many alarms, which was well answered by them that was in the rearward, which stayed them from pulling us down by the heels. But I lost divers of my dear friends. They were laid all along the wood as we should pass, behind trees, rocks, crags, bogs, and in covert. Yet so long as we kept the bottom we lost never a man, till we were drawn up the hill by our leaders, where we could observe no order; we could have no sight of them, but were fain only to beat the places where we saw the smoke of our pieces; but the hazard of myself and the loss of my company was the safeguard of many others… were a man never so slightly hurt, he was lost, because no man was able to help him up the hill. Some died, being so out of breath that they were able to go no further, being not hurt at all.’53
Carew and Audley had a dispute at the outset, and the loud talk of two usually quiet and modest officers had a very bad effect on their men. The renegade captain, Gerald Fitzmaurice, had full information from Kildare’s people, if not from the Earl himself, and he knew the companies had never been together before. They contained many raw recruits, and he rightly calculated that they would be thrown into confusion by an unseen enemy. The soldiers fresh from England wore red or blue coats, and Maltby, who was with Grey in the open, saw how easily they were picked off. ‘The strangeness of the fight,’ he adds, ‘is such to the new-come ignorant men that at the first brunt they stand all amazed, or rather give back to the enemy… Their coats stand them in no stead, neither in fashion nor in giving them any succour to their bodies. Let the coat-money be given to some person of credit, with which, and with that which is also bestowed on their hose, they may clothe themselves here with jerkins and hose of frieze, and with the same money bring them every man a mantle which shall serve him for his bedding and thereby shall not be otherwise known to the rebels than the old soldiers be.’ The recruits wavered, the kerne ran away to the enemy, and so ‘the gentlemen were lost.’
Stanley says not above thirty Englishmen were killed, but Moore, Cosby, Audley, and other officers were among them. Grey thought the rebels were fewer than the soldiers, who were stricken by panic. Sir Peter Carew was clad in complete armour, which proved more fatal than even a red coat. Suffocated from running up hill he was forced to lie down and was easily taken. It was proposed to hold him to ransom, ‘but one villain,’ says Hooker, ‘most butcherly, as soon as he was disarmed, with his sword slaughtered and killed him, who in time after was also killed.’
Three months afterwards George Carew rejoiced that he had the good fortune to slay him who slew his brother, and announced that he meant to lay his bones by his or to be ‘thoroughly satisfied with revenge.’ No doubt the survivor under such circumstances would be filled with remorseful bitterness; but his thirst for revenge, fully slaked by a murder three years later, can be scarcely justified even according to that ancient code which prescribes an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.54
When a civilised government receives a check from its revolted subjects, the moral effect is generally out of all proportion to the actual loss. But Pelham had effectually bridled Munster, and Maltby had for the moment nearly neutralised Connaught and Ulster also. O’Rourke and O’Donnell now both took arms in the Catholic cause, and there was every prospect of a general conflagration. Maltby rode post from Dublin northwards, and such was the dread which he had inspired, that O’Donnell at once disbanded his men, and wrote to say that nothing should make him swerve from his allegiance. The President hastened to Leitrim, where he found that O’Rourke had dismantled the castle. He immediately began to repair it, though he had to draw lime eight miles. The tanist Brian O’Rourke, who regarded the chief as his greatest enemy, helped the work, and gladly acted as sheriff under the President.
O’Rourke appeared at the edge of a wood with 1,200 men, of whom 500 were Scots; but Ulick Burke, who begged for the place of honour, charged at the head of 200 soldiers and 500 kerne. Some Scots were killed, and the building was not further interrupted. Leaving a strong garrison in the castle, Maltby then hurried back to Dublin, and arrived there in time to be a witness and a critic of the Glenmalure affair. He warned the English Government that Ulster was in a dangerous state, and that Tirlogh Luineach’s wife was determined to make a new Scotland of that province. ‘She has already planted a good foundation, for she in Tyrone, her daughter in Tyrconnell (being O’Donnell’s wife), and Sorleyboy in Clandeboy, do carry all the sway in the North, and do seek to creep into Connaught, but I will stay them from that.’55
The news of Grey’s defeat did not reach the officials at Cork for eleven days, and then only in a fragmentary way, but its effect upon the natives was instantaneous. Tirlogh Luineach, whom Captain Piers had just brought to terms, suddenly swept round the lower end of Lough Neagh, drove off the cattle of the loyalist Sir Hugh Magennis, and killed many of his men, demanded the title of O’Neill, and the old hegemony claimed by Shane, declared that he would stand in defence of religion while life lasted, and proposed to invade the Pale with 5,000 men. The Scots’ galleys lay in Lough Foyle, and effectual resistance seemed impossible. The Baron of Dungannon sent his cattle to the mountains, and hid himself in the woods, protesting his loyalty even ‘if all the Irishry in Ireland should rebel,’ and if he had nothing left but his bare body. But Magennis, after crouching for a while at Narrow Water, was forced to go as a suppliant to Tirlogh’s camp.
The southern side of the Pale was in no better case. A strong force under John of Desmond besieged Maryborough, and the constable was so closely watched that he dared not write. A private settler living in the unfinished castle of Disert, and expecting to be attacked every moment, sent the news to Dublin, but was forced to entrust his letter to a poor beggar-man. Ladders were ready in the woods to attack all posts. Some of Ormonde’s villages were burned, and his brother Piers, though he maintained his own ground, could not save Abbeyleix from the flames. The remnant of the O’Connors rose once more, and Ross MacGeohegan, the most loyal and useful subject in the midlands, was murdered by his half-brother Brian, whose mother was an O’Connor. ‘All is naught here,’ wrote Maltby from Dublin, ‘and like to be worse.’ He had to reach Athlone by a circuitous route, and found his province already in an uproar.56
It was in foreign aid that all Irish rebels mainly trusted; and it was supposed that the fleet would prevent any descent upon Munster, the only district where strangers from the South would have much chance of maintaining themselves. Winter had been directed to cruise about the mouth of the Shannon, having first sent some light craft to the Biscay coast for news. He was not to land himself, but if necessary to employ a naval brigade under Captain Richard Bingham. The admiral was not in good health; he hated the service, he hated Captain Bingham, and he was ready to run home as soon as there seemed the least chance of victuals running short. The fleet reached Ireland about the beginning of April, and early in July Winter threatened to sail away. But the Queen’s positive orders restrained him for a time, and Pelham was at hand to inculcate obedience, reminding him that there was generally a Michaelmas summer in Ireland. Pelham left Munster on the last day of August, on December 5th Winter sailed for England, and on the 12th the long-expected Spaniards arrived at Smerwick. The admiral was required to explain his very unseasonable departure, and it must be admitted that he had reasons, though a Drake or a Nelson might not have allowed them much weight. The ships were foul, and sailed too badly either for flight or chase, the sails and ropes were rotten from the unceasing wet of a Kerry summer, victuals were running short, there was a most plentiful lack of news, and the Shannon was a bad anchorage at the best. Whatever the Queen may have thought of the admiral’s conduct, it did not prevent her from sending him to Ireland again.57
An attack on England could not be secretly prepared in Spain, for the carrying trade was in England’s hands. Armed rovers like Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, half merchants and half buccaneers, came and went as they pleased upon the peninsular coast,
George Carew to Walsingham, November 20, 1580. For the defeat in Glenmalure, see Stanley, Maltby, and Gerard to Walsingham, August 31 Grey to Walsingham, August 31; to Burghley, September 12; Wallop to Walsingham, September 9; Hooker;
Maltby to Leicester and Walsingham, August 17; the former in
Hugh Magennis to Grey, August 29, 1580; Dungannon and Sir Hugh O’Reilly to Grey, September 3; Gormanston to Grey, September 4; Sir N. Bagenal to Grey, September 2; Mr. John Barnes to Grey (from Disert), September 4; Nathaniel Smith to Maltby, September 3; Maltby to Walsingham, September 7 and 8.
Pelham to the Privy Council, July 14, 1580; to the Irish Council, July 22; to Winter, August 16, all in
