Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/257

 1569.]' STATE OF IRELAND. 237 Spanish blood whom Philip might please to give them. The Celts and the Norman Irish were equally interested, for all believed themselves threatened, and all equally detested Protestantism. Messengers went round the provinces collecting signatures to the intended address to the Spanish King, and not a single chief or noble- man refused his name, except the two Butlers, who in the midst of their own agony, ' spotted/ as Ormond himself proudly complained, ' with the name of traitors/ called rebels in Dublin, and protected only by dread of Elizabeth from being hunted down as wild beasts, declined to abandon their loyalty. Sir Edmund Butler told Fitzmaurice that 'he could die to be revenged upon Carew/ and that he would fight to the death to preserve his lands ; but ' he would not meddle with the bringing in of Spaniards, or with the setting up the Mass/ 1 The Ormond family held on, notwithstand- ing the provocations which they had received, to their old allegiance ; but they stood alone against the whole island beyond the Pale, and three archbishops and eight bishops, the earls, barons, chiefs, the entire noble blood of the country, combined in one common effort to transfer to Spain the sovereignty of Ireland. The Archbishop of Cashel, Maurice Macginn, or Maurice Eeagh, as he was called, was chosen to be the bearer of the petition, and ' escorted to his ship ' by James Fitzmaurice ' as if he were a god/ he sailed from a harbour in Kerry in February, 1569, at the moment 1 Edmund Butler to the Earl of Ormond, August 24, 1569 : MSS. Ireland.