Great Ralegh. Hugh De Sélincourt
and savage; and not even their hatred of the invading English could serve to concentrate them. They were far too impatient for serious warfare. They liked to come upon a foe—a Butler on a Geraldine—like a whirlwind, fight a terrific battle, and make off to their homes to listen to the songs by their bards, chanted in praise of their undying prowess, "as those Bardes and rythmers doe for a little reward or a share of a stolen cow," until the man of prowess praised "waxed most insolent and halfe madde with the love of himself and his own lewd deeds. Of a most notorious thiefe … one of their Bardes will say, That he was none of the milkesops that was brought up by the fireside, but that most of his dayes he spent in armes and valiant enterprises, that he did never eat his meat until it was won by the sword, that he lay not all night slugging under his mantle but used commonly to keep others waking to defend their lives, and did light his candle at the flames of their houses to bade him in the darknesse … and finally that he died not bewayled of many, but made many waile when he died, that dearly bought his death."
Such men were not ripe for the burden of a great cause. But one Sanders, an English Jesuit already past middle age, meeting with Fitzmaurice in Spain, formed a capital project of passing over to Ireland, subduing it, and passing from Ireland to England and driving out Elizabeth and her nation of Protestants.
In May, 1579, they landed at Dingle, after having on their voyage taken a small Bristol vessel, the sailors and captain of which they pitched into the sea. The landing at Dingle was impressive as the ceremony, which inaugurated the coming of the true religion, must needs be. "Two friars stepped first on shore; a bishop followed, mitre on head and crosier in hand, then Sanders, with the consecrated banner, and after him Fitzmaurice."
But the expedition did not rise to the level of its inauguration. It served only to stir up a savage rebellion in Munster, and to bring devastation upon the country.
It was to help quell the insurrection that Ralegh came to Ireland as captain of a company of one hundred foot-soldiers at the end of 1579, or the beginning of 1580.
The war—if war it can be called—was carried on with savage cruelty on both sides. Less could not be expected. The times were not gentle, when little girls in London might see men hung and quartered, and limbs stared down from the chief gates of most cities. Nor would mercy be expected from generals who came to Ireland as Pelham came, and as Lord Grey de Wilton came, regarding Ireland as the grave of reputation. To Ralegh, too, the service was itself distasteful. He writes with characteristic vigour of phrase to the Earl of Leicester, "I would disdayn it as mich to keap sheepe. I will not trouble your honor with the busyness of this loste land; for that Sir Warram Sentleger can best of any man deliver unto your lordshipe the good, the bad, the mischief, the means to amende, and all in all of this common welthe or rather common woe."
The English soldiery regarded the Irish as savages who would not live at peace, and must be exterminated, with the exception of the actual tillers of the ground or churls as they were called. And this point of view was encouraged by those in authority, who had neither men nor money to spare for guarding and feeding prisoners. "Death," as Froude says, "was the only gaoler their finances could support." Nothing can extenuate cruelty; but it is well to face the fact that cruelty, and cruelty not greatly less atrocious than this, was an absolute attribute of the Elizabethan age. The one quality, which runs through all the pages of every history of every man and every movement, is vitality—intense, burning vitality; and this vitality illumined the literature, chaotic as much of it is, and beat pulsing through the veins of the nation, explaining its magnificent advance, and enthusiasm and greatness, even as it explains its brutality. England was like a boy who is suddenly conscious of being strong and of being free, with all the capacity of some young Hercules and all his reckless faults.
When Ralegh joined the Irish service, Lord Justice Pelham was in the position of Lord Deputy. Soon after his arrival, however, Pelham was recalled, greatly to his pleasure, and Lord Grey de Wilton, Gascoigne's patron and general in the Netherlands, undertook the command of the forces, and the Earl of Ormond, an Irishman, was made Lieutenant of Munster. These were Ralegh's chiefs; and his criticism of their methods of management first brought him, as will be seen later, under the direct notice of the great Burghley.
As an active soldier, however, his exploits are exciting and adventurous, and they are not hidden in the obscurity which hid his exploits in France. The same Hooker who has been already quoted, records them with pride in his continuation of Holinshed's Chronicles.
Ralegh was once stationed with a troop of cavalry at Rakele under Lord Grey. He was always a well-eyed man and observed that the Irish were in the habit of hurrying down upon an encampment immediately it had been abandoned. Accordingly, he made a plan to surprise them, and the plan was successful. He captured a considerable number of prisoners. One of the Irish carried a bundle of withies, and Ralegh went up to him and asked him why he carried the withies. "To hang English churls with," was the blunt answer. "Is that so?" said Ralegh. "They shall now serve for an Irish kerne." And without more ado he bade his men hang him to the nearest tree. The repartee was prompt and savage. It is typical of the time that it should have happened; and intensely typical that a careful record should have been made in contemporary history.
Another time we read that Ralegh, on a small expedition to a certain Lord Barry, of Barry Court, in a fight against great odds, twice at his own personal peril rescued one Henry Moyle, who twice was caught in the soft bog. "He was unhorsed, and stood with his pistol and quarter-staff, one man against twenty." History does not relate what he said to Henry Moyle on his return to camp. The two stories stand well side by side. At the tragic sacking of Smerwick Ralegh was one of the captains ordered to carry out the last desperate instructions: the siege is illustrative not only of that bad Irish campaign, but also shows what a personal part high officers used to take in battles.
A second band of Papal soldiers, comprised of Italians, Spaniards and Frenchmen, came to Ireland in 1580, and made Smerwick their headquarters, a fort on the shore fully exposed to the Atlantic winds. Here Lord Grey came upon them, but was obliged to wait eight days with his men until Sir William Winter arrived in Ventry harbour with cannon and ammunition, and at length joined Admiral Bingham in Smerwick Bay. Lord Grey galloped down over the sands to welcome Winter. Speedily the cannon were landed and placed in position before the fort, and the bombardment began. The English crept nearer after the first day, until the cannon were within a cable's length of the wall, and Sir William Winter himself taking careful aim, brought down the enemy's chief piece, and a man appeared on the ramparts waving a white hand-kerchief. The firing ceased. Then Signor Jeffrey, an Italian, came to entreat grace from the Lord Deputy, but grace was refused him. "Afterward their Coronnel Don Sebastian came forth to intreate that they might part with their armes like souldiers, at the least with their lives according to the custome of war … it was strongly denied him and told him by the Lord Deputie himselfe that they could not justly pleade either custome of warre or lawe of nations—for that they were not any lawfull enemies. … " The Pope sent them? asked Lord Grey de Wilton, and declared himself surprised, the bitter old enthusiast, that gentlemen should undertake a commission from "a detestable shaveling the right antichrist and patron of the doctrine of devils." He would only agree to wait till morning. So on the morning of the next November day, the garrison, seven hundred men, piled their arms, and with a few women and children stood waiting, while the great Atlantic waves beat coldly, sullenly on the shore. "Then put I in certain bands who fell straight to execution," writes Grey, with grim brevity. Six hundred men in all were slain that November morning, and Grey had the bodies stripped and laid in neat lines upon the shore, and Grey looked at them without emotion, and thought them "as gallant and goodly personages as ever I saw." So he wrote to the Queen, informing her of the victory, and the Queen wrote back thanking him, adding a postscript in her own hand (a special mark of honour) warmly approving of his action: and Camden courteously lies when he says that Grey shed tears and Elizabeth wished the cruelty had been unnecessary. Captain of one of these "certain bands" was Walter Ralegh. Edmund Spenser was at this time secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, and he writes in that scholarly graphic treatise in dialogue form, which has been already quoted, namely the "View of the State of Ireland"—"Whereupon the said Coronell did absolutely yeeld himselfe and the fort, with all therein, and craved only mercy, which it being not thought good to shew them, for danger of them, if, being saved they should afterwards join with the Irish;