Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3). Bagwell Richard
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Towards the end of October, the Lord Deputy, much hindered by flooded rivers and a bad commissariat, slowly made his way by Kilkenny into the county of Limerick. At Rathkeale he was joined by the English companies whom Ormonde had with him, and led the united force to Dingle. The Earl seems to have returned himself. Among the newly arrived captains was Walter Raleigh, burning with anxiety to distinguish himself, and ready to tempt fortune to almost any extent. When the camp at Rathkeale broke up, he held his own company in ambush until the main column had gone to some distance. Then came some wretched kernes to pick up what they could, as the lepers came to the Syrian camp before Samaria. Raleigh took them all prisoners, including one who carried a bundle of osiers, used by the Irish as halters, and who imprudently said that they were to hang up English churls. ‘They shall now serve an Irish kerne,’ said Raleigh, and this jester out of season was hanged forthwith. The other prisoners, says Hooker, were treated according to their deserts, but we are not told what those deserts were. The whole army then marched as far as Dingle, where they encamped to wait for the admiral, who lingered at Kinsale after his rough voyage. After conferring with Bingham and viewing the fort, Grey agreed that regular approaches were necessary, and until the fleet came nothing could be done, for the army was not provided either with trenching tools or heavy guns.63
More than a week later an express came from Winter to say that he had been delayed by weather, but was now in Smerwick harbour, and that three provision ships had come from Cork and Limerick. Grey at once rode to Smerwick from his camp near Dingle, and Winter agreed to land eight pieces of cannon. Next day was Sunday, part of which Grey spent with Bingham studying the ground, and on Monday he moved his camp to near the doomed fort. At his approach the garrison hung out the Pope’s banner and saluted the Lord Deputy with a round shot, which very nearly killed Jacques Wingfield. A small party sallied forth and skirmished with the advanced guard of the English under cover of a heavy fire from musketeers lying in the ditch. The practice was remarkably bad, for the only damage done to the English by more than 600 rounds was to graze Captain Zouch’s leg without breaking the skin. Grey pitched his tent near the fort, and that night a trench was made. The sailors went to work with a will, and two pieces were mounted, which began to play next morning at a distance of about 240 yards from the work. The enemy had mounted their guns so badly that only two seriously annoyed the besiegers. These were disabled by two o’clock; and the garrison were reduced to musketry and to harquebusses which they fired from rests. Every little skirmish went against the Italians, and in spite of four sallies the sappers worked up that night to within 120 yards of the ditch.
The only serious casualty happened next morning. Good John Cheke, as Grey calls him, was a son of the great scholar, and inherited most scholarlike poverty, although he was Burghley’s nephew. Tired of living as a dependant on his uncle’s favour, and much more in awe of him than of Spanish bullets, he begged a horse from the great Lord Treasurer and resolved to seek his fortune in Ireland. Incautiously raising his head above the trench, he received a fatal wound, and Grey descants at great length upon his edifying end. ‘He made,’ wrote the Puritan warrior to the Queen, ‘so divine a confession of his faith, as all divines in either of your Majesty’s realms could not have passed, if matched, it; so wrought in him God’s spirit, plainly declaring him a child of His elected.’ Grey observed that the fatal volley came from under a wooden penthouse, and pointed out the spot to Winter, who himself laid the guns. The second shot dislodged the musketeers, and at the fourth a flag of truce was shown on the ramparts. The Pope’s banner had first been struck and replaced by a black and a white banner. This was to warn Desmond, who had promised to be on the neighbouring hills with 4,000 men. The furling of the black flag was a first signal of distress; but no help came, and a parley was asked for. Sir James Fitzgerald of Decies had been given by Desmond to the Italians with instructions to exact 1,000l. ransom; he was now brought out and liberated. The camp-master, Alexander Bartoni, a Florentine, then came into the trenches, and said that certain Spaniards and Italians had been lured to Ireland by false representations, that they had no quarrel with Queen Elizabeth, and that they were quite ready to depart as they had come. A Spanish captain followed, but he made no pretence of being sent by his king, or of having communicated with any higher authority than Recalde, the governor of Bilboa. The Florentine said they were all sent by the Pope for the defence of the Catholica fede, and Grey, in true Puritan style, replied that his Holiness was ‘a detestable shaveling, the right Antichrist and general ambitious tyrant over all right principalities, and patron of the diabolica fede.’ All conditions were refused, and in the evening the commandant, Sebastian de San Josefo, a Bolognese, came himself into the trenches and begged for a truce till morning.
The interpreter was Oliver Plunkett, who expected no mercy and therefore opposed all negotiations, and his double-dealing may have caused such confusion as to make it possible to say that the garrison had surrendered on promise of their lives. The strangers may even have thought they had such a promise, but it is clear that Grey’s terms were unconditional surrender or storm as soon as practicable. The unfortunate Sebastian embraced his knees, and promised to evacuate the place unconditionally next morning. Catholic writers accuse San Josefo of cowardice, but he could not help surrendering, for the fort had been heavily battered, and there was no chance of relief. To make assurance doubly sure the English worked all night and mounted two fresh guns before sunrise. On the morrow about a dozen officers came out with their ensigns trailed and surrendered the fort at discretion. Grey distributed them among his officers to be held to ransom for their profit. The arms and stores were secured, ‘and then,’ says Arthegal himself, ‘put I in certain bands, who straight fell to execution. There were 600 slain.’ Hooker adds that Mackworth and Walter Raleigh were the captains on duty, and that they superintended the butchery.64
The poor Italians had no commissions and were treated as filibusters, just as the Spaniards would have treated Drake had they been able to catch him; but many blamed Grey, though he does not himself seem to have been conscious that he had done anything extraordinary. Sussex was among the critics, though he had plenty to answer for himself, but the Queen approved of what had been done. At the top of the despatch sent in answer to the Lord Deputy’s, she wrote as follows, in the fine Roman hand which sometimes contrasts so strangely with her studiously
62
Captain R. Bingham to Walsingham, October 13, 18, and 23, 1580; to Leicester, October 18, in
63
Hooker; Grey to the Queen, November 12, 1580; Bingham to Walsingham, November 3.
64
Strype’s Life of Cheke, ch. vi. Bingham to Leicester, November 11, 1580, in Wright’s