Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/601

 I 5 8o.] THE DESMOND REBELLION. Malby, who was hastening to Dublin on the news of the defeat at Glenmalure, was recalled by disturbances in Roscommon. Shocked at last by the report of the cruelties in Munster, 1 and discovering from the demands upon the exchequer that they were not producing the effect which might have excused them, Elizabeth was now thinking once more of trying the effect of a pardon, accompanied, as Mendoza said that she had intended before, with religious toleration, when at the back of the other bad news came authentic tidings that the ships from Coruna had arrived at last, and that Dingle and Smerwick were again occupied by a Papal force. Eight hundred men, Italians chiefly, with a few Spaniards among them, had actually landed, and Philip, though not actively consenting, had not allowed them to be interfered with. They had sailed from a Spanish port, and the eager September. told me plainly that if God should call the Queen's Majesty, England and Ireland were and should be the King of Scotland's own.' Captain Piers to Walsingham, August 18 : MSS. Ireland. 1 Malby considered that the Irish had been dealt with too leniently. 1 1 perceive by your letter,' he wrote to Walsingham, 'that Irish com- plaints have good hearing there. I am sorry for it. And hard it is for us that serve, when rebels' talcs and the surmises of such as be friends to rebels, shall work us disadvantage and misliking, for so often adventur- ing our lives, which we do only in respect of our duty to her Majesty. No man can hold it for a pastime ; neither will any man of discretion desire to govern by fighting if it may be done by honest policy ; but my hap is worst of any man's in that I hear it said I use the sword over severely. I am sorry I have spared it so much, and if it be not used more sharply than hitherto it has been, her Majesty is like to lose both sword and realm. It is now a quarrel of religion, and the expect- ation of foreign aid doth much fur- ther it.' Malby to Walsinghai?; September 7 : MSS. Ireland.