Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3)

Unsuccessful attack on the Ulster Scots. Death of Brabazon

Soon after this the Lord Deputy made another attempt to punish the Scots for the Rathlin disaster, and Hugh Oge O’Neill for supporting them. O’Neill attacked the advanced guard at Belfast, then ‘an old castle standing on a ford,’ and killed Savage of Ards, with fifty others. The main body crossed the Laggan safely, and proceeded to fortify the old stronghold. Meanwhile the Baron of Dungannon had brought up his forces, but incautiously encamped in the open field before effecting a junction with Croft. There he was set upon by the sleepless Shane, and utterly routed, so that the whole expedition ended in failure. Sir William Brabazon, the Vice-Treasurer, who had served so long and so well in Ireland, died on the march. His body was buried in Christ Church, Dublin, but his heart, according to the annalists, was ‘sent to the King, in token of his loyalty and truth towards him.’[382 - The facts of this expedition (June and July 1552) are given by the Four Masters; and see Ware’s Annals.]

Tyrone is released

Tyrone complained to the King of his continued detention. His country, he said, suffered by his absence, and he offered either to plead his own cause in England, or to submit unreservedly to Commissioners sent from thence. Danger was still feared from Scotland, but the English party there procured the arrest of George Paris, on the information of one of O’Connor’s sons. On the whole it was thought better to release Tyrone, his countess and her son remaining as pledges for him, and Shane’s brother for that troublesome person. The Earl bound himself in 6,000l. to keep the peace towards the King’s adherents, the Baron of Dungannon, Calvagh O’Donnell, Maguire, and Tirlogh Luineach O’Neill.[383 - Tyrone’s complaint, July 1552; Privy Council to George Paris, Oct. 25; to Croft, Dec. 10; Cusack to Privy Council, Dec. 22; Memorandum concerning Tyrone, Dec. 30, in Carew.]

Desmond

The Corporation of Waterford praised Desmond for visiting remote parts of his district, and training the wild people; a task for which few, if any, of his ancestors had shown any taste. Cusack wrote in the same strain, and advised that Dungarvan should be taken from the Butlers, and restored to him. The Chancellor’s pet idea was to have a President at Limerick, less as a governor than as a general referee in all disputes, and he believed that by such peaceful means permanent civilisation might be cheaply attained.[384 - Mayor, &c., of Waterford to the Privy Council, Dec. 18; Cusack and Aylmer to the Privy Council, Dec. 22 and 30; Declaration of Desmond’s title, Dec. 30; Cusack in Carew, ut supra.]

Croft recalled, 1552

At this time the King granted leave of absence to Croft, whom he apparently intended to send back; but the O’Connors became uneasy, and Sir Henry Knollys was sent to stop the Lord Deputy. The clouds blew over, and Croft was able to go before the end of the year, leaving the government to Cusack and Chief Justice Aylmer. Tyrone was released a few days later, and followed Croft to London; and Hugh O’Neill submitted, apologising for the past, and making promises for the future. The latter chief received certain monastic lands rent free, especially stipulating for the friary at Carrickfergus, where his ancestors were buried. Belfast Castle was restored to him. The Government had in fact been unable to chastise him, and put the best face they could upon matters. It can hardly be doubted that the three secular priests whom Hugh intended to maintain at the family burying place were not likely to advance the King’s views in religion.[385 - Northumberland to Cecil, Nov. 25, 1552; Cusack’s ‘Book’ in Carew, vol. i. p. 236; King’s letter in Lodge’s Patent Officers; Ware’s Annals.]

Character of Croft. St. Leger returns to Ireland

Sir James Croft bears a fair character among Irish governors. He did nothing very striking, nor did he contribute much towards a final pacification; but he was considered a just man, and he made no personal enemies. He was at least no bigot, for he received warm praise from Archbishop Browne, though he did not hesitate to recommend Leverous for a bishopric. It was, however, decided that St. Leger should return to Ireland in his stead. Sir Anthony’s government had been cheap, and not ineffectual. During the last five years of Henry’s reign there had been a small annual surplus; but since his death there had been a constantly growing deficit, which could only be met by increasing the taxation of the obedient shires, by employing Irish soldiers almost exclusively, and by maintaining such troops as were necessary at free quarters upon the country. Miserable expedients certainly; but the English Government could devise nothing better, and they were determined to keep down the expenses. It was resolved not to increase the existing force of 2,024, and to make no attempt at a thorough conquest. The arrangement with Tyrone was dishonourable, but was to be adhered to, lest a breach of faith should lead to war, and consequent expenditure. The King’s death prevented a full return to his father’s policy, and those who had lately governed in his name immediately lost all influence.[386 - A paper calendared under Jan. 1553 (No. 75) calculates the average expenses from 33 to 38 Hen. VIII. at 8,500l. a year. In the six years of Edward’s reign they rose by regular gradation from 17,000l. to 52,000l. The average revenue for the former period was 9,000l., for the latter, 11,000l. See also No. 83, ‘a device how to keep Ireland in the stay it now remaineth upon the revenues only.’]

Protestant Bishops

Goodacre was consecrated to Armagh and Bale to Ossory on the same day by Browne, Lancaster of Kildare, and Eugene Magennis of Down. Where Bale was there was sure to be controversy, and a fierce one arose about the ritual proper to the occasion. The Archbishop would have postponed the ceremony, and Bale, who frequently denounces him as an epicure, declares that his object was to ‘take up the proxies of any bishopric to his own gluttonous use.’ Lockwood, Dean of Christ Church, was supreme in his own cathedral, and his timidity led him to wish for the pontifical order. Bale accordingly stigmatises him as an ass-headed dean, a blockhead who cared only for his kitchen and his belly. But Lockwood had the law on his side; for King Edward’s first book only had been proclaimed in Ireland, and it contained no form for consecration. Browne and Cusack also wished to stand on the old way. Goodacre was for the form contained in the second book, and now used in England, but he was willing to waive his own opinion. Bale, however, positively refused to be consecrated according to the old usage, boldly maintaining that one king makes one law, and that Ireland must necessarily follow England. His vehemence carried the day, and the consecrations took place according to the new Anglican use. The Communion Service followed, and Bale rejected the consecrated wafer, successfully arguing that common bread should be used. He afterwards preached twelve strong Protestant sermons in Dublin, insisting particularly on the marriage of priests; and he flattered himself that he had established the people ‘in the doctrines of repentance, and necessary belief in the gospel.’[387 - The consecrations took place on Feb. 2, 1553.]

Goodacre

Goodacre seems never to have seen his cathedral, to which access was barred by Shane O’Neill. Bale says he was a man of remarkable sincerity and integrity, and a zealous and eloquent preacher. He also informs us that he was poisoned by the procurement of certain priests of his diocese, ‘for preaching God’s verity, and rebuking common vices.’ This contemporary statement has been doubted, on account of Bale’s prejudices, but it is repeated by Burnet on the authority of Goodacre’s fourth lineal descendant. Burnet’s informant received the story from his grandfather, who was Goodacre’s grandson. According to this tradition the actual murderer was a monk, who pledged Goodacre in poisoned wine, and died himself of the effects. Bale says he was himself warned by letter to beware of the Archbishop’s fate. Whether the joint authority of Ossory and Sarum is to be rejected or not will much depend upon the reader’s opinion of two learned, and in some respects not dissimilar divines.

Bale

Bale soon proceeded to Kilkenny. On his journey from Waterford to Dublin he had already passed through part of his diocese, and had been much scandalised by what he saw and heard. The parish priest of Knocktopher boasted that he was a son of William, late prior of the Carmelites there – not the legitimate son, as he was careful to point out. The marriage of a friar would have been a heinous offence, but an irregular connection was venial, and it was thought honourable to be the offspring of a spiritual man, whether bishop, abbot, monk, friar, or secular priest. Bale, who had himself been a Carmelite, and who had married a wife, rebuked this candid ecclesiastic, and resolved to set himself as bishop to the work of reform. He admits that he had no success; and none could be expected where public opinion sanctioned the pleasant vices of the clergy.[388 - Bale’s ‘Vocation,’ in the Harleian Miscellany.]

Proceedings of Bale

Far more questionable was Bale’s zeal against images, the destruction of which will never make men Protestants. His opinions were hopelessly at variance with those in vogue in Ireland, as may be judged from the following autobiographical passage: —

‘Many abominable idolatries maintained by the epicurist priests, for their wicked bellies’ sake. The Communion or Supper of the Lord was there altogether used like a popish mass, with the old apish toys of Antichrist in bowings and beckings, kneelings and knockings; the Lord’s death after St. Paul’s doctrine neither preached nor yet spoken of. There wawled they over the dead, with prodigious howlings and patterings, as though their souls had not been quieted in Christ and redeemed by His passion; but that they must come after and help at a pinch with requiem æternam to deliver them out of hell by their sorrowful sorceries. When I had beholden these heathenish behavers, I said unto a senator of that city that I well perceived that Christ had there no bishop, neither yet the King’s Majesty of England any faithful officer of the mayor in suffering so horrible blasphemies.’

This was at Waterford. At Kilkenny things were no better, and on his arrival Bale proceeded to show his zeal for reform. All the statues of saints were turned out of St. Canice’s Cathedral, but the Bishop had the good taste to preserve the fine painted windows erected in the fourteenth century by his high-handed predecessor Ledred. The less artistic Cromwellians afterwards destroyed what Bale had spared, and some fragments were dug up in 1846. Bale had some supporters, chiefly laymen. The clergy, whose moral failings he had lashed so mercilessly, were not convinced by hearing the host called a ‘white god of their own making,’ nor easily persuaded that the lucrative practice of saying masses for the dead was useless, nor inclined to admit a liturgy which condemned all that they most valued. The deanery was in the hands of Bishop Lancaster, who could give no help, and among the prebendaries there was either obstructive apathy or violent opposition to change. Bale was certainly wrong in trying to impose King Edward’s second book without legal warrant; but he had gained his point with Browne, and disdained to yield to the inferior clergy. The latter pleaded that they had no books, and quoted the Archbishop against their own diocesan, who says he was ‘always slack in things appertaining to God’s glory.’ Bale’s sincerity is unquestionable, but he had set himself an impossible task, and his violence made him enemies who showed no quarter when their turn came. The most patient of men might have done nothing in such a position, but his reputation would have been better had he shown some Christian moderation. Bedell afterwards fell into the hands of his opponents, but his imprisonment was relieved by expressions of sympathy and admiration from the most unlikely quarters, and he must have felt that he had not worked in vain. Bale could have no such consolation.[389 - Church histories of Mant, Killen, Brennan, and Reid. Graves’s History of St. Canice. They all derive their chief inspiration from Bale’s own ‘Vocation.’ Fuller has preserved the nickname of ‘biliosus Balæus,’ given to the Bishop in contemporary controversy.]

Catholic reaction at Edward’s death

On the first rumour of Edward’s death it became evident that the Bishop of Ossory’s authority was at an end. Oddly enough the priests hastened amid general rejoicing to proclaim Queen Jane. They were eager for change, and probably knew little of the fair saint whose innocent life was sacrificed to the ambition of others. Justice Howth, who had been Bale’s strongest opponent, censured him for not being present at the ceremony; ‘for indeed,’ says the Bishop, ‘I much doubted that matter.’ In order, he adds, to ‘cause the wild people to bear the more hate to our nation,’ the priests also propagated a report that the young Earl of Ormonde and Barnaby Fitzpatrick had been slain in London. The forts were attacked, and many Englishmen killed. Mrs. Matthew King, the clerk of the check’s wife, was robbed ‘to her very petticoat’ on the highway by the Fitzpatricks and Butlers. But rumour and uncertainty were soon at an end, and the priests and people of Kilkenny learned that Catherine of Arragon’s daughter was Queen of England.[390 - Browne and Bale were friars; yet Protestants will not blame them for entering the holy estate of matrimony, any vows to the contrary notwithstanding. To modern England a married clergy seems quite natural, but the scandal was great during the transition period, and Queen Elizabeth felt the awkwardness herself. The following statement of Harpsfield may be true or false, but it shows what could be said by a contemporary. It should be remembered that Harpsfield was Archdeacon of Canterbury. ‘Against these kind of marriages, and maintenance of the same, King Henry, in his latter days, made very sharp laws, whereupon many so married put over their women to their servants and other friends, who kept them at bed and board as their own wives. And after the death of King Henry they received them again (as love money) with usury; that is, the children in the mean season begotten by the said friends, whom they took, called and brought up as their own, as it was well known, as well in other as in Browne, Archbishop of Dublin. It would now pity a man at the heart to hear of the naughty and dissolute life of these yoked priests,’ &c.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE REIGN OF MARY

The succession to the crown

Lawyers and casuists might dispute about the succession. Logically, Mary and Elizabeth could not both be legitimate; but the people of England swept these cobwebs away. Catherine had for twenty-two years borne the title of Queen, and in that great place she was not known to have done anything worthy of blame, but much deserving the highest praise. And then there was the will of Henry VIII. Its execution had perhaps been informal, but the people cared nothing for that; it was his will, and he had been authorised by Parliament to make it. The sick-room fancies of a boy of sixteen were not to be allowed to alter such a settlement.

Mary proclaimed

The struggle for the crown was short, and was little felt at the distance at which Ireland then was, though the Dudley party took care that Queen Jane’s accession should be officially known there. On the thirteenth day after her brother’s death Mary was proclaimed by the Council in London, on the fourteenth the baffled Northumberland renewed the proclamation at Cambridge, on the fifteenth the grand conspirator himself was arrested. On the very day of the Cambridge proclamation the Privy Council wrote to Aylmer, the acting Lord Justice cancelling the former communication, and directing that Mary should be proclaimed ‘Queen of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and on earth supreme head of the churches of England and Ireland.’[391 - Morrin’s Patent Rolls, p. 304.]

St. Leger is Deputy, 1553

Besides twelve Privy Councillors, six individuals connected with Ireland, who happened to be in England, signed these letters – Cusack, the Chancellor; Lord Gormanston; Staples, Bishop of Meath; Thomas Luttrell, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; James Bathe, Chief Baron; and the veteran John Alen. The object probably was to show the men in Dublin that this time at least there was no mistake as to which Queen they were to obey. Cusack, Aylmer, Luttrell, and Bathe were confirmed in their offices with increased emoluments, and no immediate change was made in the general management of Irish affairs. Some disturbances amongst the O’Connors were easily put down, and the citizens of Dublin repulsed a raid of the O’Neills near Dundalk. In the meantime Northumberland had expiated his crimes on the scaffold. Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstall, and others had been restored, and Cranmer, Latimer, and Hooper imprisoned; and there was time to think of the affairs of Ireland. In October, soon after the coronation, St. Leger was appointed Lord Deputy in fulfilment of the late King’s intention. He landed at Dalkey on November 11, and on the 19th took the oath and received the sword in Christ Church.

His instructions

St. Leger’s instructions show the policy which Mary had adopted. As regards temporal affairs it did not greatly differ from that of her father. The Scots in Ulster were not to be molested unless they gave fresh trouble. The army was to be reduced to 500 regular soldiers, of which not more than ten per cent. were to be Irishmen. Extraordinary garrisons were to be discharged at the next general pay day, and if possible induced to go back to England without raising riots. The Lord Deputy might employ kerne and gallowglasses where necessary, and the usual private bands were to be continued; but coyne and livery were to be eschewed as much as possible. St. Leger found it impossible to carry out the reduction of the army lower than 1,100 men, besides kerne. The question as to the desirability of a Presidency for Munster was to be carefully considered in all its bearings. Leix and Offaly being in great measure waste, the Lord Deputy was to grant lands in fee simple at a small quit-rent either to Englishmen or Irishmen, binding them to erect and maintain farm buildings, and to till a certain portion of land. By this means it was hoped that these unfortunate districts would soon be made like the English Pale. Leases for twenty-one years were to be given to Crown tenants generally, including holders of monastic lands. Goodacre had just died, so that there was no difficulty about Armagh, to which, as well as to the Primacy of all Ireland, Dowdall was immediately restored, with the additional grant of the priory of Ards rent free for life. The Mass and the rest of the old religion was to be restored as nearly as possible.[392 - Instructions for Sir A. St. Leger, Oct. 1553; Morrin’s Patent Rolls, pp. 300-304.]

Mary maintains the rights of the Crown

But Mary, though zealous for orthodoxy, had no intention of yielding the rights of the Crown to the Pope, and this was no doubt well understood. One of St. Leger’s earliest duties was to go to Drogheda and place the government of Eastern Ulster in the hands of Eugene Magennis, who specially covenanted not to admit any provisor from Rome. An Irish-born priest named Connor MacCarthy asked Mary for a letter of licence to go to Rome, there to obtain certain benefices from the Pope, fearing lest some should be in the Queen’s gift, ‘and also considering the statute of Premunire.’ Nor was the fear an idle one, for when Tyrone afterwards obtained a Papal bull for the appointment of his chaplain to the restored priory of Down, the Queen sharply reminded him that she intended to maintain the prerogative in that behalf which she had received from her progenitors. MacCarthy was not the only Irish ecclesiastic of the reign who thought it necessary to petition for relief from the consequences of the dreaded statute.[393 - Petition of Connor MacCarthy, 1553. The Queen to Sussex, July 6, 1558. Orders taken at Drogheda, Dec. 6, 1553, in Carew.]

Catholicism restored. Bale refuses to give way

Bale’s religious dramas

In some places the old religion was restored without waiting for any formal order. As soon as Edward’s death was known Justice Howth and Lord Mountgarret, the Earl of Ormonde’s uncle, went to Kilkenny and desired to have the sacrament celebrated in honour of St. Anne. The priest said the Bishop had forbidden celebrations on week days; ‘as indeed I had,’ says Bale, ‘for the abominable idolatry that I had seen therein.’ The learned judge, who seems to have had no commission, then discharged the clergy from obedience to their Bishop, and commanded them to proceed in the old way. On August 20 Mary was proclaimed at Kilkenny with much solemnity. Bale strongly objected to wear cope or mitre, or to have the crozier borne before him; not from any opposition to the Queen’s title, but from dislike to vain ceremonies. Taking a New Testament in his hand, he went to the market-cross followed by a great crowd, to whom he preached from the 13th chapter of Romans, on the reverence due to magistrates. But the clergy of the cathedral, who had no sympathy with the Bishop’s doctrines, provided two disguised priests to carry mitre and crozier before him against his will. The people were amused, instructed, or scandalised, as the case might be, by the representation of a tragedy concerning God’s promises in the old law, and by a comedy of St. John the Baptist. The baptism and temptation of Christ were brought upon the stage, and the young men of the town acted both at the morning and evening performance. Both dramas were written by Bale himself, and in a literary point of view they are far from contemptible. They mark the transition between the mystery plays of the middle ages and the compositions of Shakespeare’s immediate precursors. Personified abstractions as well as historical characters appear on the stage; nor did Bale shrink from a representation which seems impossible to us, for he boldly introduces the first person in the Trinity under the name of Pater Cælestis. Justification by faith is the great doctrine inculcated, and where the author speaks in person he loses no opportunity of attacking the Church of Rome. In an epilogue he exhorts the people to

‘Hear neither Francis, Benedict, nor Bruno,
Albert nor Dominic, for they new rules invent,
Believe neither Pope nor Priest of his consent,
Follow Christ’s gospel,’ &c.

In another play on the instructive story of King John, ‘Ynglond vidua’ says: —

‘Such lubbers as hath disguised heads in their hoods,
Which in idleness do live by other men’s goods,
Monks, chanons, and nones.’

In his other works Bale throughout shows the same spirit. Thus he calls that very questionable hero, Sir John Oldcastle, ‘a blessed martyr not canonised by the Pope, but in the precious blood of his Lord Jesus Christ.’ St. Paul is the great object of Bale’s admiration, and he seems to have thought that he was like him. The points of resemblance are similar to those which Captain Fluelen discovered between himself and Alexander the Great. Thus, Paul was tossed up and down between Candia and Melita, Bale between Milford and Waterford. There was a river in Monmouth and a river in Macedon, and there were salmon in both.[394 - Bale’s select works, Parker Society; King Johan, a play, ed. J. Payne Collier, Camden Society; ‘God’s promises in all ages of the old law,’ in Dodsley’s Old Plays, vol. i.; a brief comedy or interlude of John Baptist in Harl. Misc. vol. i.]

Opposition to Bale in his diocese

Sir Richard Howth, Treasurer of St. Canice’s, and his friend Sir James Joys, were among Bale’s most energetic opponents. To annoy him they suggested solemn exequies and prayers for the soul of Edward VI. The Bishop argued that it would be better to wait for orders from Dublin. The ceremony had already once been postponed to see the devil dance at Thomastown – a Sunday amusement which the mob perhaps preferred to the Bishop’s plays. Bale found another enemy in one whom he calls Bishop of Galway, and who was probably John Moore, Bishop of Enaghdune, the ancient diocese in which Galway stands. This Moore was commissioned, along with other prelates not acknowledged in the Roman succession, to consecrate Patrick Walsh Bishop of Waterford. He was no credit to the Reformation, for Bale represents him as spending his nights in drinking and his days in confirming children at twopence a head. A gallowglass brought a dog in a sheet with twopence hanging round his neck to be confirmed with his neighbours’ children; in this, says Bale, ‘noting this beastly Bishop more fit to confirm dogs than Christian men’s children.’ The soldier may have regarded him as a schismatic, but it is not easy to understand how such a man can have attained episcopal orders.[395 - Bale’s Vocation; Cotton’s Fasti, vol. i. p. 123.]

He is forced to fly

Ten days after the proclamation of Mary there was a general revolt against Bale, incited by Howth, whose position in legal circles gave him ample means of knowing how the wind blew at Court, but who was rather horrified at the length to which the clergy and their adherents went. In Bale’s absence they rang the bells of St. Canice’s and of all the other churches, flinging their caps to the battlements of the cathedral with shouts of laughter, but doing no actual violence. A little later the mob was not so good-humoured. The Fitzpatrick and Butler kerne, and especially the ‘furious family of Mountgarret,’ annoyed Bale in many ways. Barnaby Bolger, an enterprising tradesmen who had formerly aroused great indignation by forestalling Kilkenny market, and whose young daughter was married to ‘Grace Graceless,’ an adherent of the Fitzpatricks, headed a tumultuous attack on the Bishop’s house outside the town. He and his friend Mr. Cooper, the parson of Callan, were robbed of all their horses, and thus deprived of the means of escape. Five of Bale’s servants, one of them a girl of sixteen, were caught haymaking, and all murdered. He managed to close the portcullis and defend himself until rescued by Robert Shee, the sovereign of Kilkenny, ‘a man sober, wise, and godly, which is a rare thing in this land.’ Shee, who could command the services of 100 horse and 300 foot, sent Bale by night to Dublin, and no doubt he thought of St. Paul’s journey under somewhat similar circumstances. But there was no safety in the Irish capital, and the Bishop escaped by sea in a sailor’s dress. He was captured at St. Ives and brought before the justices, but was released when nothing was found to connect him with Wyatt’s or any other plot. He was again captured by pirates and had to pay a ransom, but ultimately succeeded in reaching Holland. For five years he lived at Basel, where he continued to write with an acrimony which had not been lessened by his recent troubles. When Elizabeth became Queen, Bale made no attempt to regain his bishopric. At sixty-three he was disinclined to face the Kilkenny people again, or perhaps he had learned that he was unfit to govern men. He became a prebendary of Canterbury, and devoted his remaining years to literature. His hurried flight from Ireland had forced him to leave books and manuscripts behind, and the Queen ordered them to be sent over to him. ‘He had,’ she said, ‘been studious in the search of the history and antiquities of this our realm,’ and might probably do something for their illustration. Whether Bale ever got back his library or not, he was certainly not silenced for want of materials; for the extent and variety of his learning were considered most remarkable.[396 - Bale’s Vocation; Ware’s Annals. Queen Elizabeth to the two St. Legers, calendared under 1559 (No. 85). Dr. Reid printed the following contemporary epigram: —‘Plurima Lutherus patefecit, Platina multa,Quædam Vergerius, cuncta Balæus habet.’]

Wyatt’s rebellion. Croft, Cheeke, and Carew, 1554

The abortive insurrection of Wyatt had the usual effect of setting Mary more firmly on the throne, and at the same time of exasperating her against some whom she might have been willing to spare. Sir James Croft, the late Lord Deputy, was arrested before he had time to raise his tenants in Herefordshire: he was convicted, but afterwards pardoned. Sir Peter Carew, who afterwards played an important part in Irish affairs, was also accused of complicity, and thought it prudent to go abroad, where his companion was no less a personage than Sir John Cheeke. Venturing to Brussels, where Paget was ambassador, they were led to suppose that there was no danger, but that crafty diplomatist had them kidnapped near Antwerp, and carried to England in a fishing boat. Their captors were the Flemish and Spanish officials; and Philip, while expressing becoming indignation at the breach of hospitality, took care not to hear of it until the prisoners were safe beyond seas. The passage can hardly have been pleasant, for they were blindfolded and chained, one at each end of the boat. Poor Sir John Cheeke, who afterwards showed his unfitness for the crown of martyrdom, and who perhaps saw a vision of the stake, did not conceal his misery. ‘Although very well learned, but not acquainted with the cross of troubles, he was still in great despair, great anguish, and heaviness, and would not be comforted, so great was his sorrow; but Sir Peter Carew, whose heart could not be broken nor mind overthrown with any adversities, and yielding to no such matter, comforted the other, and encouraged him to be of a good stomach, persuading him (as though he had been a divine) to patience and good contentation.’ The man of action, as is not seldom the case, showed that he had more philosophy than the philosopher. Sir Peter, whose guilt, if he was guilty, was much less clear than that of Croft, was pardoned by the Queen, and afterwards served her well at St. Quentin. Sir John Cheeke lived to undergo a worse humiliation than that of Cranmer, to be made an instrument in the persecution of those with whom he secretly agreed, to suffer in the few months which his pusillanimity had gained him a thousand martyrdoms of grief and shame, and then to die heart-broken and dishonoured. Sir Nicholas Arnold, afterwards employed by Elizabeth in Ireland, was another of the conspirators. Lady Jane, the innocent victim of so many intrigues, laid her beautiful neck upon the block, and fivescore Kentishmen suffered death for their zeal to the Reformation or their hatred of Spanish influence. Gerald of Kildare and the young Earl of Ormonde both served with distinction against Wyatt, and the orthodox Queen rewarded both with goodly grants of abbey lands. Ormonde had been captain of one of the bands of Whitecoats sent by the city into Kent, where many of his men deserted to the insurgents.[397 - Hook’s Life of Pole, vol. iii. p. 359, note; Machyn’s Diary, Jan. 27, 1554; Life of Sir Peter Carew, ed. by Macleane, and also printed in Carew, vol. i.]

The primacy is restored to Dowdall