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 he caused Ormonde's brother Edward to be arraigned for treason, and, though the jury refused to convict, he considered that the fact that he had been tried would produce a beneficial result. From Tipperary he proceeded to Waterford, and finding ‘that countie to be muche molested by certain disordered persons … wounte to depende upon the Lord Power,’ he caused him to be arrested and locked up for a time in Dublin Castle. Proceeding on his journey by way of Dungarvan to Youghal, he was there joined by the Earl of Desmond, and entering at once ‘into the debatinge of the causes between him and the Erle of Ormounde,’ gave his decision in the latter's favour. Thereupon Desmond fell ‘into some disallowable heates and passions,’ and Sidney, though he could not blame him for being ‘somewhat quicke at the matter,’ laid him by the heels and carried him back with him to Dublin, leaving the government to his brother Sir John of Desmond. Continuing his journey through Limerick to Galway, where he seized the Earl of Clanricarde's sons, he returned by way of Athlone to Kilmainham on 16 April. He had been absent exactly eleven weeks. Subsequently he again repaired to the borders of Ulster to receive the submission of Shane's successor, Turlough Luineach O'Neill [q. v.], and took measures to guard against the inroads of the Scots by establishing garrisons at Carrickfergus, Belfast, and Glenarm.

On his return to Dublin, he ‘caused the old ruinous castle there to be re-edified.’ But the hard service he had undergone and his indifference to his health were beginning to tell on his constitution. Procuring his revocation, he entrusted the government to Sir William Fitzwilliam and Lord-chancellor Weston [q. v.], and early in October 1567 repaired to England, accompanied by O'Conor Sligo, O'Carrol, the Baron of Dungannon, and other Irish chiefs. At Chester he had to undergo a painful operation for stone in the bladder. When he reached the court the negotiations for the marriage of Elizabeth to the Archduke Charles seemed, under Sussex's management, likely to be brought to a successful issue, and Sidney was mortified at the coldness of his reception and the indifference with which his service against Shane O'Neill was regarded. Not only, moreover, were his settlement of the dispute between Ormonde and Desmond and the appointment of Sir John of Desmond to the government of Munster severely criticised, but the whole arrangement was set aside by the arrest of Sir John himself and his incarceration, along with Desmond, in the Tower. This proceeding, Sidney afterwards pointed out, was the cause of all the mischief that subsequently happened in Munster. Sidney left the court in chagrin for Penshurst. But with the failure of Sussex's marriage scheme Leicester's star rose again in the ascendant; and Sidney, so far from being deprived, as had been confidently expected, of his office of president of Wales, found himself in the spring of 1568 once more at court. Moreover he was now on excellent terms with Sir William Cecil, in whom on Irish topics he found a warm ally. But for himself he had no desire to return to Ireland, and it was with the greatest reluctance that he finally consented to resume the deputyship.

Landing at Carrickfergus on 6 Sept., he had an interview with Turlough Luineach, who impressed him favourably. After inspecting the garrisons which he had already planted there, he converted the district of Clandeboye and the Ardes into the county of Carrickfergus. On proceeding to Dublin he wrote frankly to Cecil. If Ulster was to be permanently tranquillised, colonists must be imported, towns and bridges built, and the natives of Tyrone created freeholders. Connaught must be provided with a president, and the Earl of Ormonde be compelled to reside in Ireland and to use his personal influence to suppress the disorders caused in Munster by his own brothers, in league with James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald (d. 1579) [q. v.] Sidney, having proclaimed Fitzmaurice, paid a visit to Kilkenny, where, and also at Waterford, he caused execution to be done upon a great number of the Butlers' followers, though his recognition of Sir Peter Carew's claim to the barony of Idrone hardly conduced to peace. On 17 Jan. 1569 parliament was opened by him in great state, and the struggle between the old and new settlers found vent in the House of Commons. Sir Edmund Butler, the leader of the former, was publicly reprimanded for his violence by Sidney in the council-chamber, and departed home vowing vengeance against him. Nevertheless, before the parliament was prorogued on 16 March a number of acts, including one for the attainder of Shane O'Neill, had been added to the statute-book. The acts of the Irish parliament were now for the first time, by Sidney's order, printed by John Vowell alias Hooker [q. v.] (license in Carew MSS. i. 387). During the summer the state of affairs in the south went rapidly from bad to worse, and in July Sidney, leaving Fitzwilliam and Kildare to hold the O'Neills in check and Sir Barnaby Fitzpatrick to guard the Pale on the south side, set out with six hundred men to try if possible to restore