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 order there. Passing through Kilkenny into Tipperary, he fixed his camp at Clonmel, but his proclamation of pardon failed to have any effect on the rebels. Sir Edmund attributed to Leicester and Sidney the design of making themselves respectively kings of England and Ireland. Attempts at conciliation proving fruitless, Sidney carried the castle of Fitzmaurice by assault, though he failed to capture either its owner or Sir Edmund Butler. At Kilkenny, however, a few months later, he caused above sixty persons, ‘many of them the stoutest of the Butlers' gallowglas,’ to be executed. His energy and severity produced a salutary effect not only on the country but also on parliament, which, on reassembling on 26 May 1570, passed an act for the attainder of Clancar, Fitzmaurice, Ormonde's three brothers, and other Butlers of less note, a proceeding which Ormonde never forgave. An act was secured for the erection of a free school in every diocese under an English master, and another for restraining monopolies. The encouragement which Sidney gave at the same time to ‘above forty families of the reformed churches of the Low Countries, flying thence for religion's sake,’ to settle in the ruined town of Swords, was not among the least valuable of his efforts to promote the welfare of the country. But vexed at the scanty support given him by Elizabeth and her readiness to listen to Ormonde's complaints, he insisted on laying down his ‘thankless charge.’ Accordingly, having seen Sir John Perrot [q. v.] installed as president of Munster and taken order with the O'Farrells for shiring their country by the name of county Longford, of which he constituted them freeholders, he took shipping at Dublin on 25 March 1571, leaving the government to his brother-in-law, Fitzwilliam.

Arriving at court, he found ‘more acceptation’ than he had expected, though some there were who insinuated that the Butlers' war might have been avoided, and ‘that else there was nothing done.’ The next four years were spent partly at court, partly in attendance to his duties as president of Wales, where he reformed abuses that had crept in during his absence in Ireland. In the spring of 1572 there was a rumour that he was to be created a baron, but the offer being unaccompanied by any additional source of revenue to sustain it, Burghley, at Lady Sidney's earnest request, nipped it in the bud. As time went on, the merits of his Irish administration became more and more unmistakable, notwithstanding the ability displayed by Fitzwilliam in coping with difficulties for which he was not responsible. A rumour of Sidney's return to Ireland, ‘with as great honour as ever deputy had,’ obtained currency in the summer of 1574; but owing to his reluctance to go with bound hands, and Elizabeth's unwillingness to concede the terms on which he was willing to serve, a year and more passed away before the rumour was confirmed by his actual appointment in August 1575.

This time, however, he was to be virtually his own master, and in return for 20,000l. per annum, paid beforehand in quarterly instalments, he undertook to govern without further demands on the queen's exchequer. So far as the crown was concerned, it was an excellent bargain, for under Fitzwilliam the expenses of government had annually exceeded the Irish revenue by much more than double. Landing, after a stormy passage, on 14 Sept., as near to Dublin as he could, on account of the plague that was raging in the city, he had no sooner received the sword from Fitzwilliam at Drogheda than he repaired northwards to Carrickfergus. Things had changed for the worse since his last visit, in consequence of the turmoil caused by Sir Thomas Smith's and Essex's abortive efforts to colonise the Ardes and Clandeboye. Nevertheless, the mischief done was not, he thought, irreparable, or a ‘peaceable reformacion’ impossible if, Rathlin Island being abandoned, and Chatterton's and Malby's grants revoked, the MacQuillins were confirmed in their possession of the Route, Sorley Boy MacDonnell expelled, Magennis created a baron, and Turlough Luineach gratified with a title on condition of renouncing his claims over Maguire and MacMahon. Sidney wished it to be understood that he was still personally in favour of ‘forceable subjection,’ on the understanding that it was ‘no subject's enterprise,’ but one which demanded a ‘prince's purse and power.’ Ulster being temporarily pacified, he returned to Dublin, closely inspecting the country as he passed through it, and laying plans for the future. ‘Albeit it was the depth of winter,’ he at once set out on a similar tour of inspection through the south, holding sessions here and there on his way. At Kilkenny he was honourably entertained by the Earl of Ormonde, who ‘very courteously’ accompanied him to Waterford. From Waterford he proceeded to Cork, where he spent Christmas, and stayed till Candlemas. At Limerick, on 4 Feb., he was ‘received with far greater pompe than either I my selfe have heretofore had, or seene yeelded to any other in this lande.’ The earls of Ormonde and Thomond and the principal gentry of the district repaired to him, and he stayed at Limerick three weeks, more and more