALEGH LN IRELAND yet it is still a fresh and living force in the unwritten history of the peasants from Youghal to Lismore, and along the banks of the Blackwater and the Lee from Imokilly to the mountains of Kerry. It is possible to meet men and women on the old ploughlands of the Desmond estate who speak nothing but Irish (in the Province of Munster there are thirty thousand peasants who at this day do not speak English), and from their stories to pick up more of the real doings of Ralegh and his comrades in Ireland than from Hume and the historians. That tradition-loving and long-memoried people as M. Thierry calls them, the most unchanging people on the face of the globe as Mr. Froude calls them, are not ignorant of the events of three hundred years ago, and they look upon them now much in the same way that their ancestors looked upon them then. In his ' English in Ireland' Mr. Froude makes no reference to Sir Walter Ralegh, and in his ' History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of EUzabeth,' in which the war of the Desmonds is RALEGH AND THE HISTORIANS 7 is more fully described, he hardly mentions him. Having touched on the Irish victory at Glenmalure in which the new Deputy, Lord Grey de Wilton, was defeated, the landing of two thousand Scots in Antrim under the Countess of Desmond, and the landing of some Spanish and Italian allies of the Irish in Dingle Bay, Mr. Froude says : — " Meanwhile, Lord Grey having recovered as well as he could from his first calamity, and being reassured by a victory of Maltby's over the Burkes and the unexpected quiet of the rest of Ireland, gathered all the soldiers that he could raise, and set off with a small, but, from its composition, un- usually interesting force, to attack the invaders by land. Ireland had become to young EngHshmen of spirit a land of hope and adventure, where they might win glory and perhaps fortune \ and among the names of the ofiicers who accompanied Grey are found those of Burghley's kinsman, young Mr. Cheke, of Edmund Spenser, and of Walter Ralegh." Such is Mr. Froude's mention of him. This omission is not less remarkable from the fact that in important 8 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND important events described by Mr. Froude, Ralegh took a busy part ; and for a score of years he was an influential adviser of Elizabeth, sometimes the most influential, in an Irish policy that, as Edmund Burke says, was never deviated from for a single hour during her reign. Ill Arrives in Ireland Spenser was Assistant-Secretary to the Lord Deputy, and was then twenty-eight years of age. Ralegh was also in his twenty-eighth year when he sailed from the Isle of Wight for Ireland. He landed in Cove harbour with what he calls "a footeband of one hundrethe men." In his letter to Lord Burghley written from Cork on the 22nd of February, 1580, he claims certain arrears, from which it seems that he was paid at the rate of four shiUings a day for himself, two shillings a day for his ARRIVES IN IRELAND his lieutenant, fourteenpence a day for four other officers, and eightpence a day for every common soldier. To this company he was able to add a small number of horsemen with " good furniture," that is, suitable armour and trappings. They were mostly Devonshire men, and, like their captain, full of courage and energy. Even when, two years later, by the Queen's special order, he got the command of Captain Appesley's band also, the number of troops with which he operated was very small. The amount of destruction and conquest accomplished by those highly paid and well equipped men seems out of all proportion to their insignificant numbers. For some years the Irish fell before them as German tribes had fallen before the soldiers of Italy. IV IV » The Slaughter at Sinerwick Captain Ralegh's " Reckonings " in Ireland begin, according to the records in the Rolls Office, with the date July 13, 1580, a couple of months before Lord Grey's second government in Ireland, but some earher record of his pay may have been lost. Whether or not he preceded the Lord Deputy to Ireland, he certainly accompanied him to the bay on the shores of the Atlantic where Admiral Winter and Vice-Admiral Bingham blockaded Desmond's six or seven hundred foreign allies. Hemmed in on all sides, the garrison of Smerwick Castle surrendered on the loth of November, 1 580. Here is Mr. Froude's description of the way in which some of those young English- men of spirit began to win glory : — " Don Bastian with the officers came out with ensigns THE SLAUGHTER AT SMERWICK easigns trailing, and gave themselves up as prisoners. The men piled their arms outside the walls, and waited defenceless to learn the pleasure of their conquerors. They were strangers, and by this time alone. The officers were reserved for their ransom. Common prisoners were incon- venient and expensive, and it was thought desirable to read a severe lesson to Catholic sympathisers in Ireland. ' The Lord of hosts,' \vrote Grey, ' had delivered the enemy to us, none of ours being hurt, Mr. Cheke alone excepted. Then put I in certain bands, who fell straight to execution.' A certain number of the original party had fallen sick, and had been sent back to Spain. With the excep- tion of these and of the officers, the entire party was slaughtered. A few women, some of them pregnant, were hanged. A servant of Saunders, an Irish gentleman, and a priest were hanged also. The bodies, six hundred in all, were stripped and laid out upon the sands, ' as gallant goodly person- ages,' said Grey, ' as ever were beheld.' " Mr. Froude, after referring to Camden's state- ment 12 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND ment that Lord Grey had shed tears and Queen Elizabeth had wished the cruelty undone, surmises that they might possibly " have felt some pity for the subjects of the King of Spain which was refused to the wives and babies of the Irish chiefs." But he gives good reasons for doubting Lord Grey's tears or the sincerity of the Queen's pity. Whoever was to blame for the occurrence, the English admiral had no complicity in it. Dr. Taylor in his ' History of Ireland' says : "To the relentless soldiery innocence furnished no protec- tion ; helpless infancy and tottering age found no mercy. Admiral Winter, however, with the human- ity natural to a British sailor, was shocked by the horrid massacre, and granted protection to a few that escaped to his fleet." But who was to blame ? Lord Grey does not say what orders he gave to the bands he sent in, nor who commanded them. He does not mention Ralegh's name in his despatch of November 12 to the Privy Council. The question as to who was the actual executioner seems, how- ever, to be set at rest by a passage in the contem- porary THE SLAUGHTER AT SMERWICK 13 porary narrative in Hooker's Supplement to the Chronicles of Holinshed, in which we are told that the people in the fort held out a white flag, uttering the cry, " Misericordia, misericordia ; " they then, at the Lord Deputy's request, disarmed themselves, all their armour and arms being laid in one place. Hooker then adds : " In the fort Sir James Fitz- gerald, Knight, and Lord of the Decies, was a prisoner by the order of the Earl of Desmond ; and one Plunket, an Irishman, and one Englishman which came and accompanied the traitors out of Spaine. The knight was set at liberty, but the other two were executed. When the captain had yielded himself, and the fort appointed to be surrendered, Captain Ralegh, together with Captain Macworth, who had the ward of that day, entered into the castle, and made a great slaughter, many or most part of them being put to the sword." The exact number thus dealt with by Ralegh and Macworth, though not given in Hooker's Supplement, appears in Holinshed under the date An. Reg. 2^ (1580). " The fort was yeelded, all the Irish men and 14 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND women hanged ; and more than foure hundred Spaniards, Itahans, and Biscaies put to the sword ; the coronell, capteins, secretarie and others, to the number of twentie, saved for ransome." Elizabeths Approval Mr. Froude is the first EngHsh historian who admits that Queen Elizabeth had sanctioned this early exploit of Grey and Ralegh. For nearly three centuries the royal approbation of the Mahometan lesson of Smerwick was denied or doubted by British writers, whilst on the other hand the popular belief in Ireland was universal, that Grey had broken faith and that Elizabeth had approved of the massacre. Lord Bacon said, " The Queen was much displeased at the slaughter."* Leland em- bodied the general view of the historians from * ' Harleian MSS.,' vol. v. p. 89. Camden ELIZABETirS APPROVAL Camden to the nineteenth century when he said, "Queen Ehzabeth expressed the utmost concern and displeasure at this barbarous execution, but such pretences and such professions could not efface the odiousness of this action, and on the Continent it was received with horror." The two letters, however, from Elizabeth to the Lord Deputy, printed in the appendix, show that the popular Irish view was well founded. The first letter is dated December 12, 1580, and is in reply to Lord Grey's despatch of the 12th of November. In this letter she says the deed performed by him was " greately to our lyking." The second letter was written by the Queen two years subsequently, and refers with satisfaction to his exploit. They were both rendered accessible to the public only a few years ago when the State Papers were calendared at the Public Record Office. The mistaken view of the British historians may possibly have arisen from assuming that because Lord Burghley had condemned the massacre, his Royal mistress had condemned it also. But this was 1 6 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND was only one of many instances in which the English Prime Minister of that day differed with Elizabeth as well as with the Dublin Castle offi- cials. What real ground the Irish people have for the proverb, " The faith of Grey," as indicating a broken promise, is difficult to determine. Grey's despatches give no colour to any act of treachery. His secretary Edmund Spenser, however, admits the existence of a vague sentiment on the subject, from which he defends his master. But as regards the approval of the Queen, which is now beyond all question, the accuracy of the popular view in Ireland as opposed to that of the historians, may be accounted for by the fact that whilst Lord Burghley spoke out in London against the massacre, and the Queen held her tongue. Lord Grey, doubtless, showed her letters to his Council, and perhaps to the captains who were most zealous at Smerwick. It is one of the misfortunes of foreigners under such circumstances that the gossip of the dinner- table and the camp is soon spread by native servants. The ELIZABETirS APPROVAL The State Papers that can now be read by the public at the Rolls Office^ determine another dis- puted point also in connection with this affair. The Abbe Mac Geoghegan had asserted that one or two of the prisoners had been tortured and mutilated before being put to death. This was denied as a mahcious fable. It was asserted that though Elizabeth's gallant captains might deal out stern justice to Irish women and children, to the extent even of hanging them, they would not wantonly mutilate human beings. One of the official reports however to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's Secretary of State, in the seventy-eighth volume of the State Papers relating to Ireland for 1580, makes the following mention of the torture and mutilation : — " The ffortes were yielded, all the Irishmen and women hanged, and four hundred and upwardes of Italyans and others put to the sworde. ... A ffrayer and others kept in store to be executed after examination had of them. . . . Next day was executed an Englishman who served Dr. Saunders, c one 1 8 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND one Plunckett, and an Irishe Priest theire armes and legges were broken and hanged upon a gallows." VI RalegHs Courage Some of Ralegh's exploits were such as would entitle him now-a-days to the Victoria Cross. In his letter from Cork to Sir Francis Walsingham, of February 22^, 1581, after he had been about a year in Ireland, he refers to an escape he had from the Seneschal of Imokilly when returning by a circuitous route from Dublin to Cork. His own account of the skirmish, which seems to have taken place at the Ballinacurra river, is very modest : — "In my return from Develin I made a hard escape from the Seneshall in Bar re's countre (wher he is always fostered) with xiiii horsmen and three- score footmen. " I was three horsmen, and soun set on horsbacke two RALE GITS COURAGE 19 two Irishe footmen. I coveted to recover a litle old castle, in that resun I left three men and three horses. The manner of myne own behaviour I leve to the report of others, but the escape was strange to all men. The castle was a longe mile off from the place wher he first sett on us, Ther is great need of a supply in Munster, for the bandes are all miche decayed." From that letter Walsingham would learn nothing of the fact that Ralegh most gallantly risked his own life to save one of his followers. Hooker's descrip- tion of the affair is more minute : — '^ The capteine (Ralegh) making his returne from Dubline, and the same well knowne unto the seneschall of ImokeUie, through whose countrie he was to passe, laie in ambush for him to haue intrapped him betweene Youghall and Corke, lieng at a foord, which the said capteine must passe our with six horssemen, and certain kerne. The capteine little mistrusting anie such matter, had in his companie onelie two horssemen and foure shot on horssebacke, which was too small a force in so c 2 doubtfull 20 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND doubtfull and dangerous times : neuertheless he had a very good guide, which was the servant of John Fitzedmunds of Cloue, a good subject, and this guide knew euerie corner and starting hole in those places. " The capteine being come towards the foord, the seneschal had spied him alone, his companie being scattered behind, and verie fiercelie pursued him, and crossed him as he was to ride ouer water, but yet he recovered the foord and was passed ouer. The Irishman who was his guide, when he saw the capteine thus alone, and so narrowlie distressed, he shifted for himselfe and fled into a broken castell fast by, there to saue himselfe. The capteine being thus ouer the water, Henrie Moile, riding alone about a bowes shoot before the rest of his companie, when he was in the midle of the foord his horsse foundred and cast him downe ; and being afraid that the seneschalls men would have folowed him and have killed him, cried out to the capteine to come and to save his life ; who not respecting the danger he himselfe was in, came unto him, and re- covered RALEGirS COURAGE 21 covered both him and his horsse. And then Moile wishing with all haste to leape up, did it with such hast and vehemencie that he quite over lept the horsse and fell into a mire fast by, and so his horsse ran awaie and was taken by the enemie. The capteine neverthelesse staid still, and did abide for the coming of the residue of his companie, of the foure shot which as yet were not come foorth, and for his man Jenkin who had about two hundred pounds in monie about him, and sat upon his horsse in the mean while, having his staffe in one hand, and his pistoll charged in the other hand." The chronicler adds that the Seneschal, though he was twenty to one in strength, would not face Ralegh's little band again when he saw the captain ready to receive the onset. A leader who risked his life for his soldiers was likely to be well served by them, and when in another skirmish with the Irish his horse was mortally wounded by a dart, Ralegh was saved by two of his band fighting for him against long odds. Hooker gives a vivid account of this : — * ''When 22 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND " When the summer was spent, Captaine Ralegh returned with all his band unto Corke, being in number eight horssemen and four score footmen. And as he passed through the countrie, it was advertised to him that David Barrie, an archtraitor, was at Clone with a great troope of sundrie hundreds of men. Whereupon he thought good to passe that waie through the towne of Clone, minding to trie the valor of David Barrie, if by anie meanes he might meet with him. And euen at the verie towns end he found Barrie and all his companie, and with a lustie courage gave the onset upon him. But Barrie refused it, and fled. And then this capteine passing from thense, in his jorneie he espied in a plaine niere adjoining to a woods sides a companie of footmen by themselves, upon whome with six horssemen he gave the charge ; but these being cut off from the wood whereunto they were flieng, and having not succor now to helpe and relieve themselves, they turned backe and conjoining themselves together to withstand this force and onset made upon them, in which they behaved RALE GITS COURAGE 23 behaved themselves verie vaHantlie, and of the horsses they killed five, of which Capteine Ralegh his horsse was one, and he himselfe in great danger, and like to have beene slaine, if his trustie servant Nicholas Wright a Yorkshire man borne had not bin. For he perceiving that his maisters horsse was galled and stricken with a dart, and plunged so much, that to his seeming he was past service, the said Nicholas willed and called to an Irishman there^ whose name was Patrike Fagaw, that he should looke to his capteine, and either to rescue him, or to give charge upon the enemie. Where- upon the said Fagaw rescued his capteine, and the said Nicholas Wright forthwith gave the onset upon six of the enemies and slue one of them. And therev/ith came one James Fitzrichard an Irish gentlemen with his kerne to the rescue of the capteine, but his kerne was slaine and himselfe in danger. For Wright not looking on them followed the enemie verie egerlie and recompensed the losse of one with the slaughter of others. Which Capteine Ralegh perceiving cried out to his man saieng, 24 S//^ WALTER RALEGH LN IRELAND saieng, * Wright, if thou be a man, charge above hand and save the gentleman.' Who at his maisters commandment pressed into the middle of the enemies, and slue one of them and so saved the gentleman : and in which skirmish his horsse leg was cut under him. Diverse footmen were slaine of the enemies, and two were taken prisoners, whome they carried with them to Corke." His arrest of Lord and Lady Eoche about this time has been described as a gallant exploit ; but though it involved some danger it was not done without an act of treachery on Ralegh's part, and an abuse of hospitality. Some of the details of the exploit, as given in Hooker's Chronicles, are characteristic. Zouch having directed him to capture Lord Roche, Ralegh ordered ninety of his band " to be in readyness between ten and eleven o'clock at night upon the paine of death ; " and at the appointed hour, on a dark night, he marched out of the north gate of Cork, and for twenty miles through an enemy's country. At daybreak he reached Lord Roche's RALEGH'S COURAGE 25 Roche's castle. The villagers adjoming the castle assembled to the number of five hmidred, armed with darts and spears. Ralegh placed his well- equipped men across the village, and with six, whose names are given, Butler, Fulford, Wright, Barlow, Swane, and Pinking Huish, he knocked at the gate. A parley ensued, Ralegh stating that he came to speak to his lordship. After some dis- cussion it was proposed that he should be allowed to pass in, provided he would only bring with him two or three of his party. To this Ralegh agreed, and the gate was then opened. "When once within the gate," says the chronicler, " Captain Ralegh so handled the matter by devises and meanes, that by little and little, and by some and some, he had gotten in within the iron doore or gate of the courlodge all his men." He then directed that every man should have " his peece well prepared with two bullets." Lord Roche received him with great courtesy, presented him to his lady and invited him to join them in the meal they were about taking. Ralegh accepted 26 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND accepted the hospitality, and then asked Lord and Lady Roche to accompany him back to Cork. His lordship declined the invitation, whereupon Ralegh pointed out that his armed soldiers commanded the hall where they sat, that Lord Roche was his prisoner, and that he and his lady would be compelled to accompany him. With Lord Roche's life in his hands, he had no difficulty in getting orders given to the villagers to make no opposition to the departure from the castle. The return journey was begun at midnight, amidst a storm of rain. The darkness and the tempest saved him from an attack by the Seneschal of Imokilly, who lay with eight hundred men close to the main road. His contemporary historian describes the path he took as being '* full of balks, hillocks, pits and rocks." Someof his menweremuch hurt by stumbling in the dark and " some lost their armour." One soldier appears to have died of a hurt or from exhaustion. After his two night marches, he arrived at the walls of Cork, early in the morning, " to the great joy of the garrison." In RALE GITS COURAGE 27 In August 1580, Sir James Fitzgerald, the Earl of Desmond's brother, was captured and brought to Cork, where he was tried by Captain Ralegh and Captain Sentleger. They sentenced him to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Portions of his body remained for a considerable time above the gates of the city. The other brother, Sir John of Desmond, was killed in the following year and his body brought to Ralegh, who was acting as Governor of Cork. His head was sent to Dublin Castle, and his body was suspended by the heels from a high gibbet over the river Lee, on the north-gate bridge of Cork, where it swung for three years. Before long the skeleton of the Earl was also hanging from the walls of Cork, his head having been sent as •' a goodly gift to Her Highnesse " in London. " Such was the fate," says the Abbe MacGeoghegan, " of the illustrious Fitzgeralds of Desmond, the Maccabees of our day, who sacrificed their lives and properties in the defence of the Catholic cause." For eight and twenty years from this time, Ralegh's name is found associated with the broken fortunes of the Geraldines 28 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Geraldines until the burial of James, the Eighteenth Earl, in the Chapel of the Tower. VII His Hardships The longer he served, however, the more he complained of the hardships he and his soldiers endured. In a letter dated in 1581, " From Corke, the fyrst of May," he thus writes to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Grey de Wilton : — *'The bandes of Sir Georg Bowser, Edward Barkley, Captayne Dowdall, and of my self have bine ever since the seconde weeke of Lent remayning in Corke ; and both the great wood of Conoloathe, Harlo, Clenlis, and all the countie of Lymbricke, and the counties betweene the Dingle and Kilkeny, left without any companies ether to defend itself or anoy the enemy. Since which tyme wee have made two journeys : the one towards Kilkeny HIS HARDSHIPS 29 Kilkeny to give convoye to my Lorde, and attend his returne, and the other into Conoloathe, by which jurnes (the one being in horible wether, and the other utterly botles, being don without draught or espiall, and beside inforst to walke such un- reasonable marches as, wher wee dispatched a churell of the traitors, wee lamed, lost, or left behynde unserviceable, a soldier or two of our owne) the poore bands have curste the change they made in levying to follow your Honor, as they have tould the Lord Generall many tymes. And this fyrst of May wee ar going another posting convoy towards Kilkeny. But to culler the matter, wee shall march some two dayes out of our way to seeke wee know not whome. The store of Cork, except it be a smale quantitie of wheat and butter, is all spent within the walles, and now it wilbe aleged that wee cannot serve for want of vittles, or else because the bandes are not supplied j although wee were nevere less than fore hundred stronge, and yet both of Sir George Bowcer's and Captain Barkle's companies left at Kilmalloch and Asketon. Wee have 30 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND have spent these two monethes of the spring in paries with Barrey Rowe, the Countess of Desmond, and Finnin Macartey; and wee think it willbe two moneth more er he (Ormond) be resolved whether thes oughte to be followed or no, and yet theris no day passeth without some trayterous villanies by the Barres committed." VIII The Queen and Ralegh Some evidence of the personal interest Elizabeth began to take in Ralegh is manifest in the following letter she sent to the Lord Deputy in April 1582. By the Qiieene. " Right trusty and wellbeloued. We grete youe well. Where .we be given to vnderstand that Capteyne Appesley is not longe synce deceased, and the band of footemen which he had, committed nowe THE QUEEN AND RALEGH nowe to James Fenton : for that as we are en- fourmed the said fenton hathe othenvise an en- treteynment by a certeyn ward vnder his charge ; but chieflye for that our pleasure is to haue our Servaunt Walter Rawley treyned some longer tyme in that our realme for his better experience in Martiall affaires, and for the speciall care we haue to doe him good in respecte of his kyndred, that haue served vs some of them (as you knowe) neer aboute our Parson : theise are to requier youe, that the leading of the said bande may be committed to the said Rawley. And for that he is for so manie considerations by vs — lycensed to staye here and owre pleasure is that the said bande shall be in the meane tyme (till he repaire into that realme) deliuered to so manie sooche as he shall depot to be his luietenant there. Given at our Mannor of Grenewiche the of Aprill 1582 in the xxiiij*** yere of our reigne." Three years later she ^vrites to Dublin that a substitute is to be found for Rafe Lane, " in con- sideration 32 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND. sideration of his undertaking the voyage to Virginia for Sir Water Rawley." In 1587, she refers to a fresh levy of horsemen for service in Ireland made by "our well beloved Sir Walter Rawley." In that year she places him first in the list of her Irish Captains. When she issues a sort of Royal Commission "touching the service in Ireland against Tyrone," Ralegh is one of the six selected to advise her. His growing influence with the Queen can be noted in his letters on Irish affairs. IX The Success of his Bands A question of some historic interest is solved by a study of Ralegh's Irish campaigns, and indeed by his own admission. How can we account for the success of such small bodies of soldiers as Elizabeth's captains commanded in the Desmond wars ? The bands of Piers, Appesley, and Ralegh seemed THE SUCCESS OF HIS BANDS 33 seemed for some years to be invincible. Not counting the women and children who were deliberately and systematically butchered,* they routed over and over again five times their number of Irish gallowglasses ; indeed, if Hooker is to be believed, sometimes ten times their number. And yet in the lifetime of Ralegh this was all changed. He lived to hear of Hugh O'Neill, who, to use Mr. Froude's words, destroyed an English army at the ford of the Blackwater — the northern Blackwater. Something of course was due to the coui^ge and skill of men like Ralegh, and the fatal rivalry of the Geraldines and Butlers. But such causes could not account for the early and easy victories over numerous Irish, compared with the fact that under Hugh O'Neill, Owen Roe, and the still later Sarsfield, the Irish troops were a match for an equal number of the enemy, and sometimes defeated the English troops even with a force numerically inferior to them. Ralegh himself * Lecky, * Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. p. 105. D explained 34 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND explained it. In his ' Discourse touching a War with Spain,' one of his miscellaneous works not printed till after his death, he says : — " I myself remember that, within these thirty years, two of her Majesty's ships would have commanded loo sail of the Spaniards. I remember also, when I was a captain in Ireland, loo foot and I GO horse would have beaten all the forces of the strongest province. But of late I have known an Easterling fight hand to hand with one of her Majesty's ships, and the Irish in this last war have been victorious with an equal or even with an inferior force. And what is the reason? The Netherlands in those days had wooden guns and the Irish had darts : but the one is now furnished with as great a number of English ordnance as our- selves, and the other with as good pikes and muskets as England hath."* Thus Voltaire's libel, which had its origin in the contrast between such campaigns as Ralegh's in • Ralegh's * Miscellaneous Works,' vol. viii. pp. 304-5. Ireland PRACTICES ASSASSINATION Ireland and the subsequent achievements of the Irish brigade on the Continent, is answered by Ralegh himself. X Practises the Assassination of Irish Chiefs But apart from the fact that for many years the Irish were not met with even weapons, for which of course no one can blame the soldiers, the captains of Elizabeth introduced an infamous system as new to Ireland in the days of Ralegh as the Enghsh muskets. In the fifth book of his ' History of the World ' Ralegh discusses the differ- ence between "killing a man in open field with even weapons, and killing by guile." Writing in the prison of the Tower, he condemns the " lying in wait for bloud privily," as " guilfull murder," yet there seems little doubt that he had previously encouraged, if not practised, the assassination of D 2 the 36 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND the Irish landlords and chiefs of his time. He had high official example to guide him. " Practice and subornation," writes Secretary Fenton to Walsing- ham, " is as necessary as force." Instead of killing the greatest landowner in Munster by what he calls the " uncertain end of arms," the Chief Secretary of that day records how he told the Lord President to get some one to undertake that service " for the hire of a thousand pounds, with some further small gratification of Desmond's lands." The latest biographer of Ralegh, Mr. Edward Edwards, thus deals with his complicity in such trans- actions : " On one other important matter, Ralegh, Carew, and Cecil were at one. In regard to what, in the phrase of their day, were called ' practices against rebels,' they were as little troubled with scruples of conscience as Sir Humphrey Gilbert, or Sir Henry Sidney, or Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton had been a few years earlier. In plain English, * practices against rebels ' meant the deliberate assassination of rebels, or even of persons vehemently PRACTICES ASSASSINATION vehemently suspected of an intention to rebel. Cecil indeed avowed that he had a rooted objection to the killing of a rebel by poison." Mr. Edwards here refers to Cecil's objection to the proposal to get rid of the Earl of Tyrone by poison j but I doubt if it is fair to place him exactly on the same footing in this matter as Ralegh and Carew. The latter certainly thought any means lawful by which the lands of the Irish chiefs could be obtained. Mr. Froude quotes a letter of his, written in 1602 to the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, in which he describes how Hugh O'Donnell, who had gone to Spain for assistance, was followed by a hired assassin, who poisoned him in the castle of Simancas. The assassin, Carew writes, ^' at his coming in Spain was suspected by O'Donnell, because he embarked at Cork ; but afterwards he insinuated his access and O'Donnell is dead. He never told the President in what manner he would kill him ; but did assure him it should be effected." In Carew's original letter in the Public Record Office, he says, " O'Donnell is poisoned." The words 38 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND words " poisoned," " President," and *' kill " are in cipher. That Ralegh and Cecil were not entirely of one mind on this subject seems probable from the following letter, written, Mr. Payne Collier thinks, when Ralegh was in Ireland in October 1598:— To the Right Honorable Sir Robert Cecil, Knight, Principall Secretory to Her Majestic. "■ Sir, — It can be no disgrace if it weare knowen that the killinge of a rebel weare practised ; for you see that the lives of anoynted princes are daylye sought, and we have always in Ireland geven head money for the killing of rebels who ar evermore proclaymed at a price. So was the Earle of Desmonde and so have all rebels been practised against. Notwithstanding I have written this enclosed to Stafford who only recommended that knave to me upon his credit. Butt for your sealf, you are not to be touched in the matter. And for me PRACTICES ASSASSINATION 39 me, I am more sorrye for beinge deceaved than for being declared in the practise. " Your Lordships ever to do you service, "W. Ralegh. " He hathe nothinge under my hand butt a passport." The knave who got the passport was a paid murderer. Mr. Edwards surmises that the " being deceaved " refers to a case in which Sir George Carew describes how he himseh^ had hired an assassin^ to whom he gave " a pistoll, some munitions, and ten pounds in money," to kill John Fitz Thomas, the owner of a fine estate, but " one Coppinger, sometime a footman to Sir Walter Ralegh, who had promised him (the assassin) faythfullye to assist him," snatched the weapon from his hand as he was about to shoot Fitz- Thomas in Arlow Woods, where they were passing with him alone. XI XI Elizabeth's Complicity in Assassination Plots Nor was it the example merely of the Deputies, Chief Secretaries, and the Presidents of Munster, with whom he associated in Ireland, that Ralegh had to guide him in this dark path. He had opportunities of knowing the Queen's secret sentiments, and he could hardly have been igno- rant of the confidential precedents established by those who immediately preceded him in the career of " glory and fortune " in Ireland. The manuscripts calendared in our time by the Rolls Office terminate a controversy raised by John O'Neill, the great chief of Ulster, three hundred years ago. When Sir Henry Sidney iniited him to an interview within the Pale, the answer was that " he had much affection for Sir Henry, but that the Deputy's predecessor, the Earl of Sussex, had t\vice attempted ELIZABETH SANCTIONS ASSASSINATION ^i attempted to assassinate him. That after such experience his timorous Irish would not trust him any more in Enghsh hands." Up to a recent period historians denounced this as a " foul libel upon the blunt and honest Sussex." The national traditions^, however, had always supported O'Neill's charges. It was a question of the belief of the long-memoried people on the one side, and the incredulity of ill-infomied writers on the other. But now the controversy is at an end. Mr. Froude himself has given the conclusive evidence to the world. In a letter from the Earl of Sussex to Queen Elizabeth, written from Ardbrachan on the 24th of August, 1561, he describes the arrival of two mes- sengers from the camp of the victorious Irish chief, one of whom, named Grey, he proceeded to bribe. " ' I swore him upon the Bible/ writes the Lord Deputy, '■ to keep secret that I should say unto him, and assured him, if it were known during the time I had the government there, that besides the breach of his oath it should cost him his life. I used long circumstance in persuading him to serve your 42 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND your Highness, to benefit his country, and to procure assurance of Uving to him and his for ever by doing of that which he might easily do. He promised to do what I woud. In fine I brake with him to kill Shan O'Neill : and bound myself by an oath to see him have a hundred marks of land by the year to him and to his heirs for his reward. He seemed desirous to serve your Highness and to have the land : but fearful to do it, doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and promised to do by any means he might escaping with his life.' " Having quoted this despatch^ Mr. Froude says : " Elizabeth's answer — if she sent any answer — is not discoverable. It is most sadly certain, however, that Sussex was continued in office." He adds : ** The Lord Deputy's assassination plots were but the forlorn resources of a man who felt his work too heavy for him." Two years after this the English troops were again routed. A treaty of peace was accordingly made. " Indentures were drawn " (says Mr. Froude) " on the ELIZABETH SANCTIONS ASSASSINATION ^t, the 17th of December 1563, in which the Ulster sovereignty was transferred to O'Neill in everything but the name ; and a treaty — such treaty as it was — required only Elizabeth's signature. When a second dark effort was made to cut the knot of the Irish difficulty. As a first evidence of returning cordiality a present of wine was sent to Shan O'Neill from Dublin. It was consumed at his table, but the poison had been unskilfully prepared. It brought him and half his household to the edge of death, but no one actually died. The guilt could not be fixed on Sussex. The crime was traced to an English resident in DubUn named Smith j and if Sussex had been the instigator, his instrument was too faithful to betray him." But why should Smith betray the Lord Deputy ? When put upon his trial he " confessed his guilt, took the entire responsibility upon himself, and declared that his object was to rid his country of a dangerous enemy." Smith no doubt knew that, though weak in the field, the Lord Deputy had influence in Dublin, and the result was that the convicted 44 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND convicted poisoner got off without punishment. Mr. Froude thinks the treachery of the Lord Deputy, the conduct of the inquiry, and the anomalous termination of it, would have been incredible had not the original correspondence, in which the facts are not denied, been now before us. Referring to the Queen's answer to John O'Neill's remonstrance against being thus practised upon, Mr. Froude says : " After the repeated acts of treachery which had been at least meditated towards O'Neill with Elizabeth's knowledge, she was scarcely justified in assuming a tone of innocent anger." Ralegh knew all this. He knew also that Sir Henry Sidney had finally succeeded where Sussex failed, and that he succeeded by employing a friend and companion of Ralegh. Dr. Taylor describes how the Irish chief proceeded to the camp of the Hebridean Scots. " But," he goes on to say, " an emissary of the Government had preceded him. Piers, a British officer, a disgrace to his country and his profession, had undertaken the task of persuading ELIZABETH SANCTIONS ASSASSINATION ^^ persuading the Scottish chief to murder his unsus- pecting guest. At a given signal, the banqueting room was filled with soldiers, and all the Irish were slain. O'Neill's head was sent to Dublin, and Piers received a thousand marks from the Govern- ment as a reward for the murder." Hooker tells us that the head was carried to the Lord Deputy " by Captain Piers, by whose device the stratagem, or rather tragedie, was practised." Mr. Froude, whilst admitting that O'Neill and his friends in the banqueting hall were murdered, says but little of Captain Piers' conduct. " Four days later," he tells us, ''Piers hacked the head from the body and carried it on a spear's point through Drogheda to Dublin, where, staked upon a pike, it bleached on the battlements of the castle, a symbol to the Irish world of the fate of Celtic heroes." But Mr. Froude, perhaps, sees that it was a symbol to the Irish world of something else too. XII XII Burghley disapproves of Oppression This Captain Piers, Captain Ralegh, and Sir WiUiam Morgan were subsequently joined in the one commission under which they exercised martial law, or rather martial executions without law, in the county of Cork. The lessons which were thus taught to Ralegh, and which he practised without scruple, gained him a great estate and the confidence of Elizabeth, but did not serve him in certain other influential quarters. The Lord Treasurer did not like such work. He had con- tributed to the true glory of his own country and the future happiness of the Netherlands by de- nouncing the bloody Duke of Alva and opposing the bigotry and tyranny of the foreign rulers of Holland. He looked askance at Sir Walter Ralegh, and treated many of his importunities with silence BURGHLEY DISAPPROVES OF OPPRESSION 47 silence. The year after Ralegh had written from Cork complaining that the Earl of Ormond was not severe enough in Munster, and that what was wanted was the fire and sword of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (Ralegh's half-brother), who boasted of "putting man, woman, and child to death," Lord Burghley wrote to Sir Henry Wallop, the War Treasurer for Ireland, on the loth of June, 1582, "that the Flemings had not such cause to rebel against the oppression of the Spaniards as the Irish against the tyranny of England." In repeating this sentence of the greatest statesman of the sixteenth century, Mr. Froude * observes with truth that Lord Burghley possessed the rare quality of being able to recognise the faults of his own countrymen. * ' History of England,' x. vol. p. 604. XIII XTII Bu7'ghley^s Policy thwarted But in spite of his commanding position, the English Minister failed. Not for the first or last time, the officials in Ireland thwarted and defeated the good intentions of a statesman in London. Lord Burghley touched the root of the evil, when he instructed the Treasurer Wallop, that confis- cated lands in Ireland were not to be given to persons, but to offices.* Writing from Dublin,, Sir Henry Wallop bitterly complains of these in- structions, and of" the Lord High Treasurer's harsh- ness " in the matter. It is evident that the Queen and Walsingham did not concur with the Prime Minister. Had the policy of the Prime Minister been carried out, the Devon and Dorset adven- * ' State Papers ' — Ireland, vol, xci. p. 2. turers BURGHLEY'S POLICY THWARTED 49 turers would have returned to their homes in England, with whatever pay they might have saved, instead of remaining in Ireland as alien landlords. Lord Burghley's instructions would have enabled some lands to be attached to the office of Governor or Deputy Governor of Cork, but Sir Walter Ralegh would not have got the castles and farms and abbey lands along the shores of the Black- water. The English Minister of that day fore- saw what the English historian who describes the period has exposed, the effect upon the Irish'people of rewarding the adventurers with land. " These western gentlemen," says Mr. Froude, ''had been trained in the French wars, in the privateer fleets, or on the coast of Africa, and the lives of a few- thousand savages were infinitely unimportant to them. The extinction of the Irish was contem- plated with as much indifference as the destruction of the Red Indians by the politicians of Washington, and their titles to their lands as not more deserving of respect. The Irish, it is true, were not wholly savages j they belonged, as much as the English E themselves 50 S/J^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND themselves, to the Arian race \ they had a history, a Hterature, laws and traditions of their ovm, and a religion which gave half Europe an interest in their preservation ; but it is no less certain that to these intending colonists they were of no more value than their own wolves, and would have been exterminated with equal in- difference."* Ralegh has been censured for recommending his half-brother's vigorous measures, but in justice to him it should be remembered that his most inti- mate companions have recorded similar deeds of their own when claiming Irish lands or seeking preferment. Sir Nicholas Malbie, writing to Wal- singham in April 1580, says : — " This day the forces which I have entertained took the strong castle of Dwnemene from Shane MacHubert and put the ward, both men, women, and children to the sword." Captain Zouche, at the same time, reports to the Secretary of State * * History of England,' vol. x. ch. 59, p. 233. the BURGHLETS POLICY THWARTED 51 the taking of a castle in the county of Limerick in these words : — " They made no defence of fyght, butt the howse being entered they yielded, and sum sought to swim away, but there escaped nott one, neither of man, woman, nor child." Sir Richard Bingham, a colleague of Ralegh in the Smerwick executions, describing the subsequent fight at Ardnary in Connaught, says : — " The number of their fighting men slain and drowned that day we estimated and numbered to be fourteen or fifteen hundred, besides boys, women, churls and children, which could not be so few, as so many more and upwards." In stigmatising such acts, Mr. Froude refers to Sir Peter Carew " murdering women and children, and babies that had scarcely left the breast," and he adds : — " The English nation was shuddering over the atrocities of the Duke of Alva. The children in the nurseries were being inflamed to patriotic rage and madness by tales of Spanish tyranny. Yet E 2 Alvn's 52 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, the defenceless, or those whose sex even dogs can recognise and respect."* ,XIV Irish Coimcil and Judges oppose Burghlefs Policy Burghley saw the evil consequences to England, as well as to Ireland, of this anti-Irish policy. But he stood almost alone. At rare intervals and in the earlier part of her reign Elizabeth supported him. Her officials in Ireland, however, obstructed Burghley at every point. In those days the Irish judges were politicians as well as jurists. In those days the Irish Privy Council represented one interest only. The head of the judicial bench spoke of the Prime Minister's suggestions of pardons and remedial measures, as " agreeing to * 'History of England,' vol. x. ch. 59, p. 251-2. recompense BURGHLEY SUCCESSFULLY OPPOSED 53 recompense felonious offences," and, instead, the Lord Chancellor's policy was summed up in one word, "hanging." Though there is something more judicial in the halter than in the other instrument of death, this representative of justice in Ireland wrote a letter to Walsingham, in which he expresses his opinion that it would " have been better, if ten years past the Governor had put on determination to subject the whole Irishry to the sword." The members of the Irish Privy Council were as much opposed to Burghley's views as the judges, and so indeed were nearly all the officials. From the permanent staff of Dublin Castle, down to the newly appointed magistrates in Kerry and Cork, there appeared to be a dogged determination to act against the wishes of Burghley and to rule Ireland by coercion alone. The com- bination of the impoHtic official element in Ireland was too strong for the wise Lord Treasurer. Care- fully selected Lord Deputies failed him. Secre- taries that he sent to Dublin Castle armed with his prudent counsel and their own good intentions, gave 54 Sm WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND gave way to the dominating spirit of the Pale and became coercionists. He had no real Parliament, no English press, no influential pubHc opinion to support him. But though he could not carry his policy, he lived long enough to see the Nemesis that was coming. XV RalegKs Agrarian Troubles It is exactly three centuries since the sound advice of one of England's best statesmen was swept aside to make way for the selfish schemes of the oligarchy of the Pale. In vain he said do not drive the Irish people from the soil ; do not give confiscated lands to individuals. In his library at Hatfield are recorded the first pages in that sad complaint which has gone on from generation to generation, now sinking and now rising, a chorus of the oppressed and the oppressors. Sir Walter Ralegh was one of the first to feel the conse- quences RALEGH'S AGRARIAN TROUBLES 55 quences of his own injustice. The remnant of the Irish peasants that escaped the sword had hardly- been forced to cross the Blackwater to the moun- tains and woods, leaving the fields of Desmond to the new tenants from Devonshire, when the grievances of the landlord reached the ear of Cecil. The Lord Treasurer and the English Council had received a significant report from the Commis- sioners for surveying the seigniories of the escheated lands, dated from Youghal, October 1586. "At Lismore and Youghal," they wrote, "we have stayed these eight days in meeting and bounding such lands as we hear Sir Walter Rawley is to have, which hath been exceedingly difficult and painful by reason that the lands having been long waste, and generally overgrown with deep grass, and in most places with heath, brambles, and furze, whereby, and by the extremity of rain and foul weather, we have been greatly hindered in our proceeding; and, for that we find all the gentlemen undertakers and their associates that came hither to be again departed into England, we 56 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND we surcease from further dealing therein until the spring." The following year a rough survey was completed and Ralegh's courage and vigour enabled him to begin, in the words of his leases, '' the repeopling of the Province of Munster." At first he mur- mured about the physical difficulties of reclearing the sort of secondary jungle that had sprung up on the removal of the old agricultural population. Any natives that came from the woods and moun- tains were unfriendly to the new settlers. Even when a sort of truce was proclaimed, and they were offered sustenance and wages instead of the rope, or the edge of the sword, Ralegh could not get them to assist in moving the timber his colonists cut down, or to do a stroke of useful work. This form of passive resistance embarrassed and annoyed the undertaker, who turned to the Government — what was called the Government — for a remedy. At first the Government tried to assist him. The refusal of workmen to do work was to be treated as a sort of treason. New schemes of coercion were RALE GITS AGRARIAN TROUBLES 57 were invented, but they did the settlers no good. Dubhn Castle at length got tired of Ralegh's suggestions. Ralegh then turned to England and complained of Dublin Castle. Whilst he could not get his o^vn rents and profits, the trifling sum payable to the Crown was dragged from him by distress warrants, evictions and costly legal processes. His English are not protected by the Lord Deputy. The Lord Deputy encourages rebels to push out Englishmen from his castles and farms. The sheriff carries off five hundred milch kine from his people for an alleged debt of fifty marks which Ralegh believed he had paid, but which was not only enforced again but magnified into a debt of four hundred pounds. His poor Devon farmers are left without cattle in a strange country newly set down to build and plant. He and his colonists look around in vain for sym- pathy. The Irishry of the woods and bogs are no worse than the Dublin Casde agents. " The doting Deputy," he finally writes, " hath dispeopled me." Ralegh's despairing cry might have been the echo of 58 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND of the last words of the hunted Earl of Desmond, of whose penalties as well as of whose forfeitures, he seemed to be the political heir. Even at the other side of the Channel, the " Curse of Sherborne," as it was called, pursued him. When nothing of his vast Irish estates remained to him but the old Castle of Inchequin Ralegh, he writes to Cecil in 1 603, of his other property : — " My tenants refuse to pay my wife her rent. I hold divers leases uppon forfeture, in that mannor, of myne own tenants. Alas ! all goes to ruin of that littell which remaynethe. My woods ar cutt dowTi ; my grounds wast ; my stock — which made up my rent — sold. And except sume end be had, by your good favor to the Kinge, I perishe every waye. " This I leve to your tyme and charetabell care, and rest your Lordship's miserabell poore frind, ever to be cummanded by yow, " W. Ralegh. " Of ;^3,ooo a yeare ther remayns but ;^30o ; and uppon that ;£'3,ooo debt." XVI XVI His Qjieensfown Estate Burghley had seen that Ralegh's application for Irish lands was made in a spirit that boded ill for the future relations of the two kingdoms. Ralegh's letter to Sir Francis Walsingham of 1581, in which he asks for an estate, secretly denounces his general, the Earl of Ormond, for not being severe enough with the Irish. He begins by saying how he wished to occupy the Castle of Barry's Court and the ad- joining island, "being a great strength and a safety for all passengers between Corke and Youghal," but the Earl of Ormond, " unwillinge any Inglishman should have anything, stayed the taking thereof." He then says : " I pray God her Majesty do not finde that she hathe spent a hundred thousand pounds more ; she shall at last be driven by too dere experience to send an Inghshe President to follow these 6o SIJ^ WALTER RALEGH LN IRELAND these malicious tray tors with fier and sword." The English President he suggests in place of Ormond is his own kinsman, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He then protests that his sole object is the love of the Queen and her service. " I beseiche your Honor to take my bold writing in good part, protesting before Hyme that knoweth the thoughtes of all hartes that I Avrit nothing but moved thereto for the love I bere to her Highness and for the furtherance of her service." A more substantial motive, however, appears in the closing sentences of the letter : — "I beseich your Honor that I may by your means enjoy the kepingof this Barre Court and the island ; or that it will please your Honor to writ to my Lord Deputy that he will confirm it unto mee." The Lord Deputy confirmed the grant, but Burghley advised the Queen not to sanction it. This estate, which extended from Rostellan Castle to Fota, included one side of Cork harbour, and was coveted by Ralegh for many good reasons. He was a sailor as well as a colonist ; and, if he was HIS Q UEENSTO WN EST A TE 6 1 was fated to be the first colonial governor in America, and an administrator of an English colony in Munster, he was destined to be an admiral of the Royal Navy also. Hence his land hunger included not only a strong castle or two, but the idea of a residence near the sea, where he could have easy access to his ships, and where he could indulge his passion for mercantile speculation. Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his Oxford lectures, says : " The eagles took wing for the Spanish main ; the vultures descended upon Ireland." Ralegh seems to have united some of the characteristics of both. XVII His Blackwater Estate Two years after he was deprived of Barre Court, and in little more than a year after his first expedition to America, he was a successfiil suitor to Queen Elizabeth for forty-two thousand acres in the province 62 SIJ? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND province of Munster. A marginal note in her own handwriting on the warrant attests the Queen's anxiety to hasten the completion of the grant. Amidst the foreign undertakers who were devouring the lands of the Earl of Desmond and the plunder of the Church, Ralegh evidently was the favourite, and was allowed to pick and choose. He began at the "havanroiall" of Youghal, and at both sides of the river he took the best that could be found. Mr. Edwards says, " Ralegh's broad lands were thickly wooded ; " and he surmises that this led him into a commercial speculation, which for many years gave him trouble, and involved him in eventual loss. But there was something on this Blackwater property besides timber. A man of Ralegh's literary and historic tastes cannot have been entirely insensible to traditions of intellectual culture, some of them then very recent. From the upper windows of the house he occupied, close to the College of Earl Thomas, he could look across the river to his hills of Ardmore, which hid the Cloig-theach^ one of the best preserved round towers of HIS BLACKWATER ESTATE 63 of Ireland. On this part of his property stood the Oratory of St. Declan, and the sculptured cathe- dral in which he might have seen the mysterious Ogham stones, that are perhaps the earliest efforts at writing in Western Europe. If any of the English undertakers noticed such antiquities, it should have been Ralegh, for the only Ogham stone found in England was discovered at Fardel in Devonshire, where his father was born. Molana Abbey, where Raymond le Gros is buried, was granted to Ralegh the year after the monastery was dissolved. In 1586 the Dominican Friary, that had been built in Youghal by Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitz- gerald in 1268, was granted to Ralegh. During his mayoralty of Youghal in 1587 he ordered or allowed the destruction of this fine building, the massive piers and broken arches of which still remain. Ralegh's agents in the demolition, accord- ing to a book published in 1620, were unfortunate. "An Inghshman breaking down the monastrie of S. Dominiques in YoughuU fell dead from the toppe of the Church, all his limmes being broken, A.D. 64 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND A.D. 1587. Also three soldiers which did cast downe and burne the holye roode of that monastrie died within one seanight after they had done it."* The miraculous image of the Virgin, which made this monastery famous throughout Europe, was saved from Ralegh and his soldiers by the daughter of one of the Geraldines whom he had pursued. The silver case in which the beautiful ivory image is preserved, bears this inscription : "Orate pro anima Onoriae filiae Jacobi de Geraldinus qse. me fieri fecit. Anno Dni. 161 7." From Ralegh's time to this there has been a perpetual succession of Dominican custodians of the ruined abbey and the sacred image, the Rev. B. Russell of Cork being the present holder of that office. The Preceptory of the Knights Templars at Rincrew and the confiscated lands of the order were granted to Ralegh by letters-patent that are * * Theatre of Catholique and Protestant Religion,' p. 124, quoted by the Rev. S. Hayman. Still HIS EDUCATIONAL POLICY 65 Still preserved in the Duke of Devonshire's archives at Lismore. XVIII His Educational Policy The reputation for learning, which made Lismore known to European scholars before Oxford was founded, may have induced Ralegh to select it as a place for a school ; but the school he 'endowed, like others of later times, was a failure, because it was avowedly established to destroy the faith of the people. Dr. Caulfield, in one of his valuable contributions to Irish history,* quotes the original grants of the Queen to Ralegh, including " the patronage or gift of the wardenship of Our Lady's College of Youghall." Before Ralegh got it, the Corporation of Youghal applied in vain for this endowment, which the Queen at first decided * Council Book of Youghal, xliv. F should 66 SIJ? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND should be still employed " in the well bringing up of children in learning and the mayntance of others according to the foundation." But, beyond his selecting the warden's house for his own residence, no evidence can be found that Ralegh took any interest in saving or reviving the College. It had been a sort of Catholic University. Those who are interested in the history of Irish education can trace to this useful endowment of the Geraldines a little of the learning and classical taste that the Western Island assisted in diffusing in some parts of the Continent until the new school of Educationists arose in the reign of Elizabeth to reform and destroy. It is easy to blame Ralegh for looking unmoved at the ruins of a Catholic University or sharing in its spoils. But, in this, he was controlled by the policy of Her Majesty's Government ; a policy briefly summed up, — " we must put a stop to priestcraft and superstition in Ireland : we must take the responsibility of educating the Irish in our own way." In a few years he realised in his agrarian troubles HIS EDUCATIONAL POLICY 67 troubles some of the moral and social consequences of this imprudent policy. For this he is more to be pitied than blamed : especially when we remember that what are called leading Catholic laymen have played a somewhat similar part as educationists in later times, and with a like result as regards their own comfort and the peace of their country. He did not, however, trouble himself much with such questions. XIX The National Cause and the Land Question The more one looks into the details of Ralegh's connection with Ireland, the more the accuracy of Mr. Lecky's statement is seen, that theological animosity did not then play the leading part in Irish history. Ralegh's letters from Ireland also show the soundness of Mr. Lecky's judgment as to the slight importance attached at that time to nation- alist views. No doubt, eighty years later, the F 2 pohcy 68 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND policy of Charles the First in Ireland, as Lord Beaconsfield * has shown, by its recognition of an independent Irish Parliament and a real Irish Execu- tive, under the Crown, established for the moment, what Thomas Davis would call a national con- servative government. But the elevating sentiment of Nationality, the antidote, as Mr. Justin M'Carthy observes,! to much that is unwholesome, vulgar, and debasing, was overshadowed when Ralegh was in Ireland. The land question was the dominating question of Ralegh's day. It ruled him from the moment he set foot in Ireland to the last hour in which he was able to affect the fortunes or misfortunes of the country. Without mentioning his name, Mr. Lecky indicates the real Ralegh spirit when he speaks of the taste for adventure, the dislike of routine, the extreme desire to find out new and rapid paths to wealth, that characterised the Elizabethan age — a desire showing itself in the * Speech on the state of Ireland, Hansard's Debates, February i6, 1844. t 'Nineteenth Century,' March, 1880, p. 421. form THE NATIONAL CAUSE 69 form of discovery, of piracy, of a passion for Irish land. The Government poHcy was, as Mr. Lecky says, to root out the Irish from the soil, to confiscate the property of the septs, and plant the country with English tenants. He observes how Edmund Burke, in one of his letters to Sir Hercules Langrishe, gives the real clue to Irish history from the accession of Elizabeth, in asserting that the true genius and policy of the English Government was directed to the total extirpation of the interests of the natives in their own soil ; that this was the original scheme, and that it was never deviated from for a single hour during the whole reign of Elizabeth. That Edmund Burke should have thus, in a passing remark, shown so exact an apprecia- tion of the subject, Mr. Lecky attributes to his great intellect as well as to the fact that he studied Irish history with care. But the little boy that was reared at Castletown Rochej and Monanimy, on the banks of the Blackwater, where the estates of Ralegh came close to those of Spenser, and in the midst of a peasantry ever whispering of those days, may 70 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND may possibly have picked up something in his uncle Nagle's house and in the school near KilavuUen more useful to him as a student of real history than what he afterwards found in the library of Trinity College. Though in the days of Ralegh the land question thus dwarfed the religious and the purely national ones, it is impossible not to see that whatever influence the Catholic Church and the awakening national sentiment of Ireland could exercise^ was a conservative influence in the truest sense of the word. That influence was an influence on the side of order, of an ancient civilisa- tion and of property, as opposed to the destructive policy of men like Ralegh — something that in course of time would enable a Sovereign who wields great moral power to use such words in writing to the Irish Bishops as " justam patriae causam," and " publica populi Hiberni causa/' whilst condemning un- hallowed societies, agrarian outrages, and the infamous practice of assassination. XX XX " This Loste Land^' If the literature of the Elizabethan age has been unrivalled, and the statesmanship of Burghley almost unrivalled, it must also be admitted that there never were so many Englishmen of command- ing ability employed in the attempted subjugation of Ireland, as in the time of Ralegh. In the seven centuries of suffering, no Lord Lieutenants, Secre- taries, Councillors, and Captains, can compare with such a group as Sussex, Sydney, Grey, Perrot, Mountjoy, Russell, Carew, Spenser and Ralegh. The commonplace mediocrities of later times have shared with those illustrious men good intentions to begin with, and despair to finish with. All alike have followed in the beaten track of the three steps, hope, coercion, failure. No Englishman in Ireland, in the long history of misrule, had greater self-reUance and determination 72 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND determination than Ralegh. No one was more devoted to his Queen, or more sincerely resolved to make the Western Island a sort of flourishing out- post of Devon and Cornwall. With his master, Lord Grey, and his companion Spenser, he commences full of confidence. The confidence gives place to repressive measures, suited to the fashion of the age — women hanged, children put to the sword, Irish leaders poisoned by hired assassins. Lord Grey, after governing and struggling for years, writes to the Queen that he is ruined and the country is ruined, and he implores to be recalled. Ralegh sums it all up in three words, " this loste land ! " A popular song of our own day describes in a single line current events as well as Spenser's ' State of Ireland,' and Ralegh's rule in Munster : " The most distressful country that ever yet was seen ! " — distressful indeed, not alone because of seven hundred years of national pain, but because of the sad shipwreck of noble reputations, the judg- ments pronounced by each succeeding generation upon '* THIS LOSTE LAND " 73 upon the well-meaning British officials who earned the dislike of millions of poor people one day, and in the next the condemnation of their own histo- rians and countrymen. What EngUsh historian now defends the Irish policy of Ralegh and Spenser ? Who can turn without a pang from that page in the ' State of Ireland ' in which the Lord Deputy's Secretary describes the thin faces of the Irish peasants, who were dying for want of food ? Who does not feel a still sharper pang on reading how he welcomed the depopulation of the country as being the best for Enghsh rule ? The shadow of Dublin Castle never fell upon a Secretary of gentler disposition, or finer genius. Centuries may pass before there can come another mth such culture, and so refined a character, to behold, as Spenser did, the familiar scene of hunger-worn peasants, to take, as Spenser did, the responsibility of trying to rule a people he did not know. XXI XXI Land Commissio7i to fix Rents The Irish land question undoubtedly puzzled Elizabeth's advisers. Projects without end were submitted to her. In the same volume of the State Papers for 1577,13 a report from the Irish Chancellor to Walsingham referring to the " cruelty of the landlords," reducing the " tenants to be stai-ved beggars," and a despatch from the Lord Deputy to the Queen, in Council, recommen- ding " Commissioners to settle the rent, landlords shall take of their tenants,"* and also desiring " a Commission to compound for arrears." The un- dertakers constituted a sort of land corporation to substitute loyal tenants from England for what was left of the stubborn Irish. The land Commis- sioners fail, the arrears Commissioners fail, the * State Papers — Ireland, vol. Ivii. 5. English LAND COMMISSION TO FIX RENTS 75 English tenants fail. Lord Burghley's two main ideas, that the lands should not be given to indi- viduals, and that the remnant of the Irish should be encouraged to administer their own local affairs, v/ere not tried ; but the schemes of inferior men, sometimes of obscure and almost unknown persons, were welcomed by Elizabeth ; reformation one day, extirpation the next. All experiments that had the character of national vivisection were encou- raged, but all in vain. XXII Destruction of Irish Woods In addition to the women and children, there were other helpless and innocent objects to be rooted out as enemies to Queen EUzabeth ; and, as to these, no man cut down and destroyed more than Ralegh. In a letter addressed to Lord Burghley in the year 1588, Mr. George Longe urges 76 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND urges the Lord Treasurer to transfer to Ireland thirteen out of the fifteen glass manufactories then existing in England, for the reason that " the woods in England will be thereby preserved and the superfluous woods in Ireland wasted, than which in tyme of rebellion her Majestic hath no greater enemy there."* Ralegh, actuated by a better motive, that of simply trying to make money, brought over bands of English woodcutters, and soon made short work of venerable groves of oak and yew trees, wherever the waterway of the Avondue and its tributaries could convey the lumber to his ships at Youghal. He obtained a monopoly for exporting pipe-staves to the Continent, and for some years the wines of France, Spain, and even Italy came to England in hogsheads of Irish wood. Ralegh's letters and the Privy Council Records show that this destructive mono- poly reacted upon him in reputation and in purse. It involved him in lawsuits, and in quarrels with * Sir H. Ellis's * Original Letters,' vol. iii. p. 159. the DESTRUCTION OF IRISH WOODS 77 the Executive. But, like his political policy, it left its marks on the country. When Spenser first welcomed Ralegh to Kilcolman Castle, he says it was "bordered with a wood Of matchless hight, that seem'd the earth to disdaine, In which all trees of honour stately stood." In a few years not a tree was left, and the demesne that was described as " the woody Kilcoman " became a few naked fields surrounding the bare and burnt walls of the castle. And so throughout Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, and Waterford, Elizabeth's undertakers did their work. The cutting down of the Irish forests because they sheltered the Irishry is frequently mentioned in the State Papers of this period. What remained of the full-grown trees on Ralegh's former estates, were dealt with for a more legitimate purpose in the following reign. In a note in the Carew Papers by John Powey, ship carpenter, he gives the number of trees marked " along the river of Youghal " for the King's ships, in two months of 161 1, as amounting to 7500 trees 78 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND trees to be felled. The ancient chroniclers who called Ireland Fiodha litis, the island of the trees, did so not merely because it was well wooded by nature, but because the natives, at a time when little was known elsewhere of the advantages of tree-planting, fostered the art, and especially sur- rounded the numerous abbeys, the seats of religion and learning, with groves. Even Mr. Froude cannot read the testimony of one of Ralegh's comrades on this subject without drawing the con- trast between the Irish '' traitors " and the English undertakers. In Sir R. White's diary (1580) he says : " A fairer land the sun did never shine upon ; pity to see it lying waste in the hands of traitors ; " whereupon Mr. Froude observes : " Yet it was by those traitors that the woods, whose beauty they so admired, had been planted and fostered. Irish hands, unaided by English art or English wealth, had built Muckross and Innisfallen and Aghadoe."* Whether or not Lord Burghley's correspondent * ' History of England,' vol. xi. p. 225, was BURGHLEY AND RALEGH ANTI-PAPAL 79 was right in saying that the Queen had no greater enemy than the Irish trees, their fate, at all events, showed the possibility of a physical destruction that time has been unable to repair. With the people the result has been different, though they were treated to a similar process by the same men. XXIII Burghley and Ralegh Anti-Papal On one point only was Ralegh's policy in Ireland in entire accord with the views of the Prime Minister. No doubt when Burghley used the serious words Mr. Froude quotes, that the Irish had more cause to rebel against the tyranny of England than the Netherlanders against the tyranny of Spain, the Prime Minister had in his mind long years of severe repression, as well as the immediate proceedings of undertakers such as Ralegh. But whilst Burghley, like his brilliant successor 8o SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND successor* of our day, could thus feel in a sort of historical conscience a justification of Irish rebel- lion, he was, of all English premiers, with perhaps one exception, the most determined enemy of Vaticanism. On the land question, the great Cecil preferred a native proprietory to the system of foreign undertakers and absentee landlords, which he foresaw would involve chronic trouble to England ; but he was overruled. He would have yielded local self-government to the demands of Hugh O'Neill, but his wise counsels were pushed aside for those who boasted that they could establish permanent order by never giving way to Irish sentiment. Nevertheless, he heartily supported Ralegh and the Irish administration of that day in priest-hunting. When the undertakers cried out that a hostile population was closing in upon them and crimes of violence spreading, Burghley joined with the others in saying, root out Popery. When Adam Loftus, the Protestant Archbishop, wrote to * Mr. Disraeli : House of Commons, February 1844. him THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHEL him that villages of English settlers in his diocese had been burned and the settlers murdered, and that his life was daily threatened by the recently formed secret associations of native assassins, the reply was, extirpate the old religion, and teach the Irish morality in your o-svn way. XXIV The Last National Archbishop of Cashel Ralegh was then in Ireland active in a career of cruelty. He had not then learnt the lesson he repeated in years to come, when writing those touching letters from the Tower, appealing to the mercy of James the First, — " Compassion hath ever bynn repayd with compassion, and cruelty with cruelty." When he so wrote he may perhaps have remembered his former letter to Robert Cecil, announcing the capture of Father John Mooney, "an Irishman and a notabell G stout S2 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Stout villayne," and the sort of '' examination " he put him through : or he may, perhaps, have recollected with remorse the despatches from Dublin Castle about the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr. Hurley — how the Lords Justices wrote to Walsingham, "We have neither rack nor other engine of torture in Dublin Castle to terrify Dr. Hurley ; the Tower of London would be a better place for his examination ; " then in a few months, " We made commission to Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture, such as your Honour (Walsingham) advised us, which was to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots. We recom- mend he should now be executed by martial law, as the best lawyers doubt whether he can be found guilty of an offence against the law in Ireland : " * the native historians state that when one of the boots was taken off, the flesh came away, leaving the bones of the leg and foot barcf * State Papers — Ireland, vol. cviii. 8. t Dr. Reneham's ' Lives of the Irish Archbishops,' vol. i. p. 254. "As THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHEL %i "As he can hardly be convicted by a jurie," answers Walsingham, " hir majestie's pleasure is that you take a shorter way with him."* Finally comes the despatch from the Castle, reporting Dr. Hurley's execution without trial, — simply by order of Archbishop Loftus and Sir H. Wallop, — on the 17 th of June, 1584. Possibly Elizabeth agreed with Walsingham and Ralegh that all this "would teach a lesson," and that Dublin Castle would never be troubled again by a National Archbishop of Cashel. And yet when Ralegh was at Lismore with Sir George Carew, in September 1589, he might have heard it whispered how a man dressed like a poor peasant had passed on that way to Tipperary to kneel in the ruined chapel of Cormac, the successor of Archbishop Hurley, one of a long unbroken line, from that day to this, of Archbishops of Cashel. * State Papers, vol. cxi. 12. G 2 XXV XXV Ralegh opposes Meiler Magrath The prelate referred to by Ralegh in his letter of May 1596 was not of this line. He was one of Elizabeth's creations, an Anti-Irish Irishman who reflected but little credit on the Queen or the Church of England. The State Papers contain ample evidence justifying Ralegh's account of him. Indeed, whatever fault may be found with Ralegh for his maltreatment of old educational endow- ments and his appropriation of Church lands, it must be admitted that his attempt to substitute Hugh Broughton for Archbishop Meiler Magrath in the see of Lismore, showed a sincere desire on Ralegh's part to promote the true interests of the newly created State Church, as opposed to the jobbery of ecclesiastics like Loftus and Magrath. " The Archebishopp of Cash ell," writes Ralegh, "is RALEGH OPPOSES MEILER MAG RATH 85 "is a man whome I thinck my Lord Treasurer hathe little cause to favor. . . I doe fynde noe better meanes in releffe of my self, fartheraunce of relygon and comforte of all myne Inglyshe tenants and frendes, than in preferring some other of better sorte to the bishoppricke of Lesmore and Water- ferde wherof the Archbishop hathe but a commende, and hathe, besydes, twoe or three other bishoprickes." In place of Magrath, Ralegh suggests " Master Hugh Broughton^ a man well knowen to all the lerned docters and scollers of Englande .... a man able to do moche good and be a greate comforte to all our Inglishe nation thereaboughtes, and encrease of relygyon." Ralegh's interest was powerful in England, but Magrath had secured the Irish Council. In the ninety-sixth volume of the State Papers for 1582, there are some characteristic memorials of the Archbishop : he suggests that, in certain cases, no judge, jury, or witness, should be allowed who had not taken the oath of supremacy. Soon after he goes further, and " wishes for authority to impose the 86 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND the oath of supremacy upon all manner of persons within the whole province of Cashel." He then prays for " the grant of the fee farm of the monastery of Tuam in Tipperary ; " and about the same time he " desires the custodiam of all livings, except the bishopricks, in Ulster : " so that his ecclesiastical ambition stretched from one end of the island to the other. For half a century he held five bishopricks and many livings. But he had no flock. Sir Robert Cecil writes of him in 1600 as '^a most turbulent spirit;" and in the following year he says, " Great scandal is bruited about the Archbishop of Cashel, that he doth very irreligiously suffer his church to lie like a hog-st>\ Expostulate with him for the honor of Her Majesty and God's Church wherein he hath so supreme a calHng." In 1 610 a Royal Warrant records the fact that '' the Archbishop of Cashel is seldom resident upon his see, but absent in the north upon his own temporal lands." Before this however, the Arch- bishop had asked for protection to enable him to live RALEGH OPPOSES MEILER MAGRATH 87 live in his diocese. So far from acknowledging him, the poor people had captured him and his three sons, maliciously broken the Great Seal from his letters-patent, and made him pay a heavy ransom for his liberation. Between this prelate of the State Church and the disguised Archbishop who ministered to the people in woods and caves^ there was certainly a contrast; but between Meiler Magrath and Ralegh's candidate for the see of Lismore there was almost as great a contrast. Hugh Broughton was an Englishman of high character, an eminent divine and one of the most famous scholars of the English Church. Elizabeth had him in her mind for the see of London. And yet, with all Ralegh's influence, he could not succeed in getting for Broughton one of the plundered sees out of the grasp of a man whose conduct so seriously com- promised the English cause — such as it was. XXVI XXVI RalegJUs Testimony i?t the Lords ift 1882 The House of Lords recently displayed un- wonted interest at hearing the name of Sir Walter Ralegh repeatedly mentioned. It was in connec- tion with his Irish estates. Under Elizabeth's grant he not only broke the ancient Celtic tenures throughout the domains of the Desmonds, but he usurped also the popular fisheries of the Blackwater. The rights of the attainted Earl, of his tenants and of the fishermen of Youghal, were all sold by Ralegh for a few hundred pounds to Mr. Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork. This astute and successful planter escaped with his life from the clutches of Lord Strafford to found, on the estates of Ralegh, more than one great house. His memory as a resident despot is to this day not cherished by the people, whilst, strange to say, his chief descendants are RALEGH AND THE LORDS IN 1882 89 are popular absentees. On the death of the fourth Earl of Cork in 1753, the Lismore and Youghal estates went to Lady Charlotte Boyle, the wife of the fourth Duke of Devonshire. After long litiga- tion, the House of Lords finally decided in the last session that Sir Walter Ralegh's grant conveyed to the present Duke of Devonshire an absolute right of salmon fishing in the tidal waters of the Youghal river to the exclusion of the natural rights of the public. No one can blame the Duke for termi- nating by law a long dispute. The decision was based on the sweeping terms of the Queen's grant to Ralegh, as interpreted by English law. In that point of view it is sound and indisputable. But according to the customs that prevailed before the estates of the Geraldines came to Ralegh, it is alleged that there were popular privileges of fish- ing which the Desmonds, at the very height of their princely power, could not have taken from the people. From time to time, the inherent right of gathering food from the tidal waters was exercised by the common fishermen, though often disputed by 90 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND by the landlord. At length, three hundred years after it was signed, the deed of Elizabeth was brought back again from Lismore to London, and the shade of Ralegh came as it were to the Bar of the House of Lords in 1882, to testify against the claims of the Irishry. But whatever may be the historic interest of the decision, those who live on the banks of the Blackwater know that the just and kindly Cavendishes will not use the now established rights of Ralegh to the injury of the poor. XXVII Ralegh and Cromwell Mr. Froude has reminded us more than once of what Sir Walter Ralegh's first master. Lord Grey, said, that the only way to deal with Ireland was by "a Mahometan conquest." In the 'Nineteenth Century' for September 1880, Mr. Froude again refers to Lord Grey's suggestion as " a cruel but in the RALEGH AND CROMWELL 91 the long run merciful one," if Ireland is to be kept in subjection. Indeed, the historian has never disguised his bias in favour of a system of unre- lenting severity and a bold attempt at extermina- tion. Had Cromwell lived, he has often told us, the experiment would have been worked out. But he has hardly done justice to the great Protector or to the difficulties in his way. Long before his death Cromwell had realised the impossibility of exterminating a nation. He had tried it, but failed. Nor has our unrivalled historian done jus- tice to his own favourite theme, for he overlooked the fact that his experiment had been previously tried, and, as far as it was possible, thoroughly tried. It was tried under circumstances the most favour- able for its success, and such as never can occur again. It was tried by a man of genius, daring and no scruples — by a man who did not stand alone, but, with his resolute companions was backed up by whatever force England could afford. It was tried at a time more likely to insure success than in the days of Cromwell — at a time when novel 92 SIJ? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND novel improvements had been effected in the art of war and new weapons had been brought into use, but improvements and weapons employed, as Ralegh himself tells us, for some years by one side only. The man who, with these advantages, was able to try the experiment was not open to the imputation that Mr. Froude lays against the Geraldines and the still later Boyles and Caven- dishes, that with their Irish estates they acquired some Irish feeling, and did not look at Ireland from a purely English point of view only. Mr. Edward Edwards says (vol. i. p. 320) : — " With the interests of Ireland, indeed, Ralegh gave himself no trouble. He looked at Irish affairs just as his fellow-soldiers and fellow-councillors looked at them, with preoccupations exclusively English. In Ireland he was an English soldier, and an English planter, and he was nothing more. . . . His face was set as flint against peddling interferences and temporary expedients in dealing with great evils. To cut the tap root rather than to spend precious time in pruning the branches was his RALEGH AND CROMWELL 93 his maxim. And it may well be that occasionally he pressed it unduly." Here was a man to Mr. Froude's heart. He not only wielded the sword himself, but, having gained the ear of his Queen by the thoroughness of his Irish policy, he never wavered in advising her to maintain undeviating severity, and the despotic ruler acted upon that advice. The wise Lord Treasurer had to submit in silence, and see the Mahometan system tried by this bold and vigorous captain and his martial-law companions — not tried by fits and starts, or for a few years only, but tried as persistently as they could do it and over a long period. The reign of Queen Ehzabeth was not a short one. From the time when the Lord Deputy Sussex arranged with her for the assassina- tion of John O'Neill down to her last interview with Ralegh was a period of forty years. During that time the only servants she rewarded for work in Ireland were the Mahometan-conquest ones. It was not victories she rewarded so much as severity and the effort to exterminate. Sussex with his hired 94 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND hired assassins and poisoners, was a failure, but still he was rewarded. Ormond was recalled by her from Ireland, and the second Essex ruined, partly because Ralegh whispered that they mingled some thought of Irish interests in the EngUsh work she had given to them. Mr. Froude's sug- gestion in favour of the policy of Cromwell would hardly be approved by the shade of Elizabeth's great Minister, if in the tomb he could hear it ; nor would it be approved by the Minister of a truer woman and a better Queen, who, writing from Hughenden Manor in October 1870, said : " Ireland should be governed according to the policy of Charles the First, and not of Oliver Cromwell."* * Mr. Disraeli's Preface to his collected works, 1870. XXVIII XXVIII Ralegh and Ormond Mr. Froude quotes Ormond' s indignant letter to Burghley : " My Lord, the clause in the Queen's letter seems most strange to me. I will never use treachery to any, for it will both touch her High- ness's honour too much and mine own credit ; and whosoever gave the Queen advice thus to write to me is fitter to execute such base service than I am. Saving my duty to her Majesty, I would I were to have revenge by my sword of any man that thus persuaded the Queen to write to me." Ralegh was then at Court. His letters written from Cork in 1580 and 158 1, secretly denouncing his general for not using the fire and sword enough, had gained him the Queen's regard before the romantic incidents of the velvet cloak and the lines written 96 SIJ^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND written with the diamond ring upon the window occurred — or were invented. Ormond, it might be thought, was as unrelenting and thorough as Mr. Froude could wish, but he was not prepared to go quite as far as the Gilberts and Carews, to get the Irish to come in from the woods and moun- tains of Duhallow under pledges of protection for their lives, and then, seizing them unprepared, to hang them up, as Ralegh did, from the North Gate bridge to the Red Abbey of Cork. Mr. Froude's comment upon Ormond' s letter of 1583 points, in a few words, the contrast between him and the English captains to whose charge Ireland was for so many years entrusted by Elizabeth : " To Ormond the Irish were human beings with human rights. To the EngHsh they were vermin to be cleared off the earth by any means that offered."* Amongst the draft charges to be laid against the Earl of Ormond, was one to the effect that two * Froude's * History of England,' vol. xi. p. 258. assassins RALEGH AND ORMOND 97 assassins, hired by the Lord Lieutenant to murder Fitzgerald, the seneschal of Imokilly, were stopped and exposed by Ormond. That traitors should be prosecuted by the hired dagger was not agreeable to Ormond ; and his private conversations de- nouncing the practice were reported to the Privy Council by Ralegh. The following is the passage in the Carew Papers, volume 607, page 71, from the articles against Ormond : " Where two choice persons were entertained for the killing of the traitor Seneschal, and had under- taken the same, the matter not being revealed to any by the persons that entertained them, saving only to the Earl of Ormond, these executioners were no sooner arrived at the camp but they were apprehended by the Seneschal, and charged with the practice, and for the same executed, to the great grief of the persons that entertained them. " Let Captain Bartley and Captain Rawley be examined of words privately uttered by the Lord General (Ormond) touching the prosecution of traitors. Persons to prove those articles : Sir H George 98 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND George Bowcer, Sir William Morgan, Captain Bartley, and Captain Rawley." XXTX Irish Self -gov ern7neiit Sir John Perrott also experienced the adverse influence of Ralegh. He complains bitterly of Ralegh's opposition to him. As one of the leading gentlemen of the Pale, Ralegh supported his repressive measures, but opposed him in other things. The idea of giving real freedom to an Irish Parliament was not consistent with Ralegh's Irish policy. Few historians have noticed the fact that, at one moment in Ehzabeth's reign, this all-important step was nearly taken. Here again the oligarchy of the Pale defeated a wise project, and the Lord Deputy found the permanent staff of the Castle intriguing against the idea of an independent legislature for Ireland. A Bill IRISH SELF-GOVERNMENT 99 Bill for the repeal of Poyning's Act was duly certi- fied by the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons in April 1585. On the 30th of May, Sir John Perrot writes to Walsingham : '' There is no good meaning in the people of the Pale and borderers towards the composition intended, or anything else that is good. They have overthrown the repeal of Poyning's Act."* The historian Cox also attri- butes the defeat on the third reading of the Bill for repealing Poyning's Act, to the "jealousy of some gentlemen of the Pale." t Indeed any plan that an enlightened English statesman might have had for giving to the Irish the responsibility of administering the affairs of their own country, was not likely to meet with much favour from the gentlemen of the Pale, and especially from that inner circle of the Pale composed of the judges and officials^ with whom at that time Ralegh was cordially working. * State Papers, Ireland, vol. cxvi. 69. t Cox's 'Reign of Elizabeth,' p. 384. H 2 XXX XXX Florence McCarthy Ralegh's letter to Cecil of the 4th of March, 1593, throws some light on a disputed point in Irish history, — the true character of Florence McCarthy. Ralegh knew him well. He met him as a boy in 1580. They corresponded on Irish affairs; and when EHzabeth welcomed McCarthy to London he and Ralegh were fre- quent companions at Court. The Celtic chief was being played off against the Norman Geraldines, until his romantic wedding offended the Queen. Elizabeth was planning an alliance between one of her officials in Munster and an Irish heiress, the Earl of Clancar's daughter, when Florence suddenly left London for his native county and married the lady in spite of the Lord President's guards. For this the young bridegroom got his first experience of FLORENCE McCARTHY of a State prison, in which he was, at different times, to spend over forty years. Long after his ill-starred marriage, for Cecil employed the wife as a spy upon the husband, Ralegh thus writes of him : — "Florence MacCarty is a man reconciled to the Pope, dangerous to the present State, beloved of such as seek the ruine of the Realme." He adds, — " He is not worthie to be relieved by her Majesties goodness. He may for a time dissemble, by occasion of his imprisonment in the Tower ; but he is not to be trusted." From his own point of view, Ralegh was doubt- less right in his estimate of McCarthy, who, in spite of his early training at Court, was a patriot at heart, — ^' a man infinitely adored in Munster," as one of the Queen's officers, in denouncing him, records. The reference to Florence, in Ralegh's letter of October 1601, also shows a true appreciation of McCarthy's influence. Relying on their old friendship and the literary tastes they had in common. I02 S/J^ WALTER RALEGH LN IRELAND common, Florence, over and over again, writes to Cecil to refer his case to Ralegh's judgment. He was in fact appealing to that judgment at the very moment that Sir Walter was privately objecting to the contemplated pardon. On the unwise but constantly recurring theory that peace and prosperity were alone to be secured by keeping Ireland down and governing her by Enghshmen, Ralegh was justified in recommending Cecil not to let Florence McCarthy out of the Tower. Had Perrot's idea of a local Parliament with real powers been carried out, Florence McCarthy would have been a leader in the Irish House of Commons, the true friend of both kingdoms. He was a scholar, a man of en- lightened views, and of a winning disposition. Like his old friend and political foe, he was a historian. Ralegh, who was one of the main agents in his imprisonment, became again his intimate companion in after-years. When he himself passed through the Traitors' Gate he found McCarthy in a cell, suiTounded with books and manuscripts, writing his FLORENCE McCARTHY 103 his * Treatise on the Antiquity and History of the Early Ages of Ireland.' McCarthy's History was preserved in his clear and minute handwriting for two centuries and a half, till it was edited and pubHshed by the late Dr. O'Donovan. XXXI His Last Advice to the Qiieen Another of that Celtic clan felt the weight of his influence. Having referred to the consistency with which Ralegh counselled the Queen to main- tain an unrelenting demeanour towards the Irish, from the first word she heard him utter in 1582 to the last time she saw him in 1602, Mr. Edwards goes on to say how he did this alike in open conference with the Queen and in his private advice to her Ministers. He refers to his last recorded interview Avith Elizabeth about three months before her fatal illness. The question was, what ro4 ////»' WAf/ri-.R A-A/./'.C/r IN IRELAND what should be done with respect to CJormar: Ma^:- Dcrmod McCarthy, Lord of Muskcrry. Cecil in his letter to Sir George Carew of November 4, 1 602, mentions liow lie reported to her Highness that the President of Munsler \ym\ alren/ly sjjoiled the r:ountry .'ind taken the castles of CJorrnac. In his previous despatch from Cork, dated Octr^ber 25, 1602, Carew reported how the towns had been burnt, and there were " killed and hanged divers poor men, women, and children appertaining to Cormocke." The fire and sword had swept from Carrigrohan to Inchigeelagh. The Queen heard again the words which for over forty years had been so often rej^eated at her Council table : " The rebels' country is utterly spoiled." Cecil thought some mercy might be shown to the hunted chief whose people were slain and whose castles were ruined, but he tells how the Queen turned to Sir Walter Ralegh. "Whereupon Sir Walter very earnestly moved her Highness to reject Cormac MacCarthy." He gave the old and sufficient reason, " because his country was worth her ,, keeping." JUS f.Asr ADV1CJ-: to j'ji/-: {)(//■: kn 105 keeping." The Queen, lie .ulds, was " so wrought upon by Ralegh's advice as to give special charge about the next despatches to Munster : no i)ardon should be given to Cormac MacCarthy." Such was Ralegh's hist advice to JOlizabeth. Jn a {(i\w months another sovereign was on the throne, and before long tiie friends of OniHHid and of Essex were reminding the new King that the gallant Captain of the Guard had little scruples about the shedding of blood. XXXH 'J'/tc Jiiniy^ralioti and Ju:-J>r(>J)/i/iy^ JHans In the lease made by Sir Walter Ralegh in 1588, and now to be seen in his house at Youghal,* he describes himself as *' one of the principal under- takers with Her Majesty for the repeopling of the * Appendix. ].-i.nd io6 SIJ^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND land in the counties of Cork and Waterford." One of the main conditions on which he and the other undertakers got the confiscated estates, was that this repeopling should be by persons of English birth only, and that no Irish should be allowed to remain on the lands. It was not for any want of zeal or energy that Ralegh failed in this cardinal point of the undertaking. He had for eight years co-operated with Mackworth, Zouch, and Carew, in removing the Irish peasants from their own soil. Though the sword and the halter were freely used, the other two weapons for clearing the country, famine and emigration, were not neg- lected. The emigration which was promoted by Dublin Castle and its agents in the Tudor period was not across the Atlantic. The noble colonies, whose birth will ever be associated with the genius of Ralegh, had not become the new home of a formidable section of the Celtic race. The gallant captains who got the lands did their best to clear off the people, one of Ralegh's friends recording how they starved to death 30,000 in six months in the EMIGRATION AND RE-PEOPLING PLANS 107 the province of Munster by destroying the crops.* But the State Papers of that day contain suggestions from more benevolent-minded persons in England, who thought emigration was the true remedy, but emigration across the Blackwater, and to the woods and mountains of Kerry. In any shape or form, however, the Irish race do not like emigration. Those who benevolently promoted the transfer of the people from the once fertile ploughlands of the Geraldines and the MacCarthys to the back- woods beyond the Pale, were as little loved by the poor emigrants as the Captains who pursued them in a rougher style. In their new homes among the mountains they remembered the fields where they had been born. By a sort of instinct which the foreign rulers were quite unable to comprehend, these dispossessed farmers looked upon the few well-intentioned and benevolent emigrationists much in the same light as they looked upon their enemies who wielded other weapons. Hence the emigration * Sir Warham Sentleger to the Queen, from Cork, 1582, vol. xci. 41. did io8 S/J? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND did not work well, and Ralegh soon found a double difficulty in his repeopling scheme. In spite of the desolation described by Edmund Spenser, some Irish had survived in the vast districts where none but English were to live in future. This tempted the undertakers to break their engagements with the Government, as they thought the remnant of the hunted people might be utilised in again tilling the ground. The Lord Deputy could not understand this. Commissions were issued to inquire if any of the Irishry had been allowed to remain. The undertakers who con- nived at the breach of engagement were worried by the Castle. On the other hand, from the rugged colonies of the emigrant race, there came messages and agents of disaffection. The Curfew Act failed to check the growth of midnight outrages. The lessons of assassination that Sussex, Carew, and Ralegh had taught the people began to be practised by both sides. From the distant mountain that Edmund Spenser has immortalised — "... that EMIGRATION AND RE-PEOPLING PLANS 109 "... that mountain gray, That walls the north side of Armulla dale — there dropped down, one by one, active fomentors of trouble, until at length the gentle poet, but perhaps too severe soldier, fled broken-hearted from Kilcolman, whose roof (which had often sheltered Ralegh) he beheld for the last time in flames. " My undertakers," writes the Queen to the Lord President of Munster, " either for lack of comfort from you or out of mere cowardice, fled away from the rebels upon the first alarm." Eliza- beth's emigration scheme and Ralegh's re-peopling scheme failed, having done more harm than good, as sometimes happens with well-meaning plans framed by one people for the management of another people. XXXIII XXXIII Dedication of the Irish Wars And here the question may perhaps be asked, how comes it that Mr. Froude tells us nothing of Ralegh's doings in Ireland and of his Irish policy ? The one vague reference to him as having accom- panied Lord Grey to the west of Ireland in 1580, is all he tells us about Ralegh. Mr. Froude says not a word about his being for twenty years the favourite adviser of the Queen on Irish affairs ; not a word about the special training she desired, under her royal warrant of February 1582, that he should continue to receive in Irish affairs ; not a word about his successful intrigue against Ormond, and barely a word about the reward he got of forty- two thousand acres in Munster. Of his doings as Deputy President of Munster, as Governor of Cork, as Mayor of Youghal, as the daring leader of the Ensrlish DEDICATION OF THE IRISH WARS iii English soldiers in many a raid from the mouth of the Blackwater to the sources of the Lee, Mr. Froude is also silent. But on the last and not least impor- tant point — the result of the policy so recom- mended and enforced — Mr. Froude speaks out. " The entire province of Munster," he says, " was utterly depopulated. Hecatombs of helpless crea- tureSj the aged, and the sick, and the blind, the young mother and the babe at her breast, had fallen under the English sword; and though the authentic details of the struggle have been forgotten, the memory of a vague horror remains imprinted in the national traditions." The contemporary chronicle, Hooker's Supple- ment to Hohnshed, which is so often quoted by Mr. Froude, describes all this and gloats over it as a notable and rare example of a people being justly rooted out, as the true and rational settlement of the Irish difficulty. Hooker appropriately dedicates his record of those Irish wars to Sir Walter Ralegh, on the ground that the " right worthie and honor- able gentleman and knight "was "a partie and a dooer 112 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND dooer, a painful and a faithful servitor" in those trans- actions, the effect of which he thus sums up in the same ' Epistle Dedicatorie :' — " The common people such as escaped the sword all for the most part are perished with famine or fled the countrie. The land itself, from beinge verie fertile, is waxed barren, yeelding nor come nor fruits — the pastures without cattell : nothing there to be seene but miserie and desolation." XXXIV The Natmial Traditio?is Here then was Mr. Froude's system tried. All suc- ceeding efforts in that direction were less thorough. The " curse of Cromwell/' the broken treaty of 169 1, the way an insurrection was produced and punished in 1798, the means employed to repress local self- government in 1800, the coercive legislation that followed, — these were of the same character, no doubt, but less thorough. They have, however, served THE NATIONAL TRADITIONS 113 served to stereotype that vague horror which Mr. Froude tells us remains in the traditions of the people of Ireland. Are those terrible traditions all that remain of Ralegh's days in Ireland ? How long are they to remain ? What has been their effect in a country where the two main elements of social order — the religion of the people and the national sentiment — have not been allowed to play their legitimate part in the Government ? Are those traditions growing, as political agents, less powerful with the increasing strength of popular spirit in Europe ? How far does a frank admission of their vitality and their force enable us to look into the future ? XXXV XXXV Spenser and Ralegh Some of these are questions for practical politicians to consider who either hold the helm or aspire to do so. A mere student of history must be content to answer the first question only and to turn to the more pleasing reminiscences of Ralegh — to think of him wandering with Lord Grey's Secretary beneath *' the green alders by the Mulla's shore " or sitting in the deep embrasured window of the Warden's house reading the manuscript of his brother poet and then " aemuling " the pipe of Spenser, who tells us ' ' His song was all a lamentable lay Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard : " the unkindness of the Queen who in some jealous fit had exiled him to his Irish estates — to the country which SPENSER AND RALEGH 115 which he had contributed to render not " a common wealth but common woe." The advice he gave to Spenser in the old house in Youghal and in the spoiled and desolate fields of Desmond was an event in English literature. " When thus our pipes we both had wearied well (Quoth he), and each an end of singing made, He gan to cast great lyking to my lore, And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot, That banisht had my selfe, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite forgot. The which to leave, thenceforthe he counseld mee." The noble sonnet that Ralegh then wrote, in which he says — "All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen, At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept" — and the sound advice he gave Spenser, well earned for him the immortal distinction of the dedication written in Kilcoman Castle, — **To thee, that art the summer's nightingale, Thy Sovereign Goddess's most dear delight, Why do I send this rustic madrigal. That may thy tuneful ear unseason quite? I 2 Thou, ii6 SIJ^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Thou, only, fit this argument to write, In whose high thoughts Pleasure hath built her bower. And dainty Love learnt sweetly to indite." Indeed that dedication was due to him, to his literary genius, to his critical taste, to his encourage- ment of the exiled poet, as much as the dedication by Hooker of the Chronicles of Ireland had been won by his sword and halter. It is evident from Spenser's testimony that a good deal of Ralegh's poetry was ^vritten in Ireland. In some of his pathetic verses there are traces of his Irish exile. He was, however, so pre-eminent as a man of action, that he is underrated, or almost forgotten, as a poet. Spenser indeed was justified in writing at Kilcolman in 15 91, — " Full sweetly tempered is that Muse of his." XXXVI XXXVI Introduces Tobacco and the Potato The richly-perfumed yellow wallflowers that he brought to Ireland from the Azores, and the Affane cherry, are still found where he first planted them by the Blackwater. Some cedars he brought to Cork are to this day growing, according to the local historian, Mr. John George MacCarthy, at a place called Tivoli. The four venerable yew-trees, whose branches have grown and intermingled into a sort of summer-house thatch, are pointed out as having sheltered Ralegh when he first smoked tobacco in his Youghal garden. In that garden he also planted tobacco. The climate of the south of Ireland favoured its cultivation. Many years after his time the name of Ralegh was favourably mentioned in College Green, when the Irish House of Commons contemplated encouraging tobacco plantations ii8 SIJ? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND plantations in Ireland. The supposed necessity, however, of protecting tobacco planters in the colonies and supporting the customs revenue of England compelled the Lord Lieutenant to veto any revival of Ralegh's scheme. A few steps further on, where the town wall of the thirteenth century bounds the garden of the Warden's house, is the famous spot where the first Irish potato was planted by him. In that garden he gave the tubers to the ancestor of the present Lord Southwell, by whom they were spread through- out the province of Munster. In an old book of travels in the northern countries, quoted in the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' eighty years ago, it is said, " Potatoes were first planted here (in Lancashire), having been brought from Ireland to England by the immortal Ralegh." Writing from Cork in August 1602, Carew says to Sir Robert Cecil, " I sent unto Sir W. R. many sorts of ore. I would be glad to know how they prove, and that speedily." Before this, Ralegh had brought some Cornish miners to Ireland, and had spent a considerable sum in trying THE OLD COUNTESS OF DESMOND 119 trying to develope the mineral resources of the country. How different would the popular tradi- tions respecting Ralegh in Ireland be, if his taste in such things and his literary genius had been associated with a wiser and more truly English policy than that of repression ! XXXVII The Old Countess of Desmojtd He himself recalled Irish memories sometimes unaccountably. In his great folio he illustrates the long lives of the patriarchs by his own knowledge of a lady who lived about five miles from Youghal. " I myself," he says, " knew the old Countess of Desmond of Inchiquin in Munster, who lived in the year 1589 and many years since, who was married in Edward the Fourth's time, and held her jointure from all Earls of Desmond since then ; and that this is true all the noblemen and gentlemen of Munster I20 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Munster can witness." This lady, the Countess Catherine of Desmond, was bom in 1464, the year in which the eighth Earl built Sir Walter Ralegh's house. In a letter written after he had sold his Irish estates to Mr. Boyle, he says : " There remains unto me but an old castle and demesne which are yet in the occupation of the old Countess of Desmond for her jointure." From this it would appear that she was then one hundred and thirty- eight years of age. In his Youghal house can now be seen two original documents that throw some light on the controversy as to this lady's age. One is Sir Walter's lease sealed by him on the 21st of July, 1588, of a small neighbouring property, in which he refers to " the Ladie Cattllyn old Countess Dowager of Desmond j" the other the original warrant of Queen Elizabeth dated 2nd October, 1588, with the Royal autograph and signet granting a pension to Eleanor, widow of the i6th Earl of Desmond.* Sir * See Appendix. George THE OLD COUNTESS OF DESMOND 121 George Lewis and others thought that the passage in Ralegh's ' History of the World ' must have been hastily written, and that the old Countess could not have been alive in 1589. Sir Walter's deed, how- ever, shows that she was undoubtedly living, five miles from his Youghal house, in 1588. In that deed he calls her the " old Countess." It was known that a Countess of Desmond had walked in 1587 from Bristol to London to petition the Queen for a pension, and it was said she could not have been so very old if she were capable of such exertion. Sir George Lewis thought this conclusive against the alleged great age of the Countess. But, as the Queen's original warrant now seems to establish, it was not the Countess Catherine, but the Countess Eleanor who walked from Bristol to London in 1587. XXXVIII XXXVIII The Two Widows In one of Ralegh's letters to the Lord Deputy, he accuses Ormond of parleying with the Countess of Desmond, allowing her to leave Cork with- many followers, and " at her going away none of her trayne either searched or lokt over." This was the Countess Eleanor, who, a few years before, was the wife of Elizabeth's wealthiest subject, a cor- respondent of the Queen, a lady of "princely castles and fair gardens," and whose " gown of cloth of gold" is referred to in one of the letters to Burghley in January 1579. Ormond no doubt re- membered her former state, and what was due to her sex and rank, when he allowed her to pass without being searched, especially when her husband, his bitter foe and political rival, though not yet killed, was hopelessly ruined. In a short time the widow had THE TWO WIDOWS 123 had a graver complaint to make against Ralegh than want of gallantry. He had got a share of the Desmond estates, and the jointure lands of the Countess Eleanor were taken. When Ralegh was full of hope with his repeopling schemes, with the fame and fortune he was to win in his Irish colony, the evicted Countess thus writes to Burghley : — "I am enforced through extreme poverty to make my moan unto your Honor. At this present my misery is such that my five children and my- self liveth in all want of meat, drink and clothes, having no house nor dwelling wherein I with them may rest."* Whilst Ralegh was holding his mayoralty in the house at Youghal, one of the last of the Desmond buildings that sheltered the widow before the undertakers drove her out, she sent a memorial to the Queen saying, — " Until Sir John Perrott came, I remained in most extreme want and misery : myself and my * State Papers — Ireland, vol. cxxii. 68. poor 124 SIJi WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND poor children were almost famished, whereupon the Lord Deputy sent us a dish^ of meat from his own table." After that^ she adds, " My Lord Ormond paid for my diets." The head of the rival family ! Again she petitions the sovereign that of her late husband's vast estates and her own jointure lands, not a blade of grass is left to her. One of Burghley's last acts was to advise the Queen to give a pension of ^£"200 a year to the Countess. The Royal Warrant to that effect, with the bold autograph of Elizabeth upon it, is, with some other original papers, in the old house at Youghal. But there is no evidence either in Ireland, or in the State Paper Office, that Ralegh had assisted the widow whose estate he held. It is only fair, however, to remember that the Queen gave her this pension when Ralegh's court influ- ence was at its height, and that he was constantly consulted on Irish affairs. It was the fate of another widow to cry out as poor Lady Desmond did. In her petition to King James the First, Lady Ralegh said : — "I THE TWO WIDOWS 125 " I beseich your majestie, in the mercies of Jesus Christ, to signifie your gracious pleasure concerning myselfe, and my poore children : That whereas your majesty hath disposed of all my husband's estates, so that there remayneth no- thing to give me and my children bred." The widow and her son, Carew Ralegh, at- tempted in vain to oust Sir Richard Boyle from the old Desmond estates. At one moment Carew Ralegh's prayer seemed likely to succeed. Lord Cork was charged by Wentworth with having possessed himself of the estates by chicane. But the Lord Chief Justice, in denouncing Lord Cork for " depopulating" the College of Youghal, spoke in the same letter of the lands and endow- ments " torn from the Church by the poure of Sir Walter Ralegh." Neither of the widows could regain an acre of the lands their husbands had held. But after much petitioning each secured a pension. In the Patent Rolls of the 7th of James the First is re- corded a grant of ";^4oo per annum, in trust to Sir 126 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Sir Francis Darcy and Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, during the life of Elizabeth Lady Ralegh." Her pension was larger than Lady Desmond's. But the English widow was granted another special favour she valued very highly. She was allowed to embalm Sir Walter's head, and she carried it about with her wherever she travelled. At her death it was left to Carew Ralegh, in whose coffin it was ultimately buried. The Irish widow, if she had had a similar sad devotion, would have had to take up her lodgings in one of the old houses on London Bridge. XXXIX Ralegh opposes Essex's Irish Policy One part of Ralegh's Irish policy which afifected his own fate and contributed to the apparently never-ending troubles of the two kingdoms, was his successful opposition to the conciliatory schemes of the second Essex. It was rumoured that RALEGH OPPOSES ESSEX'S POLICY 127 that the Queen had offered Ralegh the post of Deputy before Essex was sent to DubUn. How- ever that may be, Ralegh was her most intimate adviser on Irish affairs during the Lord Lieutenancy of Essex. The new Lord Lieutenant and Ralegh had been bosom friends, had quarrelled and had made it up again. From the day when Essex had cast his plumed hat into the sea to greet Ralegh before Cadiz, there had arisen many causes of jealousy. But the alternate smiles and frowns of the Queen were as nothing compared to their divergent views on Ireland. The Irish manuscripts known as the Annals of the Four Masters, speak of Essex as having dis- played " the most splendid regal state ever exhibited by the Saxons in Ireland." As to his Irish policy they say, " When the Earl of Essex arrived, the first thing proclaimed was that every one of the Irish who was sorry for having gone in opposition to the Queen should receive forgiveness, that any of the men of Ireland whose estates had been 128 SIJi WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND been taken by the Saxons through oppression, violence or illegality, would have a restitution of the same." No wonder the undertakers should de- termine to trip up a Lord Lieutenant whose views were so interpreted by the natives. The first journal of Essex's proceedings that reached the Queen described his march through the counties where Ralegh's estates lay. The latter read with surprise how " the Lord Lieutenant summoned the castle of Darrilayrie. The rebels surrendered and were pardoned." " Rebels par- doned ! " That was not the way Ralegh dealt with traitors in those districts eighteen years ago. Then in a despatch from Essex dated July 1599 came a few words that Elizabeth and her advisers started at. " This poor country of Ireland ! " But more serious than words of commiseration were the instructions from the Governor in Dublin Castle to those generally severe and intriguing politicians, the Irish judges, to " treat the Irish people with caution and tenderness. To refrain from laying any heavy burthen upon them, or taking any severe course RALEGH OPPOSES ESSEX'S POLICY 129 course against them. To avoid making them desperate."* Then followed stories that Essex was countenancing Popery ; — all culminating in his interview and treaty with Tyrone, in which complete toleration to the Catholic religion, and, what would have been in effect, Irish self-government under the crown of the Queen, appear to have been agreed upon. The trenchant style of Ralegh can be detected in the Queen's answers, censuring and destroying the plans of Essex. "Your pen," she writes to him, " flatters you with phrases, that you are disgraced from hence, that ' poor Ireland ' suffers in you. We will not tolerate this." And in a more official despatch to the Lord Lieutenant in Council, she tells him : " Your opinions deserve reproof rather than answer. . . . You have been the cause of corruption in religion by favouring Popery." As to Essex's agreement with the gallant Hugh O'Neill, EUzabeth writes : " To trust this * Essex's instructions to Judge Saxey. ' Carew MSS.,' vol. 607, p. 143. K raitor I30 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND traitor upon oath is to trust a devil upon his rehgion." Essex, who had been for so many years the companion and correspondent of Ralegh, recognised the hand that guided the Royal pen. Replying from Ireland, he said, "Is it not known that from England I receive nothing but discomfort and soul's wounds? Is it not lamented of your Majesty's faithfullest subjects, both here and there, that a Cobham and a Ralegh should have such credit and favour with your Majesty ? " Mr. Edwards, who is not free from what Lord Macaulay calls the disease of biographers, supports the Irish policy of Ralegh as against that of Essex. "Ralegh," he says, " was repeatedly consulted about Irish affairs both by the Queen and by her Ministers. His advice was uniformly in favour of measures vigorous and decided. In his view, the submission of rebels was the essential condition precedent of their reconciliation. That view Ralegh had always taken. It was the Earl of Essex's misfortune that he did not take it too." When RALEGH OPPOSES ESSEX'S POLICY 131 When Essex imprudently returned to the Court to defend his Irish policy in person, he found Ralegh at the Queen's ear. For a moment Essex seemed to win Elizabeth. Ralph Adderley writing to Walter Bagot on the 9th of June, 1600, says, " Ralegh is gone into the country, bag and baggage, wife and children. Her Majesty called him worse than cat and dog." Then came bad news from Ireland, and Ralegh was welcomed again at Court. At the trial he was a witness against Essex, when the latter exclaimed, " What bootheth it to swear this fox?" It seems to have escaped the attention of Ralegh's biographers that though the subtle Lord High Treasurer, as Naughton calls Burghley, was no longer living in 1599, he had recorded, in 1595, a paper concerning the Earl of Tyrone in which is to be found more of the conciliatory views of Essex than the so-called vigorous views of Ralegh.* Had Burghley a Lord Lieutenant like Essex, or had * ' Carew Papers,' vol. 614, p. 237. K 2 Essex 132 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Essex the support of a Prime Minister like Burghley, the relations of the two kingdoms would have been different. Ralegh's fate might have been different also, for in his temporary triumph over Essex it is possible to trace some of the steps that brought him to a similar end. Standing by the block in i6i8 Ralegh's final w^ords were : — "It is said I was a persecutor of my Lord of Essex : that I puffed out tobacco in disdain when he was on the scaffold. But I take God to witness I shed tears for him when he died. I confess I was of a contrary faction. But I knew he was a noble gentleman. Those that set me up against him, did afterwards set themselves against me." XL XL " Destiney stronger than Councell " As the popular traditions of Munster may furnish some notes for an unwritten chapter of Ralegh's and Spenser's Irish life, a fact which Professor Hales, the latest biographer of Spenser, has recognised, so, in the State Paper Office in London there may also be found an unprinted history that throws some light on this *' contrary faction " to which Ralegh belonged. It was the anti-Irish faction in the Court and Councils of EHzabeth. The biographers of Essex still keep speculating on the mystery surrounding his fall, instead of turning to the mass of Irish correspon- dence now available to writers and students. For the months of remorse, the worry and sleepless nights that preceded the death of Ehzabeth, ample material can also be found in that unpublished history 134 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND history. One day the Queen adopts Ralegh's advice ; the next day he is in disgrace. Then in a sort of despair she calls him back again, to read another batch of Irish despatches. Many years had passed since Ralegh told her how Ireland could be held, by vigorous measures, without any cost to her exchequer. He had gone on repeating that the true policy was to uphold the " Inglishe inhabitants in Ireland which are yet stronge enough to master the Irishe without any charge to the Queen." She acted on his advice ; and now, after forty years of repression, she finds Ireland more Irish than ever, more costly to her treasury, and kept down by the largest army of occupation that any Enghsh sovereign had sent across the seas. Though Ralegh had foreseen something of this, — though in 1593 he had written — " That accursed kingdome hath always bynn but as a trafique for which Her Majestye hath paid both fraight and costome, and others received the merchandize ; and other than such shall it never be." though '' DESTINEY STRONGER THAN COUNCELL" 135 though in the same letter he had said, — " A milHon hath bynn spent by Her Majestye in Irland. A better kingdome might have bynn purchased att a less price." and though he had added, — "Destiney is stronger than councell" — yet he continued to advise the sending of more soldiers and the wasting of more money. Up to the hour of the Queen's death he continued to pit his counsel against the destiny that destroyed Eliza- beth's Irish policy and was to overwhelm himself. Though the unpublished documents in the Rolls Office relating to Ireland tend to compromise the reputation of Elizabeth's statesmen, they contain during a subsequent period of eighty or ninety years some records of a very different character. The Irish policy of the Stuart kings was halting and defective. But it was perfection itself com- pared to what had preceded it and what followed it. The early years in that glimmering of justice and common-sense brought some hope to Ireland and corresponding disaster to Ralegh. The 136 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND The curious mixture in misfortune of Ralegh and his Geraldine victims can hardly have escaped his own notice in the Tower. He knew that the son of the sixteenth Earl, whose lands he held, was kept in the Tower till his health broke down, when the Queen gave him rank as seventeenth Earl for about a year before his premature death. This young lord's legitimate successor, and cousin, James, the eighteenth Earl of Desmond, was Ralegh's fellow-prisoner for some years.* Political prisoners in those times were not strictly confined to separate cells except at night. When Ralegh, in 1604, wrote to the Secretary of State, Lord Cranbome, from the Tower, " remember my miserabell estate, — dayly in danger of death by the palsey, nightly of suffocation by wasted lungs, And now the plaug cum here.. . .my poore child having lien next to a woman with a plaug sore, whose child this Thursday is dead of the plaug," — he saw that he shared all this suffering and danger * Appendix. in ON THE SCAFFOLD 137 in common with the head of the Munster Geraldines. Perhaps it was the daily presence of the wasting Earl, for in 1608 he was buried in that historic dust that Lord Macaulay has described, that induced Ralegh in another letter from the Tower to say : — " Wee shalbe judged as wee judge — and bee dealt withal, as wee deal with others in this life — if wee beleve God Hyme sealf." XLI On the Scaffold No one in Ireland seems to have deplored the unjust execution of Ralegh. The mass of the Irishry remembered, what it has been the fate of so many British officials to leave in the memory of the people, repressive measures only. But even in what was then simply a garrison of the Pale, the City of Cork, with its close corporation at that time of 138 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND of English undertakers and their descendants, he had no sympathisers. The Meads and Coppingers, who had formerly applauded his severe rule, now found fault with him because the coercion they had cried out for had reacted injuriously upon themselves. A premature rumour of Ralegh's death reached Cork in 1603. John Walley writes from Shandon to Sir George Carew : — "The Mayor and Recorder of Cork say his lordship and Sir Walter Ralegh were both killed, and were they living they should never command there again as of old." They were not very grateful for the way he had risked his life in defending the city, and disposing of their Irish enemies, a few years before. The night before the scaffold something made him think of Ireland. In a paper endorsed by Sir Thomas Wilson, the keeper of the Tower, " A copy of the note written by Sir Walter Ralegh, in his owne hand, which he gave me in discharge of his conscience," is the following : — " There is a lease in controversy betweene the Lord Boyle ON THE SCAFFOLD 139 Boyle and one Henry Pine of the castle and lands of Mogile in the country of Corck in Ireland ; and although I did write something at my going from Ireland towards Guiana to the prejudice of Pine's lease, yet since that time better bethinking myself, I desire that the opinion which I gave of Pine's lesse may be no evidence in law against Pine, but that it may be left to other proofs on both sides." This simple reference, at such a moment, to his long-lost Irish estates is pathetic, and, though on a trivial matter, it is something to record that his last thought of Ireland was one of reparation for an accidental injustice. XLII His Irish Residences Of Ralegh's Irish residences, the old castle in Cork is gone, and on the spot where he wrote despatches to Walsingham and Cecil there now stand the prosaic warerooms of one of the members for I40 SIJi WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND for the city ; the Barre Court of his day is gone and the island he held for a short time is now Queenstown ; the Lismore Castle where the popular Duke of Devonshire and Lord Hartington occasionally visit and administer the estate in a very different spirit from Ralegh's, is not, except in its foundation stones, the castle of the fifteenth century. Kilcolman Castle is a roofless, ivy-clad ruin on the well-managed property of a descendant of the Barrys with whom Ralegh fought ; but no alders can now be seen on the banks of the MuUa. The only house in which he lived that has sur- vived the burnings, reprisals, and destructive raids that swept away so many buildings in Ireland, is the Warden's house of the College of Youghal, to which he took a fancy because of its resemblance to the old manorhouse at East Budleigh, where he was bom. When Mr. Crofton Croker sixty years ago visited Youghal, he thus described it : — " The house of the ill-fated Sir Walter Ralegh, who was mayor of the town in 1588, is still to be seen nearly in the same state as when inhabited by him HIS IRISH RESIDENCES 141 him ; and many objects are pointed out to which the charm of traditional anecdote is attached. It is long and low, the exterior plain and heavy, resembling the common English manorhouse of his time. In the interior those rooms which we saw were completely lined with small oaken panels, and had large wooden chimney pieces, embelUshed with very beautiful carved work." Thomas Dyneley, in Charles the Second's reign, notices " the well wrought ancient chimney pieces " and the " extrem pleasant garden." But the most accurate description of Ralegh's house is that pubUshed in 1852 by the Rev. Samuel Hayman, the historiographer of Youghal. He speaks of the solid mementos of the fifteenth century, the walls five feet thick, the deep projecting bay window and porch, the orieled closet, the high-pointed gables and gablets, and the great towering chimneys. "A large dining-room" (he says) " is on the ground floor, from which is a subterranean passage con- necting the house with the old tower of St. Mary's Church 142 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Church. In one of the kitchens the ancient wide arched fireplace remains. The walls are in great part wainscoted with Irish oak. The drawing-roora — Sir Walter's study — retains most of its ancient beauty in the preservation of its fine dark wainscot, deep projecting windows, and richly carved oak mantelpiece rising in the full pride of EHzabethan style to the height of the ceiling. The cornice rests upon three figures, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity, between which are enriched circular-headed panels, and a variety of emblematical devices fill up the rest of the structure. In the adjoining bedroom is another mantelpiece of oak, barbarously painted over. The Dutch tiles of the fireplace are about four inches square^ with various devices inscribed in a circular border. Behind the wainscoting of this room, a recess was a few years ago revealed in which a part of the old monkish library, hidden at the period of the Reformation, was discovered." Some of the books Mr. Hayman describes may have been gifts to the Warden from James, the ninth Earl, and Maurice, the tenth Earl of Desmond, both HIS IRISH RESIDENCES 143 both of whom supported and enriched the educa- tional foundation of their great ancestor, the good Earl Thomas. But one of the fifteenth-century volumes, Peter Comestor's ' Historia Scolastica,' is quoted by Sir Walter Ralegh in the second book of the first part of his ' History of the World.' In the same recess was also found a black-letter volume, printed at Mantua in 1479, of scriptural events in the history of the world from the Creation to the days of the Apostles. The elder Disraeli has argued that Ralegh could not have written the whole of his erudite folio himself, because he had not the books of reference in the Tower of London. But the discovery of one of the first editions of Comestor, and the black-letter epitome of early historical events, in the little recess in his Youghal bedroom, may indicate the possibility that Ralegh had been taking notes from the remnant of the Desmond library for the opus magnum during his frequent Irish exiles. XLIII XLIII Irish Portraits of Ralegh In appearance, what manner of man was Ralegh when in Ireland? There was much change, of course, from the dashing captain of eight-and- twenty, when he was putting the unarmed men to the sword and hanging the women in Dingle Bay, to the admiral of sixty-five, who, between the Tower and the scaffold, visited his old haunts in the county of Cork for the last time in the three summer months of 1 6 1 7 . But all accounts agree in giving him a commanding presence, a handsome and well-compacted figure, a forehead rather too high ; the lower part of his face, though partly hidden by the moustache and peaked beard, showing rare resolution. His portrait, a life-sized head, painted when he was Mayor of Youghal, was recently presented to the owner of his house, where it had been IRISH PORTRAITS OF RALEGH 145 been years ago, by the senior member for the county of Waterford ; and another original picture of him when in Ireland is in the possession of the Rev. Pierce W. Drew of Youghal. Both these Irish pictures show the same lofty brow and firm hps. At Ballynatray is a full-length painting of Ralegh by Zucchero. In a corner of his Youghal house is an engraving by Vander Werff of Amsterdam that seems to combine all his characteristic features — the ex- traordinarily high forehead, the intelligent eyes, the same large but well-shaped nose, the moustache and peaked beard, ill concealing a too determined mouth. The likeness is most striking. But there are accessories in this old engraving that seem to indentify it, even more than the mere resem- blance of the features, with Ralegh's career in Ireland. The knightly personage in armour is shrouded in the skin of a wolf; the wolf's head shows its sharp fangs at the top of the picture \ two human skulls are beneath, the eyeless sockets of one being directed upwards to the portrait, with an expression, as far as a poor skull can have L expression, 146 S/Id WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND expression, of reproach and woe. Both skulls rest on the torch and sword, the dagger of the assassin and the halter. Surely that must be Ralegh? Examining it closer, however, it is found to be but the picture of one of his contemporaries and rivals in glory, Ferdinand of Toledo, the foreign coercionist of the Netherlands. XLIV Retrospect of Ralegh's Irish Policy Looking back upon Ralegh's connection with Ireland, it is impossible to forget that he and Sir George Carew taught, by their example^, the odious crime of assassination; but, with this exception, there is much that may be forgiven, partly because the " cruelty that is repayd with cruelty " was the general fashion of the day, partly because of the earnest efforts he made to develope the industrial resources of the country, and no doubt also because of the sympathy evoked by the literary and romantic RETROSPECT OF RALEGH'S IRISH POLICY 147 romantic side of his character, as well as the natural indignation one feels at his unjust end. But his successful opposition to Perrot and Essex, on two main points, condemns him as the deliberate enemy of Ireland, and the unconscious enemy of England. Had he not assisted the oligarchy in stopping the repeal of Poyning's Act, had he not counselled the rejection of the Tyrone and Essex treaty, how different might have been the relations of the two kingdoms ! Perhaps if he had supported Perrot and Essex on those two points, no possessor of his Irish estates, from the days of the ever-worried and anxious Richard Boyle to later times, would have had to declare that the Irish problem was the most important and the most difficult for English statesmen to deal with. In truth, it would seem as if the poor Irish-speaking peasants of Munster have not greater reason to complain of Ralegh, than the millions of perplexed Englishmen who love fair play and peace. L 2 LETTERS OF SIR WALTER RALEGH FROM IRELAND, OR RELATING TO IRISH AFFAIRS. To the right honorable and my very good Lord, the Lord BURGHLEY, Lord Highe Thresojtrer of England, Maye it please your Honor, To UNDERSTAND that uppoii the receaving of my footeband of one hondrethe men, when I departed from London towards this land, there was then dehvered mto my hands (besides one hundreth powndes in imprest which is defalked uppon my enterteynment heere,) so muche mony as amownted to six dayes wages for my self, my levetennent, officers, and soldiers, at accustomed rates, viz. iiij' per diem for my self, ij' per diem for my levetennente^ xiiij*^ a peece for iiij officers, and viij"^ a peece for every soldier ; after th' expira- cion of which six dayes (by order from Your Honor and the rest of my lords of Her Maiesties Pryvy Counsell,) wee entered into the Isle of Wighte where wee contynued xv dayes, and ther beinge imbarked in Her Maiesties shippes, there was 152 SIJ^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND was xvii dayes more before wee arryved heere, duringe all which tyme of xxxij dayes, in the whole, wee receaved only vittells after the rate of vi** sterlinge/7^r diem for eache one, so that duringe those xxxij dayes there growethe due to every of my company ij^ sterlinge per dietTi as a remaynder of theire wages at viij*^ sterling per die?n ; and also to my selfe, my levetennente and officers, our whole enterteynment for the lyke tyme at the rates abovesaid. So yt is, my goode and honor- able Lorde, that at the importunate suyte and ex- clamacion of my company I have bin enforced to paye and satisfye every of them of that rema5nider, and seekinge to have the same to be allowed mee agayne heere, I am therfore referred to Your Honor's order and the residue of my Lords of Her Maiesties Pryvy Councell in England ; being ann- swered by Her Highnes' offycers heere that wee are neyther to be entered into paye, nor no other manner of waye to be allowed heere, but from the daye of our arr3r\^all in this land. In consideration whereof I am a moste humble sutor to Your Honor and TO BURGHLEY 153 and the residue of my said Lords for allowance of that mony, as hathe bin heretofore, by Your Lord- ship's good meanes, in the like case allowed to Sir William Morgan, and that the same may be payd to the gentleman which shall deliver this letter to Your Honor, whom I have desired to attend your Lordship for that purpose, and who shall present unto You as well a perfect accompte thereof, as also a suffycient certifycate or testemony of the tyme of our contynuaunce in the Wighte, and of the daye of our arry vail heere. I moste hum- bUe desire Your honor to farther this my request as spedely as you conveniently maye, because I have appointed the mony to be imployed in England abowte the providinge of sutche wants as bothe my selfe and company doe greatly stand in neede of. Thus I comyt Your Lordship to God ; my poore selfe remayninge alwayes at Your Honor's service and comaundment. Corke, this 22 of February, 1580. Your Lordship's most humble to comaunde, W. Rauley. II II To the honorable Sir FRANCIS Walsingham, Knightc, Principal Secretory to Her Highnes, geve thes. I RECEVED of late a letter from Your Honor wherein I finde Your Honor's disposicion and oppinion more favorable then I can anyway deserve. Notwithstandinge I hope Your Honor shall finde that my forwardnes to advance her Maiesties ser- vice shall not be less accordinge to my smale strenght. Whereas of late a cumpany of yonge cumpanions linket together in rebelUon who because they can no longer covertly assiste the proclaymed traytors do at length manifeste their good mindes to Her Hightnes and the Inglyshe nacion, — as Davy Barrey, sonn and heir of Lorde Barrey, now in the castle of Develin ; Morrice Roche, eldest sonn to the Lorde Roche ; Finnin Macartey, Patrick CoNNDON, and divers others, — ^my Lorde Generall is TO WALSINGHAM 155 is now cum hither who, wee hope, ether by force or pollecy will sufficiently hampre them that are farr of greater strenght than the Earle of Desmond and JoHNE. In my returne from Develin I made a hard escape from the Seneshall in Barre's countre (wher he is allways fostered) with xiiij horsmen and threescore footmen. I was three horsmen, and soun set on horsbake to Irishe footmen. I coveted to recover a litle old castle, and in that resun I left three men and three horses. The manner of myne own behavior I leve to the report of others, but the escape was strange to all men. The castle was a longe mile of, from the place wher he first sett on us. Ther is great need of a supply in Munstre, for the bandes ar all miche decayed. The bands of Tanner and Barnishe were so ordered in the cashiringe that no man was the better. For the officers had the furniture and the soldiers ran away. Beside, the men ar suche poore and misserable cretures as ther captaynes dare not lead them to serve. If Your Honors beheld them when they arive here, You would 156 .9/;? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND would think them far unfitt to fight for Her Maies- ties crown ; and Hke Your Honor ther is no fit place to lande them that ther captaynes may receve them fiirnished but Corke, ft-om whence they may most conveniently be delivered over. Thus, be- sechinge You to continew Youre favorable oppinion of mee, I humblie take my leve, restinge allways most redy to do you all honor and service. From Corke, xxiij of February, 1581. Your honor's most humble to cummande, W. Rauley. Endorsed : *■'■ 2-^ February , 1580. From Mr. Walter RawleyT HI Ill To the honorable Sir Francis Walsingham, Knight, the Pnnapall Secntory to Her Highnes. The day after the writinge of my letter to your Honor by Levetenant Bigges, news came that Davy Barrey had broken and burnt all his castles and entred publikly into the action of rebellion. It plesed my Lorde Deputy, att my beinge at Develin (forseinge vvherunto this Trator was bent) to bestow on mee the kepinge of on of his castles called Barre Court and the Hand adjoyninge therunto; which hows he gave mee in charge to keap to her Majesties use, being a great strenght to the countre and a safty for all passingers betwen Corke and Youghall. Notwithstandinge, becaus my Lord Generall was presently to cum up and Barrey ready to go out (having before undreground broken the foundacions of the rest of his castles) I 158 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND I made stay to take this Barrey Court, as well for that my Lord Generall should not alledge that I crost hyme in any service or did anythinge with in his goverment without his privitey, as also because it should not be sayd that the takinge therof was the hasteninge of Barre's rebellion. But when my Lord came and Barrey had burnt all the rest, the Lord Generall, ether meninge to kepe it for hyme selfe — as I think all is to litle for hyme — or els unwillinge any Inglishman should have any thing, stayd the taking therof so longe, mening to put a gard of his own in it, as it is, withe the rest, defaced and spoled. I pray God Her Majesty do not finde, that — what with the defence of his own countre assalted on all sides, what with the beringe and forberinge of his kindred, as all thes traytors of this new rebellion ar his own cussen-germayns, what by reason of the incomperable hatred betwen hyme and the Garautines who will rather dy a thowsand deathes, entre into a milhon of mischeifes and seek soccor of all nacions, rather than they will ever be subdued by a Butler — that aftre Her Majesty TO WALSINGHAM 159 Majesty hathe spent a hundred thowsand pound more she shall at last be driven by to dere experience to send an Inglishe Presedent to follow thes mallicious traytors with fier and sword, nether respectinge the aliance nor the nacion. Would God your Honor and her Majesty, as well as my poore selfe, undrestoode how pitifully the service here goethe forward ! Considering that this man, havinge now byn Lord Generall of Munstre now about too yeares, theire ar at this instant a thowsand traytors more then ther were the first day. Would God the service of Sir Humfry Gilbert might be rightly lokt into ; who, with the third part of the garreson now in Ireland, ended a rebellion not miche inferior to this, in to monethes ! Or would God his own behavior were suche in peace as it did not make his good service forgotten and hold hyme from the preferment he is worthy of! I take God to wittenes I speake it not for affection but to discharge my duty to Her Majesty; for I never hard nor rede of any man more fered then he is amonge the Irishe nacion. And I do assuredly i6o SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND assuredly know that the best about the Earle of Desmond, ye ! and all the unbridled traytors of thes partes, would cum in hyre, and yeld them selves to the Queen's mercy, were it but known that he were cum amonge them. The end shall prove this to be trew. And for myne own part God is my judge it grevethe mee to receve her Majesty's pay (although God knowes it be but a poore entreteynment) to see her so miche abused ; and I will rather begg then live here to indure it. I would most willingly geve over my charge, and did offre it to the Lord Generall, God is my judge, if I could, and serve her Majesty privatly with a dussen or ten horse duringe the wares. I beseiche your Honor to take my bold writing in good part, protesting befor Hyme that knowethe the thoughtes of all hartes, that I writ nothing but moved therunto for the love I here to her Highnes and for the furtherance of her service. And further I humblie crave at your Honor's handes that you will reserve my letters to yourselfe, and if your Honor will promise mee so miche and give mee leve, I will from tyme to tyme advertise your Honor TO WALSINGHAM i6i Honor trewly of this estat. Myself being on that your Honor shall allways finde most ready to ventur my life to do yow all honor and service during my life. I beseich your Honor that I may by your means injoy the keping of this Barrey Court and the Hand ; or that it will please your Honor but to writ to my Lorde Deputy that he will confirm it unto mee, whom I find most willing to do mee any good, being my honerable, good Lorde. This humblie I take my leve, reposing myselfe and my estat uppon your Honors favor. From Corke, the 25 th of February. Your Honor's most humble ever to command, W. Rauley. M IV IV Endorsed : " i May, 1581. Copie of a letter to the Lord Deputy, from Corke. Fering that it shoulde seme strainge unto your Lordshipe the litle service don in thes partes, I presume to wryte unto your honor in myne owne excuse, lest your Lordshipe should growe in ill opinion of us that ar and have byne in the presenc of the General to be directed. The bandes of Sir Georg Bowser, Edward Barkley, Captayne Do WD ALL, and of my self, have bine ever since the seconde weeke of Lent remayning in Corke ; and both the great wood of Conoloathe, Harlo, Clenlis, and all the county e of Lymbricke, and the counties betwene the Dingle and Kilkeny, left without any companies either to defend itself or anoy the enemy. Since which tyme wee have made to jumeys : the one towards Kilkeny to give convoye to TO THE LORD DEPUTY 163 to my Lorde and attend his returne, and the other into Conolothe, by which jurnes (the one being in horible wether, and the other utterly botles, being don without draught or espiall, and beside inforst to walke such unreasonable marches as, wher wee dispatched a churell of the traytors, wee lamed, lost, or left behynde unserviceable, a soldier or two of our owne) the poore bands have curste the change they made in levyng to follow your Honor, as they have tould the Lorde Generall many tymes. And this fyrst of May wee ar going another posting convoy towards Kilkeny. But to culler the matter, wee shall march some two dayes out of our way to seeke wee know not whome. The store of Corke, except it be a smale quantitie of wheat and butter, is all spent within the walles, and now it wilbe aleged that wee cannot serve for want of vittles, or else because the bandes ar not supplied j allthough wee were nevere less than fore hundred stronge, and yet both of Sir George Bowcer's and Captain Barkle's left at Kilmalloch and Asketon. Wee have spent thes two monethes of the spring in M 2 paries 1 64 Sm WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND paries with Barrey Rowe, the Countes of Desmond, and Finnin Macartey ; and wee think it willbe two moneth more er he be resolved whether thes oughtt to be followed or no, and yet theris no day passeth without some trayterous villanies by the Barres committed. The Countes of Desmonde is retourned, and brought so many followers with her hither to carrye provision with her as the Earle, for his parte, shall be the better able to keepe the feild all this sommer ; and at her going away none of her trayne ether sercht or lokt over. Barrey Rowe is protected. The Lady Barrey hav- ing gathered her goodes into Corke ; and fering that by the atteyndure of her husband those wilbe found for the Queene, her yonge sonne — viz. Barrie Roe, that five dayes before fell on the garrisons of Youghal — is brought in to serve that turne to carye the goodes into O Syllevanses countrey, or els- wher, for the more saftie ; and besides this man shall keep some store of cattell and such impotent people as cannot follow Davey Barrey in the feild with many other profits ether for the Queen or for the knaves. TO THE LORD DEPUTY 165 knaves. I thinke your Honor hard of the losse of the warde of Asketon.* O Kenis and his sonn wer both slayne by Jhon of Desmond, — gentelmen of Mac Donoth's countrey and very good subiects. Barre's Cowrte and the Hand — which your Honor willed me to keepe — the on hath sine bin many tymes defaced, and the other spoylde and pred. From this iland the traytors can never wante nether wine nor salte, or iron, or any other necessary provision, or if neede bee advertisement from Spayne or elswher ; being common for any man to lande on. Notwithstanding, it is left naked and the castle broken that stood in the entranc therof for defenc. I have, by great perswacion of the Commissioners, gott leve to edifie the same, and leve a ward therin ; and if it shall please your Honor to thinke mee woorthie the keeping and custodie therof I will at myne owne coast buyld it up agayne and defend it for her Maiestie. I would the rather bee an humble and ernest suter to your * " xi of them were distressed that fondly aventured owte to far for sum cowes." — Marginal note by the Lord Deputy, Honor i66 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Honor for it in that I heire the Lord Generall purposeth, when I have taken the toyle in making it defencible and bin at the charg, to turne me over for my charges to the Queene and dispose of the iland to some other. I hope your Honor will stand my good lord therin. If it please your Honor to give commission ther may bee an other hundreth soldier layd uppon the cuntre heire aboute.* I hope itwillbea most honorable matter for your Lordshipe, most acceptable to her Maiestie, and profitable for the cuntre ; and the ryght meane to banish all idle and frutles galliglas and kerne, the ministers of all miseryes. Thus, most humblie beseeching your Honor not to condemne any of us that are willing to deserve your Lordshipps good favor, I humblie take my leve. From Corke^ the fyrst of May. Copie of ... . [Captain Rauley's] letter (^the name being in cypher) . * "This is the beeginnyng of that platt which, by Mr. Fent, I have advertizement of, for the fynding of a certayne garrison gratis to Her Majestie." — Marginal note by the Lord Deputy. V To the right honorable and my very good Lorde the Eric of Leycester, of her Majesties most honorable Pryvey Counsell. I MAY not forgett continually to put your Honor in mind of my affection unto your Lordshipe, havinge to the worlde bothe professed and protested the same. Your Honor, havinge no use of such poore followers, hathe utterly forgotten mee. Notwith- standinge, if your Lordshipe shall please to thinke mee your's, as I am, I wilbe found as redy, and dare do as miche in your service, as any man you may cummande ; and do, nether, so miche dispaire of my self but that I may be somway able to performe as miche. I have spent some time here under the Deputy, in suche poore place and charge, as, were it not for that I knew him to be on of yours, I would disdayn it i68 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND it as miche as to keap sheepe. I will not troble your Honor with the bussiness of this loste lande ; for that Sir Warram Sentleger can best of any man deliver unto your Lordshipe the good, the badd, the mischeifs, the meanes to amend, and all in all of this common weithe^ or rather common woo. He hopethe to finde your Honor his assured good Lorde, and your Honor may most assuredly cummande him. He is lovingly inclyned toward your Honor. And your Lordshipe shall win by your favor towards hyme a wise, faythfuU, and valient gentleman, whos worde and deede your Honor shall ever find to be on. Thus, having no other matter, but only to desire the continuance of your Honor's favor, I humblie take my leve. From the Camp of Leismore, in Irland, August 25 1581. Your Honor's faithful and obedient, W. Rauley. I am bold, being bound by very conscience, to cummend unto your Honor's consideration the pitiful TO THE EARL OF LEYC ESTER 169 pitiful estate of John Fitts-Edmonds, of Cloyne, a gentleman, and the only man untucht and proved tru to the Queen, bothe in this and the last RebelHon. Sir Warram can declare his service, what he is, and what he deservethe. VI VI To my lovinge Cussen, Sir George Carew, Master of the Ordinajice in Irlaiid. Cussen George, For my retrait from the Court it was uppon good cause to take order for my prize. If in Irlande they thincke that I am not worth the respectinge they shall mich deceave them sealvs. I am in place to be beleved nor inferrior to any man, to plesure or displesure the greatest ; and my oppinion is so receved and beleved as I can anger the best of them. And, therfore, if the Deputy be not as reddy to steed mee as I have bynn to defend hyme, — be it att is may. When Sir William Fitzwilliams shalbe in Ingland, I take mysealfe farr his better by the honorable offices I hold, as also by that nireness to her Majestye which still I injoy, and never more. I TO SIR GEORGE CARE IV 171 I am willinge to continew towards hyme all frindly offices, and I doubt not of the like frome hyme, as well towards mee as my frinds. This mich I desire he should understand ; and, for my part, ther shalbe nothinge wantinge that becummeth a frinde ; nether can I but hold myself most kindly dealt withall heretherto, of which I desire the continu- ance. I have deserved all his curteses in the hiest degree. For the sute of Lesmore, I will shortly send over order from the Queen for a dismis of their cave- lacions ; and so, I pray, deale as the matter may be respeted for a tyme; aad cummend mee to Mr. SoUicitor with many thancks for his frindly deling therin ; and I assure yow, on myne honor, I have deservde it att his hands in place wher it may most steed hyme. For Hardinge, I will send unto yow mony by exchange with all possible spead, as well to pay hyme (if he suffer the recoverye) as all others ; and till then, I pray, if my builders want, supply them. I look for yow here this springe, and, if possible I 172 S/J^ WALTER RALEGH LN IRELAND I may, I will returne with yow. The Queen thincks that George Carew longes to see her ; and therfore see her. Farewell, noble George, my chosen frind and kinsman, from whom nor tyme, nor fortune, nor adversity, shall ever sever mee. The 27 of December [1589]. W. Ralegh. VII VII To my honorable frinde^ Sir R. CiCiLL, Knt.^ of Her Majesty s ?nost honorable Privy Councell. Sir, I WRAT unto your father how I am dealt withall by the Deputye, to whom my disgraces have bynn highly cummended. Hee supposed a debt of four hundred pounds to the Queen, for rent, and sent order to the Shiriff to take away all the cattell my tenants had, and sell them the next day, unless the money weare payd the same day. All Munster hath scarce so mich mony in it ; and the debt was indeed but fifty marks, which was payde, and it was the first and only rent that hath yet bynn payd by any undertaker. But the Shirife did as he was cummanded, and tooke away five hundred milch kine from the poor people; sume had but two, and sume three, to releve their poore 174 -5-//? WALTER RALEGH LN IRELAND poore wives and children, and in a Strang country newly sett downe to builde and plant. Hee hath forcible thrust mee out of possession of a Castell, because it is in law between mee and his cousin WiNCKFELD, and will not here my atornes speake. Hee hath admitted a ward, and geven it his man, of a Castell which is the Queen's, and hath bynn by mee new built and planted with Inglishe, this five years ; and to profitt his man mth a ward- shipp, looseth her Majesties inheritance, and would plant the cussen of a rebell in the place of Inglishe men, the Castell stanetinge in the most dangerous place of all Munster. Besids, ther is a band of soldiers, which a base phello, O'DoDALL, hath in Yoholl, which duth cost the Queen twelve hundred pound a yeare, and hath not ten good men in it; but our porest people muster and serve hyme for threepence a day, and the rest of his soldiers do nothing but spoyle the country, and drive away our best tenants. If the Queen be over rich, it may bee mayn- tayned ; but I will, att three days' warninge, rayse her TO SIR R. CICILL 175 her a better bande, and arme it better tenfold, and better men, whensoever shee shall need it. And, in the mean tyme, it may ether be imployed in the North, or discharged ; for ther is in Munster, besids, a band of horse, and another of foot, which is more than needeth. In this, if yow pleas to move it, yow may save her Majestye so mich in her coffers. For the rest I will send my man to attend yow, although I care not ether for life or lands ; but it will be no small weakninge to the Queen in thos parts, and no small cumfort to the ill-affected Irishe, to have the Inglishe inhabitants driven out of the country, which are yet stronge enough to master the rest, without her charge. Yours, to do yow service, W. Ralegh. VIII VIII To my very loving friend^ Sir Robert Cecill, Knight^ of Her Majesty'' s most honorable Privy Councell. Sir, I PRAY send me the news of Ireland. I hear that there are three thousand of the Burgks in arms, and young Odonell and the sons of Shane Oneale. I wrote in a letter of Mr. Killegreew's, ten days past, a prophesye of this rebellion, which when the Queen read, she made a scorn at my conceat ; but yow shall find it but a shoure of a farther tempest. If yow please to sent me word of what yow hear, I will be laught at again in my opinion touching the same, and be bold to write yow my farther suspicion. Your cousen, the dotinge Deputy, hath dispeopled me ; of which I have written to your father already. It is a sign how my disgraces have past the seas, and have TO SIR ROBERT C EC ILL 177 have been highly commended to that wise Gover- nour, who hath used me accordingly. So I leve to trouble yow at this time, being become like a fish cast on dry land, gasping for breath, with lame leggs and lamer loonges. Your's, for the little while I shall desire to do yow service, W. Ralegh. IX IX To the right honorable^ Sir Robert Cicill, Knight, of Her Majestie's most honorable Privy Councell. Sir, I AM very sorry for Mr. Wilkenson and the rest, that I here ar lost in the River of Burdens ; but for my part I was resolved of the success before- hand, and so miche I told Willkenson before his departure. Of this Irish combinaction Her Ma- jestye shall find it remembred to her sealf not longe since; but the Troien Southsayer cast his spear against the wooden horse, but not belevede I did also presume to speake somewhat how to prevent this purpose; and I thinck it not over hard to be yet donn ; and if I had by any chance bynn acquaynted with the Lord Burgh's instruc- tions, I would have putt you in mynde to have woonne the Earle of Argile rather then all the rest of Skotland; for by hyme this fier must be only maintained TO SIR ROBERT CICILL 179 maintained in Ulstell. But for me to speake of the one or the other, I knowe my labors are prejudicate, and I cannot hereafter deserve ether thancks or acceptance. Less then that number men apoynted, I tacke it, will serve the turn, if the garrisons be placed aright to impeach the assem- blies, and sume smale pineses ordered to lye be- tween Cantirrs and ODonells Country; but herein the order and the tyme hath most powere. Ther be also others in Irland that lye in waite, not suspected ; which I most feare, and others most able and fitt to make them neglected and dis- coraged : which smale matters would have hartned to great purpose, as the tyme will better wittness. I had bynn able my sealf to have raysed to or three bands of IngHshe well armed, till I was driven to relinquishe and recale my people ; of which the loss shall not be alone to mee, howsoever I am tumbled down the hill by every practize. We ar so busyed and dandled in thes French warrs, which are endless, as we forgett the defens next the hart. Her Majesty hath good cause to N 2 remember iSo S/J^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND remember that a million hath bynn spent in Irland not many yeares since. A better kingdome might have bynn purchased att a less prize, and that same defended with as many pence, if good order had bynn taken. But the question now may be, whether for so great expence the estate be not less asured then ever ? If Her Majestye conseder it aright, she shall fynde it no small dishonor to be vexed with so beggerly a nacion^ that have neather armes nor fortificasion ; but that acursed kingdome hath always bynn but as a trafique, for which Her Majestye hath paid both fraight and costume, and others receved the marchandize j and other then such shall it never be. The Kinge of Spayne seeketh not Irlande for Irlande, but havinge raysed up troops of beggers in our backs, shall be able to inforce us to cast our eyes over our shoulders, while thos before us strike us on the braynes. We have also knowne the levell of his subversion ; but destiney is stronger than councell ; and good advice, ether neglected or weakly executed, hath tought our enemis to arme thos parts which before lay TO SIR ROBERT CICILL i8i lay bare to the sworde. Prevention is the doughter of IntelHgence, which cannot be borne without a mother; and the good wooman hath so many patrons, as the one referreth her cherishinge to another's trust, and in the meanwhile shee liveth baren and frutles. Sir, thes poore Countris yeild no newse. I here of a frigott that taketh up fishermen for pilatts in the West. I am my sealf here at Sherburne, in my fortun's folde. Wherever I be, and while I am, yow shall cummande me. I thinck I shall need your furder favor for the litle parke, for Law and Conscience is not sufficient in thes days to upholde me. Every foole knoweth that hatreds are the cinders of affection, and therfore to make me a sacrifize shall be thanksworthye. Sir, I pray re- member my duty to my Lord Admirall, and to your father, if it please yow. From Sherburne, this loth of May [1593]. Your's most asured to do yow service, W. Ralegh. I am the worse for the Bath, and not the better. X X To the Lord Treasurer Burghley. My honorable good Lord, By reason of your Lordship's letters and the rest of the Lords of Her Majesties Privie Councell, written to the Lord Deputie and Councell of Ireland, for a restraint of transportacion of Pipe- staves out of that Realme to the Islands, we have a great quantitie of barrell and hogshead bords alreadie cutt and made which, for want of venting and expending, will rott uppon the ground, if we male not receave some order for their utterance. Besides, we must be forced to draw home a great number of able men from thence which are ap- pointed to serve Her Majestie with their weapons uppon anie occasion, which will prove to be a great weakening of the province of Munster. Wherefore, if it please your Lordship, — for the keeping TO LORD BURGHLEY 183 keeping and enterteyning of theis men in worke, which otherwise cannot live there ; and for venting of this commoditie, which must needs perish if longer stale be made of them there, — to write to the Lord Deputie and Councell, that, according to your Lordship's meaning signified in your former letters, we male be licensed to transport from thence into England such barrell and hogs- head bords as we have made, and male be sparde out of our own woods ; the rather, because those of the west countrie here have great v/ant of this caske, we will putt in such bords to her Majesty's use, before th' officers of the ports where they are to be laden, as are required in your Lordship's said letters, for th' assured transporting thereof into England and to no other place. And so I most humblie take my leave. From Dirrham House, the xvth of June, 1593. Your Lordship's for ever to be cummanded, W. Ralegh. For the bringinge of caske into Ireland, I hope wee i84 S/J^ WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND wee shall rather deserve thankes, then that wee shall need to make any great sutes for it. Yet, so mich it hath pleased the Deputye to malline my particuler, as I know, without your Lordshipp's heulpe, yeven so mich will hardly be afforded. I do humblie desire your Lordship to favor mee so mich as to writ your Lordship's own letteres unto hyme that I may receve justice at his hands ; and, acknowledging my sealf only bound and sus- teyned by your Lordship's goodnes, I wishe your Lordship eternall health, and humblie take my leave. XI XI To the right honorable Sir Robert Cecil, Knight^ one of her Majesties most honorable Privie Councell. Sir, You know our long suite to the Lords of Her Majesties Privie Councell for the continuance of transportation of Pipestaves out of Ireland to the Islandes, according to Her Majesties graunt by Her Letters Patents under the Great Scale. Master Pine, as I understand, is now at Court to sollicite your Honnor and the rest, in our behalfe, for a dissolucion of the restraint procured by the Lord Deputie's letters, upon his supposicion of some enormities and surmised inconveniences which thereby will need ensue. I beeseech your Honnor to fauvor our proceed- ings therein, and to assist us, as much as you maie, for the obteyning of our suite ; and if you please to acquaint 1 86 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND acquaint my Lord Admiral with my poore request, I doubt not but his Lordship will farther so honest a mocion. If their Lordships would be pleased thoroughlie to consider the state of the cause, and have patience to peruse the contents of our demaund (which Master Pine will shew your Honnor, in all points, according to the truth), they wold assuredlie allow of our trade to the Islands, and conceave better of those which undertake the same. And so I humblie take my leave. From Gillingham Forrest, the 27 th of August, 1593- Your Honor's humblie att cummandment, W. Ralegh. Sir, The Indian falcon is sike of the buckworme ; and therfore, if yow wilbe so bountefull to geve another falcon, I will provide yow a roning geldinge. XII XII To the right honorable Sir Robert Cecill, Knight, one of her Majesties most honorable Privy CouncelL Sir, This honorable gentleman, the Lord Barry, one that is well affected to her Majesty and her Estate, is in humble suite to her Majesty, and hath entreated my letter to your Honnor that such fine or benefitt as Florence MacCarty hath by graunt obteined from her Majesty, by reason of his former offence in Ireland (which is well knowen to your Honnor), may be again revoked and remitted. And if my opinion herein maybe reguarded, I thinke that his pardon which her Highnes graunted him hath wrought his true affection, and his entire disposicion to honnor and serve her Maiesty with such unfeined obedience as can be required ; and therfore not fitt to be discountenanced by Florence MacCarty, [he] being a man reconciled to the Pope, 1 88 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND Pope, daungerous to the present State, beloved of such as seeke the ruine of the Realme his native cuntrie, and not worthie to bee reUeved by her Maiesties goodnes. He maie for a time dissemble, and in revealing his poverty, by occasion of his impri- sonment in the Tower, protest that obedience which he ought to performe : but he is not to be trusted. His alliance and friends in Ireland are great and manie, and he wanteth nothing but mony to execute his practices, whereunto the Pope hath animated him. This noble gentleman hath, to my knowledg, a long time lived civilly and conformablie to all her Majesties directions and commandments, and hath not deserved theis troubles and discontentments. I praie you so much to favour him by yourself, or by the meanes of my honorable good Lord, your father, that hee maie bee discharged of this demaund ; and I will reckon it amongst the rest of your favours. And so I humblie take my leave. From th' assises at Dorchester, the 4th of March, 1593- Your Honor's humbhe att cummandment, W. Ralegh. xni XIII To the right honorable Sir Robert Cecill, Knight, of her Majesties most honorable Privey Councell. Sir, From this desolate place I have little matter ; from myself, less hope ; and therefore I thinke the shorter the discourse, the better wellcum. I receved from Lyme, — a port town in this shire, — by a smale barke lately arived, that there ar lately many French shipps imbargoed in Spayne, and of good burden and very serviceable ; notwith- standing that the same went by pasport and asurance from Spayne. And all the marriners likewise imprested ; and that ther ar a fleet ether gone or goinge of sixtye saile, as the saye, for Irlande. It seemeth asuredly that the preparations ar great, and do dayly increase. If your Honors conceave therof aright, or looke into I90 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND into the nirest mischeif, wee shall do the better. Butt I feare, by your favors, ther is somewhat more in the enemys intent then is supposed. Wee that have mich ado to gett bread to eat have the less to care for, unless mich lost labor and love awake us that ar also thanckles busied in things ether beyound our capasates or cares. What becumes of Guiana I miche desire to here, — whether it pass for a history or a fable. I here Mr. Dudley and others ar sendinge thither ; if it be so, farewell all good from thence. For although my sealf, — like a cockscome, — did rather preferr the future, in respect of others ; and rather sought to wine the kings to her Majesties service then to sack them, I know what others will do, when thos kings shall cum simpely into their hands. If it may pleas yow to acquaynt my Lord Admirall therwith, lett it then succeed as it wille. If my Lord will have a fyne pinnes sent to the coast of Spayne, to vew what is dunn, I thinke for a matter oi £/^o or £^q I can gett one that shall do service. Sir, TO SIR ROBERT CECILL 191 Sir, for conclusion, I will only say this mich, — take good heed least you be not to slow. Expedi- tion in a little is better than mich, to late. Butt yew, ministers of dispatch, ar not plentifull. Neather is it eveiy man's occupation. God send yow all honor and health. I will wishe yow both, and be reddy ever to do yow service, W. Ralegh. From Sherborne, the loth of November [1595]. XIV XIV To the right honorable Sir Roberte Cecill, Knighte, Comiceller in her Highnes^ Prevye Councelles. These maye be to seignifye unto your Honor that the Archebishopp of Cashell, a man whome, I thincke, my Lord Treasourer hathe lytell cause to favor, hathe of late delte verye badlye with me, contrarye to all fay the and promysse, touchinge diverse of my Irishe leases and lands ; whoes discortysies I wold gladlye mete withall. And doe fynde noe better meanes in releffe of my self, fartheraunce of relygyon, and comforte of all myne Inglyshe tenants and frendes, then in preferrynge some other of better sorte to the bishoppricke of Lesmore and Waterforde, whereof the Archebishop hathe but a comende, and hathe, besydes, twoe or three other bishoprickes. My desire is that you wilbe pleased to be a meane TO SIR ROBERTE CECILL 193 meane to prefer unto the same bishopricke of Lesmore and Waterford my verye good frend Master Hughe Broughton, a man well knowen to my Lorde his Grace of Caunterburye, my I^orde Treasorer, and all the lerned docters and scollers of Englande ; and a man unto whome I wishe moche goode; besechinge you to have some conference with my cosen Goringe aboughte he same — wherein the said Master Brouton is able to do moche good and be a greate comforte to all our Inglishe nation thereaboughtes, and encrease of relygyon. And the gentellman hymself wilbe verye thanckefull unto you for anye favor shewed unto hym, whome I leave to your good rememberance, and your self to God. This third of May e, 1596. Your Honor's to do yow service, W. Ralegh. To Sir Robert Cycill. XV XV To the right honorable Sir Robert Cecil, Knight, Principall Secretory to her Maiestie. Sir, It can be no disgrace if it weare knowen that the killinge of a rebel weare practised ; for you see that the Hves of anoynted Princes are daylye sought, and we have alv/ays in Ireland geven head money for the killinge of rebels, who ar evermore pro- claymed at a price. So was the Earle of Desmonde, and so have all rebels been practised agaynst. Notwithstandinge, I have written this enclosed to Stafford, who only recommended that knave to me upon his credit. Butt, for your sealf, you ar not to be touched in the matter. And for me, I am more sorrye for beinge deceaved than for beinge declared in the practise. Your Lordship's, ever to do you service, W. Ralegh. He hatha nothinge under my hand butt a passport. XVI XVI To the right honorabell Sir Robert Cecyll, Knight^ Principall Secritory to her Majestye. Sir, I BESEICH you to signefye Her Majesties pleasure to my Lord Deputye of Irland — because his Lordship is ready to depart — concerning this gentelman, on whom Her Majestye hathe bestowed Poore's companye. Your Honor's to do you service, W. Ralegh. o 2 xvn XVII For her Majesties speciall affaires. To the right honorabell Sir Robert Cecyll, Knight , Principall Secritory, &^c. Hast, &c. I WROTE unto yow the 26 of this present what I received from certayne Skottishe marchants. It is now manefest that bothe thos advertisements ar trew, for thos three pinneses which brought in the great prize att Plymouth of 900 chests of suger were chased by the Spanish fleet, seven dayes before their arivall ; and they arived on Tuesday last, the second of this moneath, and weare therfore chased of the mouth of the Channell, which was about the 25 of August, and so must needs be in Ireland or perished ; from whence it seemeth yow canot hear by reason of this esterly winde. Thos of Munster had some warninge of ther being on the coast, for one Captayne Love or Capt. Lane, being on the Irishe coast, forsooke his shipp, and went into a bote and tooke horse uppon TO SIR ROBERT CECYLL 197 uppon the shore, and gave warninge to the next adjoyninge about the coast of Dungarvan, between YohoU and Waterforde. From there he tooke his shipp agayne and arived att Plymoth. Thes pinneses tolde 60 sayle. A Fleming also, ciiming from Lysbone, confirmeth the former intelligence, and addeth therunto, either out of conjecture, or knowledge, or fame, affirming that the soldiers ar 6,000 ; that they have twelvemoneths pay, and like vittell, beforehande; that he saw many with chaynes of golde ; and that generally the army was very brave, and well provided of all things ; that certayne cannons were imbarked in some gallions, with all other things answerabell. Sir, I beseich to acquaynt my Lord Admirrall herewith, and that yow will vouchsaif to excuse me for not writing to his L, knowing that yow are of one mind and fortune, of one love and on indevor for Her Majesties service. Yours ever as your sarvent, W. Ralegh. Shirb, the 27 of Sept., 1601. XVIII XVIII To the right honorabell Sir Robert Cecyll, Knight, Prin- cipall Secritorye, &'c. Sir, If I cum not to late, I would be an humbell sutor unto yow for a cumpany in Irian d for a gentelman, Mr. Stuckly, who hath served with good reputation bothe by sea and lande. Hee was wounded with Sir Richard Grenvile in the Revendge^ and hath since served longue in Irland and elcewhere. For the rest, I will not trobell yow, but I will hope for your favor towards hyme, and rest your Honors to do yow service, W. Ralegh. Sherburn, this 13 of October, 1601. This bearer hath brought an Inglishman which came in the Spanish fleet. Hee will tell yow that they imbarked 4,000 men, but want ij great shipps and almost a 2,000 of their men. They ar riche in mony. TO SIR ROBERT CECYLL 199 mony. The cummanders have brought their wives and children, which proveth that they mean to abide it, and make us a warr ther. They look for great supplies. They have broken down the wall, man's hight. They have intrenched without the towne ; out of which they have bynn beaten twise in a day by Captain Flowre. The IngHshe serve with invincibell currage agaynst them. Many Spanierds ar alreddy taken. They have too carvells uppon the entrance. The Deputy is not yet cum to beseige them, but will shortly. Diego Brochero is admirall ; Seburo, vice-admirall. Brochero is thot dead. They had 6 great shipps of 900 toon, and on of 1,300; all mand, for the most, with strangers. The most of the shipps ar gone. The rest tarry yet. I had thought that this bearer had been Stuckly, which made me write as I did. Butt he is still in Irlande, and therfore I do not miche desire anything in his behalf. Your's ever to do yow service, Sherburn, this Wensday night. W. R. XIX XIX To the right honorabell Sir Robert Cecyll, Knighte, Prin- cipall Secritorye, &=c. Sir, I AM of oppinion that ether Kynsale was not the place purposed to be undertaken, or elce Florence [MacCarthy] was the cause therof, for the port bordereth his country. The towne is of small reseate, mastered by hills, and cumpassed with a weake wall. Butt wher as I herd that the Deputy and Presedent have written that they will make a short work of it, I am not altogether of that minde^ and yet I do not thinck that Spayne will supply them in hast. Neather will thos Spanierds alreddy ther finde such a party as they hoped, — which may be some cause of thos govemours' hopes. Butt, after a few dayes, yow shall here more ; for, if the country stand sounde, then the warr ^ TO SIR ROBERT CECYLL warr wilbe the easier. Butt sure I am if thes Spanierds had cum in the begining of the warrs, the kingdome had bynn once lost. Yow shall finde, I warrant yow, that Tirrone will bestire hyme sealf in the north, and every rebell in his quarter. For this is the last of all hopes. For Meeres, I thinck by this tyme yow finde the strenght of his villanous spirrite, and yet a more notorious cowardly brute never lived. Butt if hee do not submitt hyme sealfe, hee will triumph that hee hath resisted mee and my greatest frinds. All which I leve to your favorabell care, and rest your ever most faythfull, to do yow service, W. Ralegh. My wife sayes that yow came hither in an un- seasonabell tyme, and had no leasure to looke abrode ; and that every day this place amends^ and London, to her, groes worss and worss. I have sent away her Majestie's letters and your Honor's with all dillegence ; not doubting butt the soldiers, butt first apoynted and thes, shalbe reddy. My deputes 202 SIJ? WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND deputes have written to mee that they will arme the first 50 men. What they will do for thes, I know not Endorsed : ^^Sir Walter Raleigh to my Master. Without date ;'" and in another hand, " Oct. 1601." XX XX Testamentary Note written by Sir Walter Ralegh on the night before his execution^ November, i6l8. A Copy of the note written by Sir Walter Rawley, in his owne handy which hee gave me for discharge of his conscience^ ^c. Endorsement of Sir Thomas Wilson, Keeper of the Tower. There is a lease of certaine parcells of land, claymed by one John Meere, near Sherborne Castle. Meere clayming it by a grant of myne to one Captain Thomas Caufeilde, I do protest before God I never made any lease or grant to Caufeilde of that land. There is a lease in controversy betweene the Lord Boyle and one Henry Pine, of the Castle and lands of Mogile, in the county of Corck in Ireland ; and although I did write something at my going from Ireland towards Guiana to the prejudice of Pine's lease, yet since that time better bethinking myself, 204 SIR WALTER RALEGH IN IRELAND myself, I desire that the opinion which I gave of Pine's lease may be no evidence in law against Pine, but that it may be left to other prooffs on both sydes. I desire that my wife, if shee enjoy her goods, may have consideration of Christopher Hamon's wyfe. That my wife do in any case, according to her abiUty, releive Mr. John Talbot's wife, who, I feare me, — her sonn being deade, — will otherwise perish. Sir Lewis Stukeley sold all the tobacco at Plimouth of which, for the most part of it, I gave him a fift part of it, as also a role for my Lord Admirall and a role for himself. He had also tenn peeces of mee the Sonday that wee tooke boate, which he pretended to borrow to send his men into the country, which notwithstanding hee sent downe the river to jojme with Mr. Harbert I desire that hee may give his account for the tobacco. W. Ralegh. APPENDIX APPENDIX Official Report of Proceedings at Smerwicke: Women hanged and Two Men mutilated. STATE PAPERS— IRELAND, 1580, NOVEMBER. Vol. 78. No. 27. The vi'^ of this Monethe my Lorde Heinge in Campe betwene Dingley and Smerwicke newes came to his Honor of the arrivall of S' Will'm Winter in the haven of Smerwick withe the Revendge, the Swifte Sure, the Tyger & the Merlyon and other Shippes of her Ma^^, & also of three barques fraughted from Lymerick and Corke w*^ victuells vppon w'=^ advertism' his Lo: on the morrowe after m'ched towardes the fortes and comynge w*in vewe thereof the Spanyardes dischardged a great peece at a trope of Horsmen attendinge his honnor, at w*"^ tyme the M' of Thordnnce verie narowHe escaped. And the vovewarde marchinge of my Lo: w* a smale Com- pany drewe nere w^^in dawnger of shott where- vppon 2o8 APPENDIX vppon xxx*'^ of the forte issued forthe and did skirmishe w*^ o' men that after none, and theare great ordn'nce and certayne musketf' lienge at rest in certayne trenches dischardged at vs as faste as might be and the Shippes w* theire ordn'nce at the fortes duringe w*"^ tyme my^^ Lo: in psone M' Zouche & other attendinge hime tooke vewe of the fortes, and came w*4n vj score paces of the Rampier there was dischardged out of the fortes above vi*" shott that after none greate and smale and no man towched on o' syde (god be praysed) savinge that a BuUett from the forte after grazinge towched Cap*^" Zouche on the legg and brake noe skine, and of the ennymyes, three slayne of there best Showldiers. That night two peeces of Ordyn'nce was landed and movnted and a trench made by the Showldyors and marryners and on the morrowe playde all the daye at the fortes and they likewise at vs besydes skyrmishinge betwene them and o"" Showldiers and no man of o' pte hurte but of them ix of there chefest souldiors and one Cap*^'' were slayne w*^ two shott of o' Ordyn'nce & the night after w* a Rowlinge Trenche we came w*^in vj score of the forte, and on the morrowe after certain e of o'' shott were placed in the same trenche where M"" Cheike showing himselfe was shott in the head w*^ a buUett APPENDIX 2.0^ bullett & is in great daunger of deathe. At o' firste comynge they advaunced iiij Ensignes & the Poopes banner in the middest of thinn'r forte w^^ on the viij*^ daye they tooke downe and did set vpp two other, one all white and another all black w^^ was for a token devised betwene Therle and then the meaning wherof was that if they fownde them selves weeke and vnable to kepe the fortes then Therle and John p'mysed to be on the movntaynes by w* M' M^M' mene, and vppon sight therof come downe w*^ there forces & Re- move o' seidge, but in conclusion they never shewed their selves vppon w'''' the morrowe after the black flagg was taken downe and the white lefte standinge w^^ they waved towards us makinge an offer to pley. Vpon intelhgence wherof geven to my Lo: his honnor sent Capt. Zouch and Capt. Mackworthe vnto them by whome they sente from the forte one of there cheifest menne called Alexander there Campe M"^ and one Plunckett borne nere to Drogheda, and after some con- ference had by my Lo: w*^ them, his honnor re- torned them backe willing them to sende their cheifest Cap*^'^ w*"^ they did accordingly who comynge to his Lo: after some discourses of Faulke offred to yeeld vpp the ffortes, Soe as they might be licensed to depte w* Bag and baggadge 2IO APPENDIX w"*" my Lo: did not graune vnto them, Whervppon after his Lo: had declared vnto them that vnlesse they wolde simphe yeelde them selves w'^out con- dic'on his Lo: wolde p'ceede to the assavlte and so they were sent backe to there Collonell where after they had remayned some while in consul- tac'on the Collonell and Cap*''"^ came forth and yelded to my Lo: demaundes and lefte pledges to yealde vp the fforte the next morninge and brought w*^ them S" James ftitzgarrett who was taken by the Seneshall and given to them by Therle to be Ransomed at M". The morrowe after beinge the ix'^ of this monethe the ffortes were yeelded all the Irishmen and women hanged, and iiij"" and vpwardes of Italyans, Spanyardes, Byskins and others put to the sworde. The Collonell, Capt"" Secretarie Camp M' and others of the best sorte saved to the number of xx*^^ psones and doctor Saund . . . chief man an Englishman Plunckett a ffrayer and others kept in store to be executed after examy- nac'on had of them. It is confessed that v""^ more are loked for daylie to be sente from the Pope and the Kinge of Spayne to lande here. There was fownde in the ffortes good store of mony and a great quantitie of bisquett, Bacon, oyle, APPENDIX 211 oyle, ffishe, Rise, Beanes, peas, Barley beinge by computac'on victuelles for there Company for halfe a yeare. There was also fownde Armor, mor- rions callyvers, mvsketts, pykes, swordes, fflasqes harquebusses of croke, powder, shott, barrells of buUetts and other kinde of furniture to serve iiij""' and sondry tooles for mene of all occupac'ons. My Lo: after the Rasinge of the ffortes en- tendeth to repayre to Dingley, and there to fortefie and leave Capten Zouche with ccccl^ mene and soe to come homewardes throughe Connought as it is Reported. This daye was Exec'ted an Englishman who served Doctor Sawnders, one Plunckett of whome before is wrj-ten and an Irishe Preste theire armes and Legges were Broken and hanged vppon a Gallowes vppon the Wall of the fforte. Endorsed \ ^^ To the right honorable S^ ffrauncs Walsing- ham Knight principall Secretary to her a7td of her most hotiorable cotmsell yeue these hatty II II Queen Elizabeth! s Letters about the Affair at Smerwick This was writtyn in'j The mightie hand of the Al- Roman hand by her Ma. >mightiest power hathe showed on the top of the Lre. J manifest the force of his strengthe in the weakenes of feeblest sexe and mynds this yere to make men asshamed ever hereafter to disdaine vs, in w''' Action I joye that you have bin chose the Instrument of his glory w'''' I meane to give you no cause to forthincke. Your loving Soveraygne, Elizabeth R. By the Qtieem. Trusty, &c. As the most happie successe youe haue latly had against certaine invad''^ sent by the Pope contayned in yo' I'res brought vnto vs by ou' seruant Denny doth incomparably shew the great- nes of god's loue & fauo"" towards vs ; so yo' care & paine in following of the same and courage in execuc'on thereof, deserueth great thancks & comen- dac'ons at our hands. Wherein youe haue answered by APPENDIX 213 by effects y^ good opinion we conceaued of yo' sufficiency at the tyme of our choise made of youe, to supply the place youe do now hold : not doubt- ing but that hereafter there will appeare greater fruits of yo"" valeur by reducing the deseased state of y^ realme to such conformity as god may be better serued, we obayed and this our Realme not burthened w''' charges as of late yeres it hath ben : wherein assure yo' self youe shall not lack ou"" good countenance and fauo' in such measure as neyther enny nor practise shalbe able to preuayle against youe, & therefore vppon this assurance youe may proceede w**" the more comfort in the charg comit- ted vnto youe. In this late enterprise performed by youe so greatly to ou' lyking we could haue wished that the p^'ncipal persons of the said invad*^ to whome youe haue p'mised grace w''^ we will see performed, had ben reserued for vs, to haue ex- tended towards them eyther Justice or mercy, as to vs should have ben founde best, ffor y^ it seemeth to vs most agreable to reason that a principall should receaue punishment before an accessary, w^'' would haue serued for a terro"" to such as may be here- after drawen to be executioners of so wicked an enterprise when they should heare that aswell the heads as the inferio'^ had receaued punishment according to theire demerits. Vppon the great good 214 APPENDIX good report youe haue giuen vnto vs of such Captaines & soldiers as in this enterpise did assist youe for theire great forwardnes & courage shewed in performing this so acceptable a service to vs we would haue youe let them vnderstand in how thanckfull part we accept the same, and so much the rather for y* we haue ben informed what great pennury they haue sustayned in our seruice there not only for want of necessary victuell, but also in respect of the badnes and vnseruiceablenes of such scarcety as they had. Wherein as we to our great greefe howlding nothing so deear as the pr'seruac'on of the healthe and lyves of the subjects thinck our- self very ill s'rved by such inferior mynisters to whome the charg thereof hath ben comitted, so you may let them vnderstande y* we will see y* better order be taken hereafter aswell in that as in all oth' things requisite for theire better comfort and encouragement & for the advancement of our s'ruice. Endorsed: ^^ 12° Decejnb. 1580 at Westm'^. Alinute from the Queenes Ma}^ to the L. Gray L. depute of Ireland^ Entered. Right trustye &c. Whereas we have ben in- fourmed that certen reports haue ben caryed ou'r vnto APPENDIX 215 vnto yo, that you should be out of o' grace and fauor, wherw'^ we heare you are greatly greeved and discompforted, we haue thought good to let you vnderstand that though in very deede we haue conceaued some mislike of the continuance of o*^ great chardgs in that realme and for that things weare not so carefully looked vnto and husbanded for our most proffit, as y* seemid vnto vs they might haue ben but rather that there was some more regarde had to y^ gra,tefyeing of y^ Captens and Souldio'' especyally by contyneweing dyvines in pension vppon no great cavse of desert by servyce as also couered vnnecessary offycers then of easing of o' chardgs, and that so great numbers, as the garrison did of late ryse vnto, weare continued longer in paye then the necessitye of o' s'ruice (weying the burthen of th' excessyve chardgs we did therby susteyne,) did require, yet the same mislike did not proceede so farr to make vs forgett the great good s'rvics you haue don vs many wayes but cheefely in the late exployt you did against the straingers that had invaded y® realme, w''^ next to gods dyvyne providence we must needes acknow- ledge as the second meanes wherbye the whole land was pres'rued from the hazard and danger w'''' otherwyes y' was likely to haue fallen into, for the w'^^' as we do carye a thanckfull remembraunce towards 2i6 APPENDIX towards you, so do we still retayne that good opinion we haue alwayes conceyuid of yo"" syncere good will and deuoc'on to the furtheraunce of o' s'ruice accompanyed w'^ no lesse fidelitye and sufficiencye eny waye to pfourme the same. Wherfore we wishe you not to be any way greeued or discouraged thorough any such sinister reports as may be made vnto you of o' meaning towards you but rather to proceede on cherefully to do yo' best indevo"" in y^ well executing of y^ chardge comitted vnto you, as we ar in good hope by yo' meanes and carefull trauell that realme shalbe shortlye reduced to such a setled and peaceable estate of gou'rnement as both o' chardges shalbe hereafter spared and the people conteynid w*in the bounds of due obedyence towards vs, for the bringinge wherof to passe according to such order and direction as you shall receaue from vs in that behalf, you shall not want o' best fauo' helpe and counten'nce, as ap'teyneth to a man of yo*" qualitye & good des'rte that occupyeth that place in o' s'ruice tha you do and of whom we haue conceaued so good an opinion & liking. Endorsed : " From hir Ma}''' to the L: DeptUie''' Entred. Ill Ill Sir Walter Ralegh's Reckofiings 218 APPENDIX •j03Jai:{AV ,qo pA Ctaxxxooodiu APPENDIX 219 ;b ;,ft yfAx ^fnxop jb pfn j.xt ^fnxxoDop ^3 Sna -^^ o is :^ '^ -^ .g _S -v! ^ rt o « ^ ^'^ '^ I ? ■? « ^ ^ ^ C3 £ Tid k2 >.' > o r ::3. ^ o i - : o d S n o 55 rrt ^-S -u ^ '« V o o c H APPENDIX •j09J9qA\ jb jp ,qo ^fx ^x ;fpp a 1 a pq < W < O -« to t/) 5 ^ , OJ O pEl j:? >, r-j ■—!-*-' O ri MX -^ rrt (U (U C ^4-( ^ .2i rt^ 15 ^ -fl o ;::5 cj t« p (U ^H b?3 ^ 5:3 O W3 2 G X o - _. ^ M3 Cl (U S -^ "^ Ph rt *x ■ s^ 2 -2^ 00 o t: bjo^ bio's "^ flJ -ti ib .S cT^ § .H ^ r^ x 'd.,-g§'^.^^'§>.: O > rt ^ > 10 O G ^ S :lr^ ■£ ^ w X cs o S" g S •-* o -^ 10 ^ ^'^ .o X WOii X 73 ^-ii " ^ r5 J3 "^ ,0 CI<*:^ CS <»- OJ _ri ^ t« X ,<1^ .IJ J2 O rj 'o il> APPENDIX ,b „IA ^AX jflllDDOD ,b „A ^lApD ^'^> •P?-. ■hTT 1- ?S "tj *X ">< ^ 'CT* X X X ^ o v -^^ > X fl (U r^ ^ _H S 0) [o « t:; ^ «j 2J ^ o OUPhS X X ex, 1=3 o n3 '^^?^ .J3 -S *« ^ O "^1 >r^ r — > ci rt (u !/3 . o.o 1) .^ U.S. 2 « dy >, U3 --r^ u w i: ^ rt-^S fl-H (U o ' 3-s^^5-=^ ii >^U ^fl ^ ii S ii bJO Q^ TV Captain Ralegh's Pay STATE PAPERS— IRELAND, 1582, FEB. Vol. 89. No. 26. S^ Henry Wallop to my L. iifeb. 1581. Ryght honorable, by a letter of S"" ffrauncs Wall- singhames of the first herof I perceve ther is 5000" assygned for y*" payment of the 700 last discharged, wherof by order ther is paide to S' George Bowser 300", to S' Nicholas Malbie 200" and to Mr. Rawley 200". My good L. my hope is that vpon the former certificats what mony more is requisite tobe had for the full paie of the three thousand and odd first discharged, and the great wants those yet in paie are in for lacke of mony and certaine debtts besydes due here to sondrie Parsons as by my particular lett' appeereth that much the rather by yo" L. good meanes money answerable to the neces- sities shalbe sent and therefore of that matter will no further troble yo' L. being right sorie that I am so continually enforced thervnto for meny causes. Yf APPENDIX 223 Yf her ma*'® might be drawen to make a full paie and then advaunce allwaies such a som'e as might serve for the garysons here (w^^' now are not great) for iij moneths, so as the soldio' might eith' have his moneths paie before hand, or paide him at the ende of everie monethe, in my symple opinion it wolde much advance the service, be profitable for hir ma*'^ and avoid many inconveniencies. Capf" Barkeley is nowe discharged of his whole band, who I thinke will fall out quaid by reason he is continually victualled out of the store, and of the 800" he had at one tyme off Pellysons agents in mony and wares as formerly I adu'rtised yo' L: I gave no certificat that any such som'e was due to the said Capt", and therfore yo' L. may stale the payment of the said Pollyson, oth'waies y^ losse wilbe her ma*'^^ I perceve that Pollysons agents both here and in Mounster have gotten and daylie do gett many billes into ther hands, thoughe I haue forewarned them that I will certifie none of them into England. I haue thought it also my duetie therof to certifie yo' L. that they may not be paid in England, for yf they be, over many of o"" Captaines will fall out quaid, and I not able to helpe it, w'^^ falleth owt nowe in the late Capf" ffyrres, his reckoning, that by reason if billes certified into England that I am not 224 APPENDIX not acquainted w'^his dewe is not sufficient to paie his victualls, munition, and satisfie his company. Yf all billes certified M' Audito"" shalbe paid in England, the losse wilbe great to hir ma^% and my accompt much the more troblesome, wherfore I am most humbly to intreat yo' L. that no paiement of any billes may be made but by me, or my assignement. fFor Capt" Rawley, his owne request was of the 600 odde pounds due to him at Michaelmasse, that yf I had had y* to have paid his agent here, the one halfe sholde have bene sent to his companie. Wherfore it shall do well he be paid no more vntill his company be satisfied and his accompt made, ffor not knowing nor having geven any direction ffor bis paiement in England, vpon his discharge I sent his company 200^^ into Mounster. Wherw'*" craving pardon of my co'tinuall over boldnes most humbly I take my Leave of yo*" L. praying Th' almyghtie longe to prosper yo". Yo" L. most bounden and at com'aundement, H. Wallop. Dublin this xi'^ of februarie 1581. Endorsed : * ' Tc* the ryght honorable my very good L. the L. Burleigh gh Treasure^ of England. . . . these at the Courte. V Ralegh's Muster-Roll^ 1587 STATE PAPERS— IRELAND, 1587. Bundle 129. No. 77. S'' Walter Rawleigh knight his musteroU taken before S' Thomas Norys, xi May 1587. Andrewe Clothurst Capten Thorns Colthurst lyfeten'nt Rob't Mawley George longe Godfrey bricklaid John Warren Geoffrey tottell Thorns Dowdall Edmond Wicklow Ambrose Wyld fferdoro m'= Shey Chachire m" donogh John fitz gerrott Q PhilUp 226 APPENDIX Phillip thickpeny Will'm love Robert Pyndie John Lee Nicholas Lawrence Thorn's Sewell Thorns blacklett VI VI Lord Burghley's Notes of Ralegh's Opinions as to the Foj'ces to be kept in Mtinster STATE PAPERS— IRELAND, 1582, OCTOBER. Bundle 96. Nos. 30, 31. The opinio' of Mr. Rawley vppo' motio's made to hym for y^ meanes of subdvy'g y^ rebellio' in Monster. first he thynketh that the Q. Ma^ forces alone w*out a' excessyve chardg by a' army y* may s'rve to laye garriso's in every cou'trye, will not subdew y^ rebell. for he shall be so releved in every contrye, where the e'glish souldiors ca'not follow hym, as by flyi'g fro' co'ntry to co'ntry he will hold vp his head a long tyme. Therfor he thynketh it nedefull to have y^ help and concurre'cy of dyvers lords of particular co'ntryes to ioyne in this servyce and herin he sayth, ther ar man'y such at this tyme y' adhere to y^ Erie of Desmo'd, which hertofor was good sub- Q 2 iects 228 APPENDIX iects and s'rved ageynst the Erie, and so'e of them being evill vsed by y^ Enghsh soldiors, and havy'g an opinio' y' in the end, her Ma*^ will both pardo' and restore the Erie as hertofor he hath bene, they do y^ rather follow hym for feare, to be hereaff played by hy', if now they should not follow hy' And therfor if man'y of them war pVatly delt w'all to retorn to y^ sVice of hir Ma^, and to be pmitted to possess ther ow' co'ntryes getly, and war well pswaded that the Erie shuld never be restored, they wold be brought to s'rve hir Ma^^, and i'peach y^ rebell fro' entry into ther co'ntryes and so hir Ma'^ Garriso's might to more purpooss both defend other co'ntryes worth defence and also ye more savely purseu y^ Rebell. And to explane this generall opinio' in a pticular sort. It is thovght good y* these psons hereafter named might be revocked by pardo' to hir Ma*'^ s'rvice, wherby ye Erie shall be left very weak, and shall have almost no place to co'tynew in. The first is ye Lord Fitzmoryce, baro' of Lex- naw who in all former tymes hath hated y® Erie of Desmo'd and sufired gret damag's by w*- standy'g of him and hath allweis sovght to be defended agay'st the Erie by y^ Q. Ma'^. this ma' being reclaymid, a small to of hir Ma^^ forces cov'tena'cy'g APPENDIX 229 Condon is of least force & hathe bin p'doned often. the white knighte was never yet ioyned w*'' the Earle but stands vppon his kepinge. cov'tena'cy'g hym, shall kepe y^ Erie out of Kyrry, or els shall so cross hym if he become thyth' as he shall not be hable to tarry long there. The second is to have Don'ogh M^Cormock y* was com'itted p'soner to Cork for p'tendy'g right to y® Co'ntry called Dowallay, to be also by pardo' revocqued to hir Ma^^^ S'vice, and to be restored to his own Co'ntry, wherto he hath right, and at this tyme, a child, pr'soner therto, whose father slew Don'oghs father being y® lawfull possessor of y^ Co'ntry. this ma' hath hertofore s'rved also agey'st the rebell, and being com'itted to pr'son, after he escaped, he avowed only to recov' his own co'trey, and not to s'rve agey'st any e'glishma'. The third pso' tobe recovered, is patryck Co'do' lord of y*" Condo's co'ntreye and s'rveth the Erie at this tyme but for feare of his restitutio', for his co'ntreye is subiect aliweise to y^ spoyle of y^ Erie. The 4th pso' is v^ whyt knyght, on also y^ hath s'rved the Qjd. and mete to be dra^v' fro' y^ Erie. All w*"^ psons ar to be recovered cheifly by the Erie of Ormo'd or by suche as one as the countrey hathe good likinge vnto. If these 4 may be recovered fro' y^ Erie they and the rest y^ ar sownd subiects as all y® Mackartyes, 230 APPENDIX Mackartyes, y^ more, reagh, y^ lord Roche, power, and now y"" vico't barryes, w* the Q. forces placed as hereaff ar named, shall be hable to subdew y^ Erie and all y® rest of his followers, w* will not be man'y to co'tynew. It'm. these 4 pso's being recovered fro' y^ Erie may be also induced to surre'der ther Co'ntreyes to hir Ma*y, and to receive them by gra't from hir Ma*^, yeldy'g a certen rent, to be discharged of Cess to souldiors. The opinio' for placy'g of y® Garriso's. At Killmallock horsem. 1 footeme' ij' at Mallo vppo' y^ brode water horss' X footeme' j-^ '^ ''''* In tipperary horssme' j* / I think to p'forme the service thereby ther shall need thes companies, In Killmallocke 200 foot' & 50 horse. At Malo or ther aboute as manye. In the border of Tiberary 100 horse the bande of Carbery to defend the west p't therof & serve vppon the macswynes w"'' amountethe vnto 500 footmen & 200 horse beside wardes w*"^ forces may be continewed for a short tyme vntill the lords above named be drawen from the Earle, then cashed & supply other bandes. In APPENDIX 231 In ye Wards \ of In Carberry footemen j / Asskettyn . . I2\ ly'merick . . 6 Castell many . 12 >« Glandy (?) . 8 Di'gle ... 32 lovghyrr (?) . 4 Yowghall . . 20 '^ Do'garva' . .16/ Totall horssme' . j'^lxx \ footme' . iiij° > vj'=lxxxx Wards . j^x ) Of the 20 at Asketon & the 10 at Lircbrick ther may be taken away 10 and added to the 20 of the dingle levinge at Limbrick Castle 6, & at Asketon 14, and 30 at Dingle, it may be inquired whether they of the Dingle will not vndertake to keepe some place of them sealves w'^'out a warde as I have heard they will. It is also necessary that all y^ soldiors be so p'vyded o"" in ther paye as they lyve not vppo' y" Cess of y® Contry, for if they shall, y^ disorder ca' not be avoyded, but the people will be so opposed, as they will rather adhere to y^ rebells, than to suffer y^ pilladg of y^ soldior. The Victualls, munic'on, & tresor for Mounstre should be sent to Corke or Lymbricke & not had from Debelin. It'm. y^ lords of y® severall co'ntryes may be induced, to contribut to hir Ma*^' sondry soo's of mon'y in reco'pe'ce of y^ burthe' of Cess wherin. now 232 APPENDIX now at y*" begy'nyng so'e moderatio' wold be vsed, because y^ co'ntryes ar gretly wasted but aft' or. The Erie of Desmo'd. In Inskelly. The Seneshall. in Arlogh, Garrett fitz Thomas of >^ Geraldy's. y® principall sept of y"" Browns blyck brow', son to Thomas brow' y* was slayn. Jho' brow' was slayn whose dorghf Appsley marryed. in Con'elogh. Nich. fitzw"^ y® recevor kylled n by estoft he was M'shall / killed by Brya' M= Don'ell Myrryck U^ Erie of Capt. of ye Erles kernlygh I Ormo'd. M'^ Cann in Co'nelogh J M"" Thomas of y** pallace killed by y* whyt knight with xxiiij mo. by order of y^ Erie of Ormo'd. M' Mack Thomas he lyveth. in Ker'y betwixt Aden and Askety. Pursell so'n of p'sell of Ballyholla' vppon y® Ryver of Adar y' was chac' of lym'eryck. The Whyt Knight, Edmu'd fitz Gibbon als' Edmu'd W Rvddery so' to Gibbo's y* was attaynted. VII VII Sir Walter RalegJis Lease of Cuil-na-docfionna {''the Nook of the White Stone'')'' This Indenture made the one and twentieth day of July in the thirtith yeare of the raign of our Soveraign Ladie EHzabeth by the grace of God of England, Fraunce and Ireland, Queen e, Defendor of the faith &c. Between the honorable Sir Walter Ralegh, Knight, Warden of her Majesties Stanneries in the counties of Devon and Cornewall and one of the principall undertakers with her Majestie for the repeoplinge and inhabitinge the attainted and escheated lands in the counties of Corke and Waterfourd in the Province of Munster in her highnes Realme of Ireland of thone partie, And John Clever of London, gentleman of thother * From the original preserved at Ralegh's house. His signature and seal were cut off and exhibited in England some years ago, and then returned to Youghal. The precis on the back, '* 21 July, 1588. Cuolycloghsy Fynnay leased for a 100 yeares, commencing the 30*'' yeare Elizae reginae," is in his handwriting. partie. 234 APPENDIX partie, Witnesseth that the said Sir Walter Ralegh for divers good causes and reasonable consider- ations him hereunto especially movinge, Hath demised, graunted, betaken and to farme letten, and by these presents doth demise, graunte, betake and to farme lett unto the said John Clever, all that ploughland commonly called or knowen by the name of Coultie Closinia sett and beinge within the Barrony Inchequyn Ralegh in the countie of Corke aforesaid, with foure hundred acres of arrable land and ferme, woods, hereunto belonginge, and if there be not foure hundered acres of arrable land and farme within the said plough land of Coultie Closynia aforesaid. Then the said Sir Walter Ralegh willeth and graunteth, and by these presents doth demise and graunt unto the said John Clever, that there shall be taken out of the lands of Polla-more, or out of the lands next adjoyninge unto the aforesaid Coultie Closynia as much as together with the farme woods, shall make upp the just number of foure hundred acres of arrable land, the same to be measured by the Standard measure of Winchester, within the Realme of England. Together with all, and hill, mountain of woods, underwoods, waters, weares, Rivers, poulls, fords, marshes, moors, boggs, mountains, barren heaths, wast grounds, comons, foullinge, fishingcj APPENDIX 235 fishinge, hawkinge^ huntinge, and all other profits, comodities and advantages whatsoever, to the same premises belonging, or in any wise apper- teyning. Except and allwayes reserved out of thes present demise and graunte unto the said Sir Walter Ralegh his heires and assignes the Royalties of the same premises and all wreackes of the sea, that shall happen within the same premisses, To have and to hold all and singular the same demised premisses and every parcell thereof with the appurtenances (except before excepted) unto the said John Clever, his executors and assignes, from the feast of Sainct Michaell the Archangell next ensuing the date hereof unto the end and tearme of one hundred years from thence next ensuinge and fully to be compleat and ended. Yielding and Payinge therefore yearely, duringe three of the said yeares, (viz.) from the end of the year of our Lord God, which shall be one Thowsand five hundred foure score and nyne, from and after the decease of the Ladie Cattelyn old Countesse dowager of Desmound, widdowe, untill the end of the yeare of our Lord God, which shall be, 1593, unto the said Sir Walter Ralegh, his heires or assignes, five pounds of good and lawful money of England, at two feasts or tearmes of the year, that is to say, at the feasts of the Annunciation of our Ladie 236 APPENDIX Ladie S'. Mary, the Virgine and S'. Michael The Archangell, by even portions, and also fower capons or hennes, at the feasts of Easter and Christmas, if they be demanded, and also yeldinge and payinge therefore yearly to the said Sir Walter Ralegh his heires or assignes during the residue of the said terme, beginning from and after the decease of the said Countesse, and after the end of the said yeare of our Lord God, which shall be 1593, the yearly rent of Tenne pounds of lawful money of England, at the said two feasts, which of them shall first happen after the death of the said Countess and after the end of the said year, 1593, the first payment thereof shall begyne and also fower capons or hennes, at the feasts of Easter and Christmas, if they be demanded, And if it shall happen, either the said yearly rents of five pounds or tenne pounds to be behind and unpaid, in part or in all, after any of the said feasts, in which the same ought to be paid, by the space of one v/hole year, being lawfully demanded, and no sufficient distresse in or upon the same premises may or can be found. That then and from thencefourth, this present lease, demise and graunte and every article and sentence therein conteyned shall be utterly void and of none effect. Any thinge herein conteyned to the contrary notwithstanding, And tlie APPENDIX 237 the said John Clever for himself his executors, Administrators and Assignes covenenteth and graunteth, to and with the said Sir Walter Ralegh his heires and assignes by these presents, to find from tyme to tyme, after the decease of the said Countesse and after the end of the said year 1593 a sufficient light horse with man and furniture, to the said Sir Walter Ralegh, his heires and assignes in the affairs of the Croune of Ireland, And also shall and will, at his and their oune proper costs and charge, erect, build upp and fynishe, in and by all things one mansion or dwelling house in and upon the same premises, at or before the feast of S\ Michael, which shall be 1593. And shall also before the same feast, at his and their proper costs and charges &c., likewise enclose with hedge, ditche and quicke sett, one hundred acres, and keep the same in good and sufficient reparation and fencinge. And the same so well and sufficiently repared and amended, in the end of the said tearme or other evacuation of this present demise, shall leave and yeld upp unto the said Sir Walter Ralegh, his heires or assignes for every acre of bogg, mountaine or barren heath, that is or shall be converted to good ground, one penny sterlinge, if it shall so sale out, that the Queenes Majestic, her heires or successors shall have 238 APPENDIX have or demand of the said Sir WaUer Ralegh his heires or assignes for every acre of the same land one farthinge or halfpenny. And also shall leave at every fall of any of the woods of the same premises, Twenty and five stands in every acre, according to the custom of England. And the said Sir Walter Ralegh for himself and his heires, executors and assignes, doth covenant, promise and grant to and with the said John Clever, his executors and assignes, by theis presents, that he the said John Clever, his executors and assignes, for the several yearly rents before in theis presents reserved, and under the covenants, graunts, articles and agreements herein conteyned, which on his or their parts are and ought to be observed and kept, shall or may by virtue hereof peaceablie and quietly have, hold, occupie, possess and enjoy the same demised premises and every parcell thereof, with the appurtenances, (except before excepted) without any lawful lett, troble, deniall, or interruption of the said Sir Walter Ralegh his heires or assignes, discharged or otherwise sufficiently saved or kept harmless, as well of and from all and all manner of former bargayneS;, sales, guifts, grants, leases, trobles, chardges, and incombrances whatsoever, As also of all bond services, Irishe customes arrerages APPENDIX 239 arrerages of rents and other endempnities what- soever had, made or done, or caused to be done by the said Sir Walter Ralegh, his heires or assignes, or by any other person or persons, whatsoever claymynge from, by, or under him, them or any of them, during the foresaid terme. In Witnes whereof the said parties to these present Indentures interchaungabhe have put their hands and seals. Sir W. R.' Seal W. Ralegh Yeoven the day and yeare first above written ■ . Mem. that this word (Closynia) amended in three Indenture as aforesaid was done mth the assents , parties before thensealinge hereof. Teste me Nichols Recognitum coram me Laur. Husc' uno Magistrorum cancellarii dictss dominse reginae, secundo die Augusti, anno regni sui supradicto. Endorsed : *' Sigillatum et dcliberatum in p-esentid met Henrici Donoghty^ scribal'' VIII VIII Royal JVan'auf, under the Sign Manual and Signet * By the Queen. For the Cotmtesse of Desmond, to the Lord Deputy. Elizabeth. R. Right trusty and welbeloved, we greete you well. Whereas the Countesse of Desmond hath bene an humble suitor unto us, to releve her poore estate and miserye, wherunto she is brought by her late husband's rebellion against us. We having com- passion of her, are pleased of our gracious princely favor, for her releefe to bestowe upon her, a yeerly pencion of twoo hundred pounds sterhng, to be quarterly paid unto her or her assignes, out of our Exchequer, of that our Relm, during our pleasure, And therfore we will and commaund you to cause a patent to be made from us, and passed under our greate Seale, of that our Relm of Ireland, of the said * From the original preserved at Ralegh's house. annuity APPENDIX 241 annuity of 1 1 hundred pounds by yeere, to be paid quarterly as aforesaid from the feast of the Annun- ciation of our Lady 1587, to the said Countess, by the hands of our Tresorer at warres there for the tyme being, eyther of such monny as comith to his hands of our Revenue there, or of such treasure as shall be from time to tyme assigned from our hands to him for that our Relm, and the same to be charged in the accompt, for that our Relm. Willing you furder to have that care, and to take such order for the sure payment of the abovesayd yearly pencion there, to the said Countess and her assignes, that she may not fayle thereof, at the termes the same shall be due, and that she may have no just cause to complayin, for want of pay- ment of the same. And these our letter, notwit- standing any want of woords, that might be here omitted, and were required to be inserted for this purpose, which nevertheless. We declare are inserted, or any other cause or matter whatsoever, shall be unto you our deputy now being, or to any other deputie or Governor of that Relm that shall be for the tyme, and to the Tresurer at warre, their for the tyme being, and to any other our officers, ministers to whom it may in this case appertayn, shall be sufficient warrant and discharge in this behalfe. Gyven under our Signett at our Mannor R of 242 APPENDIX of S*. James's, the second of October 1588, in the Thirtith yeare of our Rayne." " To our right trusty and welbeloved Sir William Fitzwillms, Knight, deputy of our Relm of Ireland, and to any deputy or other head Gouvernor there, that hereafter shall be, and to our Chauncelor there now being, and Chauncelor or Keeper of our great- Seale of Ireland hereafter to be. And to the Tresurer at Warre that now is, and that hereafter shall be of that our Relm, and to any other our officers or ministers there, to whom it doth or shall apparteyin." Endorsed : ^^ Inr oiled on the Patent Roll of Ireland, in the thirty second year of the reign of our Queen Elizabeth ^ (Seal beneath.) IX IX Ralegh and Florence McCarthy i?i the Tower together'^ The demaundes of S' George Haruie Knight Lieve- ten'nte of the Tower of London for the dietts and charges of Prisoners in his custodie for one whole Quarter of a yeare viz^ : — from the feast of St: iMichaell tharkangell 1 603 vntill the feast of the Natiuitie and Birth of Christ next foUowinge, As hereafter is declared. After charges for the late Lo: Cobham and the late Lo: Gray of Wilton, S' Walter Raleigh knight. fltem for the diett and charges of JS"" Walter Raleigh knight for himsealf and two s'nnts from the Jxvj*'' of December, being then 'sentt from Winchester, to the Tower againe, for one weeke and a halfe ended the xxv"^ of .December att iiij^ the weeke , v]l Then follow the charges for Bartholomewe Brookesby Esquio^, Anthony Copley Esqiiior, S' Griffin Marckham knight, Lawrence Kennthe Esquior, Patrick Ruthen, William Watson, Preist, William Clark Preist, Nicholas Kendall, Gentleman. * The original in the State Paper Office, London. R 2 Item, 244 APPENDIX fflorence Ma'^artie fltem, for the diett and charges' I of fflorence M'Charthie ffrom the xxix**" of September 16031 I vntill the xxv*^ of Decemb'r next \ ^^"J ^^ ^"J •^following being xij weekes and] half at liij'^ iiij'' the weeke , Item, more for Apparrell and other Necessaries bowght for Ihim this Quarter Jeames Ma'^Thomas fltem, for the diett and Charges' of Jeames Ma'^Thomas in the Iffleete from the ix**" daye of Maye 1603 vnto the x**" daye of August} I being xiij weekes for himsealf| land A s'nnte at xF the weeke — J Item, for the diett and Charges) i of Jeames Ma'^Thomas the Titu- ler Erie of Desmond from the xxix**" of September 1603 vntill the XXV*'' of Decemb'r next ffol- lowinge being xij weekes and halfe att iij^ the weeke Item, for Apparrell and Neces- saries bowght for him this iQuarter xliiij* iiij'' XX vj' xxxvij' X vij^ xj* iiij° Sis" Then follow the charges for Roger Gwynn, Preist, the Phisition, the Apothecarie, the Barbour. Sum of Allowauces for Prisoners diettsl and charges, ffor the Phisition, Appo-> ccccxlj^ xvij* ij"^ thecarie and Barbour this Quarter 1 T. Ellesmere, Cane.' T. Buckhurst. Suffolke. Ro. Cecyll. E. Wotton. L. Stanhope, G. Haruy, locut' Tun'. Ralegh and the Eighteenth Earl of Desfnond in the Tower * The demaunds of S' George Heruye Knight Leiue- ten'nte of the Tower of London for the Dietts and other Charges of Prisoners in his Custodie, for one whole Quarter of a yeere viz* from the ffeast of the Natiuitie and birth of Christ 1604 vntill the ffeast of the Annunc'ac'on of our Lady next following, as heereafter is declared. The late Lord Cob- ham. The late Lord Gray. Imprimis for the diett and") charges of the late Lord Cob- ham and his three Seruauntsj from Xpm.as 1604 vnto the}- Annuc'ac'on of our Lady next |ffollowing 1605 being Thirtene tweeks att viij^ the weeke Item, for the diett and Charges) of the Late Lord Gray for him- self and three Ser'nnts from! jxpmas: 1604 vntill our Ladyj jdaye 1605 next ffollowing being | ^Thirteene weeks att viij^ a weekej cnij< ClUj* The original is in the State Paper Office, London. Item, 246 APPENDIX Item, for the diett and Charges^ of S' Walter Raleigh Knight Sir Walter ^ for himself and three Seruants! , ^ Raleigh Kn*. j from xpmas 1604 vntill our Lady j ^^ |daye next ffollowing 1605 being! iThirteene weekes at v a weeke-J Item for the diett and charges^ of James INPThomas Tituler Erie of Dessmond, from xpmas: ! . . 1604 vntill our Lady daye 1605'' '^^'^'^^ next ffollowing being Thirteene - weeks at iij^ a weeke James M Thomas. Item more for Apparell and necessaries bowght for him this Quarter iiij* Item, more for his washing this) .Quarter v^ in toto ■ j Then follow the charges for Patrick Ruthen, Thomas Pound, Brian Bridger, Doctor Sharpp, and Thomas Bywater. The Phisition. The Ap- pothecarie. The Barbour. I Item, to Doctor Ell win phisition | for visiting the sick prisoners this) Quarter ) I Item, to Roger Gwinn apothecavie 1 for Phisick ministred to the) Prisoners this Quarter, his bill — j !Item, to Edward Porter, harbour j for trymming the Prisoners this> Quarter j viij^ xviij^ xlv* Sum'a. of allowancs for Prisoners dietts j and charges for the Phisition, Apo-/ iiij'^ xlj^ xiiij* viij'* thecarie and Barbour this Quarter ) T. Dorset. Lenox. Cranborne. E. Worcester. Cumberland. E. Wotton. L. Stanhope. G. Heruye Locut. Turr. INDEX INDEX Abb]& MacGeoghegan, 17,27 Adderley, Ralph, 131 Affane cherry, 117 Aghadoe, 78 Alva's rule contrasted by Mr. Froude with that of Elizabeth's captains in Ireland, 52 ; his portrait resembles Ralegh's, 146 America, Ralegh first English governor in, 61 Annals of the Four Masters quoted about Essex, 127 Anti-Irisli faction, 133 Antrim, 7 Appesley's band, 9 Archbishop Hurley tortured in Dublin Castle, 82 ; executed without trial, 83 ; his successors, 83 Archbishop of Cashel, "the last," 81 ; Protestant, 84-87 Ardbrachan, 41 Ardmore, round tower, (>2 ; oratory, cathedral and Ogham stones, 63 Ardnary, slaughter of, 51 Arlow woods, plot to murder John PltzThomas in, 39 Armagh, 3 Armulla dale, 109 Arnold, Matthew, 4 248 INDEX Arrears Commission, 74 Assassination practised by Ralegh, 35 ; practised by Lord Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries, 36 ; sanctioned by Elizabeth, 40, 45 ; objected to by Ormond, 97 ; taught by Sussex, Carew, and Ralegh, 108 ; condemned by the Pope, 70 ; impossible to forgive Ralegh for, 146 Azores, flowers and fruit brought by Ralegh from, 117 Bacon, Lord, wrong in saying Elizabeth was displeased at Smerwick massacre, 14 Bagot, Walter, 131 Ballinacurra river, skirmish at, 18 Ballynatray, 145 Barrie, David, 22 Barry's Court, 59-61, 140 Barrys, the, 140, 187 Beaconsfield, Lord, advocates policy of Charles the First in Ireland, 68 ; anti-Cromwellian, 94 Beaten track, the, 71 Bingham, Vice-Admiral, 10 Bingham, Sir R., kills women and children, 51 Blackwater, 6 ; estate, 61-65 '■> fishery, 88 Boyle, Lady Charlotte, 89 Boyle, Richard, 88; and Pine's suit, 203 Boyles, some with Irish feeling, 92 Bristol, 121 British officials, well meaning, but condemned by history, 73 Broughton, Hugh, 84-87 Burghley, Lord, letter to, from Cork, 8 ; condemned mas- sacre at Smerwick, 15 ; letter condemning English tyranny, 47 ; policy thwarted, 48 ; lands not to be given to persons, 48 ; foresaw evil effect of creating alien landlords, 49 ; his good plans opposed by the Castle, 52, and the Irish judges, 53 ; no English press, no public opinion to support him, 54, 75 ; anti-Papal, 79-81 ; and Tyrone, 131 ; INDEX 249 and Essex, 132 ; Ralegh's letters to, 151, 182; his notes of Ralegh's military plans for Munster, 227 Burghley's kinsman, 7 Burke, Edmund, 8 ; gives real clue to Irish history, 69 ; studied it on the estates of Ralegh and Spenser, 70 Burkes, defeat of the, 7 Camden, mistakes as to Elizabeth, 15 Carew, Sir George, an assassin, 36 ; poisons O'Donnell, 37 ; hires a murderer, 39, 71, 146 ; Ralegh's letter to, 170 Carew, Sir Peter, murders women and babies, 51 Carrigrohan Castle ruined, 104 Cashel, 3 Castletown Roche, 69 Catholic University, 66 Caulfield, Richard, 65 Caulfield, Thomas, 203 Cavendishes, just and kind, 90 ; Irish feeling of, 92 Cecil, Sir Robert, 86; Ralegh's letters to, 38, 173, 176, 178, 185-202 Chancellor, Lord, favours putting the whole Irishry to the sword, 53 Charles the First's Irish policy, 68 Cheke, Mr., 7 Chief Secretaiy, prefers assassination to the ** uncertain end of arms," 36 ; tortures Dr. Hurley, 82 Clancar, Earl of, his daughter marries Florence McCarthy, 100 Cobham and Ralegh oppose Essex's Irish policy, 130 Coercion, the step preceding failure, 71 Coercive legislation stereotypes the terrible traditions of Ireland, 113 College Green Parliament and tobacco cultivation, 117 College of Youghal, 2, 4, 62, 65 ; "depopulated " by Lord Cork, 125 250 INDEX Collier, Payne, 38 Colonies founded by Ralegh become centuries later a new home of the Irish, 106 Comestor, Peter, his history found in Ralegh's bedroom, 143 Commissioners' Report on survey of Ralegh's lands, 55 " Contrary faction," 133 Coppingers, 137 Cork, 3 ; butter and wheat in, 29 ; Ralegh's night marches near, 24-26 ; martial law in, 46 ; governor of, 49 ; rumour of Ralegh's death reaches, 138 Cork, Lord, and Wentworth, 125 ; his descendants popular absentees, 89 Cornish miners, 118 Cove, Ralegh lands at, 8 Cox, on the proposed repeal of Poyning's Act, 99 Cranborne, Lord, Ralegh's letter to, from the Tower, 136 Cromwell, curse of, 112 Cromwell's Irish policy recommended by Froude, 91 ; con- demned by Disraeli, 94 " Cruelty repayd with cruelty," 81, 146 Cuil-na-clocfionna, Ralegh's lease of, 233 Curfew Act, 108 Curse of Sherborne, 58; of Cromwell, 112 Darcy, Sir F,, 126 Darrilayrie Castle, 128 Davis, Thomas, 68 Dedication of Hooker's ' Irish Wars ' to Ralegh, 1 1 1 Depopulation welcomed by Spenser as best for English rule, 73 Desmond, Countess Eleanor, 2, 7, 122, 124, 240 Desmond, eighth Earl of, 2, 120 Desmond, the great Earl, 3 ; his fair dealing with the Irishry, 3 ; encourages commerce, 3, 143 INDEX 251 Desmond, eighteenth Earl of, in the Tower with Ralegh, 28, 246 Desmond, the good Earl, 143 Desmond, Old Countess of, 119 ; mentioned in Ralegh's lease, 120 ; mistaken for the Countess Eleanor, 121 ; called Ladie Cattelyn old Countesse dowager of Desmond in Ralegh's lease, 235 Desmond, Countess Eleanor, 120 ; Elizabeth's warrant granting her a pension, 240 ; her gown of cloth of gold, 122 ; Ralegh's want of gallantry to her, 123 ; complains of extreme poverty, 124 ; fed by Ormond in her distress, 124 J her husband's head on London Bridge, 126 Desmond, the desolate fields of, 115 ; library, 143 Desmonds, Irish-speaking peasants of the, 6 *• Destiney stronger than councell," 133 Devonshire, Duke of, 65 ; his fishery suit as Ralegh's heir, 89 ; just and kind to the poor, 90 ; popular, 140 Devonshire men, 9 Dingle Bay, 7, 144 Disaffection increased by emigration, 108 " Discourse touching war with Spain," quoted, 34 Disraeli would govern Ireland according to policy of Charles the First and not of Cromwell, 94 Disraeli the elder, 143 "Distressful country," 72 Dominican custodian of ruins and sacred image, 64 Dominican Friary granted to Ralegh, and destroyed, 63 Drew, Rev. P. W., 145 Dublin Castle prefers coercion to Burghley's wise policy, 53 ; torture of Archbishop Hurley in, 82 Duhallow, 96 Dutch tiles in Ralegh's house, 142 Dyneley, Thomas, describes Ralegh's Irish house, 141 East Budleigh, 140 !52 INDEX Educational policy, 65 ; devised to break down priestcraft, leads to agrarian troubles, 66-7 Edward the Second, 3 Edward the Fourth, 119 Edwards, Ralegh's biographer, quoted about assassination plots of Ralegh, Carew, &c., 36 ; quoted about Ralegh's opposition to Essex's Irish policy, 130 Eleanor, Countess of Desmond, 2 ; her princely state, 122 ; her jointure lands taken, 123 ; in misery and hunger, 124 j her pension, 240 Elizabeth, engraving of as Queen of Virginia, 2 ; autograph and signet of, 2, 241 ; approves slaughter at Smerwick, 15 ; her autograph note on despatch, 212; the massacre greatly to her "lyking," 213, except that the officers ransomed should have escaped punishment, 213 ; thinks Grey's exploit a great good service, 215 ; complicity in assassination plots, 40-45 ; grants Ralegh 42,000 acres, 61 ; rewards severity, 93 ; contrasted with her present successor, 94 ; letter about the undertakers and the rebels, 109 ; remorse and last troubles, 133 ; condemns Essex's treaty with Hugh O'Neill, 129 Ellis, Sir H,, letters quoted, 76 Emigrant colonies promote disaffection and trouble, 108 Emigration, Elizabeth's plans fail, 109 Emigration schemes, 106 ; not liked by the Irish, 107 English admiral no complicity in the slaughter of Smer- wick, 12 English Church in Ireland compromised by Elizabeth's Irish prelates, 86-7 " English in Ireland," Froude's history makes no reference to Ralegh, 6 English literature, an event in, 115 Englishmen who love fair play and peace, 147 " Epistle Dedicatorie," 112 Essex, Earl of, his Irish policy, 126 ; and Ralegh, 127 ; INDEX 253 regal state and conciliatory policy, 1 27-8 ; toleration to Catholics and interview with Tyrone, 129 ; censured by the Queen, and names Ralegh as her adviser, 1 30 ; calls Ralegh a fox, 131, 147 Fagau, Patrick, 23 'Fairy Queen,' 115 Fardel, Ogham stone, 63 Fenton, secretary, practises assassination, 36 Fifteenth-century books, 2, 143 Fiodha Inis, 78 Fishery suit in 1882, 90 Fitzgerald, Sir James, hanged by Ralegh, 27 Fitzgerald, Sir John, his body hung up by the heels at Cork, 27 Fitzgerald, Thomas, 3 Fitzgerald s, the Maccabees of Elizabeth's day, 27 Fitzrichard, James, 23 Fitzwilliams, Sir \V,, Deputy, Ralegh more influential in England than, 170 Flemings and Irish compared by Burghley, 47 Florence McCarthy, 100 Fota, 60 Four Masters, Annals of the, 127 Friscobaldi of Leghorn, 3 Froude, calls the Irish the most unchanging people, 6 ; hardly mentions Ralegh, 7, no; doubts Elizabeth's pity, 12 ; admits her sanction of the Smerwick slaughter, 14 ; quoted about the tyranny of England to the Irish, 47, and Burghley's recognition of English faults, 47 ; on the alien landlords, 49 ; quoted, 50 ; stigmatises Sir P. Carew's murder of women and children, 51 ; on Irish tree- planting, 78 ; describes the result of the Ralegh policy, III; on the horror that remains in the National tra- ditions, III 254 INDEX ' Gentleman's Magazine,' quoted as to introduction of potatoes from Ireland into England, Ii8 Geraldine College and Ralegh, 1-4, 66, 140 Geraldines' misfortunes associated with Ralegh, 27, 245 Gerardo, a Florentine merchant, 3 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 96 Glenmalure, Irish victory at, 7 Goldwin Smith, " eagles to the Spanish main : vultures to Ireland," 61 Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy, 71 ; defeated by the Irish, 7 ; orders the massacre at Smerwick, ii ; his despatch, 12 ; his slaughter approved by Elizabeth, 15, 212-215 ; his despair, 72 ; defended by Spenser for breach of faith, 16 ; his despatches do not indicate treachery at Smerwick, 15 ; Ralegh's letter to, 162 Governor of Cork, no Governor of Virginia, i ; in America, 61 Hales, Professor, 133 Hardships, 167, 173 Hartington, Marquis of, 140 ^ Hatfield Library contains record of Ralegh's agrarian troubles, 54 Hayman, Rev. S., 64 ; describes Ralegh's house, 141 " Hiberni causa," 70 ' History of the World,' quoted, 35 *' Holy roode," the, cast down during Ralegh's mayoralty of Youghal, 64 Hooker's description of Ralegh's gallant fight with the Seneschal, 19 ; his account of Ralegh's fight with David Barrie, 22 Hughenden Manor, 94 Hume, 6 Hurley, Archbishop, tortured in Dublin Castle, 82 j illegally executed, 83 INDEX 255 Imokilly, Seneschal of, plot to assassinate, 97 Inchequin Ralegh, 58, 234 Inchigeelagh, 104 Innisfallen, 78 Ireland, called by Ralegh *' this loste land," 72, and " That accursed kingdome," 134 ; ''should be governed according to policy of Charles the First," 94; called by Essex, ''this poor country of," 128 ; described in Ralegh's letter to Leycester, not a "common welthe," but "common woo," 168 ; the most difficult problem for English states- men, 147 Irish Brigade, 35 Irish House of Commons and tobacco plantations, 117 Irish judges, politicians, 52 ; warned by Essex to treat the people better, 128 Irish Privy Council, represent one interest only, 52 ; oppose Burghley's views, 53 Italian allies of the Irish, 7 Italian cabinet of Ralegh, 2 James the First, Ralegh's appeal to, 81 ; grants pension to Lady Ralegh, 125 Judge Saxey, instructions to, 128 Judges, Irish, politicians, 52 ; warned by Essex not to make the people desperate, 129 " Justam patriae causam," 70 Justin McCarthy on Irish Nationality, 68 KiLAVULLEN, 70 Kilcolman Castle, 115 ; in flames, 109 ; an ivy-clad ruin, 140 Kilcolman Woods, 77 Land Commission to fix rents, 74 Landlords in time of Elizabeth, 74 256 INDEX Lane, Ralph, a substitute for Ralegh on voyage to Vir- ginia, 31 Langrishe, Sir H,, 69 Lecky quoted, 67-69 Lee, the, 6 Leland, the historian, mistake of, 15 Leo the Thirteenth to the Irish bishops, 70 Lewis, Sir George, 121 Leycester, Earl of, Ralegh's letter to, 167 Lismore, 90, 140 ; Ralegh's school at, 65 ; order from the Queen to dismiss " cavelacions " in Ralegh's lawsuit, 171 Livorno, 3 Local self-government, 98 ; its repression in 1800, 112 Loftus, Archbishop, 80 Longe, George, 75 Lords, House of, and the shade of Ralegh in 1882, 90 Lorenzo de' Medici, 3 "Losteland," 70, 73 Macaula-Y, Lord, 130, 137 Maccabees of Elizabeth's day, the Fitzgeralds, 27 McCarthy, Cormac MacDermod, not to be pardoned, 104-5 McCarthy, Florence, the historian and Irish chief, loo ; Ralegh's letter about him, loi ; writes his ' Treatise on the Early Ages of Ireland ' in the Tower, 103 ; Ralegh's companion in the Tower, 244 McCarthy, John George, and Ralegh's cedars, 1 16 McCarthy, Justin, on the elevating influence of nation- ality, 68 MacGeoghegan, Abbe, now shown to be right about alleged mutilation and torture, 17, 211 ; refers to the Fitzgeralds destroyed by Ralegh as the Maccabees of that day, 27 Magrath, Meiler, 84 ; Sir R. Cecil on, 86 ; contrast between him and H. Broughton, 87 INDEX 257 Mahometan conquest of Ireland, recommended by Deputy Grey and Mr. Froude, 90 ; disapproved by Burghley, 93 Maltby's victory over the Burkes, 7 ; describes his killing of women and children, 50 Mantua, a black-letter volume of, 143 Mayor of Youghal, 140, 144 Meads of Cork, 138 Mediocrities of later times compared with Elizabeth's Irish officials, 71 Mogile, 139 Moile, Henry, Ralegh saves his life, 20 Molana Abbey, 63 Monanimy, 69 Mooney, Father John, captured and "examined" by Ralegh, 81 Mountjoy, 37, 71 Muckross, 78 " Mulla's shore," 114 Munster, Irish-speaking peasants of, 6, 147 ; Ralegh's ad- ministration of, 61 ; traditions, 133 National Cause, 67 National Conservatives, 68 National sentiment plays no part in the Government, 113 Naught on, 131 Oak Chest of Ralegh, 2 j oak carvings, 142 O'Donovan, Dr., publishes McCarthy's History, 103 Ogham stones, 63 O'Neill, Hugh, defeats an English army, 33 ; Elizabeth denounces Essex's treaty with, 129 O'Neill, John, and Sussex's assassination plots, 41 ; Mr. Froude on, 41 ; attempt to poison, 43 ; murdered, 45 O'Neill, Owen Roe, 33 Onoria Fitzgerald, 64 258 INDEX Ore, Irish, sent to Ralegh, 118 Ormond, Ralegh's letter against, 59 ; recalled, 94 ; contrast between him and Elizabeth's English captains, 96; accused of not conniving at assassination, 97 ; Ralegh a witness against him, 98 ; pays for Lady Desmond's food, 124 Outrages, agrarian, condemned by the Pope, 70 Outrages, midnight, 108 Pale, The, and Dublin Castle defeat Burghley's wise plans, 54 ; prevent the repeal of Poyning's Act, 99 Perrot, Sir John, 71, 147 ; opposed by Ralegh, 98 ; favours Irish self-government, 99 ; obstructed by the Pale, 99 Petrarch and the Fairy Queen, 115 Philistine policy, 4 Piers, Captain, murders O'Neill, 45 ; in commission with Ralegh at Cork, 46 Pine, Henry, 139 Pipestaves, 76 Pope's, the, letter to Irish bishops, 70; and McCarthy, 188 Portraits, Irish, of Ralegh, 144 Potato, first planted in Ireland, 118 Powey's report on trees to be cut down, 77 Poyning's Act, its proposed repeal in 1585, 99, 147 Priest, an Irish, his arms and legs broken, and then hanged, 18, 211 Prisoners in the Tower, 243-5 Privy Council, Irish, represent one interest only, 52 ; oppose the Prime Minister's views, 53 Prophecy of TjTone's rebellion by Ralegh, 176 Public Record Office, 15 Queen, the, a better sovereign and a truer woman than Elizabeth, 94 Queen's Colleges, 4 Queenstown Estate, 59-61, 140 INDEX 259 Ralegh's study, 2 ; and Thomas Fitzgerald, 3 ; career, 5, and the liistorians, 5 ; yew-trees, 5, mention of, by Mr. Froude, 7 ; pay and arrears, 8, 9, 222 ; reckonings, 10, 218-221 ; courage, 18-26 ; hardships, 28, 30; and Ehza- beth, 30-32 : his influence with, can pleasure or displeasure the greatest : his nearness to the Queen, 170 ; advises about the Earl of Tyrone, 32, 201 ; success of his well- equipped bands over numerous Irish, 32-35 ; practises assassination, 35-39 ; his agrarian troubles, 54 ; repeopling schemes, 56, 105; complains of the "doting deputy dispeopling" him, 57 ; despairing cry, the echo of the hunted Lord Desmond, 58, 71 ; and Meiler Magrath, 84; and Hugh Broughton, 85 ; in the Lords in 1882, 88 ; his fishery grant, 89 ; testifies against the Irishry, 90 ; and Cromwell, 91 ; anti-Irish, 92 j his intrigue against Ormond, 95 ; his connection with Florence McCarthy, 100-3 > his last advice to the Queen, 103 ; against pardoning Cormac McCarthy, 105 ; and the dedication of the Irish Wars, III; sonnet addressed to him with the ' Fairy Queen,' 115 ; his sonnet to Spenser, 115 ; underrated as a poet, 116; Spenser's opinion of his muse, 116; intro- duces into Ireland flowers and trees, 117; introduces tobacco and potatoes, 118; Irish ores to analyse, 118; developes mineral resources, 119; opposes Essex, 126; called "worse than cat and dog" by Elizabeth, 131 ; speech at the block, 132 ; and his Geraldine victims, 27, 136, 245; sufferings in the Tower, 136; his testamentary note, 138 ; one of his last thoughts given to Ireland, 139 ; his Irish residences, 139 ; his Irish career depicted in an old engraving, 145 ; retrospect of his policy, 146 ; Englishmen as much reason to complain of his policy as Irishmen, 147 ; muster-roll, 225 Ralegh, Carew, fails to get back the estates his father held, 125 ; his father's head buried in the son's coffin, 126 26o INDEX Ralegh, Lady, suffered like Lady Desmond, 124 ; in want of bread, 125 ; gets pension of 1^400, 125 ; embalms Sir Walter's head, 126 Raymond le Gros, 63 Reckonings, Ralegh's, 10, 218 Red Abbey, 96 Religion of the people, has no part in the Irish government, 113 ; ignoring the, causes agrarian troubles, 66 Repeopling schemes, 56, 105 ; fail, 109 Repressive measures, Ralegh's, destroyed whatever was good in his Irish work, 119 Residences of Ralegh in Ireland, 139-143 Rincrev/, Preceptory of, 64 Roche, arrest of Lord and Lady, by Ralegh, 24-26 Rolls Office, records in the, 10, 40, 135 Rostellan Castle, 60 Royal Warrant pensioning Lady Desmond, 240 Russell, Father Bat, custodian of sacred image of the Virgin, 64 Russell, Sir William, 71 Sarsfield, 33 Saunders' servant tortured and hanged, 18, 21 1 Saxey, Judge, Essex's instructions to, 128 Scaffold, on the, 137 Scots, two thousand land in Antrim, 7 Seal of Ralegh, 2, 233 note Self-government, 98 Seneschal of Imokilly, 18 ; attempt to assassinate, 97 Sidney, Sir Henry, accomplishes the murder of O'Neill, Simancas, O'Donnell poisoned at, 37 Slaughter of Smerwick, 10-18, 208 ; Elizabeth's letters approving of, 212 Smith, Gold win, quoted, 61 INDEX 26] Smith sends poisoned wine to O'Neill, 43 ; not punished, 44 Southwell, Lord, 118 Spanish allies of the Irish, 7, iSo, 189, 196, 199 Spenser, Edmund, 5, 7 ; arrives in Ireland, 8 ; Assistant Secretary, 8, 69, 71 ; * State of Ireland,' 72-3 ; fine character and Irish fate of his successor, centuries later, 73; and Ralegh, 114; sonnet to Ralegh, 115; advice given to, by Ralegh, 1 15; his opinion of Ralegh's muse, 1 16 Stafford recommends a knave to Ralegh, 194 'State of Ireland,' 72-3 State Papers, 15, 17, 133; about the poisoning of O'Donnell, 37 St. Declan's Oratory, 63 St. Mary's Tower, 2 Stuart kings show some glimmering of justice to Ireland, 135 Study, Sir Walter's, i, 142 Sussex, Earl of, 71, 93 ; his letter to Elizabeth describing his scheme to assassinate John O'Neill, 41 ; his assassination plots referred to by Mr. Froude, 42 Table, The, at which Ralegh wrote, 2 Taylor's History, quoted, 12, 44 Templars', Knights, preceptory granted to Ralegh, 64 Testamentary note, 203 Thierry, M., calls the Irish a long-memoried people, 6 Throgmorton, Sir N., 126 Tivoli, near Cork, Ralegh's cedars at, 117 Toledo, Ferdinand of, 146 Traditions, of the Irish people, vague horror imprinted on, III; of coercion stereotyped, 113; effect in a country where religion and nationality are ignored by the State, 113; respecting Ralegh, 119 Treasurer, the Lord High, looks askance at Ralegh, 46 ; compares English and Spanish tyranny, 47 Treaty of Limerick broken, 1 12 262 INDEX Trinity College Library, 70 Tuam, monastry of, 86 Tyrone and Essex, 129 Undertaker's lease, 233 Unhallowed societies condemned, 70 University, Catholic, 4 Van der Werff's engraving, 145 Vaticanism opposed by Burghley, 80 Verazzano's charts, i Victoria Cross, Ralegh earns, 18 Victoria, Queen, contrasted with Elizabeth, 94 Virgin, Blessed, miraculous image of, 64 Virginia, Governor of, i ; Queen of, 2 ; voyage to, 32 Voltaire's libel, 34 Walley, John, 138 Wallop, Sir H,, letter to, from Burghley about the tyranny of England in Ireland, 47 Walsingham, report to, about massacre and mutilation at Smerwick, 17, 207-211 ; Ralegh's letters to, 18, 154-157 Warden's house, 2, 4 ; Spenser and Ralegh reading the MS. of the * Fairy Queen ' in, 114 ; potatoes planted in garden, 118; described by Crofton Croker, 140; wainscoting and oak carvings, 142 Washington, politicians of, 49 Waterford, 3, 145 * Wearing of the Green,' quoted, 72 White, Sir N., quoted, 78 Widows, the two, 122 Wight, Isle of, 8 Wilson, Sir T., keeper of the Tower, 138 Wines, foreign, reach England in Irish wood, 76 Winter, Admiral, 10 ; a humane British sailor, 12 INDEX Women slain, 50-1 Woods, Irisli, cut down, 75-9 Wright, Nicholas, 23 ; called on by Ralegh, 24 Yew-trees, Ralegh's, 117 Youghal, 3, 55, 65, 140, 145 ; potato planted near town wall of, 5, iiS ZouCH, Captain, 24; kills women and children, 51 Zucchero's portrait of Ralegh, 145 LONDON : PRTNTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. /? 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