Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/330

 3io REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 59. and would give him a commission as commanding in her name. When matters had thus arrived at extremity, news came that the Earl of Desmond had escaped from Dublin Castle. He had refused to accept the last con- ditions which had been demanded of him. He had exclaimed against the breach of faith which had placed him again in arrest, and his secret friends, encouraged by the disaster which had fallen upon Essex, opened the doors of his prison. His return to Munster, when he was clear of the city, was a triumphal procession. Kildare had lost his place as chief of the Norman Irish by trimming with the English Government. They had transferred their allegiance and their enthusiasm to his kinsman, and ' there was now no God nor prince with the people of the Geraldines but the Earl of Desmond, and no law feared by them but Desmond's heste/ He crossed the Pale into Tipperary like the nucleus of a comet, the wild horsemen gathering in clouds and streaming in his track. The Countess joined him, and both together flung off the hated ' English apparel/ and appeared at the head of their warriors in the costume of Irish chieftains. They went first to Limerick, where the citizens marched out in procession to receive them. Set free, as he supposed, by his second arrest from all his engagements, the Earl issued a pro- clamation that no sheriff, or constable, or minister of English law, should execute office in Munster. A com- pany of soldiers who had been left in Castletown were expelled. Castlemartyr was taken by the Seneschal