Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/449

1538.] fortresses into the hands of his Irish neighbours, to strengthen Desmond at the expense of the Butlers. The follies of the council may have been great; but if the deputy was to be acquitted of treason, his own were incomparably greater.

His other proceedings were not calculated to restore the confidence of the loyalists. He could not have been ignorant of the confederacy. But he imagined that he might gain the hearts of the Irish by placing himself in their power. The chiefs, who could not desire to see the Government at Dublin in more convenient hands, were delighted to encourage him with hospitality. He accepted a safe-conduct from them—an action of itself dangerously culpable—and crossed with a small retinue, under an escort from O'Connor, into Connaught. Here he was met by Desmond, whose usurpation of authority in Cork and Kerry he recognized and sanctioned. With the rebel Earl for a companion, he then paid a visit into Thomond, where, with his servants in the King's uniform, he accompanied O'Brien in an attack upon a bordering clan. Following the steps of Lady Eleanor, he went next to Galway, to the Bourkes, where he received the rival Bishop, whom he had allowed to supersede Dr Nangle in the See of Clontarf. In the expedition to Limerick, two years before, he had left his heavy guns under the care of the mayor. The guns