Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/290

 270 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 59. in a few years but little remained, and with the wreck that was left he fitted out a small squadron and obtained leave from Elizabeth to colonize Florida. He told her, in his vain style, that he ' would rather be sovereign of a molehill than the greatest subject of the greatest King in Christendom/ He said he would found an empire and would write to her ' in the style of princes to his dearest sister/ But the principality at which he was aiming was nearer home than Florida. He took to his old pirate trade, then made respectable by the name of privateering. He went back to Ireland, where Sir Henry Sidney condescended to make use of him, and Shan O'Neil became so charmed with him that he recommended Elizabeth to divide the country between Stukely and himself, and together they would convert it into a Paradise. Elizabeth however would accept neither Shan's nor Sidney's estimate of her scandalous subject. He had hoped to establish his title to the lands in Cork under the southern commission, and share with St Leger and Carew in the partition of Munster; but the Queen, hearing reports of murders, robberies, and other outrages committed by him, ordered Sidney to lay hands upon him, and he was locked up in Dublin Castle. Implicated as he had been in the spoliation scheme, and concerned also, it seems, in the pillage and destruc- tion of certain religious houses, he had made no friends among the Irish except Shan, and when Shan was dead he was regarded with more than the detestation which