STORY OF IRELAND By A. M. Sullivan

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXX.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXIX. (War of the Roses) | Contents | Chapter XXXI. (Geraldines) »

HOW THE NEW ELEMENT OF ANTAGONISM CAME INTO THE STRUGGLE—HOW THE ENGLISH KING AND NATION ADOPTED A NEW RELIGION, AND HOW THE IRISH HELD FAST BY THE OLD.

THE time was now at hand when, to the existing elements of strife and hatred between the Irish and the English nations, there was to be added one more fierce than all the rest; one bitterly intensifying the issues of battle already knit with such deadly vehemence between the Celt and the Saxon. Christendom was being rent in twain by a terrible convulsion. A new religion had flung aloft the standard of revolt and revolution against the successors of St. Peter; and the Christian world was being divided into two hostile camps—of the old faith and the new. This was not the mere agitation of new theories of subverting tendencies, pushed and preached with vehemence to the overturning of the old; but the crash of a politico-religious revolution, bursting like the eruption of a volcano, and as suddenly spreading confusion and change far and wide.

The political policy and the personal aims and interests of kings and princes gave to the new doctrines at their very birth a range of dominion greater than original Christianity itself had been able to attain in a century. Almost instantaneously, princes and magnates grasped at the new theories according as personal or state policy dictated. To each and all of them those theories offered one most tempting and invaluable advantage—supremacy, spiritual and temporal, unshadowed, unrestrained, unaccountable, and irresponsible on earth. No more of vexing conflicts with the obstinate Roman Pontiffs. No more of supplications to the Holy See "with whispering breath and bated humbleness," if a divorce was needed or a new wife sighted while yet the old one was alive. No more humiliating submissions to the penances or conditions imposed by that antique tribunal in the Eternal City; but each one a king, spiritual as well as temporal, in his own dominions.

Who would not hail such a system? There was perhaps not one among the kings of Europe who had not, at one time or another, been made to feel unpleasantly the restraint put on him by the pope, acting either as spiritual pontiff or in his capacity of chief arbiter in the disputes of the Christian family. Sometimes, though rarely, this latter function—entirely of human origin and authority—seemed to sink into mere state policy, and like all human schemes, had its varying characteristics of good and ill. But that which most frequently brought the Popes into conflict with the civil rulers of the world was the striving of the Holy See to mitigate the evils of villeinage or serfdom appertaining to the feudal system; to restrain by the spiritual authority the lawless violence and passion of feudal lords and kings; and, above all, to maintain the sanctity and invioliability of the marriage tie, whether in the cottage of the bondman or in the palace of the king. To many of the European sovereigns, therefore, the newly propounded system (which I am viewing solely as it affected the public policy of individual princes, prescinding entirely from its doctrinal aspect) held forth powerful attractions; yet among the Teutonic principalities by the Rhine alone was it readily embraced at first.

So far, identity of faith had prevailed between England and Ireland; albeit English churchmen—-archbishops, bishops, priests, and monks—waged the national war in their own way against the Irish hierarchy, clergy, and people, as hotly as the most implacable of the military chiefs. With the cessation of the civil war in England, and the restoration of English national power during the reign of the seventh Henry, the state policy of strengthening and extending the English colony in Ireland was vigorously resumed; and the period which witnessed the outbreak of the religious revolution in Germany found the sensual and brutal Henry the Eighth engaged in a savage war upon the Irish nation. Henry early entered the lists against the new doctrines. He wrote a controversial pamphlet in refutation of Luther's dogmas, and was rewarded therefor by an encomiastic letter from the pope conferring on him the title of "Defender of the Faith." Indeed, ever since the time of Adrian, the popes had always been wondrously friendly toward the English kings; much too ready to give them "aid and comfort" in their schemes of Irish subjugation, and much too little regardful of the heroic people that were battling so persistently in defence of their nationality. A terrible lesson was now to awaken Rome to remorse and sorrow. The power she had aided and sanctioned in those schemes was to turn from her with unblushing apostasy, and become the most deadly and malignant of her foes; while that crushed and broken nation whom she had uninquiringly given up to be the prey of merciless invaders, was to shame this ingratitude and perfidy by a fidelity and devotedness not to be surpassed in the history of the world.

Henry—a creature of mere animal passions—tired of his lawful wife, and desired another. He applied to Rome for a divorce. He was, of course, refused. He pressed his application again in terms that but too plainly foreshadowed to the supreme pontiff what the result of a refusal might be. It was, no doubt, a serious contingency for the Holy See to contemplate—the defection to the new religion of a king and a nation so powerful as the English. In fact, it would give to the new creed a status and a power it otherwise would not possess. To avert this disaster to Catholicity, it was merely required to wrong one woman; merely to permit a lustful king to have his way, and sacrifice to his brute passions his helpless wife. With full consciousness, however, of all that the refusal implied, the Holy See refused to permit to a king that which could not be permitted to the humblest of his subjects—refused to allow a wife's rights to be sacrificed, even to save to the side of Catholicity for three centuries the great and powerful English nation.

Henry had an easy way out of the difficulty. According to the new system, he would have no need to incur such mortifying refusals from this intractable, antiquated, and unprogressive tribunal at Rome, but could grant to himself divorces and dispensations ad libitum. So he threw off the pope's authority, embraced the new religion, and helped himself to a new wife as often as he pleased; merely cutting off the head of the discarded one after he had granted himself a divorce from her.

In a country where feudal institutions and ideas prevailed, a king who could appease the lords carried the nation. In England, at this period, the masses of the people, though for some time past by the letter of the law freed from villeinage, were still, practically, the creatures of the lords and barons, and depended upon, looked up to, and followed them with the olden stolid docility. Henry, of course, though he might himself have changed as he listed, could never have carried the nation over with him into the new creed, had he not devised a means for giving the lords and barons also a material interest in the change. This he effected by sharing with them the rich plunder of the church. Few among the English nobility were proof against the great temptations of kingly favor and princely estates, and the great perils of kingly anger and; confiscations. For, in good truth, even at a very early stage of the business, to hesitate was to lose life as well as possessions, inasmuch as. Henry unceremoniously chopped off the heads of those who wavered or refused to join him in the new movement. The feudal system carried England bodily over with the king. Once he was able to get to his side (by proposing liberal bribes out of the plundered abbey lands) a sufficient number of the nobles, the game was all in his hands. The people counted for nothing in such a system. They went with their lords, like the cattle stock on the estates. The English bishops, mostly scions of the noble houses, were not greatly behind in the corrupt and cowardly acceptance of the king's scheme; but there were in the episcopacy noble and glorious exceptions to this spectacle of baseness. The body of the clergy, too, made a brave struggle for a time; but the king and the nobles made light of what they could do. A brisk application of the ax and the block—a rattling code of penalties for premunire and so forth—and soon the troublesome priests were all either killed off or banished.

But now, thought Henry, what of Ireland! How is the revolution likely to be received by the English colony there? In truth, it was quite a ticklish consideration; and Henry appears to have apprehended very nearly that which actually resulted—namely, that in proportion as the Anglo-Irish lords had become hibernicized, they would resist that revolution, and stand by the old faith; while those of them least imbued with Irish sentiment would proportionately be on his side.

Among the former, and of all others most coveted now and feared for their vast influence and power, were the Geraldines. Scions of that great house had been among the earliest to drop their distinctive character as Anglo-Norman lords, and become Anglo-Irish chiefs—adopting the institutions, laws, language, manners, and customs of the native Irish. For years the head of the family had been kept on the side of the English power, simply by confiding to him its supreme control in Ireland; but of the Irish sympathies of Clan Gerald, Henry had misgivings sore, and ruefully suspected now that it would lead the van in a powerful struggle in Ireland against his politico-religious revolution. In fact, at the very moment in which he was plunging into his revolt against the pope, a rebellion, led by a Geraldine chief, was shaking to its foundations the English power in Ireland—the rebellion of "Silken Thomas."

« Chapter XXIX. (War of the Roses) | Contents | Chapter XXXI. (Geraldines) »

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXI.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXX. (Henry VIII) | Contents | Chapter XXXII. (Silken Thomas) »

"THOSE GERALDINES! THOSE GERALDINES!"

THE history of the Geraldine family is a perfect romance, and in many respects outrivals the creations of fiction. From the earliest period of their settlement in Ireland they attained to a position of almost kingly power, and for full five hundred years were the foremost figures in Anglo-Irish history. Yet with what changing fortunes! Now vice-kings reigning in Dublin, their vast estates stretching from Maynooth to Lixnaw, their strong castles sentineling the land from sea to sea! Anon captive victims of attainder, stripped of every earthly honor and possession; to-day in the dungeon, to-morrow led to the scaffold! Now a numerous and powerful family—a fruitful, strong, and wide-spreading tree.

Anon hewn down to earth, or plucked up seemingly root and branch, beyond the possibility of further existence; yet mysteriously preserved and budding forth from some single seedling to new and greater power! Often the Geraldine stock seemed extinct; frequently its jealous enemies—the English king or his favorites—made safe and sure (as they thought) that the dangerous line was extirpated. Yet as frequently did they find it miraculously resurgent, grasping all its ancient power and renewing all its ancient glory.

At a very early period the Geraldine line was very nearly cut off forever, but was preserved in the person of one infant child, under circumstances worthy of narration. In the year 1261 a pitched battle was fought between the justiciary, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, and the MacCarthy More, at a glen a few miles east of Kenmare in Kerry. It was a formidable engagement, in which each side put forth all its resources of military generalship and strength of levies. The Irish commander completely outgeneraled the Normans. At the close of a protracted and sanguinary battle they were routed with fearful slaughter, Lord Thomas being mortally wounded, and his son, beside numerous barons and knights, left dead upon the field. "Alas!" continues the narrative of O'Daly (who wrote in the year 1655), "the whole family of the Geraldines had well-nigh perished; at one blow they were cut off—father and son; and now there remained but an infant one year old, to wit, the son of John Fitz-Thomas, recently slain. The nurse, who had heard the dismal tidings at Tralee, ran about here and there distraught with grief, and left the cradle of the young Geraldine without a watcher; thereupon an ape which was kept for amusement's sake came and raised the infant out of the cradle and carried him to the top of the castle. There, to the astonishment of those who passed by, the ape took off the babe's swaddling clothes, licked him all over, clothed him again, and brought him back to his cradle safe and sound. Then coming to the nurse, as it were in reproof for her neglect, he dealt her a blow. Ever after was that babe called Thomas a n' Appa; that is, 'of the Ape;' and when he grew to man's estate he was ennobled by many virtues. Bravely did he avenge his father's and grandfather's murder, and re-erect the fortunes of his house.[1] He left a son, Maurice Fitz-Thomas, who was the first earl of Desmond."

Of Lord Thomas, the sixth earl, is related a romantic, yet authentic story, known to many Irish readers. While on a hunting expedition in some of the lonely and picturesque glens in North Kerry, he was benighted on his homeward way. Weary and thirsting, he urged his steed forward through the tangled wood. At length, through the gloom he discerned close by an humble cottage, which proved to be the dwelling -of one of his own retainers or clansmen, named MacCormick. Lord Thomas rode to the door, halted, and asked for a drink. His summons was attended to and his request supplied by Catherine, the daughter of the cottager, a young girl whose simple grace and exquisite beauty struck the young earl with astonishment—and with warmer feelings too. He dismounted and rested awhile in the cottage, and became quite charmed with the daughter of its humble host. He bade her farewell, resolving to seek that cottage soon again. Often subsequently his horse bore him thither; for Lord Thomas loved Catherine MacCormick, and loved her purely and honorably. Not perhaps without certain misgivings as to the results did he resolve to make her his wife; yet never did he waver in that resolve. In due time he led the beautiful cottage girl to the altar, and brought her home his wife. His worst fears were quickly realized. His kindred and clansmen all rose against him for this mesalliance, which, according to their code, forfeited for him lands and title. In vain he pleaded. An ambitious uncle, James, eventually seventh earl, led the movement against him, and claiming for himself the title and estates thus "forfeited," was clamorous and uncompassionate. Lord Thomas at the last nobly declared that even on the penalty thus inexorably decreed against him, he in nowise repented him of his marriage, and that he would give up lands and titles rather than part with his peasant wife. Relinquishing everything, he bade an eternal adieu to Ireland, and sailed with his young wife for France, where he died at Rouen in 1420. This romantic episode of authentic history furnished our national melodist with the subject of. the following verses:

"By the Feal's wave benighted,
No star in the skies,
To thy door by love lighted,
I first saw those eyes.
Some voice whispered o'er me,
As the threshold I cross'd,
There was ruin before me;
If I lov'd, I was lost.

"Love came, and brought sorrow
Too soon in his train;
Yet so sweet, that to-morrow
'Twere welcome again
Though misery's full measure
My portion should be,
I would drain it with pleasure
If poured out by thee!

"You, who call it dishonor
To bow to love's flame,
If you've eyes look but on her,
And blush while you blame.
Hath the pearl less whiteness
Because of its birth?
Hath the violet less brightness
For growing near earth?

"No: man for his glory
To ancestry flies;
But woman's bright story
Is told in her eyes.
While the monarch but traces
Through mortals his line,
Beauty, born of the graces,
Banks next to divine!"

In the reign of the eighth Henry, as well as for a long time previous thereto, the Geraldine family comprised two great branches, of which the earl of Desmond and the earl of Kildare were respectively the heads; the latter being paramount. Early in Henry's reign Gerald, earl of Kildare, or "The Great Earl," as he is called in the Irish annals, died after a long life, illustrious as a soldier, statesman and ruler. He was succeeded by his son, Garret Oge, or Gerald the younger, who was soon appointed by the crown to the high office and authority of lord deputy as vested in his father. Gerald Oge found his enemies at court active and restless in plotting his overthrow. He had more than once to proceed to England to make his defence against fatal charges, but invariably succeeded in vindicating himself with the king. With Henry, indeed, he was apparently rather a favorite; while, on the other hand, Cardinal Wolsey viewed him with marked suspicion. Kildare, though at the head of the English power in Ireland was, like many of the Geraldines, nearly as much of an Irish chief as an English noble. Not only was he, to the sore uneasiness of the court at London, in friendly alliance with many of the native princes, but he was allied by the closest ties of kindred and alliance with the royal houses of Ulster. So proud was he of this relationship, that, upon one occasion, when he was being reinstated as lord deputy, to the expulsion of Ormond, his accusing enemy, we are told that at Kildare's request "his kinsman, Con O'Neill, carried the sword of state before him to St. Thomas's Abbey, where he entertained the king's commissioners and others at a sumptuous banquet."

But soon Gerald's enemies were destined to witness the accomplishment of all their designs against his house. James, earl of Desmond, "a man of lofty and ambitious views, " entered into a correspondence with Charles the Fifth, king of Spain, and Francis the First of France, for the purpose, some hold, of inducing one or other of those sovereigns to invade Ireland. What follows I quote textually from O'Daly's quaint narrative, as translated by the Rev. C. P. Meehan:

"Many messages passed between them, of all which Henry the Eighth was a long time ignorant. It is commonly thought that Charles the Fifth at this time meditated an invasion of Ireland; and when at length the intelligence of these facts reached the king of England, Cardinal Wolsey (a man of immoderate ambition, most inimical to the Geraldines, and then ruling England as it were by his nod) caused the earl to. be summoned to London; but Desmond did not choose to place himself in the hands of the cardinal, and declined the invitation. Thereupon the king dispatched a messenger to the earl of Kildare, then viceroy in Ireland, ordering him to arrest Desmond and send him to England forthwith. On receipt of the order, Kildare collected troops and marched into Munster to seize Desmond; but after some time, whether through inability or reluctance to injure his kinsman, the business failed and Kildare returned. Then did the cardinal poison the mind of the king against Kildare, asseverating that by his connivance Desmond had escaped—(this, indeed, was not the fact, for Kildare, however so anxious, could not have arrested Desmond).

Kildare was then arraigned before the privy council, as Henry gave willing ear to the cardinal's assertions; but before the viceroy sailed for England, he committed the state and adminstration of Ireland to Thomas, his son and heir, and then presented himself before the council. The cardinal accused him of high treason to his liege sovereign, and endeavored to brand him and all his family with the ignominious mark of disloyalty. Kildare, who was a man of bold spirit, and despised the base origin of Wolsey, replied in polished, yet vehement language; and though the cardinal and court were hostile to him, nevertheless he so well managed the matter that he was only committed to the Tower of London. But the cardinal, determining to carry out his designs of vengeance without knowledge of the king, sent private instructions to the constable of the tower ordering him to behead the earl without delay. When the constable received his orders, although he knew how dangerous it was to contravene the cardinal's mandate, commiserating the earl, he made him aware of his instructions. Calmly, yet firmly, did Kildare listen to the person who read his death-warrant; and then launching into a violent invective against the cardinal, he caused the constable to proceed to the king to learn if such order had emanated from him, for he suspected that it was the act of the cardinal unauthorized. The constable, regardless of the risk he ran, hastened to the king, and, about ten o'clock at night, reported to his majesty the order of the cardinal for destroying Kildare. Thereon the king was bitterly incensed against Wolsey, whom he cursed, and forbade the constable to execute any order not sanctioned by his own sign-manual; stating, at the same time, that he would cause the cardinal to repent of his usurped authority and unjust dislike to Kildare. The constable returned, and informed the earl of his message; but Kildare was nevertheless detained a prisoner in the tower to the end of his days."

"There is," says O'Daly's translator, "a chapter in Gait's 'Life of Wolsey' full of errors and gross misrepresentations of Ireland and the Irish. It is only fair, however, to give him credit for the spirited sketch he has given of the dialogue between Wolsey and Kildare. 'My Lord,' said Wolsey, 'you will remember how the Earl of Desmond, your kinsman, sent letters to Francis, the French king, what messages have been sent to you to arrest him (Desmond), and it is not yet done . . . but, in performing your duty in this affair, merciful God! how dilatory have you been! . . . what! the earl of Kildare dare not venture! nay, the King of Kildare; for you reign more than you govern the land.' 'My lord chancellor,' replied the Earl, 'if you proceed in this way, I will forget half my defense. I have no school tricks nor art of recollection; unless you hear me while I remember, your second charge will hammer the first out of my head. As to my kingdom, I know not what you mean. ... I would you and I, my lord, exchanged kingdoms for one month; I would in that time undertake to gather more crumbs than twice the revenues of my poor earldom. While you sleep in your bed of down, I lie in a poor hovel; while you are served under a canopy, I serve under the cope of heaven; while you drink wine from golden cups, I must be content with water from a shell; my charger is trained for the field, your jennet is taught to amble.' O'Daly's assertion that Wolsey issued the earl's death-warrant does not appear to rest on any solid foundation; and the contrary appears likely, when such usurpation of royalty was not objected in the impeachment of the cardinal."

« Chapter XXX. (Henry VIII) | Contents | Chapter XXXII. (Silken Thomas) »

NOTES

[1] To this incident is attributed the circumstance that the armorial ensigns of the Geraldine family exhibit two apes as supporters.

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXII.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXI. (Geraldines) | Contents | Chapter XXXIII. (Reformation) »

THE REBELLION OF SILKEN THOMAS

WHEN Kildare was summoned to London—as it proved to be for the last time—he was called upon to nominate some one who should act for him in his absence, and for whom he himself would be responsible. Unfortunately he nominated his own son Thomas,[1] a hot, impetuous, brave, daring, and chivalrous youth, scarce twenty-one years of age. For some time the earl lay in London Tower, his fate as yet uncertain; the enemies of his house meanwhile striving steadily to insure his ruin.

It was at this juncture that the events detailed in bygone pages—Henry's quarrel with the pope, and the consequent politico-religious revolution in England—flung all the English realm into consternation and dismay. Amid the tidings of startling changes and bloody executions in London brought by each mail to Ireland, came many disquieting rumors of the fate of the Geraldine earl. The effect of these stories on the young Lord Thomas seems to have suggested to the anti-Geraldine faction a foul plot to accomplish his ruin. Forged letters were circulated giving out with much circumstantiality how the earl his father had been beheaded in the Tower of London, notwithstanding the king's promise to the contrary. The effect of this news on the Geraldine party, but most of all on the young Lord Thomas, may be imagined. Stunned for an instant by this cruel blow, his resolution was taken in a burst of passionate grief and anger. Vengeance! vengeance on the trebly perjured and blood-guilty king, whose crimes of lust, murder, and sacrilege called aloud for punishment, and forfeited for him allegiance, throne and life! The youthful deputy hastily assembling his guards and retainers, and surrounded by a crowd of his grief-stricken and vengeful kinsmen, marched to Mary's Abbey, where the privy council was already sitting, waiting for him to preside over its deliberations. The scene at the council chamber is picturesquely sketched by Mr. Ferguson, in his "Hibernian Nights' Entertainment,"[2]

"Presently the crowd collected round the gates began to break up and line the causeways at either side, and a gallant cavalcade was seen through the open arch advancing from Thomas' Court toward the drawbridge. 'Way for the lord deputy,' cried two truncheon-bearers, dashing through the gate, and a shout arose on all sides that Lord Thomas was coming. Trumpeters and pursuivants at arms rode first, then came the mace-bearer with his symbol of office, and after him the sword of state, in a rich scabbard of velvet, carried by its proper officer. Lord Thomas himself, in his robes of state, and surrounded by a dazzling array of nobles and gentlemen, spurred after. The arched gateway was choked for a moment with tossing plumes and banners, flashing arms and gleaming faces, as the magnificent troop burst in like a flood of fire upon the dark and narrow precincts of the city. But behind the splendid cortege which headed their march, came a dense column of mailed men-at-arms, that continued to defile through the close pass long after the gay mantles and waving pennons of their leaders were indistinct in the distance.

"The gate of Mary's Abbey soon received the leaders of the revolt; and ere the last of their followers had ceased to pour into the echoing courtyard, Lord Thomas and his friends were at the door of the council-chamber. The assembled lords rose at his entrance, and way was made for him to the chair of state.

"'Keep your seats, my lords,' said he, stopping midway between the entrance and council-table, while his friends gathered in a body at his back. 'I have not come to preside over this council, my lords; I come to tell you of a bloody tragedy that has been enacted in London, and to give you to know what steps I have thought fit to take in consequence.'

"'What tragedy, my lord?' said Alan, the archbishop of Dublin; 'your lordship's looks and words alarm me: what means this multitude of men now in the house of God? My lord, my lord, I fear this step is rashly taken; this looks like something, my lord, that I would be loth to name in the presence of loyal men.'

"'My lord archbishop,' replied Thomas, 'when you pretend an ignorance of my noble father's murder———-'

"'Murder!' cried the lord chancellor, Cromer, starting from his seat, and all at the council-table uttered exclamations of astonishment in horror, save only Alan and the lord high treasurer.

"'Yes, my lord,' the young Geraldine continued, with a stern voice, still addressing the archbishop, 'when you pretend ignorance of that foul and cruel murder, which was done by the instigation and traitorous procuring of yourself and others, your accomplices, and yet taunt me with the step which I have taken, rashly, as it may be, but not, I trust, unworthily of my noble father's son, in consequence you betray at once your treachery and your hypocrisy.' By this time the tumult among the soldiery without, who had not till now heard of the death of the earl, was as if a thousand men had been storming the abbey. They were all native Irish, and to a man devoted to Kildare. Curses, lamentations, and cries of rage and vengeance sounded from every quarter of the courtyard; and some who rushed into the council-hall with drawn swords, to be revenged on the authors of their calamity, were with difficulty restrained by the knights and gentlemen around the door from rushing on the archbishop and slaying him, as they heard him denounced by their chief, on the spot. When the clamor was somewhat abated, Alan, who had stood up to speak at its commencement, addressed the chancellor.

"'My lord, this unhappy young man says he knows not what. If his noble father, which God forbid, should have come under his majesty's displeasure—if he should, indeed, have suffered—although I know not that he hath—the penalty of his numerous treasons———-'

"'Bold priest, thou liest!' cried Sir Oliver Fitzgerald; 'my murdered brother was a truer servant of the crown than ever stood in thy satin shoes!'

"Alan and the lord chancellor, Cromer, also an archbishop and primate of Armagh, rose together; the one complaining loudly of the wrong and insult done his order; the other beseeching that all present would remember they were Christians and subjects of the crown of England; but, in the midst of this confusion, Lord Thomas, taking the sword of state out of the hands of its bearer, advanced up the hall to the council-table with a lofty determination in his bearing that at once arrested all eyes. It was plain he was about to announce his final purpose, and all within the hall awaited what he would say in sullen silence. His friends and followers now formed a dense semicircle at the foot of the hall; the lords of the council had involuntarily drawn round the throne and lord chancellor's chair; Thomas stood alone on the floor opposite the table, with the sword in his hands. Anxiety and pity were marked on the venerable features of Cromer as he bent forward to hear what he would say; but Alan and the treasurer, Lord James Butler, exchanged looks of malignant satisfaction.

"'My lord,' said Thomas, 'I come to tell you that my father has been basely put to death, for I know not what alleged treason, and that we have taken up arms to avenge his murder. Yet, although we be thus driven by the tyranny and cruelty of the king into open hostility, we would not have it said hereafter that we have conspired like villains and churls, but boldly declared our purpose as becomes warriors and gentlemen. This sword of state, my lords, is yours, not mine. I received it with an oath that I would use it for your benefit; I should stain my honor if I turned it to your hurt. My lords, I have now need of my own weapon, which I can trust; but as for the common sword, it has flattered me not—a painted scabbard, while its edge was yet red in the best blood of my house—ay, and is even now whetted anew for further destruction of the Geraldines. Therefore, my lords, save yourselves from us as from open enemies. I am no longer Henry Tudor's deputy—I am his foe. I have more mind to conquer than to govern—to meet him in the field than to serve him in office. And now, my lords, if all the hearts in England and Ireland, that have cause thereto, do but join in this quarrel, as I look that they will, then shall the world shortly be made sensible of the tyranny, cruelty, falsehood, and heresy, for which the age to come may well count this base king among the ancient traitors of most abominable and hateful memory.

"'Croom aboo!' cried Neale Roe O'Kennedy, Lord Thomas' bard, who had pressed into the body of the hall at the head of the Irish soldiery. He was conspicuous over all by his height and the splendor of his native costume. His legs and arms were bare; the sleeves of his yellow cothone, parting above the elbow, fell in voluminous folds almost to the ground, while its skirts, girded at the loins, covered him to the knee. Over this he wore a short jacket of crimson, the. sleeves just covering the shoulders, richly wrought and embroidered, and drawn round the waist by a broad belt set with precious stones and fastened with a massive golden buckle. His. laced and fringed mantle was thrown back, but kept from falling by a silver brooch, as broad as a man's palm, which glittered on his breast. He stretched out his hand, the gold bracelets rattling as they slid back on the thickness of his arm, and exclaimed in Irish:

"'Who is the young lion of the plains of Liffey that affrights the men of counsel, and the ruler of the Saxon, with his noble voice?

"'Who is the quickened ember of Kildare, that would consume the enemies of his people, and the false churls of the cruel race of clan-London?

"'It is the son of Gerald—the top branch of the oak of Offaly!

"'It is Thomas of the silken mantle—Ard-Righ Eireann!'

"'Righ Tomas go bragh!' shouted the soldiery; and many of the young lord's Anglo-Irish friends responded—'Long live King Thomas!' but the chancellor, Archbishop Cromer, who had listened to his insane avowal with undisguised distress, and who had already been seen to wring his hand, and even to shed tears as the misguided nobleman and his friends thus madly invoked their own destruction, came down from his seat, and earnestly grasping the young lord by the hand, addressed him:

"'Good my lord,' he cried, while his venerable figure and known attachment to the house Kildare, attested as it was by such visible evidences of concern, commanded for a time the attention of all present. 'Good my lord, suffer me to use the privilege of an old man's speech with you before you finally give up this ensign of your authority and pledge of your allegiance.'

"The archbishop reasoned and pleaded at much length and with deep emotion; but he urged and prayed in vain.

"'My Lord Chancellor,' replied Thomas, 'I came not here to take advice, but to give you to understand what I purpose to do. As loyalty would have me know my prince, so duty compels me to reverence my father. I thank you heartily for your counsel; but it is now too late. As to my fortune, I will take it as God sends it, and rather choose to die with valor and liberty than live under King Henry in bondage and villainy. Therefore, my lord, I thank you again for the concern you take in my welfare, and since you will not receive this sword out of my hand, I can but cast it from me, even as here I cast off and renounce all duty and allegiance to your master.'

"So saying, he flung the sword of state upon the council-table. The blade started a hand's-breadth out of its sheath from the violence with which it was dashed out of his hands. He, then, in the midst of a tumult of acclamation from his followers, and cries of horror and pity from the lords and prelates around, tore off his robes of office and cast them at his feet. Stripped thus of his ensigns of dignity, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald stood up, amid the wreck of his fair fortune, an armed and avowed rebel, equipped in complete mail, before the representatives of England and Ireland. The cheering from his adherents was loud and enthusiastic, and those without replied with cries of fierce exultation."

The gallant but hapless Geraldine was now fully launched on his wild and desperate enterprise. There is no doubt that, had it partaken less of a hasty burst of passionate impetuosity, had it been more deliberately planned and organized, the revolt of Silken Thomas might have wrested the Anglo-Irish colony from Henry's authority. As it was, it shook the Anglo-Irish power to its base, and at one time seemed irresistible in its progress to success. But, however the ties of blood, kindred, and clanship might draw men to the side of Lord Thomas, most persons outside the Geraldine party soon saw the fate that surely awaited such a desperate venture, and saw too that it had all been the result of a subtle plot of the Ormond faction to ruin their powerful rivals. Moreover, in due time the truth leaked out that the old earl had not been beheaded at all, but was alive a prisoner in London. Lord Thomas now saw the gulf of ruin into which he had been precipitated, and knew now that his acts would only seal the doom or else break the heart of that father, the news of whose murder had driven him into this desperate course. But it was all too late to turn back. He would see the hopeless struggle through to the bitter end.

One of his first acts was to besiege Dublin city while another wing of his army devastated the possessions and reduced the castles of Ormond. Alan, the Archbishop of Dublin, a prominent enemy of the Geraldines, fled from the city by ship. The vessel, however, was driven ashore on Clontarf, and the archbishop sought refuge in the village of Artane. News of this fact was quickly carried into the Geraldine camp at Dublin; and before day's-dawn Lord Thomas and his uncles, John and Oliver, with an armed party, reached Artane, and dragged the archbishop from his bed. The unhappy prelate pleaded hard for his life; but the elder Geraldines, who were men of savage passion, barbarously murdered him as he knelt at their feet. This foul deed ruined any prospect of success which their cause might have had. It excited universal horror, and drew down upon its perpetrators, and all who should aid or shelter them, the terrible sentence of excommunication. This sentence was exhibited to the hapless Earl of Kildare in his dungeon in London Tower, and, it is said, so affected him that he never rallied more. He sank under the great load of his afflictions, and died of a broken heart.

Meanwhile, Lord Thomas was pushing the rebellion with all his energies, and for a time with wondrous success. He dispatched ambassadors to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and to the pope, demanding aid in this war against Henry as the foe of God and man. But it is clear that neither the pope nor the emperor augured well of Silken Thomas' ill-devised endeavors. No succors reached him. His fortunes eventually began to pale. Powerful levies were brought against him; and, finally, he sought a parley with the English commander-in-chief, Lord Leonard Gray, who granted him terms of life for himself and uncles. Henry was wroth that any terms should have been promised to such daring foes; but as terms had been pledged, there was nothing for it, according to Henry's code of morality, but to break the promise. Accordingly, the five uncles of Silken Thomas, and the unfortunate young nobleman himself, were treacherously seized—the uncles at a banquet to which they were invited, and which was, indeed, given in their honor, by the lord deputy Grey—and brought to London, where, in violation of plighted troth, they were all six beheaded at Tyburn, January 3, 1537.

This terrible blow was designed to cut off the Geraldine family forever, and to all appearance it seemed, and Henry fondly believed, that this wholesale execution had accomplished that design, and left neither root nor seed behind. Yet once again that mysterious protection which had so often preserved the Geraldine line in like terrible times saved it from the decreed destruction. "The imprisoned earl (Lord Thomas' father) having died in the Tower on December 12, 1534, the sole survivor of this historic house was now a child of twelve years of age, whose life was sought with an avidity equal to Herod's, but who was protected with a fidelity which defeated every attempt to capture him. Alternately the guest of his aunts, married to the chiefs of Offaly and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere felt for him led to a confederacy between the northern and southern chiefs, which had long been wanting. A loose league was formed, including the O'Neills of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, and the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The lad, the object of so much natural and chivalrous affection, was harbored for a time in Munster, thence transported through Connaught into Donegal, and finally, after four years, in which he engaged more of the minds of statesmen than any other individual under the rank of royalty, was safely landed in France."

The Geraldine line was preserved once more! From this child Gerald it was to branch out as of yore, in stately strength and princely power.

« Chapter XXXI. (Geraldines) | Contents | Chapter XXXIII. (Reformation) »

NOTES

[1] Known in history as "Silken Thomas." He was so called, we are told, from the silken banners carried by his standard-bearers—others say because of the richness of his personal attire.

[2] The book here alluded to, it may be right to remind young readers, does not purport to be more than a fanciful story founded on facts; but the author so closely adheres to the outlines of authentic history, that we may credit his sketches and descriptions as well justified approximations to the literal truth.

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXIII.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXII. (Silken Thomas) | Contents | Chapter XXXIV. (Irish Clans) »

HOW THE "REFORMATION " WAS ACCOMPLISHED IN ENGLAND, AND HOW IT WAS RESISTED IN IRELAND.

I HAVE so far called the event, usually termed the Reformation, a politico-religious revolution, and treated of it only as such. With phases of religious belief or the propagandism of new religious doctrines, unless in so far as they affected political events or effected marked national changes, I do not purpose dealing in this story. As a matter of fact, however, the Reformation was during the reign of Henry much less of a religious than a political revolution. The only points Henry was particular about were the matters of supremacy and church property. For a long period the idea of adopting the new form of faith in all its doctrinal sequence seemed quite foreign to his mind. The doctrine, firstly, that he, Henry, was supreme king, spiritual as well as temporal, within his own realms; the doctrine, secondly, that he could, in virtue of such spiritual supremacy, give full rein to his. beastly lusts, and call concubinage marriage; and lastly, that whatever property the church possessed, bequeathed for pious uses, he might rob and keep for himself, or divide as bribes between his abetting nobles, legislators, and statesmen—these were the "reforms," so-called, upon which the king set most value. Other matters he allowed for a time to have their way; at least it was so wherever difficulty was anticipated in pulling down the old and setting up new forms of worship.

Thus we find the king at the same time sending a "reforming" archbishop to Dublin while sanctioning prelates of the old faith in other dioceses, barely on condition of taking the oath of allegiance to him. Doctrine or theology had scarcely any concern for him or his statesmen, and it is clear and plain to any student of history that if the Catholic Church would only sanction to him his polygamy, and to them the rich plunder they had clutched, they would never have gone further, and would still be wondrous zealous "defenders of the faith." But the Catholic Church, which could have avoided the whole disaster at the outset by merely suffering one lawful wife to be unlawfully put away, was not going to compromise, with him or with them, an iota of sacred truth or public morality, much less to sacrifice both wholesale after this fashion. So, in time, the king and his party saw that having gone so far, they must needs go the whole way. Like the panther that has tasted blood, their thirst for plunder was but whetted by their taste of church spoil. They should go further or they might lose all. They knew right well that of these spoils they never could rest sure as long as the owner, the Catholic Church, was allowed to live; so to kill the church outright became to them as much of a necessity as the sure "dispatching" of a half-murdered victim is to a burglar or an assassin. Had it not been for this question of church property—had there been no plunder to divide—in all human probability there would have been no "reformation" consummated in these countries. But by the spoils of the sanctuary Henry was able to bribe the nobles to his side, and to give them such an interest in the utter abolition of catholicity and the perpetuation of the new system, that no king or queen coming after him would be able permanently to restore the old order of things.

Here the reflection at once confronts us—what a mean, sordid, worldly-minded kennel these same "nobles" must have been! Ay, mean and soulless indeed! If there was any pretense of religious convictions having anything to say in the business, no such reflection would arise; no such language would be seemly. But few or none of the parties cared to get up even a semblance of interest in the doctrinal aspect of the passing revolution. One object, and one alone, seemed fixed before their gaze—to get as much as possible of "what was going;" to secure some of the loot,and to keep it. Given this one consideration, all things else might remain or be changed a thousand times over for all they cared. If any one question the correctness of this estimate of the conduct of the English and Anglo-Irish lords of the period before us, I need only point to the page of authentic history. They were a debased and cowardly pack. As long as Henry fed them with bribes from the abbey lands, they made and unmade laws "to order" for him. He asked them to declare his marriage with Catherine of Aragon invalid—they did it; his marriage with Anne Boleyn lawful—they did it; this same marriage unlawful and its fruits illegitimate—-they did it; his marriage with Jane Seymour lawful—they did it. In fine they said and unsaid, legitimatized and illegitimatized, just as he desired. Nor was this all. In the reign of his child, Edward, they enacted every law deemed necessary for the more complete overthrow of the ancient faith and the setting up of the new.

But no sooner had Mary come to the throne than these same lords, legislators, and statesmen instantaneously wheeled around, beat their. breasts, became wondrously pious Catholics, whined out repentantly that they had been frightful criminals; and, like the facile creatures that they were, at the request of Mary, or to please her. undid in a rush all they had been doing during the two preceding reigns—but all on one condition, most significant and most necessary to mark, viz.: that they should not be called upon to give back the stolen property! Again a change on the throne, and again they change! Elizabeth comes to undo all that Mary had restored, and lo! the venal lords and legislators in an instant wheel around once more; they decree false and illegitimate all they had just declared true and lawful; they swallow their own words, they say and unsay, they repeal and re-enact, do and undo, as the whim of the queen, or the necessity of conserving their sacrilegious robberies dictates!

Yes; the history of the world has nothing to parallel the disgusting baseness, the mean, sordid cowardice of the English and Anglo-Irish lords and legislators. Theirs was not a change of religious convictions, right or wrong, but a greedy venality, a facile readiness to change any way or every way for worldly advantage. Their model of policy was Judas Iscariot, who sold our Lord for thirty pieces of silver.

That Ireland also was not carried over into the new system was owing to the circumstance that the English authority had, so far, been able to secure for itself but a partial hold on the Irish nation. It must have been a curious reflection with the supreme pontiffs that Ireland might in a certain sense be said to have been saved to the Catholic Church by its obstinate disregard of exhortations addressed to it repeatedly, if not by the popes, under cover or ostensible sanction of papal authority, in support of the English crown; for had the Irish yielded all that the English king demanded with papal bull in hand, and become part and parcel of the English realm, Ireland, too, was lost to the old faith. At this point one is tempted to indulge in bitter reflections on the course of the Roman pontiffs toward Ireland. "Hitherto"—so one might put it—"that hapless nation in its fearful struggle against ruthless invaders found Rome on the side -of its foes. It was surely a hard and cruel thing for the Irish, so devotedly attached to the Holy See, to behold the rapacious and bloodthirsty Normans, Plantagenets, and Tudors, able to flourish against them papal bulls and rescripts, until now when Henry quarreled with Rome. Now—henceforth—too late—all that is to be altered; henceforth the bulls and the rescripts are all to exhort the broken and ruined Irish nation to fight valiantly against that power to which, for four hundred years, the Roman court had been exhorting or commanding it to submit. Surely Ireland has been the sport of Roman policy, if not its victim!"

These bitter reflections would be not only natural but just, if the facts of the case really supported them. But the facts do not quite support this view, which, it is singular to note, the Irish themselves never entertained. At all times they seem to have most justly and accurately appreciated the real attitude of the Holy See toward them, and fixed the value and force of the bulls and rescripts obtained by the English sovereign at their true figure. The conduct of the popes was not free from reproach in a particular subsequently to be noted; but the one thing they had really urged, rightly or wrongly, on the Irish from the first was the acceptance of the sovereignty of the English king, by no means implying an incorporation with the English nation, or an abandonment of their nationality. In this sense the popes' exhortations were always read by the native Irish; and it will be noted that in this sense from the very beginning the Irish princes very generally were ready to acquiesce in them. The idea, rightly or wrongly, appears to have been that this strong sovereignty would be capable of reducing the chaotic elements in Ireland (given up to such hopeless disorder previously) to compactness and order—a good to Ireland and to Christendom. This was the guise in which the Irish question had always been presented by plausible English envoys, civil or ecclesiastical, at Rome. The Irish themselves did not greatly quarrel with it so far; but there was all the difference in the world between this the theory and the bloody and barbarous fact and practice as revealed in Ireland.

What may be said with truth is, that the popes inquired too little about the fact and practice, and were always too ready to write and exhort upon such a question at the instance of the English. The Irish chiefs were sensible of this wrong done them; but in their every act and word they evidenced a perfect consciousness that the rectitude of the motives animating the popes was not to be questioned. Even when the authority of the Holy See was most painfully misused against them, they received it with reverence and respect. The time had at length arrived, however, when Rome was to mourn over whatever of error or wrong had marked its past policy toward Ireland, and forever after nobly and unchangeably to stand by her side. But alas! too late—all too late now for succeeding! All the harm had been done, and was now beyond repairing. The grasp of England had been too firmly tightened in the past. At the very moment when the pope desired, hoped, urged, and expected Ireland to arise triumphant and glorious, a free Catholic nation, a recompense for lost England, she sank broken, helpless, and despairing under the feet of the sacrilegious Tudor.

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXIV.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXIII. (Reformation) | Contents | Chapter XXXV. (Shane O'Neill) »

HOW THE IRISH CHIEFS GAVE UP ALL HOPE AND YIELDED TO HENRY; AND HOW THE IRISH CLANS SERVED THE CHIEFS FOR SUCH TREASON.

HENRY THE EIGHTH was the first English sovereign styled King of Ireland, and it must be confessed he had more to show for assuming such a title than his predecessors had for the lesser dignities of the kind which they claimed; inasmuch as the title was "voted" to him in the first formal parliament in which Irish chieftains and Anglo-Norman lords sat side by side. To be sure the Irish chieftains had no authority from the septs (from whom alone they derived any authority or power) to give such a vote; and, as we shall learn presently, some of those septs, instantly on becoming aware of it and the consequences it implied, deposed the chiefs thus acting, and promptly elected (in each case from the same family however) others in their stead. But never previously had so many of the native princes in a manner so formal given in their acknowledgment of the English dynasty, and their renunciation of the ancient institutions of their nation. Utterly broken down in spirit, reft of hope, weary of struggle, they seem to have yielded themselves up to inevitable fate.

"The arguments," says one of our historians, "by which many of the chiefs might have justified themselves to the clans in 1541-2-3, for submitting to the inevitable laws of necessity, in rendering homage to Henry the Eighth, were neither few nor weak. Abroad there was no hope of an alliance sufficient to counterbalance the immense resources of England; at home, life-wasting private wars, the conflict of laws, of languages, and of titles to property had become unbearable. That fatal family pride which would not permit an O'Brien to obey an O'Neill, nor an O'Connor to follow either, rendered the establishment of a native monarchy (even if there had been no other obstacle) wholly impracticable." Another says: "The chief lords of both English and Irish descent were reduced to a state of deplorable misery and exhaustion. ... It was high time, therefore, on the one side to think of submission, and prudent on the other to propose concession; and Henry was just then fortunate in selecting a governor for Ireland who knew how to take advantage of the favorable circumstances."

This was Saintleger, whose politic course of action resulted in the assembling at Dublin, June 12, 1541, of a parliament at which, beside all the principal Anglo-Norman lords, there attended, Donogh O'Brien, tanist of Thomond, the O'Reilly, O'More, M'William, Fitzpatrick, and Kavanagh.[1] The speeches in the English language were translated in the Gaelic tongue to the Irish chiefs by the Earl of Ormond. The main business was to consider a bill voting the crown of Ireland to Henry, which was unanimously passed—registered rather; for, as far as the native "legislators" were concerned, the assemblage was that of conquered and subdued chieftains, ready to acknowledge their subjection in any way. O'Neill and O'Donnell refused to attend. They held out sullenly yet. awhile in the North. But in the next year they "came in," much to the delight of Henry, who loaded them with flatteries and attentions. The several chiefs yielded up their ancient Irish titles, and consented to receive English instead.

O'Brien was created Earl of Thomond; Ulick M'William was created Earl of Clanrickard and Baron Dunkellin; Hugh O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnell; O'Neill was made Earl of Tyrone; Kavanagh was made Baron of Ballyann; and Fitzpatrick, Baron of Ossory. Most of these titles were conferred by Henry in person at, Greenwich palace, with extravagant pomp and formality, the Irish chiefs having been specially invited thither for that purpose, and sums of money given them for their equipment and expenses. In many instances, if not in all, they consented to receive from Henry royal patents or title deeds for "their" lands, as the English from their feudal standpoint would regard them; not their lands, however, in point of fact and law, but the "tribe-lands" of their septs. The acceptance of these "patents" of land proprietorship, still more than the acceptance of English titles, was "a complete abrogation of the Gaelic relation of clansman and chief." Some of the new earls were moreover apportioned a share of the plundered church lands. This was yet a further outrage on their people. Little need we wonder, therefore, that while the newly created earls and barons were airing their modern dignities at the English court, feted and flattered by Henry, the clans at home, learning by dark rumor of these treasons, were already stripping the backsliding chiefs of all authority and power, and were taking measures to arrest and consign them to punishment on their return. O'Donnell found most of his clan, headed by his son, up in arms against him; O'Brien, on his return, was confronted by like circumstances; the new "Earl of Clanrickard" was incontinently attainted by his people, and a Gaelic "M'William" was duly installed in his stead. O'Neill, "the first of his race who had accepted an English title," found that his clansmen had formally deposed him, and elected as the O'Neill, his son John, surnamed "John the Proud"—the celebrated "Shane" O'Neill, so called in the jargon of English writers. On all sides the septs repudiated and took formal and practical measures to disavow and reverse the acts of their representatives. The hopelessness that had broken the spirit of the chief found no place in the heart of the clan.

This was the beginning of new complications in the already tangled skein of Irish affairs. A new source of division and disorganization was now planted in the country. Hitherto the clans at least were intact, though the nation was shattered. Henceforth the clans themselves were;split into fragments. From this period forward we hear of a king's or a queen's O'Reilly:and an Irish O'Reilly; a king's O'Neill and an Irish O'Neill; a king's O'Donnell and an Irish O'Donnell.'" The English government presented a very artful compromise to the septs—offering them a chief of the native family stock, but requiring that he should hold from the crown, not from the clan. The nominee of the government, backed by all the English power and interest, was generally able to make head for a time at least against the legitimate chief duly and legally chosen and elected by the sept. In many instances the English nominee was able to rally to his side a considerable section of the clan, and even without external aid to hold the chosen chief in check.

By the internal feuds thus incited, the clans were utterly riven, and were given over to a self-acting process of extinction. Occasionally, indeed, the crown nominee, once he was firmly seated in the chieftaincy, threw off all allegiance to his foreign masters, declared himself an Irish chief, cast away scornfully his English earlship, and assumed proudly the ancient title that named him head of his clan. In this event the government simply declared him "deposed," proceeded to nominate another chief in his place, and sent an army to install the new nominee on the necks of the stubborn clan. This was the artful system—copied in all its craft and cruelty by the British in India centuries afterward—pursued toward the native princes and chiefs of Ireland from the reign of Henry the Eighth to the middle of the seventeenth century.

« Chapter XXXIII. (Reformation) | Contents | Chapter XXXV. (Shane O'Neill) »

NOTES

[1] Son of M'Murrogh who had just previously "submitted," renouncing the title of M'Murrogh, adopting the name of Kavanagh, and undertaking on the part of his sept, that no one henceforth would assume the renounced title!

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXV.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXIV. (Irish Clans) | Contents | Chapter XXXVI. (Earl of Desmond) »

HENRY'S SUCCESSORS: EDWARD, MARY, AND ELIZABETH—THE CAREER OF "JOHN THE PROUD."

THE changes of English sovereigns little affected English policy in Ireland. Whatever meaning the change from Henry to Edward, from Edward to Mary, and from Mary to Elizabeth, may have had in England, in Ireland it mattered little who filled the throne; the policy of subjugation, plunder, and extirpation went on. In Mary's reign, indeed, incidents more than one occurred to show that, though of course bent on completing the conquest and annexation of Ireland, she was a stranger to the savage and cruel passions that had ruled her father, and that were so fearfully inherited by his other daughter, Elizabeth. The aged chief of Offaly, O'Connor, had long lain in the dungeons of London Tower, all efforts to obtain his release having failed. At length his daughter Margaret, hearing that now a queen—a woman—sat on the throne, bethought her of an appeal in person to Mary for her father's life and freedom. She proceeded to London and succeeded in obtaining an audience of the queen. She pleaded with all a woman's eloquence, and with all the fervor of a daughter petitioning for a father's life. Mary was touched to the heart by this instance of devotedness. She treated young Margaret of Offaly with the greatest tenderness, spoke to her cheeringly, and promised her that what she had so bravely sought should be freely granted. And it was so. O'Connor Faly returned with his daughter to Ireland a free man.

Nor was this the only instance in which Mary exhibited a womanly sympathy for misfortune. The fate of the Geraldines moved her to compassion. The young Gerald—long time a fugitive among the glens of Muskery and Donegal, now an exile sheltered in Rome—was recalled and restored to all his estates, honors, and titles; and with O'Connor Faly and the young Geraldine there were allowed to return to their homes, we are told, the heirs of the houses of Ormond and Upper Ossory, "to the great delight of the southern half of the kingdom."

To Mary there succeeded on the English throne her Amazonian sister, Elizabeth. The nobles and commoners of England had, indeed, as in Mary's case, at her father's request, declared and decreed as the immortal and unchangeable truth that she was illegitimate; but, according to their code of morality, that was no earthly reason against their now declaring and decreeing as the immortal and unchangeable truth that she was legitimate. For these very noble nobles and most uncommon commoners eat dirt with a hearty zest, and were ready to decree and declare, to swear and unswear, the most contradictory and irreconcilable assertions, according as their venality and servility suggested.

Elizabeth was a woman of marvelous ability. She possessed abundantly the talents that qualify a statesman. She was greatly gifted indeed; but nature, while richly endowing her with so much else beside, forgot or withheld from her one of the commonest gifts of human kind—Elizabeth had no heart. A woman devoid of heart is, after all, a terrible freak of nature. She may be gifted with marvelous powers of intellect, and endowed with great personal beauty, but she is still a monster. Such was Elizabeth; a true Tudor and veritable daughter of King Henry the Eighth; one of the most remarkable women of her age, and in one sense one of the greatest of English sovereigns.

Her reign was memorable in Irish history. It witnessed at its opening the revolt of John the Proud in Ulster; later on the Desmond rebellion; and toward the close the great struggle that to all time will immortalize the name of Hugh O'Neill.

John the Proud, as I have already mentioned, was elected to the chieftaincy of the O'Neills on the deposition of his father by the clan. He scornfully defied all the efforts of the English to dispute his claim, and soon they were fain to recognize him and court his friendship. Of this extraordinary man little more can be said in praise than that he was an indomitable and, up to the great reverse which suddenly closed his career, a successful soldier, who was able to defy and defeat the best armies of England on Irish soil, and more than once to bring the English government very submissively to terms of his; dictation. But he lacked the personal virtues that adorned the lives and inspired the efforts of the great and brave men whose struggles we love to trace in the annals of Ireland. His was, indeed, a splendid military career, and his administration of the government of his territory was. undoubtedly exemplary in many respects, but he was in private life no better than a mere English noble of the time; his conduct toward the unfortunate Calvach O'Donnell leaving a lasting stain on his name.[1]

The state papers of England reveal an incident in his life which presents us with an authenticated illustration of the means deemed lawful by the English government often enough in those centuries for the removing of an Irish foe. John had reduced all the north to his sway, and cleared out every vestige of English dominion in Ulster. He had encountered the English commander-in-chief and defeated him. He had marched to the very confines of Dublin, spreading terror through the Pale. In this strait Sussex, the lord lieutenant, bethought him of a good plan for the effectual removal of this dangerous enemy to the crown and government. With the full cognizance and sanction of the queen, he hired an assassin to murder O'Neill. The plot, however, miscarried, and we should probably have never heard of it, but that, very awkwardly for the memory of Elizabeth and of her worthy viceroy, some portions of their correspondence on the subject remained undestroyed among the state papers, and are now to be seen in the State Paper Office. The career of John the Proud closed suddenly and miserably. He was utterly defeated (A.D. 1567) in a great pitched battle by the O'Donnells; an overthrow which it is said affected his reason. Flying from the field with his guilty mistress, his secretary, and a bodyguard of fifty horsemen, he was induced to become the guest of some Scottish adventurers in Antrim, upon whom he had inflicted a severe defeat not long previously. After dinner, when most of those present were under the influence of wine—John, it is said, having been purposely plied with drink—an Englishman who was present designedly got up a brawl, or pretense of a brawl, about O'Neill's recent defeat of his then guests. Daggers were drawn in an instant, and the unfortunate John the Proud, while sitting helplessly at the banqueting board, was surrounded and butchered.

« Chapter XXXIV. (Irish Clans) | Contents | Chapter XXXVI. (Earl of Desmond) »

NOTES

[1] He invaded the O'Donnell's territory, and acting, it is said, on information secretly supplied by the unfaithful wife of the Tyrconnell chief, succeeded in surprising and capturing him. He kept O'Donnell, who was his father-in-law, for years a close prisoner, and lived in open adultery with the perfidious wife of the imprisoned chief, the stepmother of his own lawful wife! " What deepens the horror of this odious domestic tragedy," says M'Gee, "is the fact that the wife of O'Neill, the daughter of O'Donnell, thus supplanted by her shameless stepmother under her own roof, died soon afterward of ' horror, loathing, grief and deep anguish' at the spectacle afforded by the private life of O'Neill, and the severities inflicted on her wretched father!"

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXVI.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXV. (Shane O'Neill) | Contents | Chapter XXXVII. (Mullaghmast) »

HOW THE GERALDINES ONCE MORE LEAGUED AGAINST ENGLAND UNDER THE BANNER OF THE CROSS—HOW "THE ROYAL POPE" WAS THE EARLIEST AND THE MOST ACTIVE ALLY OF THE IRISH CAUSE.

THE death of John the Proud gave the English power respite in the north; but, respited for a moment in the north, that power was doomed to encounter danger still as menacing in the south. Once more the Geraldines were to put it severely to the proof.

Elizabeth had not witnessed and studied in vain the events of her father's reign. She very sagaciously concluded that if she would safely push her war against the Catholic faith in Ireland, she must first get the dreaded Geraldines out of the way. And she knew, too, from all previous events, how necessary it was to guard that not even a solitary seedling of that dangerous race was allowed to escape. She wrote to Sydney, her lord lieutenant, to lay a right cunning snare for the catching of the Geraldines in one haul. That faithful viceroy of a gracious queen forthwith "issued an invitation for the nobility of Ireland to meet him on a given day in the city of Dublin, to confer with him on some matters of great weight, particularly regarding religion." The bait took. "The dynasts of Ireland, little suspecting the design, hastened to the city, and along with them the Earl of Desmond and his brother John." They had a safe conduct from Sydney, but had scarcely arrived when they were seized and committed to the castle dungeons, whence they were soon shipped off to the Tower of London. This was the plan Elizabeth had laid, but it had only partially succeeded. All the Geraldines had not come into the snare, and she took five years to decide whether it would be. worth while murdering these (according to law), while so many other members of the family were yet outside her grasp. The earl and his brother appear not to have been imprisoned, but merely held to residence under surveillance in London. According to the version of the family chronicler, they found means of transmitting a document or message to their kinsmen and retainers, appointing their cousin James, son of Maurice—known as James Fitzmaurice—to be the head and leader of the family in their absence, "for he was well-known for his attachment to the ancient faith, no less than for his valor and chivalry." "Gladly," says the old chronicler, "did the people of Earl Desmond receive these commands, and inviolable was their attachment to him who was now their-appointed chieftain."

This was that James Fitzmaurice of Desmond—"James Geraldine of happy memory," as Pope Gregory calls him—who originated, planned, and organized the memorable Geraldine League of 1579, upon the fortunes of which for years the attention of Christendom was fixed. With loftier, nobler, holier aims than the righting of mere family wrongs he conceived the idea of a great league in defense of religion; a holy war, in which he might demand the sustainment and intervention of the Catholic powers. Elizabeth's own conduct at this juncture in stirring up and subsidizing the Huguenots in France supplied Fitzmaurice with another argument in favor of his scheme. First of all he sent an envoy to the pope—Gregory the Thirteenth—demanding the blessing and assistance of the Supreme Pontiff in this struggle of a Catholic nation against a monarch nakedly violating all title to allegiance. The act of an apostate sovereign of a Catholic country drawing the sword to compel his subjects into apostasy on pain of death, was not, only a forfeiture of his title to rule, it placed him outside the pale of law, civil and ecclesiastical. This was Henry's position when he died; to this position, as the envoy pointed out, Elizabeth succeeded "with a vengeance;" and so he prayed of Pope Gregory, "his blessing on the undertaking and the concession of indulgences which the church bestows on those who die in defense of the faith." The holy father flung himself earnestly and actively into the cause. "Then," says the old Geraldine chaplain, "forth flashed the sword of the Geraldine; like chaff did he scatter the host of reformers.; fire and devastation did he carry into their strongholds, so that during five years he won many a glorious victory, and carried off innumerable trophies."

This burst of rhapsody, excusable enough on the part of the old Geraldine chronicler, gives, however, no faithful idea of what ensued; many brilliant victories, it is true, James Geraldine achieved in his protracted struggle. But after five years of valiant effort and of varied fortunes, the hour of reverses came. One by one Fitzmaurice's allies were struck down or fell away from him, until at length he himself with a small force stood to bay in the historic Glen of Aherlow, which "had now become to the patriots of the south what the valley of Glenmalure had been for those of Leinster—a fortress dedicated by nature to the defense of freedom." Here he held out for a year; but, eventually, he dispatched envoys to the lord president at Kilmallock to make terms of submission, which were duly granted. Whether from motives of policy, or in compliance with these stipulations, the imprisoned earl and his brother were forthwith released in London; the queen making them an exceedingly smooth and bland speech against the sin of rebellion. The gallant Fitzmaurice betook himself into exile, there to plot and organize with, redoubled energy in the cause of faith and country; while the Earl of Desmond, utterly disheartened no doubt by the result of James' revolt, and "only too happy to be tolerated in the possession of his five hundred and seventy thousand acres, was eager enough to testify his allegiance by any sort of service. "

Fitzmaurice did not labor in vain. He went from court to court pleading the cause he had so deeply at heart. He was received with honor and respect everywhere; but it was only at Rome that he obtained that which he valued beyond personal honors for himself—aid in men, money, and arms for the struggle in Ireland. A powerful expedition was fitted out at Civita Vecchia by the sovereign pontiff; and from various princes of Europe secret promises of further aid were showered upon the brave Geraldine. He little knew, all this time, while he in exile was toiling night and day—was pleading, urging, beseeching—planning, organizing, and directing—full of ardor and of faithful courageous resolve, that his countrymen at home—even his own kinsmen—were temporizing and compromising with the lord president! He little knew that, instead of finding Ireland ready to welcome him as a deliverer, he was to land in the midst of a prostrate, dispirited, and apathetic population, and was to find some of his own relatives, not only fearing to countenance, but cravenly arrayed against him! It was even so. As the youthful Emmett exclaimed of his own project against the British crown more than two hundred years subsequently, we may say of Fitzmaurice's—"There was failure in every part." By some wild fatality everything miscarried. There was concert nowhere; there was no one engaged in the cause of ability to second James' efforts; and what misfortune marred, incompetency ruined. The pope's expedition, upon which so much depended, was diverted from its destination by its incompetent commander, an English adventurer named Stukely, knave or fool, to whom, in an evil hour, James had unfortunately confided such a trust. Stukely, having arrived at Lisbon on his way to Ireland, and having there learned that the King of Portugal was setting out on an expedition against the Moors, absolutely joined his forces to those of Dom Sebastian, and accompanied him,[1] leaving James of Desmond to learn as best he might of this inexplicable imbecility, if not cold-blooded treason!

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the air was thick with rumors, vague and furtive, that James was "on the sea," and soon to land with a liberating expedition. The government was, of course, on the alert, fastening its gaze with lynx-eyed vigilance on all men likely to join the "foreign emissaries," as the returning Irish and their friends were styled; and around the southwestern coast of Ireland was instantly drawn a line of British cruisers. The government fain would have seized upon the Earl of Desmond and his brothers, but it was not certain whether this would aid or retard the apprehended revolt; for, so far, these Geraldines protested their opposition to it, and to them—to the earl in particular—the population of the south looked for leadership. Yet, in sooth, the English might have relieved the earl, who, hoping nothing of the revolt, yet sympathizing secretly with his kinsman, was in a sad plight what to do, anxious to be "neutral," and trying to convince the lord president that he was well affected. The government party, on the other hand, trusting him naught, seemed anxious to goad him into some "overt act" that would put him utterly in their power.

While all was excitement about the expected expedition, lo! three suspicious strangers were landed at Dingle from a Spanish ship! They were seized as "foreign emissaries," and were brought first before the Earl of Desmond. Glad of an opportunity for showing the government his zeal, he forthwith sent them prisoners to the lord president at Kilmallock. In vain they protested that they were not conspirators or invaders. And indeed they were not, though they were what was just as bad in the eyes of the law, namely, Catholic ecclesiastics, one of them being Dr. O'Haly, Bishop of Mayo, and another Father Cornelius O'Rorke. To reveal what they really were would serve them little; inasmuch as hanging and beheading as "rebels" was in no way different from hanging and beheading as "popish ecclesiastics." Yet would the authorities insist that they were vile foreign emissaries. They spoke with a Spanish accent; they wore their beards in the Spanish fashion, and their boots were of Spanish cut. So to force a confession of what was not truth out of them, no effort was spared. They were "put to every conceivable torture," says the historian, "in order to extract intelligence of Fitzmaurice's movements. After their thighs had been broken with hammers they were hanged on a tree, and their bodies used as targets by the soldiery.

By this time James, all unconscious of Stukely's defection, had embarked from Spain for Ireland, with a few score Spanish soldiers in three small ships. He brought with him Dr. Saunders, papal legate, the Bishop of Killaloe, and Dr. Allen. The little fleet, after surviving shipwreck on the coast of Gallicia, sailed into Dingle Harbor July 17, 1579. Here James first tasted disheartening disillusion. His great kinsman the earl, so far from marching to welcome him and summoning the country to rise, "sent him neither sign of friendship nor promise of co-operation." This was discouragement indeed; yet Fitzmaurice was not without hope that when in a few days the main expedition under Stukely would arrive, the earl might think more hopefully of the enterprise, and rally to it that power which he alone could assemble in Munster. So, weighing anchor, James steered for a spot which no doubt he had long previously noted and marked as pre-eminently suited by nature for such a purpose as this of his just now—Illan-an-Oir, or Golden Island, in Smerwick Harbor, on the northwest Kerry coast, destined to be famed in story as Fort del Ore. This was a singular rock, a diminutive Gibraltar, jutting into the harbor or bay of Smerwick. Even previously its natural strength as a site for a fort had been noticed, and a rude fortification of some sort crowned the rock. Here James landed his small force, threw up an earthwork across the narrow neck of land connecting the "Isle of Gold" with the mainland, and waited for news of Stukely.

But Stukely never came! There did come, however, unfortunately for James, an English man-of-war, which had little difficulty in capturing his transports within sight of the helpless fort. All hope of the expected expedition soon fled, or mayhap its fate became known, and matters grew desperate on Illan-an-Oir. Still the earl made no sign. His brothers John and James, however, less timid or more true to kinship, had chivalrously hastened to join Fitzmaurice. But it was clear the enterprise was lost. The government forces were mustering throughout Munster, and nowhere was help being organized. In this strait it was decided to quit the fort and endeavor to reach the old fastnesses amid the Galtees. The little band in their eastward march were actually pursued by the Earl of Desmond, not very much in earnest indeed—in downright sham, the English said, yet in truth severely enough to compel them to divide into three fugitive groups, the papal legate and the other dignitaries remaining with Fitzmaurice. Making a desperate push to reach the Shannon, his horses utterly exhausted, the brave Geraldine was obliged to impress into his service some horses belonging to Sir William Burke, through whose lands he was then passing. Burke, indeed, was a relative of his, and Fitzmaurice thought that revealing his name would silence all objection. On the contrary, however, this miserable Burke assembled a force, pursued the fugitives, and fell upon them, as "few and faint," jaded and outworn, they had halted at the little river Mulkern in Limerick county. Fitzmaurice was wounded mortally early in the fray, yet his ancient prowess flashed out with all its native brilliancy at the last. Dashing into the midst of his dastard foes, at one blow he clove to earth Theobald Burke, and in another instant laid the brother of Theobald mortally wounded at his feet. The assailants, though ten to one, at once turned and fled.

But alas! vain was the victory—James Geraldine had received his death wound! Calmly receiving the last rites of the church at the hands of Dr. Allen, and having with his last breath dictated a message to his kinsmen enjoining them to take up the banner fallen in his hand, and to fight to the last in the holy war—naming his cousin John of Desmond as leader to succeed him—the chivalrous Fitzmaurice breathed his last sigh. "Such," says the historian, "was the fate of the glorious hopes of Sir James Fitzmaurice! So ended in a squabble with churls about cattle, on the banks of an insignificant stream, a career which had drawn the attention of Europe, and had inspired with apprehension the lion-hearted English queen!"

Faithful to the dying message of Fitzmaurice, John of Desmond now avowed his resolution to continue the struggle; which he did bravely, and not without brilliant results. But the earl still "stood on the fence." Still would he fain persuade the government that he was quite averse to the mad designs of his unfortunate kinsmen; and still government, fully believing him a sympathizer with the movement, lost no opportunity of scornfully taunting him with insinuations. Eventually they commenced to treat his lands as the possessions of an enemy, wasting and harrying them; and at length the earl, finding too late that in such a struggle there was for him no neutrality, took the field. But this step on his part, which if it had been taken earlier, might; have had a powerful effect, was now, as I have said, all too late for any substantial influence upon the lost cause. Yet he showed by a few brilliant victories at the very outset that he was, in a military sense, not all unworthy of his position as First Geraldine The Spanish king, too, had by this time been moved to the aid of the struggle.

The Fort del Ore once more received an expedition from Spain, where this time there landed a force of seven hundred Spaniards and Italians, under the command of Sebastian San Josef, Hercules Pisano, and the Duke of Biscay. They brought, moreover, arms for five thousand men, a large supply of money, and cheering promises of still further aid from over the sea. Lord Grey, the deputy, quickly saw that probably the future existence of British power in Ireland depended upon the swift and sudden crushing of this formidable expedition; accordingly with all vehemence did he strain every energy to concentrate with rapidity around Fort del Ore, by land and sea, an overwhelming force before any aid or co-operation could reach it from the-Geraldines. "Among the officers of the besieging force were three especially notable men—Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet Spenser, and Hugh O'Neill—afterward Earl of Tyrone, but at this time commanding a squadron of cavalry for her majesty Queen Elizabeth. San Josef surrendered the place on conditions; that savage outrage ensued, which is known in Irish history as 'the massacre of Smerwick.' Raleigh and Wingfield appear to have directed the operations by which eight hundred prisoners of war were cruelly butchered and flung over the rocks. The sea upon that coast is deep, and the tide swift; but. it has not proved deep enough to hide that horrid crime, or to wash the stains of such wanton bloodshed from the memory of its authors!"[2]

It may be said that the Geraldine cause never rallied after this disaster. "For four years longer," says the historian whom I have just quoted, "the Geraldine League flickered in the south. Proclamations offering pardon to all concerned, except Earl Gerald and a few of his most devoted adherents, had their effect. Deserted at home, and cut off from foreign assistance, the condition of Desmond grew more and more intolerable. On one occasion he narrowly escaped capture by rushing with his countess into a river, and remaining concealed up to the chin in water. His dangers can hardly be paralleled by those of Bruce after the battle of Falkirk, or by the more familiar adventures of Charles Edward. At length on the night of November 11, 1584, he was surprised with only two followers in a lonesome valley, about five miles distant from Tralee, among the mountains of Kerry. The spot is still remembered, and the name of 'the Earl's Road' transports the fancy of the traveler to that tragical scene. Cowering over the embers of a half-extinct fire in a miserable hovel, the lord of a country which in time of peace had yielded an annual rental of 'forty thousand golden pieces,' was dispatched by the hands of common soldiers, without pity, or time, or hesitation. A few followers watching their creaghts or herds, further up the valley, found his bleeding trunk flung out upon the highway; the head was transported over seas to rot upon the spikes of London Tower."

Such was the end of the great Geraldine League of 1579. Even the youngest of my readers must have noticed in its plan and constitution, one singular omission which proved a fatal defect. It did not raise the issue of national independence at all. It made no appeal to the national aspirations for liberty. It was simply a war to compel Elizabeth to desist from her bloody persecution of the Catholic faith. Furthermore, it left out of calculation altogether the purely Irish elements. It left all the northern half of the kingdom out of sight. It was only a southern movement. The Irish princes and chiefs—those of them most opposed to the English power—never viewed the enterprise with confidence or sympathy. Fitzmaurice devoted much more attention to foreign aid than to native combination. In truth his movement was simply an Anglo-Irish war to obtain freedom of conscience, and never raised issues calculated to call forth the united efforts of the Irish nation in a war against England.

Before passing to the next great event of this era, I may pause to note here a few occurrences worthy of record, but for which I did not deem it advisable to break in upon the consecutive narration of the Geraldine war. My endeavor throughout is to present to my young readers, in clear and distinct outline, a sketch of the chief event of each period more or less complete by itself, so that it may be easily comprehended and remembered. To this end I omit many minor incidents and occurrences, which, if engrafted or brought in upon the main narrative, might have a tendency to confuse and bewilder the facts in one's recollection.

« Chapter XXXV. (Shane O'Neill) | Contents | Chapter XXXVII. (Mullaghmast) »

NOTES

[1] Stukely, and most of his force, perished on the bloody field of Alcazarquebir, where Dom Sebastian and two Moorish kings likewise fell.

[2] McGee.

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXVII.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXVI. (Earl of Desmond) | Contents | Chapter XXXVIII. (Hugh O'Neill) »

[b][size=150]HOW COMMANDER COSBY HELD A "FEAST" AT MULLAGHMAST; AND HOW "RUARI OGE" RECOMPENSED THAT "HOSPITALITY"—A VICEROY'S VISIT TO GLENMALURE, AND HIS RECEPTION THERE.

IT was within the period which we have just passed over that the ever-memorable massacre of Mullaghmast occurred. It is not, unhappily, the only tragedy of the kind to be met with in our blood-stained annals; yet it is of all the most vividly perpetuated in popular traditions. In 1577, Sir Francis Cosby, commanding the queen's troops in Leix and Offaly, formed a diabolical plot for the permanent conquest of that district. Peace at the moment prevailed between the government and the inhabitants; but Cosby seemed to think that in extirpation lay the only effectual security for the crown. Feigning, however, great friendship, albeit suspicious of some few "evil disposed" persons said not to be well affected, he invited to a grand feast all the chief families of the territory; attendance thereat being a sort of test of amity. To this summons responded the flower of the Irish nobility in Leix and Offaly, with their kinsmen and friends—the O'Mores, O'Kellys, Lalors, O'Nolans, etc. The "banquet"—alas!—was prepared by Cosby in the great Rath or Fort of Mullach-Maisten, or Mullaghmast, in Kildare county. Into the great rath rode many a pleasant cavalcade that day; but none ever came forth that entered in. A gentleman named Lalor who had halted a little way off, had his suspicions in some way aroused. He noticed, it is said, that while many went into the rath, none were seen to reappear outside. Accordingly he desired his friends to remain behind while he advanced and reconnoitered. He entered cautiously. Inside, what a horrid spectacle met his sight! At the very entrance the dead bodies of some of his slaughtered kinsmen! In an instant he himself was set upon; but drawing his sword, he hewed his way out of the fort and back to his friends, and they barely escaped with their lives to Dysart! He was the only Irishman out of more than four hundred who entered the fort that day that escaped with life! The invited guests were butchered to a man; one hundred and eighty of the O'Mores alone having thus perished.

The peasantry long earnestly believed and asserted that on the encircled rath of slaughter rain nor dew never fell, and that the ghosts of the slain might be seen, and their groans distinctly heard "on the solemn midnight blast!"

"O'er the Rath of Mullaghmast,
On the solemn midnight blast,
What bleeding specters pass'd
With their gashed breasts bare!

"Hast thou heard the fitful wail
That o'erloads the sullen gale
When the waning moon shines pale
O'er the cursed ground there?

"Hark! hollow moans arise
Through the black tempestuous skies,
And curses, strife, and cries,
From the lone rath swell;

"For bloody Sydney there
Nightly fills the lurid air
With the unholy pompous glare
Of the foul, deep hell.

"False Sydney! knighthood's stain!
The trusting brave—in vain
Thy guests—ride o'er the plain
To thy dark cow'rd snare;

"Flow'r of Offaly and Leix,
They have come thy board to grace—
Fools! to meet a faithless race,
Save with true swords bare.

"While cup and song abound,
The triple lines surround
The closed and guarded mound,
In the night's dark noon.

"Alas! too brave O'Moore,
Ere the revelry was o'er,
They have spill'd thy young heart's gore,
Snatch'd from love too soon!

"At the feast, unarmèd all,
Priest, bard, and chieftain fall
In the treacherous Saxon's hall,
O'er the bright wine bowl;

"And now nightly round the board,
With unsheath'd and reeking sword,
Strides the cruel felon lord
Of the blood-stain'd soul.

"Since that hour the clouds that pass'd
O'er the Rath of Mullaghmast,
One tear have never cast
On the gore-dyed sod;

"For the shower of crimson rain
That o'erflowed that fatal plain,
Cries aloud, and not in vain,
To the most high God!"

A sword of vengeance tracked Cosby from that day. In Leix or Offaly after this terrible blow there was no raising a regular force; yet of the family thus murderously cut down, there remained one man who thenceforth lived but to avenge his slaughtered kindred. This was Ruari Oge O'More, the guerrilla chief of Leix and Offaly, long the terror and the scourge of the Pale. While he lived none of Cosby's "undertakers" slept securely in the homes of the plundered race. Swooping down upon their castles and mansions, towns and settlements, Ruari became to them an angel of destruction. When they deemed him farthest away his sword of vengeance was at hand. In the lurid glare of burning roof and blazing granary, they saw like a specter from the rath, the face of an O'More; and, above the roar of the flames, the shrieks of victims, or the crash of falling battlements, they heard in the hoarse voice of an implacable avenger—"Remember Mullaghmast!"

And the sword of Ireland still was swift and strong to pursue the author of that bloody deed, and to strike him and his race through two generations. One by one they met their doom:

"In the lost battle
Borne down by the flying;
Where mingles war's rattle
With the groans of the dying."

On the bloody day of Glenmalure, when the red flag of England went down in the battle's hurricane, and Elizabeth's proud viceroy, Lord Grey de Wilton, and all the chivalry of the Pale were scattered and strewn like autumn leaves in the gale, Cosby of Mullaghmast fell in the rout, sent swiftly to eternal judgment with the brand of Cain upon his brow. A like doom, a fatality, tracked his children from generation to generation! They too perished by the sword or the battle-ax—the last of them, son and grandson, on one day, by the stroke of an avenging O'More [1]—until it may be questioned if there now exists a human being in whose veins runs the blood of the greatly infamous knight commander, Sir Francis Cosby.

The battle of Glenmalure was fought August 25, 1580. That magnificent defile, as I have already remarked, in the words of one of our historians, had long been for the patriots of Leinster "a fortress dedicated by nature to the defense of freedom;" and never had fortress of freedom a nobler soul to command its defense than he who now held Glenmalure for God and Ireland—Feach M'Hugh O'Byrne, of Ballinacor, called by the English "The Firebrand of the Mountains." In his time no sword was drawn for liberty in any corner of the island, near or far, that his own good blade did not leap responsively from its scabbard to aid "the good old cause." Whether the tocsin was sounded in the north or in the south, it ever woke pealing echoes amid the hills of Glenmalure. As in later years, Feach of Ballinacor was the most trusted and faithful of Hugh O'Neill's friends and allies, so was he now in arms stoutly battling for the Geraldine league. His son-in-law, Sir Francis Fitzgerald, and James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass, had rallied what survived of the clansmen of Idrone, Offaly, and Leix, and had effected a junction with him, taking up strong positions in the passes of Slieveroe and Glenmalure. Lord Grey of Wilton arrived as lord lieutenant from England on August 12th. Eager to signalize his advent to office by some brilliant achievement, he rejoiced greatly that so near at hand—within a day's march of Dublin Castle—an opportunity presented itself. Yes! He would measure swords with this wild chief of Glenmalure who had so often defied the power of England. He would extinguish the "Firebrand of the Mountain," and plant the cross of St. George on the ruins of Ballinacor! So, assembling a right royal host, the haughty viceroy marched upon Glenmalure.

The only accounts which we possess of the battle are those contained in letters written to England by Sir William Stanley and others of the lord lieutenant's officials and subordinates; so that we may be sure the truth is very scantily revealed. Lord Grey having arrived at the entrance to the glen, seems to have had no greater anxiety than to "hem in" the Irish. So he constructed a strong earthwork or intrenched camp at the mouth of the valley the more effectually to stop "escape." It never once occurred to the vainglorious English viceroy that it was he himself and his royal army that were to play the part of fugitives in the approaching scene! All being in readiness, Lord Grey gave the order of the advance; he and a group of courtier friends taking their places on a high ground commanding a full view up the valley, so that they might lose nothing of the gratifying spectacle anticipated. An ominous silence prevailed as the English regiments pushed their way into the glen. The courtiers waxed witty; they wondered whether the game had not "stolen away;" they sadly thought there would be "no sport;" or they halloed right merrily to the troops to follow on and "unearth" the "old fox."

After a while the way became more and more tedious. "We were," says Sir William Stanley, "forced to slide sometimes three or four fathoms ere we could stay our feet;" the way being "full of stones, rocks, logs, and wood; in the bottom thereof a river full of loose stones which we were driven to cross divers times." At length it seemed good to Feach M'Hugh O'Byrne to declare that the time had come for action. Then, from the forest-clad mountain sides there burst forth a wild shout, whereat many of the jesting courtiers turned pale; and a storm of bullets assailed the entangled English legions. As yet the foe was unseen, but his execution was disastrous. The English troops broke into disorder. Lord Grey, furious and distracted, ordered up the reserves; but now Feach passed the word along the Irish lines to charge the foe. Like the torrents of winter pouring down those hills, down swept the Irish force from every side upon the struggling mass below. Vain was all effort to wrestle against such a furious charge. From the very first it became a pursuit. How to escape was now each castle courtier's wild endeavor. Discipline was utterly cast aside in the panic rout! Lord Grey and a few attendants fled early, and by fleet horses saved themselves; but of all the brilliant host the viceroy had led out of Dublin a few days before, there returned but a few shattered companies to tell the tale of disaster, and to surround with new terrors the name of Feach M'Hugh, the "Firebrand of the Mountains."

« Chapter XXXVI. (Earl of Desmond) | Contents | Chapter XXXVIII. (Hugh O'Neill) »

NOTES

[1] "Ouney, son of Ruari Oge O'More, slew Alexander and Francis Cosby, son and grandson of Cosby of Mullaghmast, and routed their troops with great slaughter, at Stradbally Bridge, May 19, 1597."

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXVII. (Mullaghmast) | Contents | Chapter XXXIX. (Hugh O'Donnell) »

"HUGH OF DUNGANNON"—HOW QUEEN ELIZABETH BROUGHT UP THE YOUNG IRISH CHIEF AT COURT, WITH CERTAIN CRAFTY DESIGNS OF HER OWN.

THERE now appears upon the scene of Irish history that remarkable man whose name will live in song and story as long as the Irish race survives—leader of one of the greatest struggles ever waged against the Anglo-Norman subjugation—Hugh O'Neill; called in English "patents" Earl of Tyrone.

Ever since the closing years of the eighth Henry's reign—the period at which, as I have already explained, the policy of splitting up the clans by rival chiefs began to be adopted by the English power—the government took care to provide itself, by fair means or by foul, with a supply of material from which crown chiefs might be taken. That is to say, the government took care to have in its hands, and trained to its own purposes, some member or members of each of the ruling families—the O'Neills, O'Reillys, O'Donnells, M'Guires, O'Connors, etc., ready to be set up as the king's or queen's O'Neill, O'Reilly, or O'Donnell, as the case might be, according as policy dictated and opportunity offered. One of these government protégés was Hugh O'Neill, who, when yet a boy, was taken to London and brought up in the court of Elizabeth.

As he was a scion of the royal house of O'Neill, and, in English plannings, destined one day to play the most important part as yet assigned to a queen's chief in Ireland, viz., the reducing to subserviency of that Ulster which formed the standing menace of English power, the unconquerable citadel of nationality, the boy Hugh—the young Baron of Dungannon, as he was called—was the object of unusual attention. He was an especial favorite with the queen, and as may be supposed the courtiers all, lords and ladies, took care to pay him suitable obeisance. No pains were spared with his education. He had the best tutors to attend upon him, and above all be was assiduously trained into court finesse, how to dissemble, and with smooth and smiling face to veil the true workings of mind and heart. In this way it was hoped to mold the young Irish chief into English shape for English purposes; it never once occurring to his royal trainers that nature some day might burst forth and prove stronger than courtly artificiality, or that the arts they were so assiduously teaching the boy chief for the ruin of his country's independence might be turned against themselves. In due time he was sent into the army to perfect his military studies, and eventually (fully trained, polished, educated, and prepared for the role designed for him by his English masters) he took up his residence at his family seat in Dungannon.

Fortunately for the fame of Hugh O'Neill, and for the Irish nation in whose history he played so memorable a part, the life of that illustrious man has been written in our generation by a biographer worthy of the theme. Among the masses of Irishmen, comparatively little would be known of that wondrous career had its history not been popularized by John Mitchel's "Life of Hugh O'Neill." The dust of centuries had been allowed to cover the noble picture drawn from life by the master hand of Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare—a writer but for whom we should now be without any contemporaneous record of the most eventful period of Anglo-Irish history, save the unjust and distorted versions of bitterly partisan English officials.[1] Don Philip's history, however, was practically inaccessible to the masses of Irishmen; and to Mr. Mitchel is almost entirely owing the place O'Neill now holds—his rightful prominence—in popular estimation.

Mr. Mitchel pictures the great Ulster chieftain to us a patriot from the beginning; adroitly and dissemblingly biding his time; learning all that was to be learned in the camp of the enemy; looking far ahead into the future, and shaping his course from the start with fixed purpose toward the goal of national independence. This, however, cannot well be considered more than a "view," a "theory," a "reading." O'Neill was, during his earlier career, in purpose and in plan, in mind, manner, and action, quite a different man from the O'Neill of his later years. It is very doubtful that he had any patriotic aspirations after national independence—much less any fixed policy or design tending thereto—until long after he first found himself, by the force of circumstances, in collision with the English power. In him we see the conflicting influences of nature and nature-repressing art. His Irishism was ineradicable, though long dormant. His court tutors strove hard to eliminate it, and to give him instead a "polished" Englishism; but they never more than partially succeeded. They put a court lacquer on the Celtic material, and the superficial wash remained for a few years, not more.

The voice of nature was ever crying out to Hugh O'Neill. For some years after leaving court, he lived very much like any other Anglicized or English baron, in his house at Dungannon. But the touch of his native soil, intercourse with neighboring Irish chieftains, and the force of sympathy with his own people, now surrounding him, were gradually telling upon him. His life then became a curious spectacle of inconsistencies, as he found himself pulled and strained in opposite directions by opposite sympathies, claims, commands, or impulses; sometimes in proud disregard of his English masters, behaving like a true Irish O'Neill; at other times swayed by his foreign allegiance into acts of very obedient suit and service to the queen's cause. But the day was gradually nearing when these struggles between two allegiances were to cease, and when Hugh, with all the fervor of a great and noble heart, was to dedicate his life to one unalterable purpose, the overthrow of English rule and the liberation of his native land!

« Chapter XXXVII. (Mullaghmast) | Contents | Chapter XXXIX. (Hugh O'Donnell) »

NOTES

[1] To Don Philip's great work the "Historiae Catholicae Iberniae," we are indebted for nearly all that we know of this memorable struggle. " He is," says Mr. Mitchel, "the only writer, Irish or foreign, who gives an intelligible account of O'Neill's battles; but he was a soldier as well as a chronicler." Another writer says, " The loss of this history could not be supplied by any work extant." Don Philip was nephew to Donal, last lord of Beare, of whom we shall hear more anon. The "Historiae Iberniae" was written in Latin, and published about the year 1631, in Lisbon, the O'Sullivans having settled in Spain after the fall of Dunboy.

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XXXIX.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXVIII. (Hugh O'Neill) | Contents | Chapter XL. (The O'Neill) »

HOW LORD DEPUTY PERROT PLANNED A RIGHT CUNNING EXPEDITION, AND STOLE AWAY THE YOUTHFUL PRINCE OF TYRCONNELL—HOW, IN THE DUNGEONS OF DUBLIN CASTLE, THE BOY CHIEF LEARNED HIS DUTY TOWARD ENGLAND; AND HOW HE AT LENGTH ESCAPED AND COMMENCED DISCHARGING THAT DUTY.

MEANWHILE, years passed by, and another Hugh had begun to rise above the northern horizon, amid signs and perturbations boding no good to the crown and government of the Pale. This was Hugh O'Donnell—"Hugh Roe" or "Red Hugh"—son of the reigning chief of Tyrconnell.

Young O'Donnell, who was at this time "a fiery stripling of fifteen, was already known throughout the five provinces of Ireland, not only 'by the report of his beauty, his agility, and his noble deeds,' but as a sworn foe to the Saxons of the Pale;" and the mere thought of the possibility of the two Hughs—Hugh of Tyrone and Hugh of Tyrconnell—ever forming a combination, sufficed to fill Dublin Castle with dismay. For already indeed, Hugh O'Neill's "loyalty" was beginning to be considered rather unsteady. To be sure, as yet no man durst whisper a word against him in the queen's hearing; and he was still ready at call to do the queen's fighting against southern Geraldine, O'Brien, or Mac Caura. But the astute in these matters noted that he was unpleasantly neighborly and friendly with the northern chiefs and tanists; that, so far from maintaining suitable ill-will toward the reigning O'Neill (whom the queen meant him some day to overthrow), Hugh had actually treated him with respect and obedience. Moreover, "the English knew,"says the chronicler of Hugh Roe, "that it was Judith, the daughter of O'Donnell, and sister of the before-mentioned Hugh Roe, that was the spouse and best beloved of the Earl O'Neill." "Those six companies of troops also," says Mr. Mitchel, "that he kept on foot (in the queen's name, but for his own behoof) began to be suspicious in the eyes of the state; for it is much feared that he changes the men so soon as they thoroughly learn the use of arms, replacing them by others, all of his own clansmen, whom he diligently drills and reviews for some unknown service. And the lead he imports—surely the roofing of that house of Dungannon will not need all these shiploads of lead—lead enough to sheet Glenshane, or clothe the sides of Cairnocher. And, indeed, a rumor does reach the deputy in Dublin that there goes on at Dungannon an incredible casting of bullets. No wonder that the eyes of the English government began to turn anxiously to the north."

"And if this princely Red Hugh should live to take the leading of his sept—and if the two potent chieftains of the north should forget their ancient feud, and unite for the cause of Ireland," proceeds Mr. Mitchel, "then, indeed, not only this settlement of the Ulster 'counties' must be adjourned, one knows not how long; but the Pale itself or the Castle of Dublin might hardly protect her majesty's officers. These were contingencies which any prudent agent of the queen of England must speedily take order to prevent; and we are now to see Perrot's device for that end.

"Near Rathmullan, on the western shore of Lough Swilly, looking toward the mountains of Innishowen, stood a monastery of Carmelites and a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, the most famous place of devotion in Tyrconnell, whither all the Clan-Connell, both chiefs and people, made resort at certain seasons to pay their devotions. Here the young Red Hugh, with Mac Swyne of the battle-axes, O'Gallagher of Ballyshannon, and some other chiefs, were in the summer of 1587 sojourning a short time in that part to pay their vows of religion; but not without staghounds and implements of chase, having views upon the red deer of Fanad and Innishowen. One day, while the prince was here, a swift-sailing merchant ship doubled the promontory of Dunaff, stood up the lough, and cast anchor opposite Rathmullan; a 'bark, black-hatched, deceptive,' bearing the flag of England, and offering for sale, as a peaceful trader, her cargo of Spanish wine. And surely no more courteous, merchant than the master of that ship had visited the north for many a year. He invited the people most hospitably on board, solicited them, whether purchasers or not, to partake of his good cheer, entertained them with music and wine, and so gained very speedily the good will of all Fanad.

Red Hugh and his companions soon heard of the obliging merchant and his rare wines. They visited the ship, where they were received with all respect, and, indeed, with unfeigned joy; descended into the cabin, and with connoisseur discrimination tried and tasted, and finally drank too deeply; and at last when they would come on deck and return to the shore, they found themselves secured under hatches; their weapons had been removed; night had fallen; they were prisoners to those traitor Saxons. Morning dawned, and they looked anxiously toward the shore; but, ah! where is Rathmullan and the Carmelite church? And what wild coast is this? Past Malin and the cliffs of Innishowen; past Benmore, and southward to the shores of Antrim and the mountains of Mourne flew that ill-omened bark, and never dropped anchor till she lay under the towers of Dublin. The treacherous Perrot joyfully received his prize, and 'exulted,' says an historian, 'in the easiness and success with which he had procured hostages for the peaceable submission of O'Donnell.' And the prince of Tyrconnell was thrown into 'a strong stone castle,' and kept in heavy irons three years and three months, 'meditating,' says the chronicle, on the feeble and impotent condition of his friends and relations, of his princes and supreme chiefs, of his nobles and clergy, his poets and professors."[1]

Three long and weary years—oh! but they seemed three ages!—the young Hugh pined in the grated dungeons of that "Bermingham Tower," which still stands in Dublin Castle yard. How the fierce hot spirit of the impetuous northern youth chafed in this cruel captivity. He, accustomed daily to breathe the free air of his native hills in the pastimes of the chase, now gasped for breath in the close and fetid atmosphere of a squalid cell! He, the joy and the pride of an aged father—the strong hope of a thousand faithful clansmen—was now the helpless object of jailers' insolence, neglect, and persecution! "Three years and three months," the old chroniclers tell us—when hark! there is whispering furtively betimes as young Hugh and Art Kavanagh, and other of the captives meet on the stone stairs, or the narrow landing, by the warders' gracious courtesy. Yes; Art had a plan of escape. Escape! Oh! the thought sends the blood rushing hotly through the veins of Red Hugh. Escape! Home! Freedom on the Tyrconnell hills once more! O blessed, thrice blessed words!

It is even so. And now all is arranged, and the daring attempt waits but a night favorably dark and wild—which comes at last; and while the sentries shelter themselves from the pitiless sleet, the young fugitives, at peril of life or limb, are stealthily scaling or descending bastion and battltment, fosse and barbican. With beating hearts they pass the last sentry, and now through the city streets they grope their way southward; for the nearest hand of succor is amid the valleys of Wicklow. Theirs is a slow and toilsome progress; they know not the paths, and they must hide by day and fly as best they can in the night-time through wooded country. At length they cross the Three Rock Mountain, and look down upon Glencree. But alas! Young Hugh sinks down exhausted. Three years in a dungeon have cramped his limbs, and he is no longer the Hugh that bounded like a deer on the slopes of Glenvigh! His feet are torn and bleeding from sharp rock and piercing bramble; his strength is gone; he can no further fly. He exhorts his companions to speed onward and save themselves, while he secretes himself in the copse and awaits succor if they can send it.

Reluctantly, and only yielding to his urgent entreaties, they departed. A faithful servant, we are told, who had been in the secret of Hugh's escape, still remained with him, and repaired for succor to the house of Felim O'Tuhal, the beautiful site of whose residence is now called Powerscourt. Felim was known to be a friend, though he dared not openly disclose the fact. He was too close to the seat of the English power, and was obliged to keep on terms with the Pale authorities. But now "the flight of the prisoners had created great excitement in Dublin, and numerous bands were dispatched in pursuit of them." It was next to impossible—certainly full of danger—for the friendly O'Tuhal, with the English scouring-parties spread all over hill and vale, to bring in the exhausted and helpless fugitive from his hiding-place, where nevertheless he must perish if not quickly reached. Sorrowfully and reluctantly Felim was forced to conclude that all hope of escape for young Hugh this time must be abandoned, and that the best course was to pretend to discover him in the copse, and to make a merit of giving him up to his pursuers. So, with a heart bursting with mingled rage, grief, and despair, Hugh found himself once more in the gripe of his savage foes. He was brought back to Dublin "loaded with heavy iron fetters," and flung into a narrower and stronger dungeon, to spend another year cursing the day that Norman foot had touched the Irish shore.

There he lay until Christmas Day, December 25, 1592, "when," says the old chronicle, "it. seemed to the Son of the Virgin time for him to escape. Henry and Art O'Neill, fellow-prisoners, were on this occasion companions of Hugh's flight. In fact the lord deputy, Fitzwilliam, a needy and corrupt creature, had taken a bribe from Hugh O'Neill to afford opportunity for the escape. Hugh of Dungannon had designs of his own in desiring the freedom of all three; for events to be noted further on had been occurring, and already he was, like a skillful statesman, preparing for future contingencies. He knew that the liberation of Red Hugh would give him an ally worth half Ireland, and he knew that rescuing the two O'Neills would leave the government without a "queen's O'Neill" to set up against him at a future day. Of this escape Haverty gives us the following account:

"They descended by a rope through a sewer which opened into the castle ditch; and leaving there the soiled outer garments, they were conducted by a young man, named Turlough Roe O'Hagan, the confidential servant or emissary of the Earl of Tyrone, who was sent to act as their guide. Passing through the gates of the city, which were still open, three of the party reached the same Slieve Rua which Hugh had visited on the former occasion. The fourth, Henry O'Neill, strayed from his companions in some way—probably before they left the city—but eventually he reached Tyrone, where the earl seized and imprisoned him. Hugh Roe and Art O'Neill, with their faithful guide, proceeded on their way over the Wicklow mountains toward Glenmalure, to Feagh Mac Hugh O'Byrne, a chief famous for his heroism, and who was then in arms against the government. Art O'Neill had grown corpulent in prison, and had beside been hurt in descending from the castle, so that he became quite worn out from fatigue.

The party were also exhausted with hunger, and as the snow fell thickly, and their clothing was very scanty, they suffered additionally from intense cold. For awhile Red Hugh and the servant supported Art between them; but this exertion could not long be sustained, and at length Red Hugh and Art lay down exhausted under a lofty rock, and sent the servant to Glenmalure for help. With all possible speed Feagh O'Byrne, on receiving the message, dispatched some of his trusty men to carry the necessary succor; but they arrived almost too late at the precipice under which the two youths lay. 'Their bodies,' say the Four Masters, 'were covered with white-bordered shrouds of hailstones freezing around them, and their light clothes adhered to their skin, so that, covered as they were with the snow, it did not appear to the men who had arrived that they were human beings at all, for they found no life in their members, but just as if they were dead.' On being raised up, Art O'Neill fell back and expired, and was buried on the spot; but Red Hugh was revived with some difficulty, and carried to Glenmalure, where he was secreted in a sequestered cabin and attended by a physician."

Mr. Mitchel describes for us the sequel. "O'Byrne brought them to his house and revived and warmed and clothed them, and instantly sent a messenger to Hugh O'Neill (with whom he was then in close alliance) with the joyful tidings of O'Donnell's escape. O'Neill heard it with delight, and sent a faithful retainer, Tirlough Buidhe O'Hagan, who was well acquainted with the country, to guide the young chief into Ulster. After a few days of rest and refreshment, O'Donnell and his guide set forth, and the Irish chronicler minutely details that perilous journey—how they crossed the Liffey far to the westward of Fitzwilliam's hated towers, and rode cautiously through Fingal and Meath, avoiding the garrisons of the Pale, until they arrived at the Boyne, a short distance west of Inver Colpa (Drogheda), 'where the Danes had built a noble city;' how they sent round their horses through the town, and themselves passed over in a fisherman's boat; how they passed by Mellifont, a great monastery, 'which belonged to a noted young Englishman attached to Hugh O'Neill,' and therefore met with no interruption there; rode right through Dundalk, and entered the friendly Irish country, where they had nothing more to fear. One night they rested at Feadth Mor (the Fews), where O'Neill's brother had a house, and the next day crossed the Blackwater at Moy, and so to Dungannon, where O'Neill received them right joyfully. And here 'the two Hughs' entered into a strict and cordial friendship, and told each other of their wrongs and of their hopes. O'Neill listened, with such feelings as one can imagine, to the story of the youth's base kidnapping and cruel imprisonment in darkness and chains; and the impetuous Hugh Roe heard with scornful rage of the English deputy's atrocity toward Mac Mahon, and attempts to bring his accursed sheriffs and juries among the ancient Irish of Ulster. And they deeply swore to bury forever the unhappy feuds of their families, and to stand by each other with all the powers of the North against their treacherous and relentless foe. The chiefs parted, and O'Donnell, with an escort of the Tyrowen cavalry, passed into Mac Gwire's country. The chief of Fermanagh received him with honor, eagerly joined in the confederacy, and gave him 'a black polished boat,' in which the prince and his attendants rowed through Lough Erne, and glided down that 'pleasant salmon-breeding river' which leads to Ballyshannon and the ancient seats of the Clan-Conal.

"We may conceive with what stormy joy the tribes of Tyrconnell welcomed their prince; with what mingled pity and wrath, thanksgivings and curses, they heard of his chains and wanderings and sufferings, and beheld the feet that used to bound so lightly on the hills swollen and crippled by that cruel frost, by the crueller fetters of the Saxon. But little time was now for festal rejoicing or the unprofitable luxury of cursing; for just then, Sir Richard Bingham, the English leader in Connaught, relying on the irresolute nature of old O'Donnell, and not aware of Red Hugh's return, had sent two hundred men by sea to Donegal, where they took by surprise the Franciscan monastery, drove away the monks (making small account of their historic studies and learned annals), and garrisoned the buildings for the queen. The fiery Hugh could ill endure to hear of these outrages, or brook an English garrison upon the soil of Tyrconnell. He collected the people in hot haste, led them instantly into Donegal, and commanded the English by a certain day and hour to betake themselves with all speed back to Connaught, and leave behind them the rich spoils they had taken; all which they thought it prudent without further parley to do. And so the monks of St. Francis returned to their home and their books, gave thanks to God, and prayed, as well they might, for Hugh O'Donnell."

« Chapter XXXVIII. (Hugh O'Neill) | Contents | Chapter XL. (The O'Neill) »

NOTES

[1] Mitchel's "Life of Hugh O'Neill."

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XL.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XXXIX. (Hugh O'Donnell) | Contents | Chapter XLI. (Hugh Roe) »

HOW HUGH OF DUNGANNON WAS MEANTIME DRAWING OFF FROM ENGLAND AND DRAWING NEAR TO IRELAND.

DURING the four years over which the imprisonment of Red Hugh extended, important events had been transpiring in the outer world; and amid them the character of Hugh of Dungannon was undergoing a rapid transmutation. We had already seen him cultivating friendly relations with the neighboring chiefs, though most of them were in a state of open hostility to the queen. He, by degrees, went much further than "this. He busied himself in the disloyal work of healing the feuds of the rival clans, and extending throughout the north feelings of amity—nay, a network of alliances between them. To some of the native princes he lends one or two of his fully-trained companies of foot; to others, some troops of his cavalry. He secretly encourages some of them (say his enemies at court) to stouter resistance to the English. It is even said that he harbors popish priests. "North of Slieve Gullion the venerable brehons still arbitrate undisturbed the causes of the people; the ancient laws, civilization, and religion stand untouched. Nay, it is credibly rumored to the Dublin deputy that this noble earl, forgetful apparently of his coronet and golden chain, and of his high favor with so potent a princess, does about this time get recognized and solemnly inaugurated as chieftain of his sept, by the proscribed name of 'The O'Neill;' and at the rath of Tulloghoge, on the Stone of Royalty, amid the circling warriors, amid the bards and ollamhs of Tyr-eoghain, 'receives an oath to preserve all the ancient former customs of the country inviolable, and to deliver up the succession peaceably to his tanist; and then hath a wand delivered to him by one whose proper office that is, after which, descending from the stone, he turneth himself round thrice forward and thrice backward,' even as the O'Neills had done for a thousand years; altogether in the most un-English manner, and with the strangest ceremonies, which no garter king-at-arms could endure."

While matters were happening thus in "Ulster, England was undergoing the excitement of apprehended invasion. The Armada of Philip the Second was on the sea, and the English nation—queen and people—Protestant and Catholic—persecutor and persecuted—with a burst of genuine patriotism, prepared to meet the invaders. The elements, however, averted the threatened doom. A hurricane of unexampled fury scattered Philip's flotilla, so vauntingly styled "invincible;" the ships were strewn, shattered wrecks, all over the coasts of England and Ireland. In the latter country the crews were treated very differently, according as they happened to be cast upon the shores of districts amenable to English authority or influences, or the reverse. In the former instances they were treated barbarously—slain as the queen's enemies, or given up to the queen's forces. In the latter, they were sheltered and succored, treated as friends, and afforded means of safe return to their native Spain. Some of these ships were cast upon the coast of O'Neill's country, and by no one were the Spanish crews more kindly treated, more warmly befriended, than by Hugh, erstwhile the queen's most favored protégé, and still professedly her most true and obedient servant. This hospitality to the shipwrecked Spaniards, however, is too much for English flesh and blood to bear. Hugh is openly murmured against in Dublin and in London.

And soon formal proof of his "treason" is preferred. An envious cousin of his, known as John of the Fetters—a natural son of John the Proud, by the false wife of O'Donnell—animated by a mortal hatred of Hugh, gave information to the lord deputy that he had not only regaled the Spanish officers right royally at Dungannon, but had then and there planned with them an alliance between himself and King Philip, to whom Hugh—so said his accuser—had forwarded letters and presents by the said officers. All of which the said accuser undertook to prove, either upon the body of Hugh in mortal combat, or before a jury well and truly packed or impanneled, as the case might be. Whereupon there was dreadful commotion in Dublin Castle. Hugh's reply was—to arrest the base informer on a charge of treason against the sacred person and prerogatives of his lawful chief; which charge being proved, John of the Fetters was at once executed. Indeed, some accounts say that Hugh himself had to act as executioner; since in all Tyrone no man could be prevailed upon to put to death one of the royal race of Nial—albeit an attainted and condemned traitor.

Then Hugh, full of a fine glowing indignation against these accusing murmurers in Dublin, sped straightway to London to complain of them to the queen, and to convince her anew, with that politic hypocrisy taught him (for quite a different use, though) in that same court, that her majesty had no more devoted admirer than himself. And he succeeded. He professed and promised the most ample loyalty. He would undertake to harbor no more popish priests; he would admit sheriffs into Tyrone; he would no more molest chiefs friendly to England, or befriend chiefs hostile to the queen; and as for the title of "The O'Neill," which, it was charged, he gloried in, while feeling quite ashamed of the mean English title, "Earl of Tyrone," he protested by her majesty's most angelic countenance (ah, Hugh!) that he merely adopted it, lest some one else might possess himself thereof; but if it in the least offended a queen so beautiful and so exalted, why he would disown it forever![1] Elizabeth was charmed by that dear sweet-spoken young noble—and so handsome too. (Hugh, who was brought up at court, knew Elizabeth's weak points). The Lord of Dungannon returned to Ireland higher than ever in the queen's favor; and his enemies in Dublin Castle were overturned for that time.

The most inveterate of these was Sir Henry Bagnal, commander of the Newry garrison. "The marshal and his English garrison in the castle and abbey of Newry," says Mr. Mitchel, "were a secret thorn in the side of O'Neill. They lay upon one of the main passes to the north, and he had deeply vowed that one day the ancient monastery, de viridi ligno, should be swept clear of this foreign soldiery. But in that castle of Newry the Saxon marshal had a fair sister, a woman of rarest beauty, whom O'Neill thought, it a sin to leave for a spouse to some churl of art English undertaker. And indeed we next hear of him as a love-suitor at the feet of the English beauty." Haverty tells the story of this romantic love-suit as follows:

"This man—the marshal, Sir Henry Bagnal—hated the Irish with a rancor which bad men are known to feel toward those whom they have mortally injured. He had shed a great deal of their blood, obtained a great deal of their lands, and was the sworn enemy of the whole race. Sir Henry had a sister who was young and exceedingly beautiful. The wife of the Earl of Tyrone, the daughter of Sir Hugh Mac Manus O'Donnell, had died, and the heart of the Irish chieftain was captivated by the beautiful English girl. His love was reciprocated, and he became in due form a suitor for her hand; but all efforts to gain her brother's consent to this marriage were in vain. The story, indeed, is one which might seem to be borrowed from some old romance, if we did not find it circumstantially detailed in the matter-of-fact documents of the State Paper Office. The Irish prince and the English maiden mutually plighted their vows, and O'Neill presented to the lady a gold chain worth one hundred pounds; but the inexorable Sir Henry removed his sister from Newry to the house of Sir Patrick Barnwell, who was married to another of his sisters, and who lived about seven miles from Dublin. Hither the earl followed her. He was courteously received by Sir Patrick, and seems to have had many friends among the English. One of these, a gentleman named William Warren, acted as his confidant, and at a party at Barnwell's house, the earl engaged the rest of the company in conversation while Warren rode off with the lady behind him, accompanied by two servants, and carried her safely to the residence of a friend at Drumcondra, near Dublin. Here O'Neill soon followed, and the Protestant bishop of Meath, Thomas Jones, a Lancashire man, was easily induced to come and unite them in marriage the same evening. This elopement and marriage, which took place on August 3, 1591, were made the subject of violent accusations against O'Neill. Sir Henry Bagnal was furious. He charged the earl with having another wife living; but this point was explained, as O'Neill showed that this lady, who was his first wife, the daughter of Sir Brian Mac Felim O'Neill, had been divorced previous to his marriage with the daughter of O'Donnell. Altogether the government would appear to have viewed the conduct of O'Neill in this matter rather leniently; but Bagnal was henceforth his most implacable foe, and the circumstance was not without its influence on succeeding events."

« Chapter XXXIX. (Hugh O'Donnell) | Contents | Chapter XLI. (Hugh Roe) »

NOTES

[1] Thus, according to the tenor of English chroniclers, but as a matter of fact, Hugh had not at this time been elected as The O'Neill. This event occurred subsequently; the existing O'Neill having been persuaded or compelled by Hugh Roe of Tyrconnell to abdicate, that the clans might, as they desired to do, elect Hugh of Dungannon in his place.

[Fairlie]

STORY OF IRELAND

By A. M. Sullivan

CHAPTER XLI.

From the Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)

« Chapter XL. (The O'Neill) | Contents | Chapter XLII. (Battle of Clontribret) »

HOW RED HUGH WENT CIRCUIT AGAINST THE ENGLISH IN THE NORTH—HOW THE CRISIS CAME UPON O'NEILL.

BY this time young Hugh Roe O'Donnell had, as we have already learned, escaped from his cruel captivity in Dublin, mainly by the help of that astute and skillful organizer, Hugh of Dungannon. In the spring of the year following, "on May 3, 1593, there was a solemn meeting of the warriors, clergy, and bards of Tyrconnell, at the Rock of Doune, at Kilmacrenan, 'the nursing place of Columbcille.' And here the father of Red Hugh renounced the chieftaincy of the sept, and his impetuous son at nineteen years of age was duly inaugurated by Erenach O'Firghil, and made The O'Donnell with the ancient ceremonies of his race."

The young chief did not wear his honors idly. In the Dublin dungeons he had sworn vows, and he was not the man to break them; vows that while his good right hand could draw a sword, the English should have no peace in Ireland. Close by The O'Donnell's territory, in Strabane, old Torlogh Lynagh O'Neill had admitted an English force as "auxiliaries" forsooth. "And it was a heart-break," says the old chronicler, "to Hugh O'Donnell, that the English of Dublin should thus obtain a knowledge of the country." He fiercely attacked Strabane, and chased the obnoxious English "auxiliaries" away, "pardoning old Torlogh only on solemn promise not to repeat his offense. From this forth Red Hugh engaged himself in what we may call a circuit of the north, rooting out English garrisons, sheriffs, seneschals, or functionaries of what sort soever, as zealously and scrupulously as if they were plague-pests. Woe to the English chief that admitted a queen's sheriff within his territories! Hugh was down upon him like a whirlwind! O'Donnell's cordial ally in this crusade was Maguire lord of Fermanagh, a man truly worthy of such a colleague. Hugh of Dungannon saw with dire concern this premature conflict precipatated by Red Hugh's impetuosity. Very probably he was not unwilling that O'Donnell should find the English some occupation yet awhile in the north; but the time had not at all arrived (in his opinion) for the serious and comprehensive undertaking of a stand-up fight for the great stake of national freedom. But it was vain for him to try remonstrance with Hugh Roe, whose nature could ill brook restraint, and who, indeed, could not relish or comprehend at all the subtle and politic slowness of O'Neill.

Hugh of Dungannon, however, would not allow himself at any hazard to be pushed or drawn into open action a day or an hour sooner than his own judgment approved. He could hardly keep out of the conflict so close beside him, and so, rather than be precipitated prematurely into the struggle which, no doubt, he now deemed inevitable, and for which, accordingly, he was preparing, he made show of joining the queen's side, and led some troops against Maguire. It was noted, however, that the species of assistance which he gave the English generally consisted in "moderating" Hugh Roe's punishment of them, and pleading with him merely to sweep them away a little more gently; "interfering," as Moryson informs us, "to save their lives, on condition of their instantly quitting the country!" Now this seemed to the English (small wonder indeed) a very queer kind of "help." It was not what suited them at all; and we need not be surprised that soon Hugh's accusers in Dublin and in London once more, and more vehemently than ever, demanded his destruction.

It was now the statesmen and courtiers of England began to feel that craft may overleap itself. In the moment when first they seriously contemplated Hugh as a foe to the queen, they felt like "the engineer hoist by his own petard." Here was their own pupil, trained under their own hands, versed in their closest secrets, and let into their most subtle arts! Here was the steel they had polished and sharpened to pierce the heart of Ireland, now turned against their own breast! No wonder there was dismay and consternation in London and Dublin—it was so hard to devise any plan against him that Hugh would not divine like one of themselves! Failing any better resort, it was resolved to inveigle him into Dublin by offering him a safe-conduct, and, this document notwithstanding, to seize him at all hazards. Accordingly Hugh was duly notified of charges against his loyalty, and a royal safe-conduct was given to him that he might "come in and appear. "

To the utter astonishment of the plotters, he came with the greatest alacrity, and daringly confronted them at the council-board in the castle! He would have been seized in the room, but for the nobly honorable conduct of the Earl of Ormond, whose indignant letter to the lord treasurer Burleigh (in reply to the queen's order to seize O'Neill) is recorded by Carte: "My lord, I will never use treachery to any man; for it would both touch her highness' honor and my own credit too much; and whosoever gave the queen advice thus to write, is fitter for such base service than I am. Saving my duty to her majesty, I would I might have revenge by my sword of any man that thus persuaded the queen to write to me." Ormond acquainted O'Neill with the perfidy designed against him, and told him, that if he did not fly that night he was lost, as the false deputy was drawing a cordon round Dublin. O'Neill made his escape, and prepared to meet the crisis which now he knew to be at hand. "News soon reached him in the north," as Mr. Mitchel recounts, "that large reinforcements were on their way to the deputy from England, consisting of veteran troops who had fought in Bretagne and Flanders under Sir John Norreys, the most experienced general in Elizabeth's service; and that garrisons were to be forced upon Ballyshannon and Belleek, commanding the passes into Tyrconnell, between Lough Erne and the sea. The strong fortress of Portmore also, on the southern bank of the Blackwater, was to be strengthened and well manned; thus forming, with Newry and Greencastle, a chain of forts across the island, and a basis for future operations against the north."