Little Arthur's history of England

It is a long time since I mentioned Ireland to you. You know that in the reign of King Henry the Second the English took a great part of it, and drove the old Irish away to the west side of the island.

Now the English, who settled in Ireland at that time, soon grew more like Irish than Englishmen, and they were as ready to quarrel with any new English that went to settle there as the old Irish had been to quarrel with them; so poor Ireland had never been quiet. The different lords of the new Irish, and the kings of the old were always fighting, and then they sent to England sometimes to ask for help, and often to complain of one another. Then the kings of England used to send soldiers, with private captains, who very often fought whoever they met, instead of helping one side or the other; and these soldiers generally treated the unhappy Irish as ill as the Danes used to treat the English.

In Queen Elizabeth’s time the miserable people in Ireland were never a day without some sad quarrel or fight in which many of them were killed; and though Ireland is a good country for corn and cattle, and all things useful, yet there was nothing to be had there but oatmeal; the people lived like wild savages, and even a good many of the English that had settled there wore the coarse Irish dress, used bows and arrows, and let their hair grow filthy and matted, more like the wild old Britons you read of in the first chapter, than like Christian gentlemen.

Ireland was strangely divided then; there was the part where the old Irish lived in huts among bogs and mountains; then the part with a few old castles that the first English settlers had built; and then that where fresh captains, who had come from time to time, had fixed themselves in forts and towns; and all these three parts were constantly at war.

Elizabeth, when she found how very ill Ireland was governed, wished to make it a little more like England, and to try to bring the people to live in peace. She sent a wise Governor there, called Sir Henry Sydney, and then another called Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton; but all that these good men could do was to keep the new English a little in order, and to try to do justice to the other people. By the queen’s orders they set up schools, and a college in Dublin, in hopes that the young Irishmen would learn to become more like the men of other countries.

But the bad way of governing Ireland had gone on too long to allow it to be changed all at once; and Elizabeth found she must send an army there to keep the different English and Irish chiefs in order, if she wished to have peace in the country.

Now these chiefs were all Roman Catholics, for I believe there were no Protestants in Ireland but the very newest of the English; and when the King of Spain made war against Queen Elizabeth, he sent some Spanish soldiers to Ireland to help the Irish chiefs to make war upon the English.

The story of these wars is long and very sad, and belongs rightly to the history of Ireland; but I must tell you what happened to one or two of the chief men of Ireland at this time.

The Earl of Desmond was one who joined the King of Spain’s people, and when Lord Grey drove the Spaniards out of Ireland, Desmond tried to hide himself among the woods and bogs in the wildest part of the country. But the English soldiers hunted him from place to place, so that he had no rest. One night he and his wife had just gone to bed in a house close by the side of a river; the English soldiers came, and the old Lord and Lady Desmond had just time to get up and run into the water, in which they stood up to their necks, till the English were gone. At last some soldiers, who were seeking for them, saw a very old man sitting by himself in a poor hut; they found out it was the Earl of Desmond, and they cut off his head directly, and sent it to queen Elizabeth.

But the most famous Irishman at this time was Hugh O’Neil, Earl of Tyrone. His uncle, Shane O’Neil, tried to make himself King of Ulster, and hated the English so that he killed some of his own family because they wanted to teach the Irish to eat bread like the English, instead of oat cakes.

This Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, had a large army of Irish, and fought all the queen’s officers for many years, though she sent many of the best and bravest there. Sir Henry Bagenal was one, and her greatest favourite, the Earl of Essex, was another. Two or three times, when Tyrone was near being conquered, he pretended to submit, and promised that if the queen would forgive him, he would keep his Irish friends quiet. He broke his word, however, and kept a civil war up in Ireland till very near the queen’s death, when, after being almost starved for want of food in the bogs near his own home, he made peace in earnest, and Ireland was quiet for a few years.

We are come now to the end of Queen Elizabeth’s long and famous reign. She died when she had been queen forty-five years, and was very unhappy at her death. Her favourite Lord Essex behaved so ill after he came from Ireland, that the queen’s counsellors ordered him to be put to death. Now, the queen had once given him a ring, when he was her greatest favourite, and told him, that if he would send it to her whenever he was in danger, she would save his life and forgive any of his faults. She thought he would send this ring to her, when he knew he was condemned to have his head cut off; and so he did; but a cruel woman to whom he trusted it, to give the queen, never did so till long after Essex was dead; and then Elizabeth, who was old and ill herself, was so vexed, that she hardly ever spoke to anybody again, and died in a few days afterwards at Richmond.

It would make our little history too long, if I tried to tell you of all the wise and good things done by Elizabeth, or if I told you the names of half the famous men who lived in her time.

Besides Essex, there was her other favourite, Leicester, a clever bad man.

Her god-son, Harrington, belonged to the learned men and poets of her time; but neither he nor any of the rest, though there were many, were to be compared to Shakespeare, whose plays everybody reads and loves, nor even to Spenser, who lived and died in Elizabeth’s reign.

Then there were her wise counsellors Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Burleigh, and Walsingham, and, all the generals and admirals I have told you about. I must just mention one more, because you will wish to be like him when you grow up. He was Sir Philip Sidney, the best and wisest, and most learned, and bravest. He was killed in battle. When he was lying on the ground, very hot and thirsty, and bleeding to death, a friend was bringing him a cup of water; but he happened to look round, and saw a poor dying soldier who had no friends near him, looking eagerly towards the cup. Sir Philip did not touch it, but sent to be given to that soldier, who blessed him as he was dying. And that act of self-denial and mercy makes all who hear the name of Philip Sidney bless him even now.