Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/205

1534.] But his presence was of little benefit, and only paralyzed his abler subordinates. As soon as be had brought his army into the city, he conceived that he had done as much as the lateness of the season would allow. The November weather having set in wild and wet, November, he gave up all thought of active measures till the return of spring; and he wrote to inform the King, with much self-approbation, that he was busy writing letters to the Irish chiefs, and making arrangements for a better government; that Lord Thomas Fitzgerald had been proclaimed traitor at the market-cross; and that he hoped, as soon as the chancellor and the vicar-general could come to an understanding, the said traitor might be pronounced excommunicated. All this was very well, and we learn to our comfort that in due time the excommunication was pronounced; but it was not putting down the rebellion—it was not the work for which he was sent to Ireland with three thousand English soldiers.

Fitzgerald, as soon as the army was landed, retired into the interior; but, finding that the deputy lay idle within the walls, be recovered heart, and at the head of a party of light horse reappeared within six miles of Dublin. Trim and Dunboyne, two populous villages, were sacked and burnt, and the blazing ruins must have been seen from the battlements of the Castle. Yet neither the insults of the rebels nor the entreaty of the inhabitants could move the imperturbable Skeffington.