Lawyers and casuists might dispute about the succession. Logically, Mary and Elizabeth could not both be legitimate; but the people of England swept these cobwebs away. Catherine had for twenty-two years borne the title of Queen, and in that great place she was not known to have done anything worthy of blame, but much deserving the highest praise. And then there was the will of Henry VIII. Its execution had perhaps been informal, but the people cared nothing for that; it was his will, and he had been authorised by Parliament to make it. The sick-room fancies of a boy of sixteen were not to be allowed to alter such a settlement.

The struggle for the crown was short, and was little felt at the distance at which Ireland then was, though the Dudley party took care that Queen Jane’s accession should be officially known there. On the thirteenth day after her brother’s death Mary was proclaimed by the Council in London, on the fourteenth the baffled Northumberland renewed the proclamation at Cambridge, on the fifteenth the grand conspirator himself was arrested. On the very day of the Cambridge proclamation the Privy Council wrote to Aylmer, the acting Lord Justice cancelling the former communication, and directing that Mary should be proclaimed ‘Queen of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and on earth supreme head of the churches of England and Ireland.’[391]

Besides twelve Privy Councillors, six individuals connected with Ireland, who happened to be in England, signed these letters—Cusack, the Chancellor; Lord Gormanston; Staples, Bishop of Meath; Thomas Luttrell, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; James Bathe, Chief Baron; and the veteran John Alen. The object probably was to show the men in Dublin that this time at least there was no mistake as to which Queen they were to obey. Cusack, Aylmer, Luttrell, and Bathe were confirmed in their offices with increased emoluments, and no immediate change was made in the general management of Irish affairs. Some disturbances amongst the O’Connors were easily put down, and the citizens of Dublin repulsed a raid of the O’Neills near Dundalk. In the meantime Northumberland had expiated his crimes on the scaffold. Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstall, and others had been restored, and Cranmer, Latimer, and Hooper imprisoned; and there was time to think of the affairs of Ireland. In October, soon after the coronation, St. Leger was appointed Lord Deputy in fulfilment of the late King’s intention. He landed at Dalkey on November 11, and on the 19th took the oath and received the sword in Christ Church.

St. Leger’s instructions show the policy which Mary had adopted. As regards temporal affairs it did not greatly differ from that of her father. The Scots in Ulster were not to be molested unless they gave fresh trouble. The army was to be reduced to 500 regular soldiers, of which not more than ten per cent. were to be Irishmen. Extraordinary garrisons were to be discharged at the next general pay day, and if possible induced to go back to England without raising riots. The Lord Deputy might employ kerne and gallowglasses where necessary, and the usual private bands were to be continued; but coyne and livery were to be eschewed as much as possible. St. Leger found it impossible to carry out the reduction of the army lower than 1,100 men, besides kerne. The question as to the desirability of a Presidency for Munster was to be carefully considered in all its bearings. Leix and Offaly being in great measure waste, the Lord Deputy was to grant lands in fee simple at a small quit-rent either to Englishmen or Irishmen, binding them to erect and maintain farm buildings, and to till a certain portion of land. By this means it was hoped that these unfortunate districts would soon be made like the English Pale. Leases for twenty-one years were to be given to Crown tenants generally, including holders of monastic lands. Goodacre had just died, so that there was no difficulty about Armagh, to which, as well as to the Primacy of all Ireland, Dowdall was immediately restored, with the additional grant of the priory of Ards rent free for life. The Mass and the rest of the old religion was to be restored as nearly as possible.[392]

But Mary, though zealous for orthodoxy, had no intention of yielding the rights of the Crown to the Pope, and this was no doubt well understood. One of St. Leger’s earliest duties was to go to Drogheda and place the government of Eastern Ulster in the hands of Eugene Magennis, who specially covenanted not to admit any provisor from Rome. An Irish-born priest named Connor MacCarthy asked Mary for a letter of licence to go to Rome, there to obtain certain benefices from the Pope, fearing lest some should be in the Queen’s gift, ‘and also considering the statute of Premunire.’ Nor was the fear an idle one, for when Tyrone afterwards obtained a Papal bull for the appointment of his chaplain to the restored priory of Down, the Queen sharply reminded him that she intended to maintain the prerogative in that behalf which she had received from her progenitors. MacCarthy was not the only Irish ecclesiastic of the reign who thought it necessary to petition for relief from the consequences of the dreaded statute.[393]

In some places the old religion was restored without waiting for any formal order. As soon as Edward’s death was known Justice Howth and Lord Mountgarret, the Earl of Ormonde’s uncle, went to Kilkenny and desired to have the sacrament celebrated in honour of St. Anne. The priest said the Bishop had forbidden celebrations on week days; ‘as indeed I had,’ says Bale, ‘for the abominable idolatry that I had seen therein.’ The learned judge, who seems to have had no commission, then discharged the clergy from obedience to their Bishop, and commanded them to proceed in the old way. On August 20 Mary was proclaimed at Kilkenny with much solemnity. Bale strongly objected to wear cope or mitre, or to have the crozier borne before him; not from any opposition to the Queen’s title, but from dislike to vain ceremonies. Taking a New Testament in his hand, he went to the market-cross followed by a great crowd, to whom he preached from the 13th chapter of Romans, on the reverence due to magistrates. But the clergy of the cathedral, who had no sympathy with the Bishop’s doctrines, provided two disguised priests to carry mitre and crozier before him against his will. The people were amused, instructed, or scandalised, as the case might be, by the representation of a tragedy concerning God’s promises in the old law, and by a comedy of St. John the Baptist. The baptism and temptation of Christ were brought upon the stage, and the young men of the town acted both at the morning and evening performance. Both dramas were written by Bale himself, and in a literary point of view they are far from contemptible. They mark the transition between the mystery plays of the middle ages and the compositions of Shakespeare’s immediate precursors. Personified abstractions as well as historical characters appear on the stage; nor did Bale shrink from a representation which seems impossible to us, for he boldly introduces the first person in the Trinity under the name of Pater Cælestis. Justification by faith is the great doctrine inculcated, and where the author speaks in person he loses no opportunity of attacking the Church of Rome. In an epilogue he exhorts the people to

In another play on the instructive story of King John, ‘Ynglond vidua’ says:—

In his other works Bale throughout shows the same spirit. Thus he calls that very questionable hero, Sir John Oldcastle, ‘a blessed martyr not canonised by the Pope, but in the precious blood of his Lord Jesus Christ.’ St. Paul is the great object of Bale’s admiration, and he seems to have thought that he was like him. The points of resemblance are similar to those which Captain Fluelen discovered between himself and Alexander the Great. Thus, Paul was tossed up and down between Candia and Melita, Bale between Milford and Waterford. There was a river in Monmouth and a river in Macedon, and there were salmon in both.[394]

Sir Richard Howth, Treasurer of St. Canice’s, and his friend Sir James Joys, were among Bale’s most energetic opponents. To annoy him they suggested solemn exequies and prayers for the soul of Edward VI. The Bishop argued that it would be better to wait for orders from Dublin. The ceremony had already once been postponed to see the devil dance at Thomastown—a Sunday amusement which the mob perhaps preferred to the Bishop’s plays. Bale found another enemy in one whom he calls Bishop of Galway, and who was probably John Moore, Bishop of Enaghdune, the ancient diocese in which Galway stands. This Moore was commissioned, along with other prelates not acknowledged in the Roman succession, to consecrate Patrick Walsh Bishop of Waterford. He was no credit to the Reformation, for Bale represents him as spending his nights in drinking and his days in confirming children at twopence a head. A gallowglass brought a dog in a sheet with twopence hanging round his neck to be confirmed with his neighbours’ children; in this, says Bale, ‘noting this beastly Bishop more fit to confirm dogs than Christian men’s children.’ The soldier may have regarded him as a schismatic, but it is not easy to understand how such a man can have attained episcopal orders.[395]

Ten days after the proclamation of Mary there was a general revolt against Bale, incited by Howth, whose position in legal circles gave him ample means of knowing how the wind blew at Court, but who was rather horrified at the length to which the clergy and their adherents went. In Bale’s absence they rang the bells of St. Canice’s and of all the other churches, flinging their caps to the battlements of the cathedral with shouts of laughter, but doing no actual violence. A little later the mob was not so good-humoured. The Fitzpatrick and Butler kerne, and especially the ‘furious family of Mountgarret,’ annoyed Bale in many ways. Barnaby Bolger, an enterprising tradesmen who had formerly aroused great indignation by forestalling Kilkenny market, and whose young daughter was married to ‘Grace Graceless,’ an adherent of the Fitzpatricks, headed a tumultuous attack on the Bishop’s house outside the town. He and his friend Mr. Cooper, the parson of Callan, were robbed of all their horses, and thus deprived of the means of escape. Five of Bale’s servants, one of them a girl of sixteen, were caught haymaking, and all murdered. He managed to close the portcullis and defend himself until rescued by Robert Shee, the sovereign of Kilkenny, ‘a man sober, wise, and godly, which is a rare thing in this land.’ Shee, who could command the services of 100 horse and 300 foot, sent Bale by night to Dublin, and no doubt he thought of St. Paul’s journey under somewhat similar circumstances. But there was no safety in the Irish capital, and the Bishop escaped by sea in a sailor’s dress. He was captured at St. Ives and brought before the justices, but was released when nothing was found to connect him with Wyatt’s or any other plot. He was again captured by pirates and had to pay a ransom, but ultimately succeeded in reaching Holland. For five years he lived at Basel, where he continued to write with an acrimony which had not been lessened by his recent troubles. When Elizabeth became Queen, Bale made no attempt to regain his bishopric. At sixty-three he was disinclined to face the Kilkenny people again, or perhaps he had learned that he was unfit to govern men. He became a prebendary of Canterbury, and devoted his remaining years to literature. His hurried flight from Ireland had forced him to leave books and manuscripts behind, and the Queen ordered them to be sent over to him. ‘He had,’ she said, ‘been studious in the search of the history and antiquities of this our realm,’ and might probably do something for their illustration. Whether Bale ever got back his library or not, he was certainly not silenced for want of materials; for the extent and variety of his learning were considered most remarkable.[396]

The abortive insurrection of Wyatt had the usual effect of setting Mary more firmly on the throne, and at the same time of exasperating her against some whom she might have been willing to spare. Sir James Croft, the late Lord Deputy, was arrested before he had time to raise his tenants in Herefordshire: he was convicted, but afterwards pardoned. Sir Peter Carew, who afterwards played an important part in Irish affairs, was also accused of complicity, and thought it prudent to go abroad, where his companion was no less a personage than Sir John Cheeke. Venturing to Brussels, where Paget was ambassador, they were led to suppose that there was no danger, but that crafty diplomatist had them kidnapped near Antwerp, and carried to England in a fishing boat. Their captors were the Flemish and Spanish officials; and Philip, while expressing becoming indignation at the breach of hospitality, took care not to hear of it until the prisoners were safe beyond seas. The passage can hardly have been pleasant, for they were blindfolded and chained, one at each end of the boat. Poor Sir John Cheeke, who afterwards showed his unfitness for the crown of martyrdom, and who perhaps saw a vision of the stake, did not conceal his misery. ‘Although very well learned, but not acquainted with the cross of troubles, he was still in great despair, great anguish, and heaviness, and would not be comforted, so great was his sorrow; but Sir Peter Carew, whose heart could not be broken nor mind overthrown with any adversities, and yielding to no such matter, comforted the other, and encouraged him to be of a good stomach, persuading him (as though he had been a divine) to patience and good contentation.’ The man of action, as is not seldom the case, showed that he had more philosophy than the philosopher. Sir Peter, whose guilt, if he was guilty, was much less clear than that of Croft, was pardoned by the Queen, and afterwards served her well at St. Quentin. Sir John Cheeke lived to undergo a worse humiliation than that of Cranmer, to be made an instrument in the persecution of those with whom he secretly agreed, to suffer in the few months which his pusillanimity had gained him a thousand martyrdoms of grief and shame, and then to die heart-broken and dishonoured. Sir Nicholas Arnold, afterwards employed by Elizabeth in Ireland, was another of the conspirators. Lady Jane, the innocent victim of so many intrigues, laid her beautiful neck upon the block, and fivescore Kentishmen suffered death for their zeal to the Reformation or their hatred of Spanish influence. Gerald of Kildare and the young Earl of Ormonde both served with distinction against Wyatt, and the orthodox Queen rewarded both with goodly grants of abbey lands. Ormonde had been captain of one of the bands of Whitecoats sent by the city into Kent, where many of his men deserted to the insurgents.[397]

The insurrection being at an end, the Queen lost no time in forcing Browne to surrender his patent of precedence, and restoring Dowdall to the primacy, and a commission was issued to him and to Drs. Walsh and Leverous for re-establishing the old religion, and punishing those who had violated the law of clerical celibacy. Browne, who had a wife, was accordingly deprived, and, pending the appointment of a successor, the temporalities of his see handed over to Lockwood, the pliant Dean of Christ Church. Staples of Meath, who was likewise married, and was besides personally obnoxious to Dowdall, was also deprived in favour of one of the Commissioners who sentenced him, the learned William Walsh, formerly a Cistercian monk of Bective Abbey. Curiously enough, Walsh, who was appointed by Pole in virtue of his legatine authority, did not receive a Papal provision till 1564, some time after Elizabeth had expelled him from his see. The same treatment for the same offence was inflicted on Lancaster, Bishop of Kildare, who was succeeded by Leverous, already Bishop of Leighlin by Papal provision. A fourth married bishop was Travers of Leighlin, who was succeeded by Thomas O’Fihel or Field, an Augustinian friar. A fifth, Casey of Limerick, had to make way for his aged predecessor Quin. On Bale, who had left the field clear, no legal sentence of deprivation was passed; but his successor, John Thonory, was already appointed. Thonory has an evil name for having corruptly wasted the property of his see, and is said to have died of grief at the loss of some of his ill-gotten gains. Of the deprived prelates, Lancaster lived to be Archbishop of Armagh, and Casey, who survived two successors, and saw another expelled, regained his see in 1571. Browne, Travers, and Lancaster are supposed to have died before the accession of Elizabeth, and Staples soon after it.[398]

This year was memorable for the return of Gerald of Kildare, whose titles and estates were restored to him. The attainder, however, was not renewed till 1569. Old Brian O’Connor was released from the Tower, and allowed to revisit Offaly, an indulgence which he owed to the exertions of his daughter Margaret, who was Kildare’s aunt, and who relied upon the number of her connections at Court, as well as her own knowledge of the English language. Barnaby Fitzpatrick, Lord of Upper Ossory, King Edward’s bosom friend, returned about the same time, and so did a far more important personage, the young Earl of Ormonde. ‘There was great rejoicing,’ say the ‘Four Masters,’ ‘throughout the greater part of Leath-Mhogha because of their arrival; for it was thought that not one of the descendants of the Earls of Kildare, or of the O’Connors Faly, would ever come to Ireland.’

While the obedient shires were busy with the restoration of the ancient religion, the native Irish made war among themselves, with but little interference from the Government. Donough O’Brien, the second Earl of Thomond, and a firm friend of the Crown, was killed in April 1553 by his brother Donnell, leaving the earldom to Connor, his eldest son, by Lady Helen Butler, who survived him. Donnell, however, assumed the title of O’Brien, and the clansmen were divided between the representatives of the old and new order. Donnell petitioned that, having been nominated according to the ancient custom, he might be acknowledged as chief. St. Leger was unable to grant this, but offered to write to the Queen in his favour. In the meantime other controversies were submitted to the arbitration of O’Carroll, O’Mulrian, and MacBrien Arra, on the part of Donnell; and of the barons of Mountgarret, Cahir, and Dunboyne, all Butlers, on the part of the Earl. The umpires in case of disagreement were the Lord Deputy, the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of Desmond. It is very hard to make out the exact sequence of events, but either just before or just after this negotiation, Donnell attacked one of his nephew’s castles, and was driven off by the arrival of the Earl of Ormonde. He then turned his attention to the plunder of Clanricarde. The Baron of Delvin continued to ravage MacCoghlan’s country, and one of the Nugents, who was foster-brother of Kildare, being killed, the newly restored Earl, who lost no time in showing that he meant to keep up the family traditions, exacted 340 cows as an eric. The O’Carrolls in the south, the MacSweenys in the north, killed each other in the old fashion. Shane O’Neill persuaded the Earl of Kildare and the Baron of Delvin to take his part in a quarrel with one sept of his name, and old Tyrone was defeated by another sept, supported by the MacDonnells, who were also intriguing with Calvagh O’Donnell.[399]

We have seen that the Queen had no intention of yielding any part of the dignity which had belonged to her predecessors. Notwithstanding the Papal pretension to suzerainty, she had as a matter of course assumed the royal title created by her father in Ireland. The Holy See found it necessary to respect accomplished facts, and had not Julius III. abandoned all claims to the monastic lands, Pole would never have been allowed into England. Paul IV.’s pretensions were boundless, but he could not afford to quarrel about a mere trifle both with England and Spain. He considered it a great glory for his pontificate that its opening should be signalised by the arrival of an English ambassador. Whether he wished it or not, Philip and Mary were, and would remain, King and Queen of Ireland. He therefore ignored all that Henry had done, and, as if of his own mere notion, erected Ireland into a kingdom. The world might perhaps suppose that Mary took it from his hand, and not in right of blood. ‘The Popes,’ says the sarcastic Venetian, ‘have often given that which they could not take from the possessors, and, to avoid contentions, some have received their own goods as gifts, and some have dissembled the knowledge of the gift, or of the pretence of the giver.’ But in Ireland, where distance cast a halo of enchantment over Papal politics, and where Franciscans and Jesuits swayed the popular mind, the bull which announced the gracious gift was taken by many for what it pretended to be, and not for what it really was.[400]

Mary gave evidence of her desire to restore the splendour of religion by re-establishing St. Patrick’s as a cathedral. Leverous was the first Dean of the new foundation, and was allowed to hold the preferment along with the see of Kildare. The man selected to undo Browne’s work was Hugh Curwin, Dean of Hereford, a native of Westmoreland, and one of the Queen’s chaplains. He had become known as a preacher in favour of Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn, in opposition to the Franciscan Peto. The deanery of Hereford had been his reward. Peto, on the other hand, had become the Queen’s confessor, and was the chosen instrument of Paul IV., when that Pope in a fit of anger appointed a legate to supersede Pole. Mary so valued the royal authority that she resented the irregular honour intended for her confessor, though he had been the champion of her own legitimacy, stopped the red hat at the gates of Calais, and never allowed Peto any benefit from the Pope’s irritability. On the whole, Anne’s advocate fared better than Catherine’s. Curwin, whose first article of belief enjoined submission to principalities and powers, no doubt knew how to turn the Queen’s love of power, as he had done her father’s, to his own advantage. He was treated with exceptional favour, and gained practical control of the temporalities even before his consecration, which was performed in London by Bonner, Thirlby, and Griffin. Immediately afterwards he received the Great Seal of Ireland. Curwin had the pall from Rome, and in the Papal record of his appointment Philip and Mary are said to have supplicated for it, Browne being ignored, and Curwin made successor to Alen. But the King and Queen only acknowledged that Curwin was preferred on their recommendation, and he had to renounce on oath all things prejudicial to the Crown, whether contained in the Papal bull or not. Curwin held a provincial synod soon after his arrival in Ireland, at which the principal business was the restoration of the ancient rites.[401]

Ulster was in a state of more than usual confusion. Manus O’Donnell, who had been constantly at war with his father, was opposed by his son Calvagh, who had the help of the Scots. They addressed him as illustrious lord, and he went over to Scotland to claim the proffered aid. Returning with a large force, and with a piece of ordnance which the annalists inexplicably call a crooked gun, he entered Lough Swilly, took his father prisoner, and battered Greencastle and another fortress on Lough Foyle. Calvagh thenceforth assumed practical control of his clan. The Scots slew Hugh MacNeill Oge, and St. Leger divided his territory between Phelim O’Neill and the sons of Phelim Bacagh. The hardy interlopers had even designs on Carrickfergus, which St. Leger says were frustrated ‘by the help of God and Mr. Parker;’ but in a campaign of six weeks the Lord Deputy could gain no real advantage. As in the case of most Irish governors, his detractors, among whom Sir William Fitzwilliam was conspicuous, were busy at Court. They accused him, among other things, of falsifying estimates in favour of Andrew Wyse, the late Vice-Treasurer, whose accounts had been found unsatisfactory. ‘I am now in case,’ he said, ‘as the poet’s fame. I have meat to the surlip and drink to the netherlip, and can reach neither of them.’ His position made it impossible for him to economise, and no money came to pay his hungry retinue. A friendly chronicler has remarked that St. Leger, like all other Irish governors, was hated chiefly for his good deeds; like a good apple tree, which, the more fruit it bears, the more stones are thrown at it.[402]

The Lord Deputy’s entreaties for release were heard at last, and the government was conferred on Sir Thomas Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, afterwards created Earl of Sussex, who, but for his Irish service, would bear one of the fairest characters in our history. Mary rejoiced that the true Catholic faith had by God’s great goodness and special grace been recovered in England and Ireland, and she directed her representative ‘to set forth the honour and dignity of the Pope’s Holiness and See Apostolic of Rome, and from time to time to be ready with our aid and secular force, at the request of all spiritual ministers and ordinaries there, to punish and repress all heretics and Lollards and their damnable sects, opinions, and errors.’ Cardinal Pole, she added, was about to send over a legatine commission to visit the Irish Church, and official assistance was to be given ‘in all and everything belonging to the function and office legatine, for the advancement of God’s glory and the honour of the See Apostolic.’ The new governor was reminded that he lay under an obligation to execute justice, and was exhorted at much greater length to exert himself for the improvement of the revenue. A Parliament was to be held, chiefly as a means of restoring religion according to the Queen’s ideas, of settling her marriage and succession, and of voting a subsidy. Sir Henry Sidney, who now makes his first appearance in Irish history, accompanied the Lord Deputy as Vice-Treasurer. He brought with him a sum of 25,000l.[403]

About the time of the new Lord Deputy’s arrival, the Kavanaghs made a raid into the neighbourhood of Dublin. Sir George Stanley took command of the citizens, and drove 140 of the assailants into Powerscourt, where they had to surrender at discretion. Seventy-four were hanged. John Challoner, who was Mayor of Dublin at the time, provided the civic force with arms, which he had brought at his own expense from Spain. This martial magistrate was offered knighthood, but he excused himself. ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘it will be more to my credit and my posterity’s to have it said that John Challoner served the Queen upon occasion, than to say that Sir John Challoner did it.’[404]

Sussex landed at Dublin towards the end of May, and received the sword from St. Leger’s willing hands. The religious ceremonies were of a kind entirely satisfactory to the Queen. After a month’s stay in the capital he set out for the North, and appeared in church both at Drogheda and Dundalk. The force mustered on this occasion was very considerable, for besides the regular soldiers and Ormonde’s followers, the gentlemen of the Pale were called on to serve with from one to six horsemen each. The Plunkets contributed twenty-four horse, the Nugents eighteen horse and twenty-four foot. Dublin sent sixty horsemen and gunners, and Drogheda forty men well appointed. ‘The Byrnes and the Tooles’ wastes’ in Wicklow were expected to send twelve horse each, and other Irish contingents joined on the march. The first Sunday was spent at a mill beyond Newry, where Dowdall said Mass, and where O’Hanlon, whose chiefry seems to have been disputed, was solemnly proclaimed. Mention is made of a great hill of stones, which was, perhaps, the traditional spot for the election of an O’Hanlon. Passing along the right bank of the Newry river, which he crossed near Tanderagee, Sussex reached the Laggan valley near Moira, and passing Belfast, reached Carrickfergus on the ninth day after leaving Dublin. From this the army marched across the central districts of Antrim, and, at last, on the twenty-fourth day from Dublin, Sussex reached Glenarm, and found that James MacDonnell had fled before him into Scotland. The fugitive sent to France for help, but his envoy’s proceedings were counteracted by Paget’s vigilance. A quantity of cattle were captured, besides butter and other produce hid in a cave. This seems to have been the only result of an expedition which lasted thirty-seven days. Sussex dismissed his allies at their old rendezvous near Newry, and on the very next day, as if in ridicule of his efforts, a messenger arrived to say that the Scots had attacked the rear guard. Sidney afterwards said that he had slain James MacConnell, a mighty Scots captain, during this expedition. Some Scots of name were certainly killed, and one of them may have been called James; but the real James MacDonnell was back at Glenarm before the end of the year.[405]

The moral which Sussex drew from this inglorious expedition was that the North could only be held by a chain of forts along the coast from Dundalk to Lough Foyle. Some part at least of the expense would be paid by the salmon fisheries of the Foyle, the Bann, and the Bush; and by the herring, cod, ling, and hake fisheries, of which Carlingford was the chief seat. A good English bishop would also, he thought, be a means to civilise the country. It had not yet been discovered that making the Church a badge of conquest only served to make religion itself odious. The dislike of the Irish to English ecclesiastics had been marked throughout the middle ages, and even if England had remained in communion with Rome, bishops who were Government officials first and chief pastors afterwards, could scarcely have ministered successfully to the wants of O’Neills and O’Donnells.[406]

The settlement of Leix was in outward form completed, and Sussex received the Queen’s thanks for it. The arrangements were not without a show of equity; but the old inhabitants could not reconcile themselves to the intrusion of a colony, and their pertinacious opposition forced the Government to treat them with far more rigour than had been at first intended. The western half of the new Queen’s County was originally reserved for the O’Mores, each head of a sept becoming a landlord holding an estate in tail by knight-service. The chiefs were prohibited from keeping any idlemen except of their own sept, or more than one for every 100 acres. They were to attend the constable of the fort when required, to repair bridges, and at all times to keep the passes open between their districts and those occupied by the English. They were to dress like Englishmen, except when riding, and to teach their children to speak English, to attend the Deputy annually, and to use only the Common Law. All above twelve were required to take the oath of allegiance. Forfeiture was prescribed for a persistent refusal to keep the passes open; for retaining superfluous idlemen; for keeping more than one set of harness; for interrupting communication with the English; for making a private way; for marrying and fostering with the Irish, and for absenteeism. The Deputy’s licence removed the penalty in all these cases. For keeping unlicensed firearms the first offence was to be punished by forfeiture, and the second by death.

The eastern district was assigned to the English, to hold on similar terms, and twelve places, among which Stradbally and Abbeyleix are the best known, were to be kept in a defensible state as satellites to the royal fort of Maryborough. The duties of the settlers were in general the same as those assigned to the O’Mores; but whereas the latter were restrained in the matter of arms, the possession of them was made obligatory on the former. A good bow and sheaf of arrows, or one hand-gun at least, was to be kept in every house. Forfeiture was to be incurred in the same way as by the Irish, and in addition for falling away from the use of the English tongue, for holding more than 300 acres in demesne, or for entertaining Irishmen, except so far as they were necessary for husbandry. A few natives, whose services as captains of kerne had deserved special recognition, were to have grants in the English territory, and it was suggested that a large territory should be offered to the Earl of Kildare. A constable, resident at the fort, was to have the same powers locally as the Lord Deputy had generally. Stringent rules were made as to free quarters and purveyance. The constable or president on his annual circuit was to have his own expenses and those of four men and five horses borne for one night only by each town; and each sept of the O’Mores was to bear the like burden, and no more. Finally, a church was to be built in each of the twelve settlements within three years, and a parson, of English birth, was to have the tithe.[407]

Whatever the intentions of the Queen or her Deputy might be towards Leix and Offaly, there was sure to be plenty of opposition on the part of the natives, who were, however, as usual, divided among themselves. The old chief, Brian O’Connor, was still alive, and his son Donough carried on the old feud and killed his cousin, the son of Cahir Roe. Both Donough and Connell O’More, the chief of Leix, fell into the hands of Sussex in the course of the year, but to the surprise of the Irish in general were released in deference to Kildare and Ormonde, who had become in some measure responsible for them. The O’Mores remained quiet for a time on the lands reserved to them. Donough and others of the O’Connors afterward came to Sussex at Philipstown, as the fort of Offaly must henceforth be called, and made their submission, giving promises of good behaviour, which they immediately broke.[408]

After the meeting at Philipstown, Sussex and his Council repaired to Leighlin, where the principal O’Connors neglected to appear as they had promised. A leader of the Kavanaghs, who had not taken warning by the recent fate of his clansmen, was executed, and Connel O’More, who had once more broken into rebellion, was hanged in chains at Leighlin about the same time. Offaly was next invaded and hostages taken, who were executed on a further outbreak taking place, with the exception of O’Connor himself, who was detained prisoner in Dublin.[409]

The Parliament, from which Mary expected much for the Church of which she was so faithful a daughter, met at last and enacted all the laws made in England against the Protestants. The old statutes against Lollardry, which prescribed death by fire as the punishment for obstinate or relapsed heretics, were declared to be in full force. A communication from Pole was read by Curwin as Chancellor, kneeling down in open session, in which the Cardinal urged the assembly to restore Ireland to full communion with the Church. All Acts derogatory to the Pope which had been passed since the twentieth year of Henry VIII. were accordingly repealed. The Queen was declared a legitimate, absolute sovereign, and all laws and sentences to the contrary were abrogated. On the other hand, grants of monastic land were confirmed. There could be no doubt of Mary’s wish to restore the religious houses, but this does not appear to have been done except in the single case of Kilmainham. Oswald Massingberd, who during the Puritan ascendency had led a wandering life in the woods, was appointed Prior by Pole, and the nomination was confirmed by the Queen. Massingberd was sworn of the Council, and assumed the position of his predecessors; but he seems to have had no belief in the stability of the new system. He gave long leases and sold all that was saleable, and he took no thought for the morrow. There appears to have been no intention of specially favouring the obsolete order of St. John, for no attempt was made to restore it in England; but in Ireland it happened that the Crown had not parted with the house and lands. In the same way, since it could be done without offending vested interests, Mary re-established the Benedictines at Westminster, the Carthusians at Sheen, and the Observants at Greenwich. There are indications that she wished to examine titles closely, and to restore the monks where defects appeared; but she granted and confirmed grants of abbey lands as freely as her father and brother. Ninety years later, when the confederate Catholics had military possession of the greater part of Ireland, and the Nuncio Rinuccini was apparently all-powerful, the claim of the regulars to their old possessions was met by the nobility and gentry with anger and scorn.[410]

When released from his Parliamentary duties, Sussex marched westward against the O’Connors, who, under Donough, had possessed themselves of Meelick Castle, on the Shannon. The line of march lay through Offaly, by Killeigh, Ballyboy, and Cloghan, no opposition being offered by the O’Molloys or O’Maddens. The Shannon was reached on the third day. Clanricarde must have been in a tolerably peaceful state, for Athlone pursuivant seems to have had no difficulty in going to Galway to seek ammunition and provisions. Cannon were brought by water from Athlone and planted in the grounds of the friary, on an island or peninsula on the Galway side of the stream. The castle was summoned, and a cautionary shot fired without effect. Next day the cannonade began, and at the sixteenth shot a large piece of the courtyard wall fell down. The O’Connors escaped by a postern gate, and were proclaimed traitors. Clanricarde, Thomond, O’Carroll, and other chiefs, came to pay their respects to Sussex, and may well have laughed at the small results achieved by the display of irresistible force. A garrison was placed in the castle, and, hostages having been taken from the neighbouring clans, the army returned through MacCoghlan’s country, led by the chief himself. The Lord Deputy had the pleasure of seeing the night lit up by fires which the rebels kindled within a mile of his camp. The outlying buildings at Philipstown were all burnt, and arrows shot into the fort itself. Such was the practical outcome of a nine days’ expedition, during which, as the annalists say, it is not easy to state or enumerate all that was destroyed.[411]

An expedition into Ulster, undertaken three months later, had the same lame and impotent conclusion. The annalists say compendiously that Armagh was burned twice in one month by Thomas Sussex. His horsemen encamped in the cathedral, and no enemy opposed the destroyer, who returned after a week to Dundalk only to hear that Shane O’Neill was burning and plundering within four miles of the town. Being pursued, Shane retreated to his woods, whither those who knew the country declined to follow him. Sussex then returned to Dublin; the Queen being richer by a few cows, and Sir James Garland poorer by the village which O’Neill had burned.[412]

Not much impressed by the late invasion, the O’Connors who had escaped from Meelick stationed themselves at Leap Castle, about which there had been so much fighting in bygone days. Sussex took the castle without trouble, but Donough again escaped by the speed of his horse, and the stronghold was seized by O’Carroll as soon as the army had left. Sidney afterwards made two separate inroads into the same district. O’Molloy was proclaimed a traitor, and everything destroyed. It is not easy to see how there could be anything combustible left in the devoted country. The O’Carrolls were also engaged about this time in opposition to the Government, and in support of the O’Mores and O’Connors, and the annalists are again at a loss to enumerate the preys and slaughter which were made from the Shannon to the Nore.[413]