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 1563-] SHAN a NEIL. 153 avowed by those who advised her, that he would fail. Most certainly the English commander had done no injustice to his incompetency. Three hundred horses were reported to have been lost, and Cecil wrote to in- quire the meaning of it. Sussex admitted that ' the loss was true indeed.' Being Easter-time, and he having travelled the week before and Easter-day till night, thought fit to give Easter Monday to prayer and in this time certain churls stole off with the horses. 1 The piety which could neglect practical duty for the outward service of devotion, yet at the same time could make overtures to Neil Grey to assassinate his master, requires no very lenient consideration. The news of the second failure reached Elizabeth at the crisis of the difficulty at Havre. She was strain- ing every nerve to supply the waste of an army which the plague was destroying. She had a war with France hanging over her head. She was uncertain of Spain and but half secure of the allegiance of her English subjects. It was against her own judgment that the last enterprise had been adventured, and she reverted at once to her original determination to spend no more money in re- forming a country which every effort for its amendment plunged into deeper anarchy. She would content herself with a titular sovereignty. She would withdraw or reorganize on a changed footing the profligate and worthless soldiers whose valour flinched from an enemy, and went no further than the plunder of a friend. The Sussex to Cecil, May 26 : Irish MSS.