CHAP XXIV 1568 for the cost of the original outfit. Any objections which might be raised in England would be removed, it was thought, by a circular explaining the incessant expense which the existing administration of Ireland entailed upon the Crown, and through the Crown upon the people, with the waste of life among the English troops sent thither to serve in the wars.' The Queen possessed lands enough, either by forfeiture, escheat, or just title of inheritance, to enable her to carry out the scheme without invading the rights of the Irish chiefs; and she was ready to bestow these lands for the benefit of the commonwealth. If her subjects declined the proposal she would then be obliged to require their aid to collect and maintain soldiers to live there in garrisons.' 1 The care with which the details of this large project were drawn out implies that it was seriously considered. Either, however, the country did not respond to the invitation, or it was set aside in favour of another, at once more practicable, more audacious, and more questionable. The suppression of Shan's rebellion reopened the disputes between the Earls of Ormond and Desmond, which Sidney's skill had held for a time suspended. The points at issue between them were so many and so complicated that the Irish lawyers could not see their way through them-but the House of Butler had been as faithful to the English Crown as the Geraldines had been disloyal. Lord Ormond had been educated in London as the playfellow in childhood of Elizabeth and Edward, and the Queen had insisted that, with law or without it, the right should be found on Ormond's side. 1 Motion for the sending men out of certain parishes into Ireland, Jan. 1568.-MSS. Ireland. But for the disobedience of the Deputy she would have driven Desmond into an alliance with Shan O'Neil; and now when the danger was over, although Desmond had kept clear of treason, and although Lord Winchester and Cecil strongly dissuaded her, she determined to bring him to trial. The Earl at the first summons surrendered to Sir H. Sidney, and was sent as a prisoner to London. The Geraldines, both in Kildare and the South, it is true, were a dangerous race: Elizabeth perhaps thought it politically wise to bring them on their knees. The trial was put off, and Desmond, more lucky than his kinsmen of the past generation, escaped a dungeon in the Tower. He was allowed to live at large on his own recognizances, but he was forbidden to leave England. At last when, weary of his restraint, he attempted to escape out of the country, he was arrested and made. to purchase his life by a surrender of everything that he possessed. A brief entry in the Records informs us 'that on the 12th of July, 1568, the Earl of Desmond— acknowledging his offences, his life being in peril, his goods liable to forfeiture, and himself in danger to her Highness for the forfeiture of 20,000l. by his securitiesrelinquished into her Majesty's hands all his lands, tenements, houses, castles, signories, all he stood possessed of, to receive back what her Majesty would please to allow him, and engaging to make a full and complete assurance to her Majesty of all which she might be pleased to keep.' So enormous were the feudal superiorities pretended by the Munster Geraldines that half the province could be construed by implication to have fallen into the Queen's hands. A case for forfeiture could be made out with no great difficulty against the Irish owners of CHAP XXIV 1568 СНАР XXIV 1568 the remainder. In the scheme which had been drawn out by Sir Henry Sidney for a Southern Presidency, the MacCarties, the O'Sullivans, and the other chiefs were to have been associated in the Government, in the hope that they would be reclaimed to 'civility' by the possession of legitimate authority. A project briefer and less expensive was submitted to the Queen from another quarter. It was an age of enterprise, restlessness, and energy. The sons of English knights and gentlemen, no longer contented with the old routine of duties and a stationary place in the social scale, were out in search of adventures on the wide world. The ancient order of Europe had broken down. The shores of the political ocean were strewed with wrecks for the boldest hand to plunder. The Atlantic was a highway where the privateer, with no more risk than gave flavour to the employment, could fill his sea-chests with doubloons or ingots from the Indian mines. And caring little for legality, the young English rover was craving only to do some deeds which would bring him name and fame, or at least would better his private fortunes. Excited by the difficulties of the Government, or perhaps directly invited to come forward, a number of gentlemen of this kind, chiefly from Somersetshire and Devonshire-Gilberts, Chichesters, Carews, Grenvilles, Courtenays-twenty-seven in all, volunteered to relieve Elizabeth of her trouble with Ireland. Some of them had already tried their fortunes there; most of them, in command of pirates and privateers, had made acquaintance with the harbours of Cork and Kerry. They were prepared to migrate there altogether on conditions which would open their way to permanent greatness. year The surrender of the Desmond estates created the opportunity. They desired that it should be followed up by the despatch of a Commission to Munster to examine into the titles of the chiefs, and where the chiefs had no charters to produce, to claim the estates for the Crown. The whole of the immense territory which would thus be acquired these ambitious gentlemen undertook at their own charges to occupy, in the teeth of their Irish owners, to cultivate the land, to build towns, forts, and castles, to fish the seas and rivers, to make roads and establish harbours, and to pay a fixed revenue to the Queen after the third of their tenure. They proposed to transport from their own neighbourhoods a sufficient number of craftsmen, artificers, and labourers to enable them to make good their ground. The chiefs they would drive away or kill: the poor Irish, even 'the wildest and idlest,' they hoped to compel into 'obedience and civility.' If the Irish nature proved incorrigible, 'they would through idleness offend to die.' The scandal and burden of the Southern Provinces would then be brought to an end. Priests would no longer haunt the churches, the countries possessed by rebels would be inhabited by natural Englishmen ; and Kinsale Valentia, Dingle, through which the Spaniards and the French supplied the insurgents with arms, would be closed against them and their machinations. The English settlers would have the fish, 'wherein those seas were very fortunate,' and 'the strangers who now sold fish to the country people would be driven to buy for their own markets, to the great enriching of good subjects.' Her Majesty would be spared her present expense, and would be strengthened in the command of the Channel; while the adventurers asked nothing СНАР XXIV 1568 CHAP XXIV 1569 February but the grant, undertaking to do the rest themselves, requiring only that they should not be looked upon 'as banished men,' and declaring that they meant rather 'to carry England to Ireland,' than to leave, as so many else had done, their own nationality behind them.1 This enormous scheme was submitted to the consideration of Cecil. His sense of justice and his caution were alike alarmed by the magnitude of the intended operations. 'Forfeiture,' he wrote in the margin of the petition, 'could not be enforced before attainder by some order of law, nor before offence found.' He was disposed to agree that they might have the lands, if the owners 'could be either adjudged felons by common law, or declared traitors by proclamation of the Lord Deputy;' but he suggested that the young gentlemen should begin their experiment with the county of Cork, and advance as they found their ground secure. But the projectors knew what they were about. If their adventure was to succeed at all, they conceived that it could succeed only if tried on an Imperial scale. The Irish might prove too strong for them, if they could gather on their flanks and were left with harbours through which they could bring in the Spaniards. They insisted that they must have the whole coast-line from the mouth of the Shannon to Cork harbour included in their grant. They would then have but a single frontier to defend on the short line from Cork to Limerick.2 Wild as this project may appear at first acquaintance with it, nevertheless, if to extinguish an entire people be to solve the problem of governing them, it promised better for the settlement 1 Petition of sundry her Majesty's good subjects, Feb. 12, 1569.-MSS. Ireland. 2 Settlement of Munster, April 1569, with side notes by Cecil.MSS. Ireland. |