Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/505

A.D. 1581.] to the lands of Clanhuboy, Phelim O'Neil and his adherents contended with him for its possession fort by fort. He maintained his ground, however, through the winter, though grievously suffering from the bad quality of the provisions furnished by the queen's contractors, and from the ill-armed condition of his troops—for the evils which mowed down our army in the Crimea, were among the most ancient evils of the English Government. Essex is said to have invited Phelim O'Neil to a banquet, and there assassinated him and his attendants; but this did not mend his position. The Lords Dacre and Rich, and many gentlemen, abandoned the enterprise and returned home. Though deserted and unable to conquer his own allotted territory, he assisted the lord-deputy to suppress the rebels in other parts of the island. He returned to England in 1575, and was appointed Earl Marshal of Ireland, but with no adequate force; and ultimately died, September 22nd, 1576, at Dublin, as it was asserted, by poison administered to him at the instigation of Leicester. That villain noble, the great favourite of Elizabeth, who had murdered his first wife, Amy Robsart, next married, or pretended to marry, Douglas Howard, the widow of Lord Sheffield. After having a son by her he repudiated the marriage, and, as she herself asserted, attempted to poison her so that her hair and nails fell off, and commenced an intrigue with the wife of Essex, by whom he is said to have had two children whilst Essex was absent in Leland. On the death of Essex, Sir Francis Knollys compelled him to marry his daughter, Essex's widow; which marriage, as we have seen, Simier, the ambassador of Anjou, revealed to Elizabeth, who from that day hated the lady, one of the handsomest and most charming women of her time, with a deadly and undying hatred.

After the death of Essex, the system of planting Ireland, as it was called, still went on. The destruction of the O'Neils all the other clans regarded as only preliminary to their own. They therefore appealed to the Kings of Spain and France for assistance; and on their declaring themselves unable, from their own dangers and insurrections at home, to assist them, they implored the protection of the Pope, Gregory XIII. His holiness launched a bull at the heretic queen, declaring Ireland forfeited, as previous bulls had declared England and Wales forfeited. Under his encouragement two adventurers, Thomas Stukely and James Fitzmaurice, set out to proclaim the bull, and to carry the arms of his holiness all over Ireland. Stukely, however, having obtained a ship of war, 600 soldiers, and 3,000 stand of arms, carried them to the service of the King of Portugal, and died fighting in his wars against the Moors. Fitzmaurice, a brother of the Earl of Desmond, and a deadly enemy of the English invaders, was more faithful; and after suffering shipwreck on the coast of Galicia, landed at Smerwick, in Kerry, in June, 1579. He had with him, however, only eighty Spanish soldiers, and a few Irish and English refugees; and his expedition proved an utter failure, for the inhabitants had no faith in so insignificant a knot of adventurers. Fitzmaurice being killed in a private quarrel, his followers fled into the territories of his brother, the Earl of Desmond.

The Earl of Desmond professed himself a loyal subject; but he was suspected of favouring the insurgents, and the English marched into his demesnes and plundered them. Another detachment from the Pope, however, landed at Smerwick, the port which Fitzmaurice had made. It consisted of several hundred men, having a large sum of money, and 5,000 stand of arms, under the command of San Guiseppe, an Italian. Lord Grey de Wilton, the new lord-deputy, had recently suffered a defeat in the vale of Glandaclough; but he managed to besiege this foreign force in their newly-erected fort, whilst Admiral Winter blockaded them on the sea side. After three days' resistance, the handful of Italians and Spaniards put out a flag of truce, and offered to surrender on condition that their lives were spared. Foreign writers all assert that this was granted them; but Sir Richard Bingham, who was present, says that they surrendered one night at the pleasure of the lord-deputy, to have mercy or not, as he willed. Sir Walter Raleigh and Spenser, the poet, were in Grey's army, and their conduct reflects no honour upon them. Sir Walter Raleigh entered the fort to receive their arms, and then ordered them all to be massacred; and this proceeding Spenser endeavours to vindicate. He was Lord Grey's secretary; and whilst he styles him "a most gentle, affable, loving, and temperate lord," he gives this account of his act:—"The enemy begged that they might be allowed to depart with their lives and arms according to the law of nations. He asked to see their commission from the Pope or the King of Spain. They had none: they were the allies of the Irish. 'But the Irish,' replied Grey, 'are traitors, and you must suffer as traitors. I will make no terms with you; you may submit or not.' They yielded, craving only mercy, which it not being thought good to show them, for danger of them, if being saved, they should afterwards join the Irish, who were much emboldened by those foreign successes, and also put in hope of more ere long. There was no other way but to make that short end of them as was made."

This was a fatal precedent to the French and Spaniards, against whom our own countrymen were fighting in the very same manner by the orders of Elizabeth, in France, in the Netherlands, and in South America; and whilst we denounce the savage slaughter of English adventurers in the transatlantic lands of Spain wherever they were found without mercy or quarter, we are bound to remember that we thus set them the example, and furnished them with warrant.

After this butchery, Grey and his myrmidons combined to chase Desmond from spot to spot through his mountain fastnesses. Three years afterwards a party of the English, attracted by a light, entered a hut, where they found a venerable old man lying on the hearth before the fire, quite alone. On their demanding who he was, he replied, "The Earl of Desmond," when Kelly of Moriarty instantly struck off his head, which he sent as a grateful present to Elizabeth, by whom it was fixed on London Bridge. With Desmond fell for some time the resistance of the hunted natives in Ireland. From the forfeited lands of these immolated Irish, Sir Walter Raleigh received 42,000 acres, other gentlemen from 5,000 to 18,000, and Spenser, the poet, 3,000 and a castle of the unfortunate Desmond's—Kilcolman—which the exasperated natives burnt over his head, and with it one of his children. Spenser's concern in this bloody affair proved, in fact, his ruin.