Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/255

 1569-] STATE OF IRELAND, 23$ mond supposed to belong to themselves. The estates thus seized lay within the line of the intended confis- cations. Desmond's property had been surrendered, and MacCarty was marked for forfeiture. Sir Peter Carew was imprudent enough to trespass upon the jurisdiction of Lord Ormond, to lay claim through a title-deed a century old upon estates in Kilkenny belonging to Lord Ormond's two brothers, Sir Edward and Sir Edmund Butler, and in the same style to march in, eject their tenants, and quarter his own men in the best houses on the property. Ormond at the time was in England, pushing his suit against the Geraldines. His brothers, seeing themselves dispossessed of their lands by such an extraordinary process, and hearing rumours at the same time that Carew and his friends were the advanced guard of a general invasion, flew to arms in their own defence. The English, Sir Edward Butler said, ' were coming to Ireland to make fortunes by the sword, and none but fools or slaves would sit still to be robbed/ They raised the Ormond war-cry, drove out Carew's servants, and, wild with rage, came down upon an Irish chief who had played into his hands, burnt his house, drove his cattle, and plundered his granaries. If report spoke true, their violence did not rest in these (for Ireland) legitimate measures of retribution. A number of poor Irish dependents of Carew collected their moveable goods in the churches, and sent their women there for pro- tection. The Butler kerns respected neither place nor person ; they burst the doors, misused and ravished