Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/564

 544 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 62. Where the people were quiet there was the rope for malefactors, and death by ' natural law ' for those whom the law written would not touch. 'Where they broke out there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother, and the baby at the breast. These, with ruined churches, and Irish rogues for ministers these, and so far only these, were the symbols of the advance of English rule ; yet even Sidney could but order more and more severity, and the President of Munster was lost in wonder at the detesta- tion with which the English name was everywhere re- garded. Clanrickard surrendered. He was sent to Dublin, and the Deputy wished to hang him, but he dared not execute an earl without consulting his mistress, and Elizabeth's leniency in Ireland, as well as England, was alive and active towards the great, though it was dead towards the poor. She could hear without emotion of the massacres at Eathlin or Slievh Broughty, but the blood of the nobles, who had betrayed their wretched followers into the rebellion for which they suffered, was for ever precious in her sight. She forbade Sidney to touch him. Shortly before these horrors the Earl of Essex had died. After he had set his affairs at home in some order I57 6. he had returned in the past September to September. Dublm ^ and it was perhaps intended that he should take Sidney's place. Three weeks after he landed he was dead. Lady Essex was generally believed to have intrigued, during his first absence, with the Earl of