to the Blaskets, lest cattle should be harboured in those sea-beaten islands, Winter and Pelham returned to Castlemaine, and came suddenly upon a vast herd of cows, not less than 4,000 or 5,000, which they drove into their entrenchments, and slaughtered for the use of the fleet. The starving people of the county besought Winter for God’s sake to give them something to eat, and he left them twelve or thirteen cows, a few goats, and 400 sheep, the distribution being entrusted to one MacMorris, a steward of Desmond’s, who had deserted, and from whom some service was expected. The works made for the protection of the prey were then razed, and the fleet sailed for Berehaven.40
Ormonde accompanied Pelham to Dingle and left him taking in provisions from the fleet, while he went to look for James of Desmond in O’Sullivan More’s country. He had to pass round the bottom of Dingle Bay through Clancare’s territory, and that Earl met him and acted as guide. The expedition was not expected, and 1,000 cows were taken; but Ormonde’s followers were closely pursued by O’Sullivan’s sons. Many of the chief’s tenants sided with the strongest, and with their help the cattle were brought away. Beef and water formed the only sustenance of Ormonde’s men, but they did not lag in their work of destruction, and the fires which they raised in Valentia were seen across the bay at Ventry. Pelham returned to Castlemaine, where Ormonde, ‘sore broken in his feet with rocks,’ joined him after a foray of five or six days. He brought with him Clancare, O’Sullivan Bere, and O’Sullivan More, ‘Mac Fynyn of the kerne,’ MacDonogh, O’Keefe, O’Callaghan, MacAuliffe, O’Donoghue More, and all the other chiefs of Desmond except O’Donoghue of Glenflesk, who remained with the traitor earl. The combined forces of Pelham and Ormonde encamped between Pallice and Dunloe by the lower lake of Killarney, ‘the famous lake called Lough Leane.’ Sir N. White notes forty islands, an abbey – Innisfallen – in one, a parish church in another, in a third a castle, ‘out of which came to us a fair lady, the rejected wife of Lord Fitzmaurice, daughter to the late MacCarthy More, eldest brother to this earl.’ Edward Fenton was struck by the beauty of the scene, and interested by the report of large mussels containing pearls; but he was even more struck by Clancare’s castle, ‘called the Palace, a name very unfit for so beggarly a building, not answerable to a mean farmer’s house in England, and his entertainment much like to his dwelling.’ O’Sullivan More’s castle of Dunloe had been razed by Ormonde during his first expedition against James Fitzmaurice. Leaving Killarney, the army explored Glenflesk, which White, with Virgil and Cacus in his mind, calls a ‘famous spelunce.’ But they saw neither men, monsters, nor cattle, and crossed into the upper valley of the Blackwater without any fighting. Near Kanturk Ormonde recovered his heavy baggage which he had left behind on first entering the mountains, and the whole army then marched by Mallow to Cork. The citizens, who were half-starved themselves, were very slow to relieve their wants, but at last agreed to send Pelham 100l., to give 100l. worth of wine on credit, and 100l. worth of friezes, brogues, and stockings. Many soldiers had broken down for want of bread. They could do anything, White said, ‘if they had but bread, the lack whereof is their only overthrow, and nothing else.’41
In White’s quaint language, all the lords and chiefs ‘cisalpine and transalpine the mountains of Slieve Logher,’ were present at Cork. Pelham found that nearly as many Barries as Geraldines were in rebellion; but nevertheless Lord Barrymore stood the stiffest on his defence. The rest had very little to say for themselves, and Ormonde bitterly upbraided them, ‘charging himself with their faults for making of Her Majesty to conceive so well of them.’ Desmond, he says, was their ancient scourge and enemy, and as they had favoured him he would cast them off and bid each shift for himself. He would utterly refuse their friendship and spend his blood against them all and against all Her Majesty’s enemies, ‘advising such as loved him to follow his ways, and such as would not bade them defiance, swearing a great oath and clapping his hand upon the Bible, that if Her Majesty did proclaim them traitors with the rest he would lay it on their skins, and in conclusion advised the Lord Justice to carry them all with him to Limerick till better order were taken with them.’ All were received to mercy except Lord Barrymore, who was committed for trial. ‘He is,’ said Ormonde, ‘an arrant Papist, who a long time kept in his house Dr. Tanner, made bishop here by the Pope, who died in my Lord of Upper Ossory’s house, being secretly kept there. Believe me, Mr. Secretary, you shall find my Lord of Upper Ossory as bad a man as may be.’ Pelham took Clancare, Barrymore, and several others with him, and, having been delayed at Mallow by a summer flood in the Blackwater, arrived at Limerick without further adventure. He professed himself fairly satisfied with the progress made. Frequent inroads, and still more the steady pressure of the garrisons, would soon starve out the rebels, unless help came from abroad. In that case, he said, ‘I look their strength will be infinitely multiplied.’42
As if to fill the time till the Spaniards came, a movement now began which defeated Pelham’s calculations. The new rebel was James Eustace, who had lately succeeded his father as Viscount Baltinglas, and who was an enthusiastic Catholic. He was already connected with the turbulent O’Byrnes, and his father had been in opposition on the cess question; but it is clear that religion was the chief motive. Before he succeeded to the title, Sanders and others persuaded him to go to Rome, and what he saw there under Gregory XIII. had exactly a contrary effect on him to what the Rome of Leo X. had upon Luther. On his return he heard mass, boldly gloried in the fact before the Ecclesiastical Commission, and was mulcted in the statutable fine of 100 marks, Sidney quaintly declaring that he could not countenance ‘Papistry and abolished religion.’ Loftus was told to exact the money or a bond, and to imprison in default. The young lord went to gaol for twenty-four hours, and was pardoned on signing the bond. But fine and imprisonment never convince, though they sometimes silence, and Baltinglas was in no way changed by what courtly officials called her Majesty’s godly proceedings. ‘I mean,’ he wrote to a Waterford merchant, ‘to take this holy enterprise in hand by the authority of the Supreme Head of the Church.’
The letter fell into Ormonde’s hands, and the bearer seems to have been hanged in chains. Ormonde had already warned the Viscount to be careful, and he now sent an answer which at once committed him irretrievably and almost without hope of pardon. He said he had been commanded to take the sword by the highest power on earth, and would maintain the truth to the extent of his means.
‘Questionless,’ he added, ‘it is great want of knowledge, and more of grace, to think and believe that a woman uncapax of all holy orders, should be the supreme governor of Christ’s Church; a thing that Christ did not grant unto his own mother. If the Queen’s pleasure be, as you allege, to minister justice, it were time to begin; for in this twenty years’ part of her reign we have seen more damnable doctrine maintained, more oppressing of poor subjects, under pretence of justice, within this land than ever we read or heard… If Thomas Becket, the Bishop of Canterbury, had never suffered death in the defence of the Church, Thomas Butler, alias Becket, had never been Earl of Ormonde.’43 Ormonde sent the letter by express to Walsingham, for the Queen’s eye, characterising it as ‘foolish, traitorous, popish, and devil-persuaded,’ praying that God might confound all her unnatural subjects and give her victory over all His enemies.
‘Sir, I pray you tell her Majesty that poor Lucas will remain constant in the true faith, whoever follow the Pope and do the contrary, and that neither Becket nor Canterbury shall alter him.’
It was a year of great activity among the English Catholics. Parsons and Campion had just landed; the air teemed with rumours, and papers were freely circulated to prepare men for something extraordinary. A Devonshire gentleman named Eve brought one of these to Waterford, and it was not calculated to make the task of the Irish Government easier. Ten or twelve thousand men from the Pope, rather more from the King of Spain, and rather fewer from the Duke of Florence, were expected to invade England, and
Chiefly from Journal of Occurrences, July 2.
Edw. Fenton to Walsingham, July 11; Ormonde to same, July 21; White M.R. to same, July 22; Pelham to the Privy Council, July 4 and 8 in
White M.R. to the Privy Council, July 22, 1580, where Ormonde’s speech is given; Ormonde to Walsingham, July 21; Pelham and his Council to the Privy Council, July 9 and 12, in
Baltinglas to Ormonde, received before July 24, 1580, to R. Walshe, July 18; Ormonde to Walsingham, July 24. I believe the connection of the Butlers with the Beckets has never been proved.
