A History of Ireland.

by Eleanor Hull

1931

XII.—SIR HENRY SIDNEY

[2] His most questionable act was his acquiescence in the murder of Shane O'Neill.
[3] Carew, Cal., ii. No. 501, p. 336.
Sidney had great influence over the Munster lords, who accompanied and entertained him as he passed through the province, and his popularity extended through all parts of the country. It is perhaps no wonder that at a time when Lord Grey de Wilton, Ormonde, or Pelham were carrying an unsheathed sword through Munster, especially during Lord Grey's term of office from 1580-82, Sir Henry Sidney was the man "generally desired," and that he "was cried for by the children in the streets." "If Sir Henry can but sit in his chair," wrote Malbie to Walsingham in 1582, when Grey's recall in disgrace began to be mooted, "he will do more good than others with all their limbs;" [4] and Sidney had to go back to another term of office, in spite of growing infirmities and increasing age, when he had hoped to spend the rest of his life at home. "And so, being wearied with often sending for, I resolved to go thither again; the place, I protest before God, which I cursed, hated, and detested." Yet he "hoped to be able to do somewhat that had not been done before and to hit where others had missed." The chief personal difficulty of Sidney's life in Ireland arose from the jealousy of Ormonde, who was constantly in London and whose splendid presence and abilities made him a prime favourite with the Queen. To her, every act of Sidney was reported. This hampered him seriously in dealing with the quarrels of the Butlers, Ormonde's brothers, and surrounded him with an atmosphere of suspicion and espionage most galling to a man of honest intentions. His dealings with the Desmonds were fair and patient and might have been successful in staving off the Munster rebellion had his plans not been overturned by others. Of this we have to speak later. During his long terms of office he learned to know Ireland as few Viceroys ever knew it, and he endeavoured to encourage industry and found schools supported by the State.

[4] Sidney was suffering from lameness and lumbago.
The main lines of his policy, or what he called "his fixed principle," were "the dissipation of the great lords and their countries, and the reducing of the lands of the Anglo-Norman lords into many hands," for he saw in the immense power held by the few owners of the great estates a constant source of danger to the State. He believed in plantation schemes, and thought that Essex's 'plot' for the reformation of the North was the best and surest foundation on which to build.[5] He highly disapproved the "cowardly policy," recommended by some of the Queen's advisers, "of keeping the Irish by all possible means at war between themselves for fear lest, through their quiet, might follow I know not what;" if this system were to be persisted in, he begs the Queen to choose some other minister. "Ireland," in Sidney's view, "could only be reformed by justice and by making it possible to practise the arts of peace." [6] Soon after his appointment as Deputy, Sidney continued that good practice of making occasional circuits of the provinces begun by Cusack. His lengthy reports, full of character and detail, remain.

[5] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 36, p. 43.
[6] Sidney to the Queen, April 20, 1567, in A. Collins, Letters and Memorials of State (1746), i, 29.
The first of these journeys was made in April 1567, through the Pale and Munster, the second in 1575-76, when he visited in turn all the provinces of Ireland. Starting northward, he found Eastern Ulster desolate and waste, and the towns impoverished, except Drogheda, which Essex had made his headquarters, spending very bountifully while he was there, and increasing the wealth of the city. O'Reilley's country was an exception to the general disorder, "very well ruled by him; the justest Irishman and the best-ruled Irish country, by an Irishman, that is in all Ireland"; farther south, Upper Ossory was equally well governed and defended by the young Baron, who was so firm in his decision to adopt the recognized English rule of succession that "it made no matter, even if the country were never shired." [7] Kilkenny, on the contrary, was in very bad case, "the sink and receptacle of innumerable cattle and goods stolen out of many other countries," the fruits of the interminable wars of the Butlers. Nevertheless, Sidney was honourably feasted and entertained by the Earl of Ormonde, who accompanied him to Waterford, where the Deputy was received "with all shows and tokens of gladness and pomp, as well upon the water as on the land." [8] A similar reception awaited them in Cork, where they remained six weeks, Youghal being in too reduced a condition to entertain high personages like the Deputy. The journey from this point onward was like a royal progress. They moved about attended by the Earls of Desmond, Thomond, and Clancar, the Earl of Desmond having 'come in' only a few days before; the Bishops of Cashel and Cork, the Viscounts Barry and Roche, the Barons Courcy, Lixnaw, Dunboyne, Power, Barry Oge, and even Louth, who "only to do Sidney honour," came down from the north of the Pale to Cork.[9] Divers of the Irish, "not yet nobilitated," were of the party, such as the Lords of Carbery and Muskerry, Sir Donogh MacCarthy, and Sir Cormac MacTeigue MacCarthy—men Sidney wished to see made barons, at least, "though in respect of their territories Muskerry and MacCarthy were fitted to be made Viscounts."

[7] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 33, pp. 31-33.
[8] Ibid., ii, No. 33, p. 34.
[9] Ibid., ii, No. 36, pp. 38-39. See also Collins, Letters and Memorials of State, i, 18-31, for the report of the journey in 1567; and i, 75-80, 81-85, 89-97, 102-110, for the journey in 1575.
Besides these, there were Sir Owen O'Sullevan, and the son and heir to O'Sullevan Mór, "the father not being able to come by reason of his great years and impotency," Sir William O'Carroll and MacDonoghue, "never a one of them but for his lands might pass in rank of a baron, either in Ireland or England." Of the Irish, too, were the sons of MacAwley and O'Callaghan, "the old man not being able to come by reason of extreme age and infirmity," and O'Mahon and O'Driscoll "each of them having land to live like a knight, here or there." Of the descendants of the old English were Sir James FitzGerald, Sir Theodore Butler, "who lawfully and justly enjoyed the lands of his uncle and cousin the Barons of Cahir," Sir Thomas, Sir John, and Sir James of Desmond, brothers to the Earl, and, besides all these, many of the "ruined reliques of the ancient English inhabitants, as the Arundels, Rocheforts, Barretts, Flemings, Lombards, Terries (Tirrells), whose ancestors did live like gentlemen, knights some of them, and now all in misery, either banished from their own, or oppressed upon their own." Lastly, there was a group of captains of galloglas, the MacSwynes, "a brood not a little perilous to this province," who "made the greatest lords of the province both fear them and be glad of their friendship." All of these, according to the Viceroy, "seemed to loathe their vile and barbarous manner of life and were all ready to offer fealty and service for ever to her Majesty and to perform it at Westminster." Truly Sidney might feel that the ends of English rule in Ireland had been attained, as this princely company of 'meere' Irish, old English, and 'newly nobilitated' lords, each of them with his wife during all the Christmas season "the better to furnish out the beauty and filling of the city," gathered round him, "all of them keeping very honourable, at least very plentiful houses; many widow ladies were there also, who erst had been wives to earls and others of good note and accompt." [10]

[10] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 36, pp. 40-48.
This splendid progress was followed by practical results.

A great number of the Irish and old English lords submitted, even, as Sidney travelled westward, in the districts bordering on the Shannon. Burkes, Lacies, Purcells, the Red Roche, O'Mulrian, and several of the O'Briens and MacNamaras repaired to the Deputy at Limerick, all lamenting the waste and ruin of their countries, and praying for English laws to be planted among them and English sheriffs to execute those laws. The lesser lords called for the imposition of a settled subsidy instead of the local cess exacted from them by force; on this point Sidney found them "very tractable, though the matter in handling was somewhat tough." Except in the Palatinates of Kerry and Tipperary, the Queen's writ ran everywhere in the South and assizes were held. Owing to Perrot's administration Munster showed "great towardness of reformation" since the Deputy's last visit in 1567.

In Connacht affairs were not so satisfactory, though the Deputy entered the province with an imposing train of lords owning their lands in the west who here replaced those of Munster and the Pale.[11] The Earl of Thomond, heading a large company of O'Briens, accompanied him, "all gentlemen of one surname, and yet no one of them friends to another, and sometime have been named kings of Limerick"; as also the Earl of Clanricarde, the Archbishop of Tuam and Bishop of Clonfert, the Baron of Athenry, a now needy representative of the great family of the Berminghams, "the ancientest in this land"; with O'Flaherty, O'Kelly, O'Madden, O'Naughton, at the head of their respective lords and captains, besides Burkes under their adopted names of MacDavy, MacRedmond, MacHubbert, and many more. The old Galway Prendergasts, MacCostelloes, Lynches, and Barretts were all well represented, and all alike besought that they might hold their lands of the Crown directly instead of being at the mercy of their provincial lords, who so tyrannized over them that many who had once been lords and barons in Parliament had not now three hackneys to carry them home. The whole province was suffering from the misdeeds of Ulick and John Burke, the two "hopeless sons" of the Earl of Clanricarde, whom no promises or oaths would restrain from their execrable evil deeds. Galway had been so decayed through the "horrible spoils" committed by these young men, that the inhabitants had almost forgotten that they were a corporate town. The place was fortified like a city at war, its walls nightly watched, and its gates daily guarded by armed men. Athenry, "a town full as big as Calais, with a fair high wall," had been totally burned by them, college, parish church, and all; "yet the mother of one of them was buried in the church." [12] In this former great and ancient town, which had three hundred good householders, Sidney found now "only four and they poor, and, as I write," he says, "ready to leave the place. The cry and lamentation of the poor people was great and pitiful and nothing but thus, `Succour, succour, succour.'

[11] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 38, pp. 48-51.
[12] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 38, pp. 49-50.
The Earl of Clanricarde could not deny but that he held a heavy hand over them." Sidney set about to raise a tax on the country for the rebuilding of the town, and the two youths publicly submitted in St Nicholas' Church of Galway, where Sidney caused a countryman of their own named Lynch, "sometime a friar at Greenwich, but a reformed man, a good divine and preacher in three tongues, Irish, English, and Latin" to preach a sermon to them on the wickedness of their actions.[13] But their reformation was short. After a brief confinement in Dublin they were set free, provided that they would never again pass the Shannon into Connacht. But hardly were they at liberty than they recrossed the river, flinging off their English habit and apparel and putting on their wonted Irish weed with the remark, "Lie there for one year at least." They rejoined their "loose rascall and kerne," tore down the new buildings in Athenry, and again set the province in an uproar. Their father, Richard or Redmond, known as the 'Sasanach Earl' on account of his English leanings, who was accompanying the Deputy, "very humbly on his knees had besought protection for himself and his two sons," but on their fresh outbreak his castles were delivered into Sidney's hands and he himself sent into England, the Deputy congratulating himself that he had in his power the father, an earl, and his followers, instead of "two beggerly bastard boys." The old Earl "took his leave of this world" in 1582, and the sons continued their struggles for the title of Earl, in spite of a division of their immense properties between them and their frequent promises of a better life.[14]

[13] Ibid., ii, No. 501, pp. 352-353.
[14] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 498, pp. 330, 331.
The Mayo branch of the great family of the Burkes Sidney on his journey to Galway found more amenable. Though at first MacWilliam Burke sent word that he would not come, he relented when he found that seven chief men of his galloglas, the Scottish Clandonnells, had submitted themselves, and he came "very willingly." The Deputy "found MacWilliam very sensible, though wanting the English tongue yet understanding the Latin. He desired to suppress Irish extortion and to expulse the Scots," and he agreed to hold his lands directly of the Queen. Sidney conferred on him the honour of knighthood, "whereof he seemed very joyous," and gave him "some other little trifles, as tokens between him and me." [15] Sidney found him a great man, owning territory three times as large as Clanricarde, his lands lying along the coast, wherein were many goodly havens. So long as he lived he remained loyal and seems to have endeavoured to keep the country quiet, but the untamable wildness of his family, followed by the ruthless regime of Bingham in Connacht ten years later, made peace impossible. Of the Gaelic Connacht chiefs, O'Conor excused himself by letters, but for O'Conor Sligo, O'Rorke, and O'Donnell, Sidney looked in vain. But a year later they had all submitted, with copious promises of being "good subjects" and paying rents. As a rule the rents were, as O'Conor said of his own tributes from O'Conor Sligo, "never taken without violence" and indefinitely delayed.

[15] Ibid., ii, No. 38, p. 49.
Among the local chieftains who came in and submitted to Sidney during his visit to Galway was Owen O'Mayle, or O'Malley, Lord of Borishoole, Co. Mayo, the father of the celebrated Grania O'Malley, who became famous in song as Grania Mhaol (pronounced Wael). The exploits of this Connacht chieftainess, who defied Elizabeth and her Government from her sea-fortress, so impressed her time and nation that her name became a synonym for Ireland itself, and there are popular national songs addressed to the country under this title. She was wife to the "Iron" Richard Burke, who was brought in by her to make his submission. Sidney's account of the scene reflects the general curiosity aroused by the personality of this remarkable woman. His report goes: "There came to me a most famous feminine sea-captain, called Grany O'Mallye, and offered her service unto me wheresoever I would command her with three galleys and two hundred fighting men, either in Ireland or Scotland; she brought with her her husband, for she was by sea as by land more than Mrs Mate with him...This was a notorious woman in all the coast of Ireland. This woman did Sir Philip Sidney see and speak withall; he can more at large inform you of her." [16] This interview between Sidney's famous son, the most accomplished poet-soldier of his day, with the powerful and independent chieftainess of the Connacht seaboard must have been of singular interest. We could wish that the record of it had remained. Grania ruled her husband and her district with equal vigour, commanding her fleet and army from her almost impregnable castle at Carrick-a-Uile, near Newport in Co. Mayo. Her ships scoured the wild seas of the West and made sudden descents on English armies and fleets, committing depredations far and near. Sir Richard Bingham considered her as "the nurse of all the rebellions in the province for forty years." Grania had many narrow escapes. In 1577-78 she was a prisoner in Desmond's hands, until Sir William Drury had her brought to Dublin and set her free. Her first husband was an O'Flaherty, cousin of Sir Morrogh O'Flaherty of the Axes (na dtuagh), recognized by Queen Elizabeth as the head of his clan; but on his death she was united to Richard Burke. She was seized by Sir Richard Bingham in 1586 for plundering Aran Island. He bound her and threatened to hang her, but let her off on receiving a pledge from her wild son-in-law, popularly known as "the Devil's Hook" or "the Fiend of the Sickle" (Deamhan an chórrain). On his rising in rebellion she fled into Ulster to O'Neill and O'Donnell, till Sir John Perrot sent her the Queen's pardon, on which she returned to Connacht; but her fleet was dispersed, and she fell into great poverty and had to appeal to Burghley for the restoration of one-fifth of her husband's lands. Tradition says that she was buried on Clare Island.

[16] Carew, Cal., ii. No. 109, p. 141 ; No. 501, p. 353.
The disturbed condition of the district had been aggravated by the harsh and irritating dealings of Sir Edward Fitton, who was appointed first Governor of Connacht in 1569, soon after Sidney's visit to the province. He was a man better fitted for his later post of Treasurer than as a general called upon to cope with a country in rebellion. He was replaced in January 1576-77 by Colonel Nicholas Malbie, who was given the charge of the castles of Roscommon and Athlone and all Clanricarde's houses, and who later, in March 1579, was appointed President. Under his administration the province quieted down. He brought with him a band of soldiers which included two hundred of the Scottish Clandonnells of Leinster, who formed the Queen's body of galloglas, and some kerne in her Majesty's service. At the same moment two thousand Scots were on their way over to fight with the Earl's sons and were "doing as much harm and mischief as they could." The Scottish tartan must frequently have been seen on both sides in these Irish wars. Otherwise the wars in Connacht were carried on almost entirely by Irish troops on both sides. There was never any difficulty in raising bodies of kerne for the Queen's armies, and, except for the great expeditions such as that of Essex against O'Neill, when English troops were sent over, nearly all the field campaigns were carried on with kerne raised in the locality. The English soldiers were almost exclusively used for garrisons in the towns and castles. For Bingham's ruthless campaign in Connacht kerne came swarming in from Munster to enrol under the English flag, so that he had no need of any outside help in subduing the unruly Burkes and Joys; he boasted that his wars had not cost a penny to the Queen. He reports that he had to turn away "many companies of kerne who came to me out of Munster and other places to serve here; they came up so fast that I think I must be forced to turn upon them and drive them out of the province."

The old provincial jealousies were not yet extinct, and any occasion served to revive them. It was in 1584, when the stirrings of the Burkes of Mayo and the descents of the Scots from the out-islands had between them left Connacht in a ferment, that Perrot sent Sir Richard Bingham to 'quiet' the country, giving him the title of President of Connacht. His intention was to make the people English as quickly as possible, for which purpose he introduced a 'plot' to make them directly dependent on the State His next step was to deprive them of the right of using the old 'Macs' and 'O's' before their names, applying the prohibition particularly to MacWilliam Burke, who was as proud of his title as any MacLean or MacLeod in the Scottish highlands. It is plain that these old Norman de Burgos were now looked upon and probably looked upon themselves as "original Irish" and they flew to arms to assert their right. They refused to appear at sessions and shut themselves up in their castle in Lough Mask, where Bingham besieged them by boat. "He so hunted them from bush to bush and hill to hill that in a short time no news was to be heard where any of them were." Young Richard Burke, called by the English "the Pall of Ireland," the most dangerous and active of the family, he executed under martial law, and he razed their castles to the ground. Again and again cautions came from the Lord Deputy that he was to stay his hand and not drive the province into war. No caution or command could check the movements of this capable but callous officer, who harried his foes from place to place, giving them no time for food or rest, till at last they all came in, being "so pined away for want of food and so ghasted with fear that they looked rather like ghosts than men."

William Burke, called "the Blind Abbot," submitted himself very humbly, offering one of his sons in pledge, and so did Richard Burke, "the Devil's Hook." [17] But they soon broke out again on the same point of honour. "They said they would have a MacWilliam or they would go to Spain for one; and that they would admit no sheriff nor answer at any assize." [18] But when it came to the election of a new MacWilliam self-government did not appear so easy. Of the eight competitors for the title, O'Donnell, who was called in to decide, put four in irons and required hostages for the rest. He caused to be elected a favourite of his own, Theobald of the Ships (Tibbot na long), a strong man and "hated by the English." They filled the province with reports of Spanish landings, English defeats, the Queen dying, and the Scots in arms. When Bingham was first recalled in 1587 the general dread of the landing of the Spaniards was at its height. The year of his return (1588) was the date of the Armada, and he ordered that all Spaniards landing on the coast should be hanged in Galway, an order which he boasted got rid of a thousand men. But when the Spaniards actually landed at Kinsale, Theobald of the Ships was found supporting Mountjoy against them, and he received knighthood for his services. In the reign of James I, he took over his lands on English tenure, and Charles I created him Viscount Bourke of Mayo in 1626-27.

[17] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 621, pp. 430-432.
[18] Carew, Cal. ii, No. 621, p. 431 ; O'Flaherty, Iar-Connacht, pp. 268-273, 387.
Bingham's great feat was his destruction of the Scottish army which had come over to fight for O'Donnell. They had with them Sir Arthur O'Neill and Hugh Maguire, and Bingham heard that they were marching through O'Rorke's country into Tirawley. Bingham, who had now been joined by a considerable body of English troops, "dealt with his guide to bring him the nearest way he could to them." The guide, one MacCostello, found out a priest who had that day escaped from imprisonment among the Scots and who undertook to lead the army if he might have with him a couple of horsemen of the O'Hara's, otherwise he durst not. An hour or two after midnight Sir Richard arose, and in the moonlight marched directly toward the enemy, led by the priest and keeping to the lower flanks of the mountain, all moving in great silence, till they came within sight of the Scots. These were taken completely by surprise, and he set on them and slew them, save eighty who swam across the Moyne into Tirawley and escaped.

All Bingham's undoubted military skill and all his cruelties could not quiet the distracted province. He was disliked not only by the Irish, but by many of his own countrymen. Lord Deputy Perrot says of him that "he is arrogant and hated and shall have £500 given him by the country where he governeth towards his passage into England, so that they may be rid of him...Let him go, in the name of God, to Flanders." [19] The Queen, wearying of the reports of his severities and of the disorders which he seemed unable to quell, recalled him in 1596. The usual fate of the men who undertook office and lost their credit in Ireland befell him, and he was committed to the Fleet Prison on his arrival in London; but the news of the difficulties and defeats suffered by the Queen's generals in Ulster coming in at the same time, Elizabeth thought that Bingham's action might have been justifiable and released him. On O'Neill's outbreak in 1598 he was sent back as Marshal of Ireland. There exists a curious document, dating from the third year (1586) of Bingham's sojourn in Connacht, in which the Burkes give their own account of the causes of their rising. They make no complaint of cruelty, but they say that Bingham had been restraining the lords and great men from the extortions and 'cuttings' on their tenants to which they had been accustomed, and though this was for the benefit of the tenants the gentry disliked it, saying that "this new governor would shortly make their churls their masters," while they would "become beggars for want of their cuttings and spendings." They were angered, too, by a proposal that they should join the English armies in Flanders, which "seemed so strange that we knew not in the world what to do." It was not the execution of the bad Burkes, they protested, which had caused their rebellion, "for we did know that they were very bad members of the commonwealth and great practisers of this rebellion and all other mischiefs, maintainers of thieves and evil-disposed persons, and have most justly deserved death." The real cause of the rebellion, they admit, was the taking away of the MacWilliamship and the division of lands and inheritances; "this and none other, whatever hath been pretended or reported to the contrary." [20]

[19] Carew, Cal., ii, No. 627, p. 442.
[20] S.P., Eliz., cxxvi, p. 201 (November 16, 1586). Bingham died in Dublin on January 19, 1598-99. See also "Docwra's Relation of his Acts in Connacht," Miscellany of the Celtic Society (1849).
END OF CHAPTER XII