1560 and whose directions she generally obeyed. The papers he left behind him are voluminous, and bear abundant testimony to his habits of application and business; but they display no trace of original genius, lofty and generous feeling, or enlightened views and commanding intellect. He had a cool temper, a sound judgment, and a constant eye to the main chance. Expediency was the poie-star of his policy. "He never deserted his friends till it was very inconvenient to stand by them, was an excellent Protestant when it was not advantageous to be a Papist, recommended a tolerant policy to his mistress as strongly as he could recommend it without hazarding her favour, never put to the rack any person from whom it did not seem probable that useful information might be derived, and was so moderate in his desires, that he left only 300 distinct landed estates," though he might have left much more. He left behind him, at court, his younger son, Sir Robert Cecil, who, walking in the footsteps of his father, gradually supplanted every competitor, and became to Elizabeth, long before her death, the chief depository of the royal authority. › IV. IRISH AFFAIRS. 62. The Reformation in Ireland. The ancient national animosities, which had always produced such mischiefs in Ireland, were exceedingly exasperated by the Reformation. No sooner had Henry VIII. established his royal supremacy in England than he proceeded, as a natural consequence, to establish it in Ireland. But in that island the reformers had made no progress; the Irish priests, being natives, had little or no intercourse with their bishops, who were generally English; a total ignorance and neglect prevailed in the church, so much so, that it is even found impossible to recover the succession of bishops in some sees. Hence, the clergy resisted the Act of Supremacy, and, although the English liturgy was ordered by a royal proclamation, it was not used, and never authorised by parliament, because the government feared to summon that assembly. When Mary ascended the throne, she restored tranquillity in religious matters, for the Protestants were too few to be worth persecution. But Elizabeth caused another revolution to be made; and the Earl of Sussex, the lord deputy, summoned a parliament in 1560, which enacted that the Irish church should be reformed after the model of the English church. Both the nobility and the people were hostile to the change, but the bishops unexpectedly supported the government; and pains had been taken to secure a majority in * Macaulay's Essay. + Moore's Ireland, IV., 21-22. CHAP. V. the Commons, by sending writs only to those counties and towns which were under the influence of the crown. The English Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were passed, and the Common Prayer set up instead of the mass; but in those parts of the country where the minister had no knowledge of the English language, it was provided, by a singular reservation, that he might read the service in Latin ! The effects of this measure were deplorable. The number of reformers was so small, that the Irish church became "a government without subjects, a college of shepherds without sheep ;"* scarce any pains were taken to win the people's conviction, or to eradicate their superstitions, except by penal statutes and the sword; the Irish language was universally spoken without the Pale, it had made great progress within it, and the clergy were chiefly natives; yet no translation of the Scriptures, nor even of the liturgy, was made, and the Catholic clergy were forcibly dispossessed as in England. Therefore, the rebellious spirit of the Irish was considerably aggravated, and the great chiefs took advantage of it to revolt against the government, and re-establish their ancient, unlicensed chieftainship. But independent of these religious motives, there were other circumstances to which we must attribute the insurrections during Elizabeth's reign ; "the spoliation of property by violence or pretext of law, the sudden executions on alleged treasons, the breaches of treaty, sometimes even the assassination, by which a despotic policy went onward in its work of subjugation." The great families, also, were, by mismanagement and dissension, the curse of their vassals; the estates of the Earls of Ormond, Desmond, and Clanricarde, in the southern and western counties, were in a wretched condition; the long feuds between the first two of these chieftains kept the whole province of Munster in a state of perpetual ferment; the O'Byrnes, the Tooles, and the Cavenaghs, 'those old scourges of the English Pale," harrassed Leinster with incessant inroads; the province of Connaught was a prey to the strife and jealousies constantly kept alive between the Clanricardes and the De Burghs; while Ulster, which was now the battleground on which both English and Irish misrule were contending for supremacy, was exposed to the incessant invasions of the Island Scots. Such being the causes of internal discord, we can form some adequate notion of the task which devolved upon Elizabeth's ministers, of bringing this chaos of conflicting elements into any form of order and peace.‡ *Hallam's Const. Hist., II., 259. + Ibid, II., 530, Moore's Ireland, IV., 25-26; Hallam's Const. Hist., II., 531-532, 1565-76 63. Rebellion of Shane O'Neil. Among the aboriginal Irish, the jealousy of the government was chiefly excited by Shane O'Neil, the eldest son of the Earl of Tyrone. Henry VIII. had granted the succession to Matthew, his bastard brother; but Shane claimed the chieftainry of Ulster, and the natives acknowledged him. At the suggestion of the Earl of Sussex, then lord deputy, he visited Elizabeth's court (January, 1562), attended by his galloglasses, or foot soldiers, who formed his body guard. But the Queen did not confirm his claim, though she promised him favour. In 1565, he rose in rebellion, because the English government refused to grant him a peerage; repeated losses compelled him to seek refuge among the Scots of Ulster, his deadly enemies, by whom he was murdered while carousing with their chief (July, 1567). His name and dignity were immediately extinguished by act of parliament; to assume it was made high treason; and his lands, together with those of his adherents, comprising one-half of Ulster, were vested in the crown. fall of this great chieftain, however, did not secure peace to Ireland; for local wars raged all over the country, and, therefore, Sir Thomas Smith, the secretary, proposed that all the forfeited districts should be colonized with English settlers, who, having an interest in the soil, would oppose the natives, without expense to the crown. This new plan was viewed with horror by both the native Irish and the English, and it failed in consequence of the endless and destructive wars which broke out between the settlers and the natives; and Sir Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, father of the favourite, perished through the anxiety caused by the ill success which attended his attempts to plant a colony in Ulster (September, 1576).* The 64. Rebellion of the Earl of Desmond. When Pius V. issued his famous bull, depriving Elizabeth of all right to the English crown, he made no mention of Ireland. His successor, Gregory XIII., supplied the omission, and Thomas Stukely and James Fitzmaurice, undertook to carry the new bull into effect. Stukely was an English adventurer of strange life and fortune, who, having failed in an enterprise for the discovery of "certain lands in the far west, towards Terra Florida," sold his services, first to the Queen and Sir Henry Sidney, the lord deputy,; then to the kingdom of Spain; and now to the Pope. He obtained the command of a small expedition from the Pontiff; but when he arrived at Lisbon to join Fitzmaurice, he immediately offered his services to. Sebastian, King of Portugal, and perished in the * Lingard, VIII., 128; Moore's Ireland, IV., 75-79. CHAP. V. company of that prince at the battle of Alcazar, in Africa (August 4th, 1578). Fitzmaurice was the brother of the Earl of Desmond, and an inveterate enemy to the English government. For more than two years he had personally solicited the aid of every Catholic sovereign in Europe, on behalf of his oppressed countrymen ; and at length he obtained a small force from the Pope, and the King of Spain, with which he took possession of the small fort of Smerwick, near Kerry. But the natives did not repair to his standard as he expected; he fell in a private quarrel with one of his kinsmen, and the invaders sought an asylum among the retainers of the Earl of Desmond. This nobleman was immediately proclaimed a traitor, and his dominions were plundered by the English; but he defeated Lord Grey de Wilton, the new deputy, in the Vale of Glendalough, and soon afterwards, 700 Spaniards landed at Smerwick, and intrenched themselves. They were immediately besieged by sea and land, and compelled to surrender at discretion; and they were all massacred in cold blood, under the superintendence of Sir Walter Raleigh (November 11th, 1580). This terrible act of severity extinguished the last hopes of Desmond; for three years he dragged on a miserable existence among the glens and forests, and on one occasion he and his countess had to escape from their pursuers by immersing themselves in a river, amongst the thick bushes on its bank. He was at last found alone in a miserable hut, lying before a wood fire; his head was struck off and sent to Elizabeth, who caused it to be placed on London Bridge (1583). 65. Vigorous administration of Sir John Perrot. It was during these proceedings that the poet Spenser was secretary in Ireland. The Arthegal of his Faerie Queen, the representative of the virtue of Justice, attended by Talus, with his iron flail, is meant for Lord Grey, whose severity in the government of Ireland was such, that Elizabeth was told he had left little for her to reign over but ashes and carcases. His successor, Sir John Perrot, supposed to be an illegitimate son of Henry VIII., held the government from 1584 to 1587, and was distinguished for his humanity and justice, as well as for the strict impartiality with which he administered the law to the English and the Irish. During his administration, the earldom of Desmond was colonized by English settlers; sheriffs were appointed for the five counties into which Connaught had been divided, and also for Ulster. He reduced Ireland to a state of tranquillity, hitherto unknown in its annals; but his strict rule excited the enmity of the English; 1591-99 he soon fell a sacrifice to court intrigue and the Queen's jealousy; and he died in the Tower of a broken heart (December, 1591). Great defeat of the English at Blackwater 66. Rebellion of O'Neil: the Earl of Essex lord-deputy. Among the native Irish who had distinguished themselves in the war against the Earl of Desmond, was Hugh O'Neil, the son of that Matthew O'Neil, Baron of Dungannon, who claimed the title of O'Neil in opposition to Shane. In reward of his services, he had been made Earl of Tyrone, the title which Henry VIII. had conferred on his grandfather Con O'Neil; but he soon afterwards assumed the forbidden title of O'Neil, and thus openly renounced the hollow loyalty which he had hitherto professed. His revolt endangered, far more than any preceding rebellion, the English sovereignty over Ireland. After some hostilities on the banks of the Blackwater, he suddenly submitted, in the hope of evading the punishment due to his rebellion (1596); but he had, in the meantime, entered into negotiations with Spain, and his hopes of obtaining aid from thence having revived, he at once renewed his hostilities, reduced Blackwater fort, and utterly defeated a large English force sent to relieve the place (August 14th, 1598). This victory, in which the English lost more men than in any battle they had fought since their first landing in the island, roused all the native chieftains; the O'Neil was hailed as the liberator of his country, and the Pope and the King of Spain encouraged him to further efforts by the most liberal promises. In this alarming state of affairs, the Earl of Essex was appointed lord deputy, and was invested with Essex larger powers than had been conferred on any of his lord deputy predecessors (March, 1599). His first act, after his arrival in Ireland, was in direct contradiction to the royal will; he appointed his friend, the Earl of Southampton, to the command of the cavalry; and the results of his government formed a most lamentable sequel to the great preparations which had been made. The army he took with him was the largest which had ever landed in Ireland; but, instead of grappling at once with the strength of the rebellion, by marching directly into the north, he made an idle march through Munster, as far as Limerick, and captured Cork and Waterford. At the end of three months, when he marched against Tyrone, instead of fighting that chieftain, he concluded a truce with him, and agreed to transmit his demands to the Queen, the most important of which was, that the Catholic worship should be tolerated. When the Queen heard of these proceedings of her favourite, she sent him an angry letter, which so affected the earl, that he repaired immediately to England, appointed |