should surrender Sanders and other strangers, give up Carrigafoyle or Askeaton, repair to the Lord Justice, and prosecute his rebellious brother to the uttermost. The penalty for refusing these terms was that he should be proclaimed traitor. After conferring with Ormonde, he wrote to say that he had been arrested when he went to the late Lord Justice. He refused to give up Askeaton, perhaps thinking it impregnable, but was ready to do his best against Sanders and his unnatural brethren if his other castles were restored to him. Pelham answered that the proclamation was ready and should be published in three days, unless Desmond came sooner to his senses. Still protesting his loyalty, he refused to make any further concession. A last chance was given him; if he would repair to Pelham’s presence by eight next morning he should have licence to go to England. No answer was returned, and the proclamation was published as Pelham had promised. By a singular coincidence, and as if to presage the ruin of the house of Desmond, a great piece of the wall of Youghal fell of itself upon the same day. The die was cast, and the fate of the Geraldine power was sealed.26
The proclamation asserted that Desmond had practised with foreign princes, that he had suffered Fitzmaurice and his Spaniards to lurk in his country, and that he had been privy to the murder of Davells and others. He was accused of feigning loyalty and of purposely allowing the garrison to escape from their untenable post at Smerwick. It was said that he had gone from the Lord Justice into Kerry against express orders, had seen that the strangers were well treated – being, in fact, in his pay – and had even placed some of them in charge of castles. He had joined himself openly with the proclaimed traitors his brothers, and with Dr. Sanders, that odious, unnatural, and pestiferous traitor; and quite lately his household servants had been engaged with the Queen’s troops at Rathkeale. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence was a paper found in a portmanteau belonging to Dr. Allen, ‘one of the traitors lately slain,’ which showed how the artillery found at Smerwick had been distributed by Desmond among the rebels. To detach waverers it was announced that all who appeared unconditionally before the Lord Justice or the Earl of Ormonde should be received as liege subjects. Besides Pelham, Waterhouse, Maltby, and Patrick Dobbyn, Mayor of Waterford, the subscribers to the proclamation were all Butlers; Ormonde and his three brothers, Lords Mountgarret and Dunboyne, and Sir Theobald Butler of Cahir. Some of these had been rebels, but all were now united to overwhelm the Geraldines and possibly to win their lands. ‘There was,’ said Waterhouse, ‘great practice that the Earl of Ormonde should have dealt for a pacification, but when it came to the touch he dealt soundly – and will, I think, follow the prosecution with as much earnestness as any to whom it might have been committed.’ He was, in fact, enough of an Irishman to wish that even Desmond might have a last chance; but when it came to choosing between loyalty and rebellion his choice was as quickly made as his father’s had been when he resisted the blandishments of Silken Thomas.27
Finding himself in no condition to attack so strong a place as Askeaton, Pelham returned to Dublin, and Ormonde went to Waterford to prepare for a western campaign. He wrote to tell Walsingham of his vast expenses. His own company of 100 men was so well horsed and armed that none could gainsay it; but the ships were unvictualled, and Youghal and Kinsale were doubtfully loyal. ‘I have the name of 800 footmen left in all my charge, and they be not 600 able men, as Mr. Fenton can tell, for I caused my Lord Justice to take view of them. They be sickly, unapparelled, and almost utterly unvictualled. There are 150 horsemen with me that be not 100… My allowance is such as I am ashamed to write of… I long to be in service among the traitors, who hope for foreign power.’ But the Queen was very loth to spend money, and very angry at the imperfect intelligence from Ireland. The number of Spaniards who landed was never known. There were certainly more in the country than Fitzmaurice had at Smerwick; and the number of harbours between Kinsale and Tralee was most convenient for contraband cargoes. Her Majesty also grumbled about Pelham’s new knights, lest they should be emboldened to ‘crave support to maintain their degree.’ There were but two, Gerrard the Chancellor, and Vice-Treasurer Fitton; both had served long and well, and it was customary for every new governor to confer some honours. Peremptory orders were sent that the pension list should be cut down, and the Queen even talked of reducing the scanty garrison. She was offended at the proclamation of Desmond, as she had been five years before, and found fault with everything and everybody. Pelham said the proclamation was an absolute necessity, since no person of any consideration in Munster would stir a finger until ‘assured by this public act that your Majesty will deal thoroughly for his extirpation.’ Before the proclamation, at the time of the fight with Maltby, Desmond had guarded the Pope’s ensign with all his own servants, and ‘in all his skirmishes and outrages since the proclamation crieth Papa Aboo, which is the Pope above, even above you and your imperial crown.’ In despair the Lord Justice begged to be recalled, but Ormonde, who knew Elizabeth’s humour, made up his mind to do what he could with small means. At this juncture, and as if to show that he had not been proclaimed for nothing, Desmond committed an outrage which for ever deprived him of all hope of pardon.28
The town of Youghal, which had always been under the influence of his family, was at this time fervently Catholic. The Jesuits kept a school there, and the townsmen had been ‘daily instructed in Christian doctrine, in the celebration of the Sacrament, and in good morals, as far as the time permitted, but not without hindrance.’ The corporation were uneasy, and sent two messengers, of which one was a priest, to fetch powder from Cork. Sir Warham St. Leger, who had been acting as Provost Marshal of Munster since Carter’s death, gave the powder or sent it, and offered to send one of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s well-armed ships to protect the town, which the fallen wall laid open to attack. But the corporation refused to incur the expense of supporting Gilbert’s sailors or Ormonde’s soldiers, and made little or no preparation for their own defence. On Friday, November 13, Desmond, accompanied by the Seneschal of Imokilly, encamped on the south side of Youghal, near the Franciscan priory, which his own ancestors had founded. He gave out that his intentions were harmless, and that he had come only to send messengers to Ormonde, who could prove that he had been wrongfully proclaimed traitor. Meanwhile, he demanded wine for his men, and the mayor, who was either a fool or a traitor, let him take the ferry-boat, which was the only means by which the town might be relieved from the Waterford side. The Geraldines were to take two tuns of wine, and then depart; but during Saturday and Sunday morning they had frequent conversations with their friends on the walls. The result was that they mustered with evidently hostile intentions, and that the mayor ordered the gunners in the round tower, which commanded the landing-place, not to fire first, although they had a ‘saker charged with a round shot, a square shot, and a handspike of an ell long, wherewith they were like to have spoiled many of them. One elderly man of the town commanded not to shoot off lest the rebels would be angry therewith, and threatened to kill the gunner if he would give fire.’ Other sympathisers had already carried out ladders and hung ropes over the walls. With such help the rebels easily entered the breach, and in an hour all was over. Wives and maidens were ravished, and the town was ruthlessly sacked. Many of the inhabitants helped the work, ‘notwithstanding that they saw the ravishing of their women, the spoiling of their goods and burning of their houses, and that (which is most detestable treason), notwithstanding that they saw the Earl and Sir John, the Seneschal of Imokilly, and divers others draw down in the court-house of the town her Majesty’s arms, and most despitefully with their daggers to cut it and thrust it through.’ ‘This they did,’ Ormonde added, ‘as an argument of their cankered and alienated hearts.’ The plunder was considerable, and the Four Masters sympathetically record that many a poor indigent person became rich and affluent by the spoils of this town. Some of Lord Barry’s men were present, and most of the plunder was carried into his country and sold there. As one of Desmond’s followers filled his pouch with gold and silver from a broken chest, he said to his master that the thing was very pleasant if not a dream. Dermot O’Sullivan, the historian’s father, stood by and warned the Earl that the sweetest dreams might be but a mockery. The houses and gates were burned, and when Ormonde came a few weeks later he found the ruins in sole possession of
Ormonde to Walsingham, July 27 and August 10, 1579; Desmond to Ormonde and also to some powerful person at court Oct. 10; and the letters in
Waterhouse to Walsingham, Nov. 4, 1579. The proclamation is in
Ormonde to Walsingham, Nov. 7, 1579; Walsingham to Waterhouse, Nov. 8; Pelham to Wilson, Nov. 28; to the Queen, Dec. 15 and 28; and many other letters in
