their deep-rooted hatred to the Protestant state, formed a strong bond of union between them; but much to the honour of the Earl of Ormond, he remained loyal. During this dreadful rebellion, frequent and successful applications were made to the Pope, and the King of Spain, for assistance; and the latter, to whom his Holiness had given the Queen's dominions, sent Juan Mendoza, an ecclesiastic, as his agent to Ireland, where he contributed very much to foment the rebellion; in consequence of which no less than three Spanish armies invaded Ireland. One of them landed at Smerwick, in the county of Kerry, where they were joined by great numbers of the Irish, to which they were incited by a Papal bull, addressed to the prelates, princes, nobles, and people of Ireland; and such of them as assisted Fitzmaurice in recovering their liberties, and in defending the holy church, were promised plenary indulgence, and a full absolution from their sins; and they received a consecrated banner from the Pope.Saunders and Allen, two Jesuits, who were the leading incendiaries in this rebellion, hallowed the place where the Spaniards encamped, and gave them assurance of success in defence of the holy church.Sir Nicholas Malby attacked them, and their Irish adherents, at a place called Monaster Neva, where they were drawn up with the Papal standard displayed. Previous to the engagement, which ended in their defeat with great slaughter, Allen, like father Murphy at the battle of Arklow in 1798, went through the ranks, exhorting them, distributing his benedictions, and assuring them of success against the enemies of their holv faith. The bodyof this pious hero was found among the slain, and in his baggage several papers, containing the most convincing proof that the Earl of Desmond was principally concerned in exciting this rebellion* ; and yet such was his dissimulation, that he wrote a letter of congratulation to Sir Nicholas Malby on his victory, in which he advised him to change his position. Instead of proceeding to extremities against him, Sir Nicholas endeavoured to persuade him to return to his allegiance, reminded him of the many promises and engagements which he had made and violated to the Queen, and exhorted him to prevent the total ruin of his ancient and noble family. Sir Wm. Pelham, afterwards Lord Deputy, did the like, and even employed the Earl of Ormond to dissuade him from his treasonable designs. But his generous applications were answered by complaints of ideal grievances and injuries, and accompanied with threats of involving the whole kingdom in confusion. Saunders the Jesuit, his ghostly adviser and constant attendant, prevented him from availing himself of the royal mercy, by assuring him that his pious exertions for the extirpation of heresy, would, with the divine assistance, be * We have been circumstantial in delineating this invasion, as the incidents attending it, resemble strongly those which took place on the descent of the French under Humbert. finally finally crowned with success; and the delusive suggestions of this fanatical incendiary, operating on his superstitious credulity, occasioned the total extinction of his illustrious House, and the confiscation of his immense property. The Fitzgeralds, the Butlers, the Fitzmaurices, the Parvs, the Ro hes, the M'Carthys of Munster, the O'Briens, O'Moores, Cavanaghs, O'Tooles, and the O'Byrns of Leinster, the De Burghes and O'Donnels of Connaught, and the O'Neals of Ulster, and their vassals, tenants and relations, were engaged in this extensive rebellion, which laid waste and depopulated a great part of Ireland. The following extract from the edict of James M. Fitzgerald, its chief leader and instigator, proves that it was founded in religious bigotry; and this title is prefixed to it" Edictum illustrissimi domini Jacobi F. de justitia ejus belli, quod pro fide gerit." After announcing that it was undertaken "for the glory of God, and of the Catholic church, the extirpation of heresv, and the establishment of the Pope's supremacy," it states-" and as Christ gave the keys of heaven to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Gregory the 13th, his lawful successor, chose me Captain-general of this war, as sufficiently appears by his letters; and the more, as his predecessor, Pius V. had deprived Elizabeth, the patroness of those heresies, of all royal power and dominion, of which his sentence against her affords abundant testimony." The province of Munster was so depopulated and laid waste in the course of this rebellion by the sword, famine, and the diseases incident to warfare, that Spencer, secretary to Lord Grey observes, "there was little left Queen Elizabeth to reign over, but miserable carcasses, and the ashes of sacked and destroyed towns." Near 150 gentlemen were attainted by Act of Parliament. Moryson observes, "Upon the attainder of the said Earl of Des mond and his confederates, the lands falling to the Crown were, in acres of English measure, about 574,628. Hereof great part was restored to the offenders, as to Patrick Condon his territory, to the White Knight his territory, to some of the Geraldines, and to other their confederates no small portions. The rest was divided into seignories, granted by letters patent to certain knights and esquires, which upon this gift, and the conditions whereunto they were tied, had the common name of undertakers*." Such was the lenity of Government, that the whole was restored to repentant rebels, except 237,670 acres.† It is much to be lamented, that in the settlement of Munster, on this occasion, the wise system embraced by James I. in colonizing the North with English Protestants, was not adopted; for in consequence of it, many parts of the province of Ulster are not inferior to England in social order, and in active and useful industry, whilst the three other provinces exhibit a most woeful contrast to it. The + Ibid. * Pages 4, 5. following following reflections of Moryson are a clear illustration of this, and the truth of them is but too strongly felt even in our own times."These undertakers did not people their seignories, granted them and their heirs by patent (as they were bound, with well affected English, but either sold them to English Papists (such as were most turbulent, and so being daily troubled and questioned by the English magistrates, were likely to give the most money for the Irish land); neither did they build castles, and do other things (according to their covenants) for the public good, but only sought their private ends, and so this her Majesty's bounty to them turned not to the strengthening, but rather to the weakening of the English government in that province of Munster." Moryson further observes," and to speak the truth, Munster undertakers aboye mentioned, were in great part cause of this defection, and of their own fatal miseries. For whereas they should have built castles, and brought over colonies of English, and have admitted no Irish tenant, but only English, these and like covenants were in no part performed by them. Of whom the best men of quality never came over, but made profit of the land; others brought over no more English than their own families, and all entertained Irish servants and tenants, who were now the first to betray them ↑." It is observable, that the leading features of all the rebellions in Ireland, since the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, have been the same. In 1641 the Popish servants and tenants betrayed their Protestant masters; they did so in 1689, and their treachery was notorious in 1798.Moryson tells us, that "the rebels in Munster had taken a solemn oath at the public cross in that province, to be stedfast in rebellion ‡." In the year 1644, the confederate Catholics assembled at Kilkenny, prescribed an oath of association §, and the Popish priests were ordered to exhibit it to their flocks. The same took place in 1689; and it is well known that the black, or bloody oath, enjoining the extirpation of heretics, was taken in, and previous to the year 1798. The Popish priests were the chief instigators in these rebellions, during which the foreign enemies of the empire were invited to assist the natives in separating Ireland from England; oaths of allegiance were uniformly disregarded, as much as in the year 1798, because, by the fundamental principles of their religion, enjoined by their general councils, they are considered as null and void, when taken to a Pro- testant state. Notwithstanding the forbearance of the English government, and the singular clemency which the natives experienced during this rebellion, raised by the Fitzgeralds, Mr. Plowden, with his usual acrimony against the Protestant state, makes the following observations-"From this time is to be dated the commencement of that unparalleled system of confiscation and depopulation, which being in its nature Moryson, page 5. + Ibid. 26. + Page 33. diametrically diametrically opposite from that of union*, pointedly marks the evils which so long afflicted Ireland, from the want of this salutary measure. In order to extirpate the aboriginal owners of the soil, transpose the property, and alter the very face of the country, Elizabeth now entered on her favourite scheme of planting and re-peopling Munster with an English colony." "Whether in this (as in more recent instances) the system of mildness, or that of rigour, were ultimately more conducive to the welfare of the state, will ever be controverted by the respective advocates for moderation or terrorism." The third great rebellion in Elizabeth's reign was raised in the year 1595, by Hugh O'Neal, spurious son of Matthew O'Neal, Baron of Dungannon, and nephew of Shane, or John O'Neal, the traitor. He entered, at an early period of life, into the service of government as an officer; and had acquired polished manners by an English education. By his insinuating manners, and his flattery of the Queen, he prevailed on her to confer on him the family estate and the title of Tyrone. Under the mask of gratitude and loyalty, he harboured inveterate hatred and treasonable designs against the government; and the following artifice enabled him to carry them into practice. He insidiously offered to maintain a body of troops in his province, to preserve the peace, and prevent insurrections; and his offer having been incautiously accepted, he by changing them often instructed great numbers of his adherents in military discipline, with a view of making them subservient to his traiterous purposes. Such was his hypocrisy, that after he had embarked in rebellion, and had sent missionaries to Spain for assistance, he made the warmest assurances of loyalty; he wrote letters to the Earl of Kiklare to seduce him from his allegiance, and to solicit his co-operation. This rebellion, which lasted till the year 1602, laid waste and depopulated a great part of the North, and at last occasioned much carnage and desolation in the province of Munster; of which Fynes Moryson, sceretary to Lord Mountjoy, Lord Deputy of Ireland, gives in various parts of his Itinerary a woeful description. In speaking of the county of Tyrone he says, "having with our eyes daily seen the lamentable estate of the countrie, wherein we found every where men dead of famine, insomuch that O'Hagan protested unto us, that between Tullogh Oge and Toome, there lay unburied a thousand dead; and that since our first drawing this year to Blackwater, there were about 3000 starved Mr. Plowden acknowledges, in his Postliminous Preface, that he was paid by the Minister of England to write such a history as would reconcile the Irish to the Union, and attach them to the British nation. But as he has done the reverse, by endeavouring to inflame and exasperate the Irish against them, by giving a false and exaggerated statement of their sufferings from the tyranny and cruelty of the English government, it is believed, and not doubted, but that he has received higher wages from very different masters. in in Tyrone. And sure the poor people of these parts never yet had the means to know God, or to acknowledge any other sovereign than the O'Neals, which makes me more commiserate them, and hope better of them hereafter *." In the progress of this rebellion, the conduct of this arch-traitor Tyrone exhibited dreadful proofs of perfidy, aggravated by perjury; for he obtained pardon no less than five times, in consequence of having submitted and taken oaths of allegiance, which he never hesitated to violate; and he constantly amused government with propositions for truces and armistices, to which he never adhered. The reader may judge of the baseness of this traitor, from the following instance of his treachery. In the year 1598 he solicited pardon, with that degree of humility which indicated sincere contrition, and it was granted to him in the most solemn manner under the great seal. Soon after he attacked the English at Black water unawares, when they were lulled into a supine and fatal security, and killed 1500 soldiers, and thirteen valiant officers, with Sir Henry Bagnall, the Marshal who commanded them; and Moryson observes, that "many of them were of the old companies, which had served in Brittany under General Norris †.” Many such instances of his perfidy occurred. The mistaken lenity of government, occasioned by the credulity of the Queen, in placing any reliance on the feigned repentance and dutiful submission of rebels, was the real cause that this destructive rebellion was not sooner put an end to. Besides the following observation, Moryson frequently mentions this, in his very excellent work, and he was an eye witness of it. "Lastly, the rebellion was nourished and increased, by nothing more than frequent protections and pardons, granted even to those who had formerly abused this mercy, so as all entered and continued to be rebels, with assurance to be received to mercy at their pleasure, whereof they spared not to brag, and this heartened the rebel, no less than it discouraged the subject t." The Queen was so sensible of this, and enraged at the perfidious conduct of the native Irish in abusing the royal mercy, that she at last said, in a letter to Mountjoy, by nourishing the Irish who are snakes in our bosom, whilst we hold them, and when they are out, do convert upon ourselves, the experience and strength they have gotten by our making them to be soldiers. We find it now grown to a common opinion, that it is as good to be a rebel as a subject §." Moryson, in speaking of Sir Richard Bingham, governor of Connaught, says, "howsoever, himself very well experienced in the country, and those who best understood the Irish nature, found nothing so necessary for keeping them in obedience as severity, nor so dangerous for the increase of murders and outrages, as indulgence towards them ." 66 It appears that Tyrone, during his delusive assurances of loyalty, * Folio edition of 1617, p. 237. + Moryson, p. 24, 255 Moryson, p. 56. Ibid. p. 17. constantly |