Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3)

Progress of Docwra in Ulster

The absence both of Tyrone and of Hugh Roe O’Donnell in Munster left a comparatively clear field to Sir Henry Docwra; ‘the country void, and no powerful enemy to encounter withal, more than the rivers.’ Castle Derg and Newtown (Stewart), both lately garrisoned, had since been betrayed by Tirlogh Magnylson, a follower of Sir Arthur O’Neill, who had become a favourite with the English officers. Tirlogh first curried favour with Captain Atkinson at Newtown by helping him to seize some cattle. Having dined with this officer, he persuaded him to take a walk outside the castle. Three or four confederates suddenly appeared, who made the captain prisoner, while others got possession of the courtyard and of the hall-door. The soldiers ‘lying in the Irish thatched house’ were all killed. Captain Dutton lost Castle Derg by a similar stratagem. But in the absence of the great chiefs Docwra was clearly the strongest man: O’Cahan’s country was harried to punish his perfidy, and even women and children were killed. Donegal was victualled, and Ballyshannon, ‘that long desired place,’ taken and garrisoned. Tirlogh Magnylson’s turn soon came. Countrymen in Docwra’s pay pursued him from place to place, and his followers were killed one by one without knowing their pursuers; those who were taken, says Sir Henry, ‘I caused the soldiers to hew in pieces with their swords.’ The hunted man travelled about the woods at night, sometimes occupying three or four cabins successively, and lighting fires to attract attention where he did not intend to stay. A boy was set to watch, and at last the poor wretch was seen to take off his trousers and lie down. Four men, says Docwra, ‘with swords, targets, and morions, fell in upon him; he gat up his sword for all that, and gave such a gash in one of their targets as would seem incredible to be done with the arm of a man, but they dispacht him and brought me his head the next day, which was presently known to every boy in the army, and made a ludibrious spectacle to such as listed to behold it.’ Captain Dutton’s betrayers had better luck. They had killed no one, and were twice spared by Docwra, after swearing ‘with the most profound execrations upon themselves, if they continued not true.’ They broke out, nevertheless, and the ringleaders kept the woods till Tyrone’s submission, when they were pardoned by Mountjoy’s express command.[411 - Docwra’s Narration, 1602 till April 20. Docwra to the Privy Council, March 11.]

Mountjoy breaks up the O’Neill throne

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1602 Docwra and Chichester continued steadily to reduce small strongholds, to drive cattle, and to make a famine certain should Tyrone hold out till the spring. In August Mountjoy again went northwards and planted a garrison at Augher. At Tullaghogue, says Moryson, ‘where the O’Neills were of old custom created, he spent some five days, and there he spoiled the corn of all the country, and Tyrone’s own corn, and brake down the chair where the O’Neills were wont to be created, being of stone, planted in the open field.’ But he could not get within twelve miles of the rebel Earl himself, who had retreated into thick woods at the lower end of Lough Erne, and who endeavoured to keep his friends together by letters in which he urged them to make no separate terms for themselves; ‘if you do otherwise,’ he said, ‘stand to the hazard yourselves, for you shall not have my consent thereunto.’ One transient gleam of success rewarded Rory O’Donnell and O’Connor Sligo. In an attempt to force the passage of the Curlews from the Roscommon side a panic seized the English soldiers, who may have remembered the fate of Sir Conyers Clifford, and they fled in confusion to Boyle, but without any great loss.[412 - Docwra’s Narration, June to September; Tyrone to O’Connor Sligo in Moryson, book iii. chap. ii.; Mountjoy to Lambert, Sept. 12; Lord Dunkellin and Sir A. Savage to Mountjoy, Aug. 7; Mountjoy to Cecil, Oct. 12.]

Last struggle in Munster

It was in Munster that hopes of Spanish succour were strongest; but Carew was able to send troops and supplies to help Mountjoy, and at the same time to finish his own work. Sir Cormac MacDermot, the chief of Muskerry, whose intriguing nature was well known to Carew, was found to have received 800 ducats from Bishop Owen MacEgan, and to have placed Blarney Castle at the disposal of the Spaniards. Captain Roger Harvey was sent, on pretence of hunting the buck, to call at the castle and ask for wine and usquebaugh, ‘whereof Irish gentlemen are seldom disfurnished,’ and if possible to get possession of the place. But the warders were on their guard, and Harvey could not even get into the courtyard. Sir Cormac himself was at Cork, not having dared to refuse attendance at the assizes, and his wife and children were also secured. Finding himself in the lion’s mouth, he ordered his people to surrender Blarney, while he made preparations for his own escape. After dark on the evening of Michaelmas-day he got out of the window in his shirt, several gentlemen being outside to receive him. A passing Englishwoman raised the alarm, but the runaway was befriended by town and country and got safe away over the walls, only to find that he could do nothing. His castle of Kilcrea had already surrendered, and Macroom was taken, owing to an accidental fire which arose while the warders were singeing a pig. No Spaniards were visible, and Tyrrell, who had eaten up Bere and Bantry, proposed to quarter his men in Muskerry. At last, towards the end of October, Sir Cormac came to Carew, and sued for mercy on his knees. A protection was granted to him, for he was helpless without his castles, his eldest son was at Oxford well watched, and Tyrrell had destroyed his corn. Raleigh advised Elizabeth not to pardon him, his country being worth her while to keep, and its situation being such as to leave him always at her mercy. Orders were accordingly given that his pardon should be withheld, at least until he had provided an estate for his cousin Teig MacCormac, who had first revealed his intrigues with the Spaniards.[413 - Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chaps. xii. and xiv.; Cecil to Carew, Oct. and Nov. 4; Privy Council to Carew, Dec. 16 – all in Carew.]

Remarkable retreat of O’Sullivan Bere

Passage of the Shannon

A disinterested guide

O’Sullivan Bere still maintained himself in Glengariffe, but his position had become hopeless. In December Tyrrell gave up the contest and marched eighty miles without a halt from near Castleisland into the King’s County, ‘leaving all his carriages and impediments, as they tired, scattered to hazard.’ Wilmot then attacked O’Sullivan’s position, and succeeded, after six hours’ sharp fighting, in driving off 2,000 cows, 4,000 sheep, and 1,000 hackneys. Sir John Shamrock’s son, William Burke, refused to stay a moment longer, cursing himself for lingering in Munster and losing his brave followers. O’Sullivan was thus forced to fly, and on the night of the 3rd of January he slipped away, with all his family and retinue. When Wilmot came to his late camping-ground he found only sick and wounded men, ‘whose pains and lives by the soldiers were both determined.’ The fugitives had a sharp skirmish with Lord Barry near Liscarroll, but reached the Shannon at Portland on the ninth day, fighting all the way and not venturing to turn aside after cattle, although often very hungry. Finding no boats, they killed twelve horses, and Dermot O’Driscoll, who was used to the canoes or curraghs of the west-coast fishermen, constructed one with osiers, twenty-six feet long, six feet wide, five feet deep, and capable of holding thirty men. Eleven horseskins were used to cover this ark, and the twelfth was devoted to a round vessel planned by Daniel O’Malley and intended to carry ten men. The O’Malleys were more given to the sea than even the O’Driscolls, but the round ferry-boat sank, while the long one answered its purpose. Ormonde’s sheriff of Tipperary failed to prevent O’Sullivan from crossing the great river, and he reached Aughrim on the eleventh day from Glengariffe. Sir Thomas Burke, Clanricarde’s brother, who had the help of some English soldiers, attacked him here with a superior force, but was worsted with loss after a hard fight, and O’Kelly’s country was passed on the same day. On the borders of Galway and Roscommon MacDavid Burke showed the will, but not the power, to stop the fugitives, who eluded pursuit by leaving great fires in the woods near Castlereagh. They suffered horribly from snow and rain, their shoes were worn out, and their last horses furnished a scanty meal. O’Connor Kerry’s feet were a mass of sores, and he reproached those members for their cowardice, which was likely to imperil his head and his whole body. He struggled on with the rest, and in a wood near Boyle, heaven, as the pious historian believed, provided them with a guide. A barefooted man, in a linen garment and with a white headdress, and carrying an iron-shod staff in his hand, came to meet them. His appearance was such as to strike terror, but he told O’Sullivan that he had heard of his glorious victory at Aughrim, and was ready to lead him safely into O’Rourke’s country. O’Sullivan, who was perhaps less credulous than his kinsman, secured the stranger’s fidelity with 200 ducats, which he magnanimously accepted, ‘not as a reward, but as a sign of a grateful mind.’ He lead them by stony ways to Knockvicar near Boyle, where they bought food and dried themselves at fires. The blood upon O’Connor’s blisters hardened with the heat, and he had to be carried by four men until they found a lean and blind old horse, on whose sharp backbone the sufferer was rather balanced than laid. The Curlews were safely passed, and at daybreak on the sixteenth day of their pilgrimage O’Rourke’s castle of Leitrim was in sight. Of over a thousand persons who started from Glengariffe, but eighteen soldiers, sixteen horseboys, and one woman reached the house of refuge. A few more afterwards straggled in, but the great bulk had died of wounds and exposure, or had strayed away from their leaders. ‘I wonder,’ says the historian, ‘how my father, Dermot O’Sullivan, who was nearly seventy, or how any woman, was able to sustain labours which proved too much for the most muscular young men.’ The distance traversed was about 175 miles as the crow flies.[414 - O’Sullivan Bere, Hist. Cath. tom. iii. lib. vii. chaps. viii. to xii. The Four Masters describe this wonderful march to Aughrim, and are perhaps preferable as far as they go. See also Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. xvii. The itinerary is as follows, as near as I can make it out: – 1. (Jan. 4) Ballyvourney; 2. Pobble O’Keefe (near Millstreet); 3. Ardpatrick (in Limerick); 4. Solloghead (near Limerick Junction); 5 and 6. Ballinakill (in Tipperary); 7. Latteragh (eight miles south of Nenagh); 8. Loughkeen; 9 and 10. Portland; 11. Aughrim (in Galway); 12. Ballinlough (in Roscommon); 13 and 14. Woods near Boyle; 15. Knockvicar; 16. Leitrim. The dates are made clear by Carew’s letter to the Privy Council, Jan. 22, 1603, in Carew.]

Rory O’Donnell submits

Tyrone sues for mercy

Like many chief governors before him, Mountjoy contemplated spending much time at Athlone, and the Queen approved of this. He went there in November 1602, and both Rory O’Donnell and O’Connor Sligo came to him there before Christmas. Rory called to mind the hereditary loyalty of his family since Henry VIII.’s days, adding that he himself had agreed with Sir Conyers Clifford to serve against his brother Hugh, and had been put in irons by him. O’Connor claimed to have brought in Rory, and to have suffered likewise for his fidelity to Clifford. His legs, he said, had never healed properly, being ‘almost rotted’ with the irons. Tyrone lurked in Glenconkein in very wretched case, whence he wrote in most humble terms, and, as he said, with a most penitent heart. Mountjoy had sent back his last letter because it contained no absolute submission. ‘I know the Queen’s merciful nature,’ he now said, ‘though I am not worthy to crave for mercy… Without standing on any terms or conditions, I do hereby both simply and absolutely submit myself to her Majesty’s mercy.’ Sir Christopher St. Laurence conducted some negotiations on his own account, but the Lord Deputy earnestly repudiated any knowledge of these, and continued almost to the end to say that he might possibly intercede with the Queen, but would do nothing more. Elizabeth’s instinct told her that Tyrone was no longer formidable unless she set him up again, and this it is most probable she would have never done. A month after the letter last quoted, and barely two months before the Queen’s death, Mountjoy talked of hunting the arch-traitor into the sea. He and Carew were together at Galway soon after Christmas, and it was agreed that the latter should go to England. Both of them wished to get away, but the Queen would not hear of the Deputy quitting his post, nor would she let the President go without his superior’s leave; and Cecil cleverly contrived that the suggestion should seem to come from Mountjoy himself. Never, we are told, was ‘a virgin bride, after a lingering and desperate love, more longing for the celebration of her nuptial’ than was Carew to go to England; but he returned to Munster and made things quite safe there before he started. Now that Tyrrell and O’Sullivan were gone, he ventured to send to Athlone 500 men out of 700, which were all he had available after providing for the garrisons and making allowances for the sick and missing. He feared that O’Sullivan might return, but of this there was no real danger. The war was now confined to a corner of Ulster, and if Elizabeth had lived the fate of Tyrone might have been like that of Desmond. To run him down was, however, a matter of extreme difficulty, and he seems to have thought that he could get out of Ireland if the worst came to the worst.[415 - Tyrone to Mountjoy, Dec. 12/22, 1602, and March 19/29, 1603; Moryson, book iii. chap. i.; Pacata Hibernia, book iii. chap. xx.; Carew to the Privy Council, Jan. 22, in Carew, and Cecil’s letter to Carew, passim; O’Connor Sligo to Cecil, March 1, 1603.]

Tyrone driven into a corner

While Mountjoy was conferring with Carew at Galway, Docwra and Chichester were pressing Tyrone hard. He was confined to about 200 square miles of glens and woods in the south-eastern part of Londonderry and the easternmost corner of Tyrone, and his fighting men scarcely exceeded 50. His numerous cattle were on the inaccessible heights of Slieve Gallion, and he himself had several resting-places surrounded with felled trees and protected by streams which were only fordable in dry weather. Docwra came to Dungannon with 450 English foot and 50 horse, and with 200 O’Cahan and 100 O’Dogherty kerne. Chichester had a fortified post at Toom, where the Bann leaves Lough Neagh, and he gathered there all the forces that the Ulster garrison could spare. Letters between the two leaders for the most part miscarried, and it was found quite impossible to converge upon Tyrone. From the very entrance of the woods the O’Cahans ran away to their own country, and the O’Dogherties pronounced the travelling impossible. The men sickened fast; one guide went off to Tyrone and was followed by another, who first contrived that cattle coming to Docwra’s relief should be stolen. Chichester penetrated farther into the woods, and fought two skirmishes without doing much harm to his light-footed adversary. Docwra returned to Derry two or three days after Christmas, and Chichester also abandoned the enterprise. The country about Toom was eaten as bare as an English common, and things were rather worse at Derry, which was quite out of the course of trade, and equally deprived of local supplies. It was no better in the Pale, and the whole army, now reduced to a nominal 13,000, depended entirely upon victuals sent from England. Even Dublin feared famine, and everyone was so worn out that it was difficult to get any service done.[416 - Docwra’s Narration, December; Bodley’s visit to Lecale in vol. ii. of Ulster Arch. Journal; Capt. Thomas Phillips to Cecil, July 27, 1602; Mayor and Sheriffs of Dublin to Cecil, Jan. 17, 1603; Mountjoy to Cecil, Jan. 8 and 20; Docwra to the Privy Council, Feb. 23.]

Famine

The confusion in the currency crippled trade and caused distress in the towns. But the winter war had worked a far greater mischief among the poor rebels in the country. Mountjoy had clearly foreseen a famine, had done his best to bring it about, and had completely succeeded. Multitudes lay dead in the ditches of towns and other waste places, ‘with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above ground.’ Sir Arthur Chichester saw children eating their mother’s corpse. Captain Trevor found that certain old women lit fires in the woods, and ate the children who came to warm themselves. Rebels received to mercy killed troop-horses by running needles into their throats, and then fought over the remains. Not only were horses eaten, but cats and dogs, hawks, kites, and other carrion birds. The very wolves were driven by starvation from the woods, and killed the enfeebled people. The dead lay unburied, or half-buried, for the survivors had not strength to dig deep, and dogs ate the mouldering remains. Some fled to France or Spain, but they were few compared to those who perished at home.[417 - Moryson, part iii. book iii. chaps. i. and v.; O’Sullivan, tom. iii. lib. viii. cap. 6; Four Masters, 1603. In describing his visit to Lecale at the beginning of 1603, Bodley casually remarks that the Irish soldiers ate grass —vescuntur gramine. Moryson says the wild Irish ‘willingly eat the herb shamrock, being of a sharp taste, which as they run and are chased to and fro, they snatch like beasts out of the ditches.’ This passage is conclusive proof that the wood-sorrel was called shamrock in the sixteenth century; see above, note to chap. xxxix. Modern claimants to the title of shamrock are the white clover, the common trefoil (medicago lupulina), and the bog-bean (menyanthes trifoliata); but none of these are edible by men.]

Tyrone and James VI

Elizabeth and James VI

Had Tyrone escaped from Ireland he would have gone to Scotland, or perhaps only to the Scotch islands. In 1597 he had offered his services to James, complaining of hard treatment at the hands of Deputies, and apologising for not having paid his respects sooner. While accepting these overtures and declaring himself ready to befriend him in all his ‘honest and lawful affairs,’ the King, with characteristic caution, noted that the time had not come. ‘When,’ he wrote, ‘it shall please God to call our sister, the Queen of England, by death, we will see no less than your promptitude and readiness upon our advertisement to do us service.’ Tyrone took care to be on good terms with the sons of Sorley Boy MacDonnell, to one of which, Randal, created Earl of Antrim in the next reign, he afterwards gave his daughter. A channel of communication with Scotland was thus always open, and it was certainly used on both sides. Early in 1600 Tyrone thanked James for his goodwill, and assured him that Docwra’s expedition was intended to end in the writer’s extermination. This letter came into Cecil’s hands, and no doubt he was constantly well-informed. He had a Scotch spy, one Thomas Douglas, who also acted as a messenger between James, Tyrone, and the MacDonnells, and who carried a letter from the Duke of Lennox to Ireland early in 1601. This did not prevent James from offering to help Elizabeth with Highlanders against Tyrone in the same year. The Queen thanked him heartily, but remarked that ‘the rebels had done their worst already.’ It is plain that she saw through her good brother like glass. ‘Remember,’ she once wrote to him, ‘that who seeketh two strings to one bow, may shoot strong but never straight; if you suppose that princes’ causes be vailed so covertly that no intelligence may bewray them, deceive not yourself; we old foxes can find shifts to save ourselves by others’ malice, and come by knowledge of greatest secret, specially if it touch our freehold.’[418 - Queen Elizabeth to King James VI., June or July, 1585, in Bruce’s Letters of those two sovereigns, also Dec. 2, Feb. 3, 1601-2, and ‘after July,’ 1602; James VI. to Tyrone, Aug. 10, 1597, in Lansdowne MSS.; Tyrone to James VI., April 10, 1600, in Scotch Calendar; and the letters printed in Ulster Arch. Journal, vol. v. pp. 205-8.]

The question of toleration

Tyrone had made an unconditional submission, so far as it was possible to make it by letter; but the Queen was very unwilling to pardon him or to grant him anything more than bare life. At the same time there was a disposition to press the matter of religious uniformity, and to revive the Ecclesiastical Commission which had long lain dormant. Vice-Treasurer Carey was not content with the mischief done by the new coin, but must needs recommend a sharper way with recusants as a means of pacifying the country, and perhaps of filling official pockets. Mountjoy, whose great object was to end the war and get home, in effect told Carey that Satan was finding mischief for his idle hands in Dublin, while the army was half-starved, and the Lord Deputy himself likely to be reduced to salt ling. ‘If,’ he wrote from Trim, ‘you did but walk up and down in the cold with us, you would not be so warm in your religion.’ Mountjoy had his way on this point, and nothing was done to frighten the Irish unnecessarily, or to drive the towns into Spanish alliances. He reminded Cecil that Philip II. had lost the Netherlands by bringing in the Inquisition, and that the States, who at one time held nearly all the provinces, had lost many of them by pressing the matter of religion too hotly. All religions, he said, grew by persecution, but good doctrines and example would work in time. In the meanwhile he advised discreet handling as the only means of avoiding a new war, of which, he said, ‘many would be glad, but God deliver us from it.’[419 - Mountjoy to Cecil, Jan. 20, 1603; to Vice-Treasurer Carey, Jan. 25; Lord Deputy and Council to the Privy Council, Feb. 26 (draft in Carew).]

Death of Queen Elizabeth

At the beginning of March, Mountjoy received two letters from the Queen, written on February 6 and 17, and another from Cecil, written on the 18th. In the first of these despatches, which were all delivered together, Elizabeth told her Deputy to send for Tyrone on promise of life only, and to detain him; in the second she authorised him to offer life, liberty, and pardon; and in the third, speaking through Cecil, she rather enlarged his powers, while laying some stress on altering the title of Tyrone, on reducing the size of his country, and on forcing him to keep the roads into it always open. There was no difficulty about the last covenant, for the felling of a few trees would always nullify it; but Mountjoy pointed out that O’Neill, and not Tyrone, was the dangerous word, and that it was great gain to have an earl by any name instead of a chieftain by that one. As to curtailing the repentant rebel’s land, he thought that obedience would be more probable from one who would lose rather than gain by change. The great Queen was no more when the letter containing this reasoning was sent, so that we cannot tell whether she would have agreed to it or not. On the very day of her death, commission was given to Sir William Godolphin and Sir Garret Moore to treat with Tyrone, and he and his adherents were protected for three weeks. Elizabeth died on March 24, and Mountjoy knew this on the 27th; but his secretary, the historian Moryson, had the address to prevent the news from being publicly known before April 5, and in the meantime Tyrone had made his submission.[420 - Cecil to Mountjoy, Feb. 18, 1603, in Carew; Moryson, book iii. chap. ii.]

Submission of Tyrone

To save time under the extraordinary circumstances in which he was placed, Mountjoy sent Godolphin to tell Tyrone that the least hesitation would probably be fatal to him, and that his former delays had much incensed the Queen. Godolphin was not in the secret, but he felt that it was no time for ceremony, and in the belief that confidence would beget confidence he rode several miles beyond Dungannon to meet Tyrone, who readily accompanied him to the fort at Charlemont. Next day the commissioners brought their prize early to Mellifont, where Mountjoy lodged. There, says the secretary, who was present, ‘Tyrone being admitted to the Lord Deputy’s chamber, kneeled at the door humbly on his knees for a long space, making his penitent submission to Her Majesty, and after being required to come nearer to the Lord Deputy, performed the same ceremony in all humbleness, the space of one hour or thereabouts.’ He had ever preferred the substance to the shadow, and his formal humility stood him in good stead. The written submission was equally complete, and contained not one word about liberty of conscience or in favour of that Church as whose champion the Pope had sent him a crown. He renounced all dependence upon foreign principles, and especially upon Spain, abjured the name of O’Neill, abandoned all his claims over the lands of neighbouring chiefs, and agreed to accept such estates only as the Queen should grant him by patent. He promised to disclose all he knew about dealings with Spain, to bring his son back from thence if possible, and, in short, to do everything that might become a faithful subject of the English crown. Mountjoy in return promised a royal pardon, and a patent for nearly all the lands which he held before his rebellion. 300 acres were reserved for the fort of Mountjoy and 300 for Charlemont, and Ulster was to submit to a composition as Connaught had done. On April 4, Tyrone reached Dublin with the viceregal party, and on the 5th, Sir Henry Danvers arrived from England with official tidings of the great change. King James was at once proclaimed, and the people shouted for joy; but Tyrone, on whom all eyes were fixed, shed abundant tears, and he was fain to hint at grief for the loss of the mistress whom he had been fighting for the last ten years. ‘There needed,’ says the observant secretary, ‘no [OE]dipus to find out the true cause of his tears; for, no doubt the most humble submission he made to the Queen he had so highly and proudly offended, much eclipsed the vain glory his actions might have carried if he had held out till her death; besides that by his coming in, as it were, between two reigns, he lost a fair advantage, for (by England’s estate for the present unsettled) to have subsisted longer in rebellion (if he had any such end) or at least an ample occasion of fastening great merit on the new King, if at first and of free will he had submitted to his mercy.’[421 - Moryson, book iii. chap. ii.]

The conquest of Ireland Queen Elizabeth’s work

During the last four years and a half of the Queen’s reign, it was computed that the Irish war had cost her about 1,200,000l., and this was an enormous demand upon the slender revenue of those days. The drain upon the life-blood of England was also terrible. Droves of recruits were forced annually into the ranks, to perish among the bogs and woods, while the most distinguished officers did not escape. The three Norrises, Clifford, Burgh, Bagenal, and Bingham died in Ireland, while Essex and Spenser were indirectly victims of the war there. The price was high, but it secured the conquest of Ireland. Lawyers in the next reign might ascribe the glory to James; but the hard work was all done ready to his hand, and it would not have been done at all had it been left to him. It was by Elizabeth that the power of the chiefs was broken, and until that was done neither peaceable circuits nor commercial colonies were possible in Ireland. The method pursued was cruel, but the desired end was attained. It is easy to find fault; but none who love the greatness of England will withhold their admiration from the lonely woman who repelled all attacks upon her realm, who broke the power of Spain, and who, though surrounded by conspirators and assassins, believed that she had a mission to accomplish, and in that faith held her proud neck unbent to the last.

CHAPTER LIII.

ELIZABETHAN IRELAND

Natural features of Ireland

The physical features of a country must always have great influence on its history. Plains naturally submit to strong and centralised government, while mountains tend to isolation and to the development of local liberties. Where races have warred for the possession of a country, the weaker has been often driven into some mountainous corner, which the conquerors have been contented to bridle by castles or fortified towns. But where mountains or other natural strongholds are scattered over the face of the land, the conditions of conquest are different. It has been noted that while no country is more easily overrun than Spain, none is more difficult to occupy permanently. And this was the case of Ireland. As long as the Anglo-Norman settlement retained its vigour, the natives were driven into the less fertile districts, while fortresses protected the good land. But as the policy of the Plantagenet kings gradually weakened the colony, the castles were deserted and the native race resumed possession of the soil. Feudal law sought the protection of walled towns, which were of Danish or Anglo-Norman origin; and those nobles who retained their power did so only upon condition of more or less perfectly assimilating themselves to Irish chiefs. When the Tudor reconquest began, it was seen that two courses were open to the Crown. Englishmen were encouraged to settle, and a system of garrisons was gradually established. Sometimes the prevailing idea was to substitute English for Irish proprietors; at other times it was thought better to conciliate the native chiefs, while taking such military precautions as might prevent them from preying upon the settlers. During the whole of the sixteenth century statesmen did what they could to persuade the Irish chiefs to hold of the Crown, and thus to become liable to forfeiture.

Want of communications

Irish strongholds

Ireland has long been covered with a network of good roads, but a glance at any tolerable map will show how difficult it was to occupy before the roads were made. In clear weather mountains are always visible, both to the crew of a circumnavigating ship and to the sportsman who seeks snipe or waterfowl in the central bogs. It is said that when the ordnance survey was made, fires lit upon the Galties in Tipperary were answered by fires on a mountain in Cavan; and the great range of Slieve Bloom must be passed between those two points. Nor was it with mountains only that Elizabethan generals had to deal. Lord Grey is said to have introduced the first coach, but Ireland had no tolerable roads for long after his time. There were a few stone causeways, but great part of the island was covered with natural woods, and these could be crossed only by passes which the chiefs periodically agreed to cut both for troops and for peaceful travellers. When war broke out – and the doors of Janus were seldom shut for long – these rudimentary roads were easily closed. A few trees were felled, so as to prevent horse from passing at all. The branches of others were partially cut and skilfully interlaced, so that even infantry, while they struggled through the barrier, were exposed to the fire of an unseen enemy. Bridges were but few, and holes dug in the beds of rivers made the fords impassable, or at least very dangerous. When the Irish were hard pressed, they could retire to dry spots surrounded by bogs, and nearly every little lake contained a crannoge, where some oats had been stored, and which might be held until the assailants had exhausted their provisions. The little active cattle accompanied their light-footed masters, while the soldiers, whose clothes were seldom dry, perished miserably of dysentery and marsh-fever. In the absence of field artillery, very rude earthworks might be long held, and in any case they could be easily abandoned, while Tyrone made it a point of not defending castles, which experience had shown to be untenable against cannon. Garrisons, and garrisons only, could starve out the guerillas, and it was by their multiplication and maintenance that Mountjoy was enabled to accomplish Elizabeth’s lifelong task.

Natural defences. Ulster

Connaught

Leinster

Munster

Ulster is, on the whole, very hilly, and it is easy to see how strong it must have been when the woods were still uncut, when there were practically no roads, and when drainage had not yet been thought of. The most inaccessible forest was that of Glenconkein, about Draperstown in Londonderry; but the whole province was a stronghold, and a mere enumeration of woods and bogs would be useless. Connaught also is a land of mountains and bogs, and was once a land of woods. It was about the Curlews that the hardest fighting took place, and the northern part of Leitrim was very difficult to attack. In Leinster Glenmalure was famous for a great disaster to the English arms, and was the chief stronghold of Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne. The oak wood of Shillelagh in Wicklow was a noted fastness, and, from having given its name to a rustic weapon, it is of all the best remembered. Both King’s and Queen’s Counties were full of woods and lurking places, the great bog called the Togher, near Maryborough, being one of the most important. The Slievemargy range between Monasterevan and Carlow was the frequent resort of Rory Oge O’More and of his son Owen MacRory, and the O’Byrnes were not very far off. Wexford had many bogs and woods; but the Kavanaghs and other turbulent clans were scarcely formidable towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, except during the general collapse of authority which followed the disaster of 1598. In Munster what was generally called the ‘great wood’ lay to the north of Mallow. Glengariffe was another great Cork stronghold, and Limerick was full of forests. In Kerry, besides Glanageenty, where Desmond was killed, there was Glenflesk near Killarney, and indeed the whole county is evidently suited for guerilla warfare. Sir Nicholas Browne reported, in 1597, that Iraghticonnor, the country of O’Connor Kerry, was wedged in between his deadly enemies, Lord Fitzmaurice and the Knight of Glin: ‘his country is but small, and he is not able to make above seven score men, but by reason of his woods and bogs he was wont to hold his own in spite of them both.’ But of all the Munster strongholds none was so famous as the glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. ‘Who knows not Arlo-hill?’ says Spenser, applying the name of the vale to the lofty peak of Galtymore which overshadows it. The poet had much to tell of a mythical golden age in those wilds, but a curse had come upon them, and in his time, he says:

‘those woods, and all that goodly chase,
Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound;
Which too, too true that land’s indwellers since have found.’

Inseparably connected as it is with his memory, that glen of Aherlow caused Spenser’s ruin; for from it Owen MacRory and Tyrrell issued forth to destroy the undertakers and all their works.

Field sports

Hawks

Hounds

Horses

Game

Fighting in Ireland was the serious business of life, but soldiers, officials, and settlers found some time for amusement also. Irish hawks, hounds, and horses were all thought worthy to be sent as presents to great men in England; and hawks were often made the subject of treaties with Irish chiefs. Falconry no doubt was practised in Ireland, but we hear much more of hunting, and the game was plentiful. Irish wolf-hounds were famous, and were considered handsome presents; the Great Mogul, Jehangir, being glad to accept some in 1615. Perrott sent a brace, one black and the other white, to Walsingham. ‘This great white dog,’ said Sir S. Bagenal when sending one to Cecil, ‘is the most furious beast that ever I saw.’ These hounds were of great size, but doctors differ as to their points, and it is not even certain whether they had rough or smooth coats. A modern club, which has tried to restore the breed, lays down that the Irish wolf-hound should be ‘not quite so heavy or massive as the Great Dane, but more so than the deer-hound, which in general type he should otherwise resemble.’ Red deer abounded all over the country; and martens, now almost extinct, were so plentiful that the Earl of Ossory, in Henry VIII.’s time, kept a pack of hounds for them alone. As many as twelve dozen marten-skins could sometimes be sent as a present, and even Strafford hoped to get enough to line a gown for Archbishop Laud. The ambling nags called hobbies were also much valued in England. Wolves were very common, and neither they nor the hounds which pursued them died out until the eighteenth century. Wild fowl, of course, abounded, and Moryson says he had seen sixty pheasants served at one feast; but partridges were scarce. Magpies seem to have been introduced late in the seventeenth century.[422 - There is a valuable paper on hawks and hounds in Ireland by Mr. J. P. Prendergast in vol. ii. of the Irish Arch. Journal, p. 144. Perrott to Walsingham, Oct. 25, 1585; Sir S. Bagenal to Cecil, MS. Hatfield, Nov. 1, 1602. In the second edition (1888) of Dalziel’s British Dogs there is a very full dissertation on the Irish wolf-hound. In Payne’s Brief Description of Ireland, 1590, we read that a red-deer skinned could be had for 2s. 6d., twelve quails for 3d., twelve woodcocks for 4d., and all other fowl rateably. The abundance of corncrakes is mentioned by both Moryson and Payne, and the latter says grouse (heathcock) were plentiful. Sixteen landrails (or corncrakes) were shot at Colebrooke in Fermanagh on one September day in 1884.]

Agriculture