A History of Ireland.

by Eleanor Hull

1931

XVIII.—THE MUNSTER PLANTERS

While Mountjoy was dealing with the Tyrone rebellion in the North, Sir George Carew was making his preparations to take up the Presidency of Munster in the place of Sir Thomas Norris, and to carry out the war against Fineen, or Florence, MacCarthy and the new claimant to the title of Earl of Desmond, James FitzThomas FitzGerald. This man, though he was known in his day as the sougaun (or 'Straw-rope') Earl, had as fair a claim to the title as many other Irish chiefs had to theirs. His father, Sir Thomas Roe FitzGerald, was eldest son of the fourteenth Earl, but had been disinherited by his father as being base-born. Nevertheless, he had been knighted by Sir Henry Sidney and had married a daughter of Lord Roche. Carew arrived in Munster shortly after the hurried descent of Hugh O'Neill from Ulster to form his combination with Fineen MacCarthy and Desmond. Hugh O'Neill had returned as the acknowledged head of the Catholic League, and the leader in the coming rebellion which was to combine North and South and to have the support of Spain, whose fleet was again daily expected on Irish shores. To the former cause of rebellion—the religious discontent—was now added the arrival in the province of a number of early 'planters,' who were establishing themselves securely on Desmond's properties even as far west as Kerry and were pushing out the old owners. Large schemes for the extension of these plantations were under discussion, and the old possessors saw themselves in danger of being gradually ousted from their lands.

The eight years that had intervened since the suppression of the first Munster rebellion had witnessed many changes in the occupation of the province. Long before the great confiscations which followed on the conclusion of the Desmond wars, isolated planters had been coming over. When Carew set out on his campaign he had in view as well the protection of the English settlers scattered up and down the country as the suppression of the rebellion. Men on the look-out for fortunes ready-made had been prospecting over the whole country before the end of the Desmond rebellion. They cared little whether the existing proprietors were of Irish or English race. Sir Peter Carew the Elder went back as far as the first Norman invaders to set up a claim, founded upon the marriage of a daughter of Robert FitzStephen to a Thomas Carew. His claim was so doubtful that, in spite of the industrious investigations of Hooker,[1] uncle of the author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, whom he engaged to make a pedigree, he was advised by the Deputy not to pursue it. Having made up his mind, however, "that there was not in Europe a more pleasant, fruitfuller or sweeter land than Idrone," he relentlessly pursued his claim and finally forced the then owner, Sir Christopher Chyvers, to acknowledge it. By Christmas 1568 he was extending a sumptuous hospitality from the old Carew Castle on the banks of the Barrow with Chyvers and the Kavanaghs alike holding of him their old properties. An old woman in the streets of Dublin pointed him out as "the man risen from the dead, to stir those out of their nests who thought to lie at peace." Carew's pretensions were one direct cause of the Butler wars of 1579-80, part of the property of Sir Edmond Butler, younger brother of the Earl of Ormonde, coming within his claims. Though the Butlers had possessed themselves originally of lands belonging to the Kavanaghs they "could not brook Sir Peter nor digest his manners, nor allow of his offers," which they looked upon as part of a widespread scheme to get rid of the present proprietors in favour of upstarts who had no real right to the lands they acquired. Sir Edmond flung off English apparel and "became not only like a meere Irishman but an Irish kerne," ranging and spoiling whole districts of the most English province in Ireland with fire and sword. The Butlers' wars and the Baltinglas rebellion added much to the difficulty of dealing with the Desmond rising, a considerable body of troops under Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Nicholas Malbie being drawn off to deal with it.

[1] For the career of Sir Peter Carew see Hooker, or Vowell, in Carew Cal., i, Introduction. This life has been repubhshed by J. Maclean (1857).
Lord Butler complained that he was attacked on one side by "the traitors James Fitzmaurice and MacCarthy Mór," and on the other by the Queen's troops and Carew, though he protested that he never was or should be false to the Queen or her Crown, and only sought to preserve his own. "This is the order nowadays," wrote Ormonde to Sir William Cecil; "I hope the Queen's Majesty, of her gracious goodness, will think of this manner of dealing with her subjects." Carew did not live to pursue his doubtful claims on Munster; he died suddenly in 1575, just as he was preparing to occupy the two fine houses he had built for himself in Cork and Kinsale, and left it to his kinsman, Sir George Carew, to revive the claim.

The real plantation began with the vast confiscations which followed on the Act of Attainder at the close of the Desmond rebellion in 1586, when over 574,000 acres of land in Munster were forfeited and vested in the Crown. Each "undertaker," as the purchasers of these properties were called, who took up 12,000 acres was required to place eighty-six English families on his estate. Great inducements were held out to suitable planters to take up land. Letters were written to every county in England to encourage younger brothers to become undertakers. Estates were to be held in fee at twopence per acre in the counties of Cork and Waterford, and to be rent free till March 1590, and then to pay but half-rent for the following three years. Their produce was to be transported duty free to any country in friendship with England, and they might import necessaries free of customs. The plan proposed was that each village or district in England should send a certain number of families complete with all the trades and kinds of husbandry that would be required in the new country; for it was intended that no Irish should be permitted to reside on these lands. But this idea was soon given up. Not only was it difficult to get the right sort of handy and industrious workmen among the hosts of idle men who flocked over, but the planters found it more profitable to retain the Irish on their estates. These were ready to give them the same services in labour that they had hitherto rendered to their chiefs, besides the fourth sheaf of all their corn, and sixteenpence yearly for a beast's grass, so that many "cared not although they never placed any Englishmen on their estates." The foolish and cruel law which would have displaced the natural inhabitants from their holdings fell into desuetude, as did many laws with a similar intent, through their own inherent folly. We find the people living on in their old homes, kindly to the English who had come among them, and perhaps glad of a change of proprietors which, under English law, made them the possessors of their own holdings.

A planter in Co. Cork named Robert Payne has written an interesting account of the experiences he met with on his estate.[2] He was one of those more benevolent settlers that we find here and there who, though they took advantage of the opportunity offered to acquire tracts of land in the fertile forfeited estates, had no ill-feeling toward the people among whom they came, and lived with them on terms of amity and mutual advantage. He took up land for himself and twenty-five partners, each of whom had 400 acres. He brought over with him one chief farmer and four smaller farmers, thus carrying out the intention of the Government proclamation; fourteen freeholders, forty copyholders, and twenty-six cottagers and labourers also accompanied him. His own family possessed 1600 acres, and he appears to have acted as manager for the estates of absent proprietors. He was an experienced planter, and he gives free advice to hesitating buyers, couched in a sarcastic vein. He bids intending settlers not to be discouraged by tales of the dangers of life in Ireland. Three of the worst dangers at least they will be free from. First, they cannot meet in all the land any worse than themselves; secondly, they need not fear robbery, for they have not anything to lose; lastly, they are not likely to run into debt, for that there is none will trust them. "The greatest matter which troubleth them is that they cannot get anything there but by honest labour, which they are altogether ignorant of." He has a high opinion of the Irish among whom he lives. He finds them quick-witted and of good constitution, keeping their promises faithfully, and more desirous of peace than Englishmen, "for that in time of war they are more charged." They are obedient to the laws, so that you may travel through all the land without any danger or injury offered by the very worst Irish and be greatly relieved of the best. He finds it difficult to tell what good fruits England hath that Ireland wanteth; while Ireland is situated more conveniently for the putting forth of all commodities than England is. This tract, written in 1589, gives us a new view of the general conditions in the South of Ireland after the close of the Munster wars. Though he tells us that most of the kerne or young fighting-men had been killed in the late wars, the better sort of the people are very civil and honestly given, and most of them greatly inclined to husbandry, though as yet inexpert. Some of them are so rich in cattle, through their great travail, that one man will milk a hundred kine and two or three hundred goats and ewes. This, after the devastations of the fifteen years' war, is surprising, and leads us to hope that parts of the country had suffered much less than others. He speaks of two very rich districts within the county of Limerick which had belonged to the Knight of the Valley, who had been executed for high treason, as "the gardens of the land" for the variety of their plants, grain, and fruits and the great store of venison, fish, and fowl they produce, though these are everywhere in plenty. The idle men going about the country after the wars he finds "not unlike our English beggars, only that they are not obliged to give any account of themselves, which should be remedied." Lastly he gives an account of their schools. He speaks of a grammar school he had visited in Limerick of 150 scholars, most of whom "spoke good and perfect English, for that they have been used to construe the Latin into English." Most of the people about him, he says, spoke good English and brought up their children to learning. Their hospitality was the proverbial Irish welcome, "more plentiful, perhaps, than cleanly or handsome; but though they never did see you before, they will make you the best cheer their country yieldeth for two or three days, and take not anything for it." Payne is of the same opinion as Thomas Stafford, Carew's secretary, that "her Majesty has a great number of loyal and dutiful subjects in this so great and fruitful country"; and that though in the Desmond wars he cannot deny there were many Irish traitors, "yet herein," he writes, "judge charitably, for such was the misery of the time that many were driven to this bad choice, whether they would be spoiled as well by the enemy as the worser sort of soldiers at home, or go out to the rebels and be hanged, which is the fairest end of a traitor. But as touching their government in their corporations where they bear rule, it is done with such wisdom, equity, and justice as demerits worthy commendations." He tells us that if a case is tried between an Irishman and Englishman the jury is formed half of each nation, and that at the assizes he has frequently seen well near twenty cases decided at one sitting, "with such indifference that for the most part both plaintiff and defendant depart contented; yet many that make show of peace and desireth to live by blood do utterly mislike this or any good thing the poor Irishman doth."

[2] A Briefe Description of Ireland (1589) in "Irish Archaeological Tracts," ed. by Aquilla Smith (1841).
Moryson complains [3] that the men of best quality who purchased estates never came over, and that of the two thousand able men who according to agreement ought to have been in the province he could not find two hundred. Most of them resold at enhanced rates in London; of those who did go, few carried out their compact to take over English families or build castles. When the new rebellion broke out most of them fled into the towns, and after the rebellion it was difficult to induce them to return to their estates. Those who remained made demands for horsemen to protect them. One of the largest of the planters, Sir William Herbert, whose Kerry properties amounted to 13,270 acres, and whose relations with his Irish tenants were of a most kindly nature, complains that in the surrounding undertakers he is associated with such lewd, indiscreet, and insufficient men as disgrace an honourable action, and that it is high time these frauds were met withal. Fineen MacCarthy too finds in the "outrageous words and violent deeds" of the settlers and soldiers alike a "ready way to make the Irish weary of their loyalty and of their lives." According to a list drawn up by Sir Edward Fitton and Sir John Popham, Attorney-General, the largest planters in the South were the two Herberts with over 17,000 acres, Denny and Brown with 6000 each in Kerry, at eight-pence an acre; Trenchard, Courtney, and Barkley, etc., 12,000 acres each, at fourpence an acre. Sir Edward Fitton, Lord Treasurer, one of the most avaricious men of his day, got 16,000 acres in Cork and Waterford. The generals and officials, such as Sir Wareham St Leger, Sir Thomas Norris, Sir Richard Grenfell, Sir Walter Raleigh, each received a large share. The latter got the enormous grant of 42,000 acres [4] in Cork and Waterford, most of which were later, by the influence of Carew and Cecil, sold to Boyle, "they being altogether waste and desolate, untenanted and of no value to him." Boyle does not say what he paid Raleigh for his property, but estates in Cork were selling for a penny an acre, in Tipperary and Waterford for 1 1/4d., and in Limerick for 2 1/2d., an acre.

[3] History of Ireland, i, 62.
[4] The grant was made in 1586. It is otherwise said to have been of 574,268 acres. As no one was allowed legally to possess more than 12,000 acres two other names were associated with Raleigh's in the list.
Besides his immense grants of lands Raleigh received the patronage of the Wardenship of the College of Our Lady at Youghal, with the exclusive rights to the valuable salmon fishery in the tidal waters of the Blackwater. The rich soil that stretched along both banks of the river was waste and neglected, and Raleigh was not the man to improve it. His restless nature and vain disposition looked for more rapid means of raising his fortunes than the laborious cultivation of the lands that had fallen, by Court favour, into his hands. Brilliant, stirring, and extravagant, even judged by the standards of Elizabeth's day, the man who sunned himself in Court smiles, and clad himself in cloaks and shoes heavy with pearls or diamonds, must have found the quiet of the beautiful little town of Youghal, with its memories of collegiate and monastic retirement, irksome to his nature. Raleigh's residence at Youghal was not his first visit to Ireland. He had come over in his youth as a needy Munster captain in that small band of horse which was commanded by his half-brother and fellow-adventurer Sir Humphrey Gilbert. That band, fresh from the ruthless wars of Languedoc, where Raleigh had seen the unfortunate peasants smoked out of the caverns in the mountains where they had taken refuge, only to fall upon the swords of the soldiery, brought to Ireland the same brutal instincts of warfare. Let loose upon Munster these young Captains did mischief altogether out of proportion to their numbers. Raleigh's first act had been in connexion with the execution at Cork in August 1580 of James FitzGerald, younger brother to the Earl of Desmond, and his next was the slaughter of the Spaniards and Irish at Smerwick, when he and Mack-worth were sent in "to do execution" on the inmates.

Raleigh held firmly the common belief of the day that all means were justifiable in dealing with rebels and that pity to the Spaniards who aided them was treachery to the State. But his harsh methods often defeated their ends; his capture of Barry's Court turned the wavering Lord Barry into an open enemy, and even for that age Sir Humphrey Gilbert's methods "had a little too much warmth and presumption," so that he had been replaced in the Presidency of Munster by Sir John Perrot. Their company was paid off and disbanded in December 1581, and Raleigh returned home. When he went back again in 1590-91 he was no longer captain of a troop of horse, but a Court favourite with large English properties, estates forfeited after the Babington conspiracies. He was Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and Captain of the Queen's Band; to these emoluments he added his great acquisitions in Cork. It was now that he found his friend Edmund Spenser at Kilcolman Castle, "under the foote of Mole, that mountaine hore," sitting, "alwaies idle," beside the restless waters of his loved Mulla stream, looking out on the distant Cork and Kerry ranges, and writing his immortal poem, while events like the Armada passed him by unheeded. Spenser came over to Ireland in 1580 as private secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, and from that time forward most of his life was passed in that country. He held several appointments, being in 1581 made Clerk of Degrees and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery, and, seven years later, Clerk to the Council of Munster. He had a great admiration for Lord Grey, whom all, he says, knew to be "most gentle, affable, loving and temperate, but that the necessity of that present state of things enforced him to violence, and almost changed his natural disposition," and he warmly resented the charge that Grey broke his word at Smerwick. But he fully approved of Grey's short and sharp methods of conquest and resettlement, and blamed the changes of policy and the weakness and corruption of governors "who thought more of their own ease and advancement than of the good of the State and country."[5] In the fifth book of The Faerie Queene Lord Grey de Wilton appears as Artegall, "the Champion of true Justice," whose "wreakfull hand" none could abide. He is attended by Talus,

made of yron mould,
Immovable, resistlesse, without end;
Who in his hand an yron flail did hould,
With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth unfould.

[5] Spenser, View of the State of Ireland (ed. Morley, 1890), p. 146.
The Faerie Queene was written at Kilcolman, a castle belonging to the Desmond family, which seems to have passed into his hands, with a grant of 3028 acres in Co. Cork, sometime after 1586. Kilcolman, now a ruin, was placed in a plain which commanded a wide view, shut in by the Ballyhowra Mountains to the north and by the Kerry Hills to the west. Here,

Under the foote of Mole, that mountaine hore,
Keeping my sheepe amongst the cooly shade
Of the greene alders by the Mullaes shore,[6]

[6] Colin Clout's Come Home Againe.
he wandered and sang in a solitude which at times was cheered by the visits of the "Shepherd of the Ocean," Sir Walter Raleigh. To an Irish reader Spenser's poems take a largely added interest from the fact that the incidents and the scenes he depicts reflect the conditions and scenery of Munster at a critical moment of its history. The startling pictures of wild life encountered by his knights are probably not greatly exaggerated reflections of actual stories brought to his ears. They approached all too nearly to the facts of life around him. On the outbreak of the second Desmond rebellion in the autumn of 1598 the insurgents wreaked their vengeance on him for his occupation of Kilcolman Castle by plundering and burning it to the ground. It is said by Ben Jonson that one of his babes perished in the flames. In poverty and deep distress Spenser returned to London, where he died shortly afterward.[7]

[7] Spenser's wife, Elizabeth, is said by a writer in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society (Second Series, i, 131-133) to have been a daughter of Sir Richard Boyle.
A figure very familiar in the neighbourhood of Youghal in the time of Spenser and Raleigh was that of the aged Dowager Countess of Desmond, about whom strange traditions floated. Widow of a man who, in 1529, had become Earl of Desmond at the age of seventy-five, and having survived him for seventy years, it is not strange that the 'Old Countess' became one of the wonders of her age. Rumour said that she was born in 1464, that she had been maid of honour at the Court of Edward IV (d. 1483), and that she had danced with Richard III when Duke of Gloucester, of whom she retained memories much more favourable than those which have come down to us. Her husband, Sir Thomas the Bald of Desmond, must have been sixty years of age when she married him. He was the third son of the eighth Earl, beheaded at Drogheda in 1468, and in spite of the efforts at reparation made by Edward IV, he and his brothers were in a constant state of suppressed rebellion; "with banners displayed they sought revenge." The Earl, who seems to have been an eccentric, had divorced his first wife, Sheela MacCarthy of Muskerry, to marry Katherine, who was eldest daughter of Sir John FitzGerald, Lord of Decies, and his cousin; he had on his hands the blood both of his late father-in-law and his first wife's brother. The castle of Inchiquin, where he and Katherine lived, must have seen wild deeds. He was so distrustful of strangers that, instead of bed and board, he provided a halter for them outside his walls "as though all visitors were spies and wizards." He took full advantage of the system of coign and livery instituted by his ancestor, the first Earl of Desmond, for he lived half the year upon his tenants; and he refused to pay one groat of yearly revenue to the Crown, in spite of his immense possessions in Waterford, Limerick, Cork, and Kerry, or to obey any of the King's laws. Henry VIII ordered the Earl of Ossory in 1534 to curb this fierce and grasping man, but he died in the same year at the age of eighty, leaving a grandson by the son of his first wife, who was brought up at the English Court and educated in the royal household. Disloyal Geraldines dubbed him "the Court Page" Earl, and he was subsequently murdered by Sir Maurice Dubh, or Duff, "the Black Geraldine," "a man without faith or truth, cruel, severe, merciless," whose murder of the "Court Page" Earl was the first step "to the overthrow of this honourable house of Desmond, God in revenge thereof not leaving one of the race of Sir John or Sir Maurice alive upon the face of the earth." Sir Maurice's son was the James FitzMaurice who aided Earl Garrett's rising.

After the death of her turbulent spouse the Countess lived on at Inchiquin Castle near Youghal, which had long been looked upon as a dower house for widows of the Earls of Desmond. She made over the property to Garrett, Earl of Desmond, then out in rebellion, but after his attainder it was granted to Raleigh, who recognized her prior claim in two leases drawn up by him. He knew personally the aged lady, who lived not many miles from his house at Youghal. When Boyle obtained Raleigh's lands the old Countess of Desmond, whose jointure came to an end at the age of the 'trust term' of ninety-nine years, leaving her reduced to penury, was obliged to revisit the Court to lay her case before Queen Elizabeth and prove her identity. She was accompanied by her daughter. Landing at Bristol, tradition says that the old lady "came on foot to London, as she was wont to walk weekly at home to Youghal on market-days. But her daughter being decrepit, was brought in a little cart, their poverty not allowing better means." Her appearance at Court created a sensation, and is mentioned in many of the memoirs of the day. Bacon says that tradition gave her sevenscore years, and Raleigh in his History of the World says, that she was alive in 1589 and "many years afterwards, as all the noblemen and gentlemen in Munster can testify." [8] She lived on till 1604, thus outliving at least three—tradition would make it six—of the Queen's ancestors and Elizabeth herself. She witnessed the great power and the downfall of the house of Desmond, caused partly through the misdoings of Englishmen, but largely also by the disregard of all laws, human and divine, by her husband and his kindred. She is said to have died from a fall while picking cherries from a tree in Raleigh's garden.

[8] The above details are taken from the Kerry Magazine, August and September, 1855; the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Second Series, ii, 145 seq. (1896) , the Dictionary of National Biography, and references there given. We give a remarkable portrait of the Countess from Knole. The portrait formerly at Muckross has recently been presented to the National Portrait Gallery, London.,/p>
Raleigh himself, in later life, after making experiments in plantations in other lands than Ireland, was condemned to spend twelve mournful years in the Tower of London, during some part of which another apartment in the same gloomy pile was occupied by the last of the Desmonds, the spoiler and spoiled being thus brought to one fate together. Like Florence MacCarthy, Raleigh endeavoured to while away the tedium of imprisonment by planning a history, and he carried out the compilation of his History of the World Florence's tract is a mere fragment, addressed to the Earl of Thomond, and mainly intended to prove that the Irish came from Greece.[9] At Youghal Raleigh made attempts to grow the potato and tobacco. His long imprisonment ended in his death on the scaffold—a fate that seemed to fall, like the judgment of God, on all those who held in their hands the weal and woe of Ireland, and who betrayed their trust. Among the 'adventurers' who built up the largest fortunes out of the escheated lands were Sir Valentine Brown, who bought up large slices of the MacCarthy estates from the spendthrift Earl of Clancar, and Sir Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, a man who arrived in Dublin in 1588 with £27 in his pocket, and who died leaving his family possessed of immense wealth, his daughters intermarried with the highest nobility, and three of his sons ennobled. The rapid acquisition of wealth by the clever and unscrupulous Boyle was so surprising that the Queen believed that he was in receipt of foreign supplies; but the easier method of ' finding lands by concealments ' provided all the means that Boyle required. He was imprisoned in 1594, and in the Munster rebellion he lost all his possessions, but such was his plausibility that he won over the Queen and was sent back as Clerk of the Council of Munster under Sir George Carew, and from this time his talents and energy ensured his rapid rise. To him it fell to convey to London the news of the victory of Kinsale, and it is characteristic of his enterprise that, leaving Shannon Castle about two o'clock on Monday morning, he delivered his packet to Sir Robert Cecil at supper on the following day, and before seven the next morning was explaining the details of the siege to the Queen in her bedchamber. His marriage with Sir Geoffrey Fenton's daughter was another step in his advance, and on the same day he was knighted by the then Deputy. Cecil writes to Carew: [10] "Boyle is accused by Crosby for I know not what; of cosining and concealing; one barrell little better hearing than th' other. Let me know therefore, whether you would have him favoured or no; truly the fellow seems witty." And Ormonde in December 1601 complains to Cecil: "One Crosby and Boyle have been the only means of overthrowing many of her Majesty's good subjects by finding false titles to their lands, and turning them out...By that means they got much lands for themselves, which manner of dealing brought much discontentment and sedition amongst the subjects." [11] From a material point of view, Boyle, soon to be created Earl of Cork, set about the improvement of his estates with vigour and success, building castles, bridges, schools, almshouses, and towns, and making such great improvements that Cromwell, when he visited the South, wished there had been an Earl of Cork in every province. He had, in fact, transformed great portions of the South from a desert into flourishing modern cities.

[9] There is a copy in the British Museum. (Add. MS. 4793, ff. 21, 22).
[10] Letters of Sir Robert Cecil to Carew, ed. J. Maclean (Camden Society, 1864), p. 146 and note.
[11] Ormonde contended that Crosby was of the family of the MacCossanes, hereditary bards to the O'Mores, but he himself denied this. His mother, however, was one of the O'Mores. He was in possession of property in the O'Mores' country.
END OF CHAPTER XVIII