Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/632

 6l2 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 62. June. maine and Ashketyn had made acquaintances ajnong the Irish women, who had seduced them into negligence. A few necessary changes and moderate diligence would place ' the archfool ' in his power. 1 It appears that Desmond still clung to the hope either of a fresh rebellion in the Pale, or of a rising in Ulster, or of the interference in his favour of Philip. Every one in Ireland, high and low, in the Pale as well as out of it, was a Catholic openly or inwardly. Annexation to Spain had become a universal passion, and the people could not believe that Spain would leave them to be destroyed. 2 But the summer went on, and the 'Neils lay still, and the Catholic chivalry of the Pale were rotting on the gallows. No Spanish sail came again to the harbour at Dingle : and Desmond, gulping down his pride, wrote at last to Ormond in ab- 1 Ormond to the English Coun- cil, May 28, 1583 : MSS. Ireland. - Wallop to Walsingham, June 1 8. The temper to which even the Anglo-Irish of the Pale had been brought, was curiously illustrated by a declaration of Walter Eustace, Lord Baltinglass's brother, who had hitherto escaped capture, but had been betrayed by a comrade. 'Being examined he confessed himself a Catholic. He said that he had done no offence against the Queen's Majesty, for that she was no Catholic ; but what he had done, he had done it for God's cause, and by authority from the Pope. And that touching the robbing and murdering of her people, God did not forbid it, but rather commanded him to kill and rob all such as were out of the Catholic faith and religion of the Pope, who also had given him and the residue authority so to do ; that he saw no cause to repent him of anything done against her Highness, for that he had done nothing agains*. her as a lawful Queen, being no Ca- tholic. That this doctrine had been taught him from the beginning, and that he would die in this opinion.' Loftus and Wallop to the English Council, June 14 : MSS. Ireland. A theory of this kind, professed and acted upon by a whole people, does certainly go near to justifying extermination.