Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3)

Rebellion of Viscount Baltinglas

As if to fill the time till the Spaniards came, a movement now began which defeated Pelham’s calculations. The new rebel was James Eustace, who had lately succeeded his father as Viscount Baltinglas, and who was an enthusiastic Catholic. He was already connected with the turbulent O’Byrnes, and his father had been in opposition on the cess question; but it is clear that religion was the chief motive. Before he succeeded to the title, Sanders and others persuaded him to go to Rome, and what he saw there under Gregory XIII. had exactly a contrary effect on him to what the Rome of Leo X. had upon Luther. On his return he heard mass, boldly gloried in the fact before the Ecclesiastical Commission, and was mulcted in the statutable fine of 100 marks, Sidney quaintly declaring that he could not countenance ‘Papistry and abolished religion.’ Loftus was told to exact the money or a bond, and to imprison in default. The young lord went to gaol for twenty-four hours, and was pardoned on signing the bond. But fine and imprisonment never convince, though they sometimes silence, and Baltinglas was in no way changed by what courtly officials called her Majesty’s godly proceedings. ‘I mean,’ he wrote to a Waterford merchant, ‘to take this holy enterprise in hand by the authority of the Supreme Head of the Church.’

Baltinglas and Ormonde

The letter fell into Ormonde’s hands, and the bearer seems to have been hanged in chains. Ormonde had already warned the Viscount to be careful, and he now sent an answer which at once committed him irretrievably and almost without hope of pardon. He said he had been commanded to take the sword by the highest power on earth, and would maintain the truth to the extent of his means.

‘Questionless,’ he added, ‘it is great want of knowledge, and more of grace, to think and believe that a woman uncapax of all holy orders, should be the supreme governor of Christ’s Church; a thing that Christ did not grant unto his own mother. If the Queen’s pleasure be, as you allege, to minister justice, it were time to begin; for in this twenty years’ part of her reign we have seen more damnable doctrine maintained, more oppressing of poor subjects, under pretence of justice, within this land than ever we read or heard… If Thomas Becket, the Bishop of Canterbury, had never suffered death in the defence of the Church, Thomas Butler, alias Becket, had never been Earl of Ormonde.’43 Ormonde sent the letter by express to Walsingham, for the Queen’s eye, characterising it as ‘foolish, traitorous, popish, and devil-persuaded,’ praying that God might confound all her unnatural subjects and give her victory over all His enemies.

‘Sir, I pray you tell her Majesty that poor Lucas will remain constant in the true faith, whoever follow the Pope and do the contrary, and that neither Becket nor Canterbury shall alter him.’

A Catholic confederacy

It was a year of great activity among the English Catholics. Parsons and Campion had just landed; the air teemed with rumours, and papers were freely circulated to prepare men for something extraordinary. A Devonshire gentleman named Eve brought one of these to Waterford, and it was not calculated to make the task of the Irish Government easier. Ten or twelve thousand men from the Pope, rather more from the King of Spain, and rather fewer from the Duke of Florence, were expected to invade England, and there to reassert the Pope’s lawful sovereignty. Elizabeth was declared ineligible, both as bastard and as heretic, to wear the vassal crown, and it was proposed to publish the Bull of excommunication in every Christian church and court. The English Catholic nobles were, however, to be allowed to crown one of their own number, who was to be independent of Spain, but her faithful ally in reducing the Hollanders. All Church lands were to be restored. The importer of this notable scheme was arrested by the Mayor of Waterford, and sent in irons to Clonmel, with his companion, a merchant of Bridgewater, to be dealt with by Pelham. We may, however, be sure that for one such production intercepted, many escaped the notice of the officials, and that Baltinglas had reason to expect support from outside. But he probably rested his hopes mainly upon the help of his neighbours, and even fancied he could get Kildare to join him.44

Attitude of Kildare

On July 14th, nearly a fortnight before the insurrection actually broke out, the Archbishop of Dublin met Kildare on the legendary hill of Tara. Baltinglas was only two miles off, and in charge of the Earl’s own troop. Kildare had been told everything, and he informed Loftus that the Viscount and other Papists had conspired and were ready to rebel. ‘The first exploit they will do,’ he said, ‘is to kill you and me; you, for the envy they bear to your religion, and me, for that being taken away, they think there is no one to make head against them.’ Dr. Loftus indeed might have had a bad chance had he fallen into their hands, but there is no likelihood that they had any murderous intention towards Kildare. The threat was probably used as likely to have weight with one whose sympathies were already more than half-gained: The Archbishop pressed the Earl to arrest the traitor and more than once received an evasive answer; but at last Kildare confessed what was doubtless the true cause of his inaction. ‘I should heap to myself universally the hatred and illwill of my country, and pull upon my house and posterity for ever the blame.’ At last he agreed to make an appointment with Baltinglas, and to arrest him, provided the Archbishop had an agent present to charge him on his allegiance. In the meantime he went to the Viscount several times in a quiet way, and did nothing until he and Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne were in actual rebellion. After this Baltinglas wrote to tell the Earl that he had unfurled his Holiness’s banner, and asking for an interview at the bridge of Ballymore Eustace. Kildare not appearing, he wrote again to express his regret and to urge him to join the good cause. ‘I trust therefore the day shall never come that strangers shall say that when Christ’s banner was in the field on the one side, and the banner of heresy on the other side, that the Earl of Kildare’s forces were openly seen to stand under the heretical banner.’ The charming was not particularly wise, yet Kildare did not altogether refuse to hear it. In the end he so managed matters as to alienate both sides.45

Results of Pelham’s proceedings

At the very moment that Baltinglas broke out, Lord Grey de Wilton’s patent as Deputy was signed in England. Pelham had but a few weeks of authority left, and he did not pass them in idleness. By the advice of Sir Warham St. Leger, and with the consent of Ormonde, he detained most of the Munster lords and chiefs at Limerick; and, having thus laid hands on the shepherds, he proceeded to make his own terms with the flock. ‘My manner of prosecuting,’ he wrote to the Queen, ‘it is thus: I give the rebels no breath to relieve themselves, but by one of your garrisons or other they be continually hunted. I keep them from their harvest, and have taken great preys of cattle from them, by which it seemeth the poor people that lived only upon labour, and fed by their milch cows, are so distressed as they follow their goods and offer themselves with their wives and children rather to be slain by the army than to suffer the famine that now in extremity beginneth to pinch them. And the calamity of these things have made a division between the Earl and John of Desmond, John and Sanders seeking for relief to fall into the company and fellowship of the Viscount Baltinglas; and the Earl, without rest anywhere, flieth from place to place, and maketh mediation for peace by the Countess, whom yesterday I licensed to have speech with me at Askeaton, whose abundance of tears betrayed sufficiently the miserable estate both of herself, her husband, and their followers.’ It was by just such means that Mountjoy afterwards put down a much greater rebellion and a much abler rebel than Desmond, and those Englishmen who knew Ireland best could see no alternative. ‘It shall be found,’ said Bagenal, ‘how severely and thoroughly good Sir William Pelham hath handled Munster; as in all his government here he deserved with the best that preceded him, so in that wrought he good perfection, and so weakened the traitors there, that John Desmond is fled to Leinster, where he is to salve his drained estate with Baltinglas. His own actions, if his commendation should be withdrawn, will sufficiently express his desert.’46

Terms offered to the repentantDeath of Sir James of Desmond

All important persons who sued for mercy were first required to imbrue their hands in some better blood than their own, and special services in proportion to their rank were required of leading rebels. Rory MacSheehy, a noted captain of the Desmond gallowglasses, was given to understand that he could have a pardon if he gave up Sanders alive. Sir John of Desmond sought to confer with St. Leger; he was told that he could have his own life by giving up his eldest brother, Dr. Sanders, and the seneschal of Imokilly. Sanders himself might perhaps be spared, if he would lay bare the whole network of foreign intrigue. The detained magnates were let loose one by one as they seemed likely to do service. Sir Cormac MacTeige MacCarthy was sheriff of Cork; he made humble submission, confessed his negligence, took a new oath, and departed with 150 English soldiers under Captain Apsley and Captain Dering. Soon afterwards Sir James of Desmond entered Muskerry and collected 2,000 of Sir Cormac’s cattle, which he proposed to drive off into the mountains west of Macroon. The sheriff came up with him, and a skirmish followed, in which Sir James was wounded and taken. He was carried from Carrigadrohid to Blarney and thence to Cork, where he was tried and condemned, having in vain begged for summary decapitation to avoid a public trial. After two months, during which he gave earnest attention to religious subjects, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, or as the Four Masters say, cut into little pieces, dying a fervent Catholic and, as his enemies allowed, ‘a yielding to Godward a better end than otherwise he would have done if he had not died the death.’ ‘And thus,’ says Hooker, ‘the pestilent hydra hath lost another of his heads.’47

Munster chiefs in trouble

Lord Fitzmaurice was at liberty, but his two sons were detained at Limerick, and he was told that he could only make his peace by intercepting Desmond or the Seneschal, or at the very least by procuring the release of Sir James Fitzgerald, of Decies, who was imprisoned in Kerry by the rebels. Sir Owen O’Sullivan Bere it was thought safe to keep at Limerick; but his neighbour Sir Owen MacCarthy Reagh was released, his tanist Donell na Pipy being retained as a hostage. Clancare had been protected by Ormonde, and the engagement was kept, but he was required to leave his son, Lord Valentia, in pledge. Lord Barrymore remained contumacious, and was sent to Dublin Castle, his sons being encouraged to come in under protection, but St. Leger was told to keep them safe until they offered good security. Sir Warham, who was always for harsh courses, advised that the father should be executed and his estate confiscated. The example, he thought, would be salutary, and the land would pay the whole cost of the war.48

Narrow escapes of Sanders and John of Desmond,

In the meantime the garrisons were busy. Sir George Bourchier was near taking a rich prize at Kilmallock. During a night foray, the soldiers fell in accidentally with Sanders and John of Desmond. Sir John was wounded, and both he and Sanders were over an hour in company with the soldiers, whose suspicions they disarmed by exhorting them, in English, to slay the Irish. An Englishman in Sanders’ service was taken and killed by the soldiers, because he would confess nothing. James O’Hea, a friar of Youghal, was made prisoner, and gave important information.

who contrive to join Baltinglas

A division of opinion had arisen between Desmond on the one hand, and his brother Sanders on the other. The Earl was inclined to sue for peace, but the others were determined to fight it out to the last. Finding themselves straitened in Kerry, they made their way to Leinster, where Baltinglas eagerly expected them. With about five-and-twenty followers, they passed through the glen of Aherlow, and crossed North Tipperary into the Queen’s County, where they were helped by the remnant of the O’Mores, and by the veteran Piers Grace, until they joined the O’Byrnes near the border of Wicklow. They had an escape on the road, which Pelham called strange, and which a Catholic writer evidently thought miraculous. They met Ormonde – or more probably one of his brothers – who called out that they were in the net. ‘A sudden tempest,’ we are told, ‘arose on a fine day – whether at the Doctor’s prayers, or not, God knows – and the rain was so thick that the Earl, with the ministers of Satan, could not advance against the Catholics, nor even hold up their heads for a whole hour.’ The fugitives, who had the wind at their backs, threw away all superfluous weight, and escaped. Having lost their best leader, the Munster rebels sought terms for themselves. Baltinglas summoned Desmond himself to join him, for defence of the Catholic faith, but the Earl’s people said they were starving, and could endure no longer war; and they openly reviled Sanders as the cause of all their misery.49

Desmond almost surrenders, but changes his mind when a new governor comes

Wearied by want of bread and all comforts, the rebel Earl began to feel that the game was up, and he besought Winter to give him a passage to England. Pelham did not object, provided the surrender was unconditional; but would allow no agents to pass, nor the Countess to go over without her husband. The poor lady’s tears showed him that her cause was desperate. Chief Secretary Fenton was principally struck by her impudence in venturing to defend her husband’s conduct. Pelham was inclined to believe that they both meant nothing but villainy, and were only seeking time to get in the harvest, and he directed Bourchier at Kilmallock, and Case at Askeaton, to give the fugitive Earl no rest for the sole of his foot. The hunted wretch might have surrendered to Winter had it not been for the change of government, which, both before and since, in Ireland, has often been wrongly supposed to denote a change of policy. He had perhaps been told that Grey’s orders from the Queen were to treat him leniently. At all events he changed his tone, though he had but 120 gallowglasses with him. These men clamoured loudly and vainly for their quarter’s pay, and the camp was followed by a horde of poor starving creatures, who begged such scraps as unpaid soldiers could give. In spite of all this, Desmond now declared that he would yield to Grey only, for that he remembered former hard treatment in England, and doubted that it would be worse than ever. And so the matter stood when Pelham, who had himself desired to be relieved, received the order to go to Dublin, and there surrender the sword to his successor. He had declared himself willing to serve under the new governor in Munster, with or without the title of Lord President, and the latter was directed to take advantage of his zeal, his experience, and his martial skill. As it was, he left Ireland on the nominal ground of health, perhaps because he could not get on with Grey, or because the Queen was frightened at the expense. He afterwards found work in the Netherlands, and Bourchier was left in charge of Munster with the rank of Colonel, Ormonde having enough to do in defending his own country against the Leinster insurgents.50

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE DESMOND WAR – SECOND STAGE, 1580-1581

Lord Grey’s instructions

Whatever private hints the Queen might give to Grey, his official instructions contained nothing to Desmond’s advantage. On the contrary, he was warned to avoid the common fault of former governors, who had been too easy in granting pardons to notorious transgressors of the law, and had thereby bred boldness in subjects prone to offend. In future, pardons were not to be given without good reasons, nor at all in general terms, but only for some specified offence. On the other hand the Queen was anxious to have it known that she did not wish to extirpate the inhabitants of Ireland, as it had been falsely and maliciously reported. Outrages committed by soldiers were to be severely punished, and officers of high rank were not to be exempt. The rebellion was to be put down as quickly as possible, so that her Majesty’s charge might be reduced. Grey landed on August 12, but the sword of state was still in Munster, and he could not take the oath without it. Baltinglas and Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne were in force not much more than twenty miles from Dublin, and he resolved to attack them before Pelham’s arrival.51

State of the Pale

Whatever hopes Desmond himself may have had from Grey, the change of government was not favourable to the chances of a rebellion near Dublin. The advent of a governor of high rank generally signified increased force, a more liberal expenditure of money, and more activity in official circles. Lord Chancellor Gerard had just landed on a part of the coast over which Baltinglas was for the moment supreme; and the latter had unaccountably neglected to make him a hostage. ‘Compared with the rest of his doings,’ said Pelham, ‘this doth argue that both he and his followers be the most foolish traitors that ever I heard of.’ The Chancellor reported that all the Leinster chiefs as well as O’Neill, O’Donnell, O’Rourke, and O’Connor Sligo were sworn to Baltinglas, and that he had the hearts of the whole country. The rebels had burned Harrington’s town of Newcastle, and openly displayed the Pope’s banner; but Kildare seemed to stand firm, and comforted the Chancellor by abusing the captains for giving false musters, saying that the Queen paid for 1,300 when she had only 700. But his most trusted follower, Gerald Fitzmaurice, had joined the rebels with his company. Sir William Stanley brought reinforcements from England, but in such plight as to argue no great probability of good service. Out of 120 calivers scarce twenty were serviceable, and the men were raw, ill-provided with necessaries, and fewer than their leader had been given to expect. The captains, blamed by Kildare, said their pay was at least three months in arrear, and of course all their men were discontented. Gormanston lay at Naas with 500 men, but the distrust was so general that Archbishop Loftus believed the throats of all Englishmen were about to be cut. ‘Unless strangers land,’ the Chancellor remarked, ‘I mistrust; and if they do I am of the Archbishop’s mind.’ Meanwhile the country south of Dublin was at the mercy of the rebels, and it was easy to know who sympathised with them. ‘They religiously prey,’ said Gerard, ‘overskipping some, many have taken oaths not to fight against them.’ 2,000 Scots were plundering loyal people in Ulster, and it was hard to see where it was to stop.52

Grey attacks the Irish in Glenmalure

Baltinglas and Feagh MacHugh lay in the valley of the Liffey, somewhere about Ballymore Eustace. On the approach of Grey’s army from the side of Naas they withdrew into Glenmalure, a deep and rocky fortress – a combe, as the Devonian Hooker calls it – to the N.E. of Lugnaquilla. The glen was thickly wooded, and at least four miles long, and Colonel George Moore was ordered to enter it with about half the army. Grey was more a knight-errant than a general, and he determined to attack at once and in front, though warned by those about him of the risk he was running. His object was to drive the rebels from the covert, so that they might be shot or ridden down on the open hillside. Old Francis Cosby, general of the Queen’s kerne, who was a man of extraordinary personal courage and of unrivalled experience in Irish warfare, foresaw the danger; but he was not listened to, and he boldly advanced to what he believed to be almost certain death. Jacques Wingfield, the Master of the Ordinance, who doubtless remembered his own overthrow nineteen years before, was present with his two nephews, Peter and George Carew, and he vainly tried to dissuade them from risking their lives. ‘If I lose one,’ he then urged, ‘yet will I keep the other,’ and George, reserved, as Camden says, for greater things, consented to stay by his uncle. Sir Peter, with Captain Audley and Lieutenant Parker, were with Colonel Moore in front, while Sir Henry Bagenal and Sir William Stanley brought up the rear. ‘When we entered,’ says Stanley, ‘the foresaid glen, we were forced to slide sometimes three or four fathoms ere we could stay our feet. It was in depth at least a mile, full of stones, rocks, bogs, and wood; in the bottom a river full of loose stones, which we were driven to cross divers times. So long as our leaders kept the bottom, the odds were on our side. But our colonel, being a corpulent man, before we were half through the glen, being four miles in length, led us up the hill that was a long mile in height; it was so steep that we were forced to use our hands as well to climb as our feet, and the vanward being gone up the hill, we must of necessity follow… It was the hottest piece of service for the time that ever I saw in any place. I was in the rearward, and with me twenty-eight soldiers of mine, whereof were slain eight, and hurt ten. I had with me my drum, whom I caused to sound many alarms, which was well answered by them that was in the rearward, which stayed them from pulling us down by the heels. But I lost divers of my dear friends. They were laid all along the wood as we should pass, behind trees, rocks, crags, bogs, and in covert. Yet so long as we kept the bottom we lost never a man, till we were drawn up the hill by our leaders, where we could observe no order; we could have no sight of them, but were fain only to beat the places where we saw the smoke of our pieces; but the hazard of myself and the loss of my company was the safeguard of many others… were a man never so slightly hurt, he was lost, because no man was able to help him up the hill. Some died, being so out of breath that they were able to go no further, being not hurt at all.’53

Defeat of the English

Carew and Audley had a dispute at the outset, and the loud talk of two usually quiet and modest officers had a very bad effect on their men. The renegade captain, Gerald Fitzmaurice, had full information from Kildare’s people, if not from the Earl himself, and he knew the companies had never been together before. They contained many raw recruits, and he rightly calculated that they would be thrown into confusion by an unseen enemy. The soldiers fresh from England wore red or blue coats, and Maltby, who was with Grey in the open, saw how easily they were picked off. ‘The strangeness of the fight,’ he adds, ‘is such to the new-come ignorant men that at the first brunt they stand all amazed, or rather give back to the enemy… Their coats stand them in no stead, neither in fashion nor in giving them any succour to their bodies. Let the coat-money be given to some person of credit, with which, and with that which is also bestowed on their hose, they may clothe themselves here with jerkins and hose of frieze, and with the same money bring them every man a mantle which shall serve him for his bedding and thereby shall not be otherwise known to the rebels than the old soldiers be.’ The recruits wavered, the kerne ran away to the enemy, and so ‘the gentlemen were lost.’

Stanley says not above thirty Englishmen were killed, but Moore, Cosby, Audley, and other officers were among them. Grey thought the rebels were fewer than the soldiers, who were stricken by panic. Sir Peter Carew was clad in complete armour, which proved more fatal than even a red coat. Suffocated from running up hill he was forced to lie down and was easily taken. It was proposed to hold him to ransom, ‘but one villain,’ says Hooker, ‘most butcherly, as soon as he was disarmed, with his sword slaughtered and killed him, who in time after was also killed.’

Three months afterwards George Carew rejoiced that he had the good fortune to slay him who slew his brother, and announced that he meant to lay his bones by his or to be ‘thoroughly satisfied with revenge.’ No doubt the survivor under such circumstances would be filled with remorseful bitterness; but his thirst for revenge, fully slaked by a murder three years later, can be scarcely justified even according to that ancient code which prescribes an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.54