The Land-War in Ireland. James Godkin
and rebellion on the other, were to be heard of no more. A clean page was turned.' Even the Catholic bishops were tractable, and the viceroy got 'good and honest juries in Cork, and with their help twenty-four malefactors were honourably condemned and hanged.' Enjoying an ovation as he passed on to Limerick and Galway, he found many grievances to be redressed—'plenty of burnings, rapes, murders, besides such spoil in goods and cattle as in number might be counted infinite, and in quantity innumerable.'
Sir William Drury was appointed president of Munster; and he was determined that in his case the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain. Going round the counties as an itinerant judge, he gleaned the malefactors Sidney had left, and hanged forty-three of them in Cork. One he pressed to death for declining to plead to his indictment. Two M'Sweenys, from Kerry, were drawn and quartered. At Limerick he hanged forty-two, and at Kilkenny thirty-six, among which he said were 'some good ones,' as a sportsman might say, bagging his game. He had a difficulty with 'a blackamoor and two witches,' against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them 'by natural law.' Although Jeffreys, at the Bloody Assizes, did not come near Drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the English Government for the paucity of his victims, saying, 'I have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.' With the Government in Ireland, as Mr. Froude has well remarked, 'the gallows is the only preacher of righteousness.'
But the gallows was far too slow, as an instrument of reform and civilisation, for Malby, president of Connaught; and as modern evictors in that province and elsewhere have chosen Christmas as the most appropriate season for pulling down dwellings, extinguishing domestic fires, and unhousing women and children, so Malby chose the same blessed season for his 'improvements' in 1576. It is such a model for dealing with the Fenians and tenants on the Tory plan, that I transcribe his own report, which Mr. Froude has found among the Irish MSS. 'At Christmas,' he wrote, 'I marched into their territory, and finding courteous dealing with them had like to have cut my throat, I thought good to take another course; and so with determination to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, I entered their mountains. I burnt all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them the best leaders they had. This was Shan Burke's country. Then I burnt Ulick Burke's country. In like manner I assaulted a castle where the garrison surrendered. I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers, that they could not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan Burke made means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people. I would not hearken, but went on my way. The gentlemen of Clanrickard came to me. I found it was but dallying to win time, so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses standing as I left his brother; and what people was found had as little favour as the other had. It was all done in rain and frost and storm, journeys in such weather bringing them the sooner to submission. They are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to offer them.'
And so Malby and his soldiers enjoyed a merry Christmas; and when Walsingham read his letters, giving an account of his civilising progress, to the Queen, she, too, must have enjoyed a fresh sensation, a new pleasure amidst the festivities and gallantries of her brilliant court. Mr. Froude has rendered a timely service in this Christmas time to the Coercionists, the Martial Law men, and the Habeas Corpus Suspension men of our own day. He has shown them their principles at work and carried out with a vengeance, and with what results! He has admirably sketched the progress of English rule in Ireland up to that time—a rule unchanged in principle to the present hour, though restrained in its operation by the spirit of the age. Mr. Froude says: 'When the people were quiet, there was the rope for the malefactors, and death by the natural law for those whom the law written could not touch. When they broke out, there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother and the baby at her breast. These, with ruined churches, and Irish rogues for ministers—these, and so far only these were the symbols of the advance of English rule; yet even Sidney could not order more and more severity, and the president of Munster was lost in wonder at the detestation with which the English name was everywhere regarded. Clanrickard was sent to Dublin, and the deputy wished to hang him, but he dared not execute an earl without consulting his mistress, and Elizabeth's leniency in Ireland, as well as England, was alive and active towards the great, although it was dead towards the poor. She could hear without emotion of the massacres at Rathlin or Slievh Broughty; but the blood of the nobles, who had betrayed their wretched followers into the rebellion for which they suffered, was for ever precious in her sight. She forbade Sidney to touch him.'3
Next came the great Desmond Rebellion, by which Munster was desolated. The Pope had encouraged an expedition against the heretics in Ireland, and some Spanish forces joined in the enterprise. It was organised by an English ecclesiastic, named Sanders, and an exiled Geraldine, named Fitzmaurice of Kerry, both able and energetic men. The Spaniards landed at Dingle in 1579. In a few days all Kerry and Limerick were up, and the woods between Mallow and the Shannon 'were swarming with howling kerne.' 'The rebellion,' wrote Waterhouse, 'is the most perilous that ever began in Ireland. Nothing is to be looked for but a general revolt.' Malby took the command against them, joined by one of the Burkes, Theobald, who when he saw Fitzmaurice struck by a ball and staggering in his saddle, rode at him and cut him down. The Papal standard was unfolded in this battle. Malby then burnt the Desmonds' country, killing all the human beings he met, up to the walls of Askeaton. When opportunity offered, Desmond retaliated by sacking and burning Youghal. For two days the Geraldines revelled in plunder; they violated the women and murdered all who could not escape. At length Elizabeth was roused to the greatness of the danger, her parsimony was overcome. A larger force was drawn into Ireland than had ever been assembled there for a century. Ormond, the hereditary enemy of Desmond, was appointed commander-in-chief; and Burghley, writing to him in the name of the queen, concluded thus: 'So now I will merely say, Butler aboo, against all that cry in the new language—Papa aboo, and God send your hearts' desire to banish and vanquish those cankered Desmonds!' The war now raged, and, as usual, the innocent people, the cultivators of the soil, were the first victims. 'We passed through the rebel countries,' wrote Pelham, 'in two companies, burning with fire all habitations, and executing the people wherever we found them.' Mr. Froude says: 'Alone of all the English commanders he expressed remorse at the work.' Well, if the creatures they destroyed were horses, dogs, or cats, we should expect a man of ordinary human feelings to be shocked at the wholesale butchery. But the beings slaughtered were men and women and children—Christians found unarmed and defenceless in their dwellings. Let the English imagine such a war carried on in Kent or Yorkshire, by Irish invaders, killing in the name of the Pope. The Irish Annalists say that Pelham and Ormond killed the blind and the aged, women and children, sick and idiots, sparing none.
The English, as usual, had help from an Irish chief in the work of destruction. Ormond had in his train M'Carthymore, 'who, believing Desmond's day to be done, hoped, by making himself useful, to secure a share of the plunder.' Dividing their forces, Pelham marched on to Dingle, 'destroying as he went, with Ormond parallel to him on the opposite side of the bay, the two parties watching each other's course at night across the water by the flames of the burning cottages!'
The fleet was waiting at Dingle. There was a merry meeting of the officers. 'Here,' says Sir Nicholas White, 'my lord justice and I gathered cockles for our supper.'4 The several hunting parties compared notes in the evening. Sometimes the sport was bad. On one occasion Pelham reported that his party had hanged a priest in the Spanish dress. 'Otherwise,' he says, 'we took small prey, and killed less people, though we reached many places in our travel!' At Killarney they found the lakes full of salmon. In one of the islands there was an abbey, in another a parish church, in another a castle, 'out of which there came to them a fair lady, the rejected wife of Lord Fitzmaurice.' Even the soldiers were struck with the singular loveliness of the scene. 'A fairer land,' one of them said, 'the sun did never shine upon—pity to see it lying waste in the hands of traitors.' Mr. Froude, who deals more justly by the Irish in his last volumes, replies: 'Yet it was