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Fitzgibbon goes to France, and negotiates with England

Finding that no expedition left Vigo, and that the King trusted Stukeley more than him, Fitzgibbon determined to see what he could do in France. At Bordeaux he was received with honour by the bishop, who gave him a horse to ride during his stay. On arriving at Paris he was at once waited on by Captain Thomas, a native of the Pale in the French service, who offered him such courtesies as were in the English Ambassador’s power. He asked and received an introduction to the Cardinal of Lorraine, to whom he manifested his own importance and the weakness of Ireland. Thomas, who had access to the Cardinal, let him know that Ireland was strong enough to resist a multitude – a statement which would have been hardly borne out by Sidney or Fitzwilliam. With better reason the captain reminded his Eminence that Fitzgibbon was a Geraldine, and that the heads of that House were in prison. The Cardinal’s demeanour then became cool, and the poor Archbishop began to think that after all Queen Elizabeth might be his best card. A second Irish soldier was appointed to watch him, and to report anything of importance that he might let fall. The Queen would not promise to restore him to his see, but was willing to pardon him, and to give him as good a living in Ireland. If Walsingham thought him insincere, he was to pump every possible secret out of him, and then try to get him given up by the French King as a rebel. The Archbishop’s terms were a pardon under the Great Seal, restoration to his see, and license to go back to Ireland with eight companions; in consideration of which he was ready to be a loyal subject, and to let her Majesty have all ‘news.’ Being pressed to substitute ‘secrets’ for ‘news,’ he said he was very unwilling to do anything which might deprive him of a future asylum in Spain or elsewhere. Should the Queen think fit to restore him to his country and place – he said nothing about the lost pall – he would show to Walsingham in writing ‘both the names of the conspiracy, and also the remedy.’ But Elizabeth would not hear of his returning to Ireland except by way of England, and he was far too wary for that.

Later movements of Fitzgibbon

He sought an interview with Anjou, but here Captain Thomas was before him, and told the French prince that Ireland was poor, and only an expense to the Queen, and that the Archbishop was of small credit, having been banished for brawling. Monsieur then sent the exiled prelate two hundred crowns, and said he was afraid he should not have time to see him. Fitzgibbon seemed for a moment inclined to go to England, and sue for pardon; but ‘sinister practices’ prevented this, if it had ever been seriously intended. The Archbishop went off to Nantes and afterwards found his way to Scotland, where he suffered imprisonment. Returning again to the Continent, he continued to intrigue against Elizabeth, and died at Oporto in 1578 without having effected anything of importance. Captain Thomas continued to draw his sixteen crowns per month from the French Government, and received thanks from Queen Elizabeth, but she does not seem to have conferred those substantial rewards at which Walsingham hinted. She had conveniently discovered in the course of the intrigue that the Archbishop was not of much importance, and that he was no relation to the Earl of Devon.²⁰⁷

CHAPTER XXIX.
1571 and 1572

Fitzwilliam cannot govern without money, 1571

Sidney was looked upon as the proper Viceroy for stormy times, and to him money and troops were given grudgingly and of necessity, for he would not go to Ireland without them. Fitzwilliam was but a stop-gap, thrown into the place to serve a turn, as he bitterly expressed it. ‘For God’s sake,’ he cried, ‘let me be rid of Ireland or I perish.’ Arthur Lord Grey was chosen for the perilous post, but the appointment did not then take place, because the Queen differed from him as to a sum of 2,000l. It would all, said Fitzwilliam, have been spent in her service, and she would lose ten times the sum by denying it. Of money, indeed, there was a most grievous want. The magazines were empty. The captains were almost openly mutinous. The men were in rags and ready to desert, being forced in the meantime to sell their arms for sheer want. The victuallers were unpaid and had struck work. The Lord Chancellor’s salary was at least two years in arrears. Grey was taken seriously ill at the thought of being forced to go to Ireland on the Queen’s terms, and Sidney positively refused to return. Fitzwilliam had therefore to remain, and to make the best of it. He received the title of Lord Deputy, but neither more men nor more money than when he held the less exalted post of Lord Justice.²⁰⁸

Perrott is ill-supported. Ormonde

After his failure at Castlemaine, Perrott said that the work of ‘trotting the mountains’ was not suited to English soldiers. He had been promised two hundred kerne at sixpence a day, but had received neither the men nor the pay. He could not do without them, even if he had to keep them at his own cost. The only real way of restoring order was to be in two places at once, as Governor and as general; that being impossible, he must have such a force as would bear dividing. ‘To follow the kerne from wood to wood your Lordship knows the soldiers are far unable. Therefore, if I should do any good here, I must have kerne against kerne, and gallowglass against gallowglass, and trained men to do what they may for the stand.’ Limerick, the garden of Munster, was too much impoverished to support an army, and the men were in dysentery from always eating beef without bread or vegetables, not forty horsemen being fit for service. The Privy Council, who had promised two hundred kerne, now murmured at being asked for a bare hundred, and the fiery President declared that he would never trust them, nor do anything in their faith again. From Ormonde alone, whom he ‘ever loved and honoured,’ did he get any real help, and he was not always satisfied that even Ormonde did his best to prosecute the rebels, for he urged him to divide his men into four divisions, and then to leave Fitzmaurice no resting-place. But even while chiding the Earl for inaction, Perrott admitted that want of provisions was a fair excuse.²⁰⁹

It is proposed to restore the Desmonds. General misery in Munster

In his extremity Perrott was driven to ask that Sir John of Desmond might be sent over. In the absence of the Earl Sir John would then be leader of the Geraldines, and would draw all away from James Fitzmaurice. The people of the ‘poor, ruinous town of Kinsale,’ as they called themselves, begged for both brothers to help the President in saving them from the fate of Kilmallock. They of Youghal, who had yet to learn of what Desmond was capable, urged the same request. They complained of being shut up within their walls, in hourly fear of assault, and crushed by the cost of a garrison in which they had no confidence. They were worn with watching; no one could spend a night at home. Rich and poor were in the same plight, and the young would soon be as weak as the old already were. Their chance of food depended on the precarious herring fishery.

Desmond and his brother, they said, ‘in their time did right well govern these parts,’ and their return would send James Fitzmaurice beyond the seas. For Sidney they longed no less than for Desmond. Perrott was entirely against the restoration of the Earl, thinking that his further detention in London would secure the good behaviour of his brother. He advised that the Earl and Countess, who were prisoners at large, should be shut up in the Tower for a year, so as to take away all hope of their return. This, he thought, would encourage the Geraldine chiefs to make separate terms. Sir John might then be safely sent over, security having been first taken for his good behaviour. ‘I hear,’ said Perrott, ‘he is a decent gentleman.’ Fitzwilliam, who saw Munster pretty much through Ormonde’s eyes, was equally against both. ‘God keep both Sir John of Desmond and base money out of Ireland, yet are they both at the seaside to come over, if brutes be true.’²¹⁰

Perrott proposes to decide the war by a duel

Most people who study the acts of Sir John Perrott will probably be of opinion that he was a wise and honest man, if not always prudent for himself. But he now indulged in such an act of folly as can hardly be matched, even in the annals of Irish misgovernment. He could not catch James Fitzmaurice, and therefore he challenged him, resolving, if possible, to end the war at one blow. Had the weapons been those of the tilt-yard, the Queen’s old champion might have been pretty sure of victory, but Fitzmaurice, who at first encouraged the President’s idea, insisted upon sword and target and Irish trousers for both sides. Perrott agreed, and provided a pair of scarlet trousers for himself. Then Fitzmaurice objected to single combat, and proposed that there should be fifty a side. It was finally agreed that each party should consist of twelve horse and twelve foot, ‘with indifferent armour and weapon.’ Edward Butler was one of those picked on the President’s side. Perrott wrote to Ormonde to borrow his horse, and begged him to attend with all his force, evidently thinking that there was a danger of foul play. ‘I trust very shortly,’ he told the Earl, ‘to make end of this war, and to overthrow the rest of these Geraldines, which do so much annoy her Majesty’s subjects. My lord, I have promised that there shall be no hurt done unto him by any of your lordship’s men, until such time as the day be past, and I have promised him peace, that no man shall hurt him, nor none of his, till this matter be tried. And so he likewise hath promised to do the like unto all her Majesty’s subjects.’²¹¹

Ormonde at his wit’s end. Fitzmaurice refuses to fight

It is not surprising that Ormonde was ‘almost at his wit’s end’ on receiving this extraordinary letter from his old brother-in-arms. ‘The manner of the President’s dealing herein is strange to me. I will stay his lordship (if I can by any means) from this attempt, and will with all my heart join with him myself and my company, to fight against the traitor and his whole company, rather than he should so barely hazard himself with so few… God send us a good hour against these villains.’²¹² He may have intended treachery and been foiled by Ormonde’s action, or he may have suspected treachery; but the message he sent by his Irish poet gave a very good reason for not coming. ‘If I should kill Sir John Perrott, the Queen of England can send another President into this province; but if he do kill me, there is none other to succeed me, or to command as I do, therefore I will not willingly fight with him, and so tell him from me.’ In the most disturbed times in modern Ireland officials, even policemen, have often been protected by the same consideration. Perrott, however, was very angry, and resolved to ‘hunt the fox out of his hole,’ regretting, as well he might, that he had wasted so much time and played into the hands of his crafty foe.²¹³

Colonisation of Ulster. Sir Thomas Smith, 1572

The failure of colonisation projects in Munster did not prevent the Queen from listening to those who imagined that they could found private principalities in Ireland. The district of Ards, in what is now the County of Down, being almost surrounded by the sea, was by its position well suited for such an experiment. On the north-west a land frontier of barely ten miles might seem to require no great number of defenders. Various offers were made, those of Secretary Smith being accepted by Elizabeth. Tremayne, who foresaw the commotion that would be caused by any scheme of colonisation, was in favour of a more extended experiment; but strongly advised that the Queen should appear as the patroness of a country already her own, and not as a conqueror. The people should be told that their rights would not be infringed, and this should be published everywhere in the Irish language. Had Sir Thomas Smith taken this advice he would still have had many difficulties to encounter; but he did not take it, and the Ulster Irish had their first notice from a pamphlet written in English and published in London. Sir Thomas thought that ‘the little book was evil done,’ but was induced to agree to its being put forth by his son, who was to have the actual direction of the business, and whom he was even content to lose in the glorious work of reconquering the Queen’s land without burden to her or to the English State. The writer of the pamphlet, whether young Smith or another, set forth at length the historical reasons why the English power had waned in Ireland, and proposed to restore it by colonisation. A permanent garrison was to be established, and ‘every soldier to be made master of his own land, to him and his heirs for ever.’ It was supposed that 600 or 700 men would be enough, and that the penniless younger sons, who could no longer fall back on the decent idleness of the abbeys, would seize upon this golden opportunity. The examples chosen to prove how easily a small English force might overcome a larger body of Irish were singularly inapplicable to a plan of colonisation. It was true that Gilbert with 100 men had driven the Munster rebels before him, that Collyer with one company had discomfited 1,000 Redshanks, that Randolph with 300 had beaten 3,000 O’Neills before Derry. But it was equally true that the rebels were as strong as ever when Gilbert’s back was turned, that Scots continued to pour in, and that the settlement at Derry was abandoned. It was argued that 300 horse and 400 foot would be enough to settle the Ards, and their pay would amount to 10,000l. a year. For the first three years they were to pay no rent for their holdings, after which it was estimated that they would be self-supporting. How Sir Thomas Smith could imagine that private adventurers would lend 10,000l. a year without interest for three years, upon the security of Irish land still unconquered, may well puzzle us; but sanguine hope was a characteristic of the sixteenth century.

‘Many shall say,’ the candid pamphleteer admits, ‘that they shall go into a place where they shall want meat, housing, and all things necessary, for that no prince yet hath been able to victual their army … that the soldier is always constrained to march through the bogs and rivers, and in the night to lodge upon the grass without meat and fire. This is indeed a great misery … but consider the difference that is between the Deputy’s journey who seeketh to apprehend the rebels’ bodies … and his enterprise, who desireth the land only.’²¹⁴

The O’Neills are alarmed

Whatever English adventurers may have thought of Thomas Smith and his pamphlet, there was nothing in the movement which could possibly be pleasing to the Irish. The Norman family of Savage had from early times enjoyed dominion in the Ards, and their title to considerable estates in the southern half had been acknowledged in 1559. It was evidently not intended to interfere with them, and though pretty thoroughly Hibernicised, they seem on the whole to have favoured Smith’s enterprise. Had the plan been strictly confined to the peninsula, and adequately supported until the cultivation of wastes became profitable, a small English Pale might have been created in Ulster. But Sir Brian MacPhelim O’Neill, chief of a clan which had long lorded it over the southern part of Antrim and the northern part of Down, took fright at once. Even in the Ards he claimed superiority, and he rightly guessed that Smith’s operations would extend further. Old Captain Piers at Carrickfergus promptly reminded the Lord Deputy that it was the nature of Irishmen to let land lie idle rather than to see others work, and that the Clandeboye O’Neills had been too long loose to brook the curb easily. Piers circulated a letter purporting to be a copy of one sent by the Lord Deputy, and denying the whole story; ‘but the truth,’ he added, ‘will soon be known, in spite of my feigning.’ He advised Fitzwilliam to gain time by pretending that the intruders were brought in entirely against the Scots, and to take timely pledges from Sir Brian MacPhelim. He would do his best; but when all shifts were exhausted the Irish would revolt, and the result was only too certain.²¹⁵

Sir Brian MacPhelim O’Neill

Fitzwilliam himself reported that the immediate effect of the pamphlet had been to strengthen the Scots, whose alliance all the Northern tribes now sought, and that a common danger had made O’Donnell and O’Neill friends. The expense of restoring peace was likely to be greater than any private interest could warrant. Sir Brian MacPhelim pleaded his own cause with considerable force. He had served Sussex, Croft, and Sidney faithfully, and had lately borne the whole cost of victualling Carrickfergus; and the Queen, ignorant as he believed of his daily usefulness, was now about to give away his inheritance to Saxons. In her service he had spent more cows and horses than were in any one English county, and so it should always be while he was left in command. Clandeboye had been in the hands of his family for fourteen generations, and he now begged for a royal grant in consideration of faithful service from his childhood. Whatever may have been the Queen’s actual intention towards Sir Brian MacPhelim and the other Irish, it is clear that no good was intended them. Smith covenanted to suppress all rebels not only in Ards but in Clandeboye, to divide the lands among the adventurers, and not to sell to any Irishman or Scot. English settlers were forbidden, except by royal license, to intermarry with Irish or Scots, and they were all bound to attend the Deputy anywhere in Ulster for forty days.

Vain attempts to reassure Sir Brian

Fitzwilliam vainly tried to explain away Smith’s project: for all answer the unlucky pamphlet was laid before him. Smith himself would fain have counteracted by a letter the mischief done by his ‘books spread in print.’ He said he was not coming to rob Sir Phelim, but to help that loyal chief, and he was willing to have any points in which their interests might differ decided by a lawful judge rather than by an appeal to arms. As a beginning of friendship he begged Sir Brian to be the protector of his people. The language was not ill chosen, and had it been followed by wise action, the scheme might yet have succeeded. The Queen also wrote to Sir Brian, promising, in language which ‘gladded’ him, that his lands should not be taken away. Had Sir Brian and his friends been frankly invited, as Tremayne advised, to co-operate with the Queen in a well-designed scheme for planting some thinly peopled districts within the Earldom of Ulster, they might perhaps have been friendly, though even that is very doubtful: managed as it was, the project was foredoomed to failure.²¹⁶

Fitzwilliam has no money

Fitzwilliam did not cease to beg for his recall or for men and money to do something worthy of the place which he was forced to fill. In his office of Vice-Treasurer he had incurred debt to the Crown, and if only allowed to go back to England he would sell Milton to pay them. In the meantime Ireland lay at the mercy of a foreign enemy. Let but 6,000 Spaniards land, and the loss would be as irrevocable as that of Calais, nor would the Narrow Seas be any longer safe. Fitzwilliam supposed that Sidney was his enemy at Court; but the friendly tone of Leicester’s letters makes this unlikely, and it is probable that the real difficulty was with the Queen. Still the late and present Deputies differed widely about the respective merits of Butlers and Geraldines. Ormonde had often begged Elizabeth not to hear his accusers in his absence; and Sidney may have reported against him, for he was now sent for. This was too much for Fitzwilliam’s endurance. The South, he said, always was tickly, Ormonde only could manage it, and in short he could not be spared.²¹⁷

The Queen reduces the army

A loyal Irishman

Ulster was greatly excited by colonisation rumours, and multitudinous hordes of Scots, introduced by Tirlogh Luineach and his wife, or seeking settlement for themselves, kept the scanty English garrisons in constant alarm. Sorley Boy MacDonnell with 700 men beset Carrickfergus. Captain Cheston, a brave and discreet soldier, sallied forth at the head of his company and discomfited his assailants, but received an arrow in his thigh; such surgery as was available failing to extract it, he lingered fourteen days, and then died. This was the moment chosen by Elizabeth to reduce the army in Ireland. 9,400l. was sent over with strict injunctions to discharge 166 men from the foot companies and 70 from the garrisons of Leighlin, Dungarvan, Maryborough, Bunratty, and Ballintober, and to hold 500 more in readiness to go as soon as the money arrived. The news spread fast over Ireland, causing ‘general jollity’ and a universal belief that the days of Saxon rule were over, that an Irish nobleman would be Viceroy, and that all late English settlers would soon be hurrying to the seaside. ‘When all be discharged,’ said the unfortunate Deputy, ‘God send me some rid out of Ireland, for I look to see fire round about in every quarter; but I must confess this medicine is well taken away, for the disease did but putrefy under it without any heal.’ Among the men discharged were several who had been at Derry, and who had received pensions since the abandonment of the post. One of these, Edmond Byrne, deserves a passing notice. He had been in the service of Don Carlos, and on hearing a Spanish gentleman speak evil of Queen Elizabeth, had attacked him at the palace gates, though attended by two armed followers. Having killed his man and beaten off the two underlings, Byrne first took sanctuary, and then fled to Portugal. There the same conduct provoked the same retort, and Byrne wounded the slanderer of his sovereign. This loyal Irishman afterwards received a pension of four shillings a day.²¹⁸

Poverty of the Crown

The best excuse for Elizabeth’s ill-judged parsimony was the great difficulty which she found in getting money at this time. The breach with Alva had destroyed the credit system of the Netherlands, and English finance had not yet become sufficient to itself. Moreover, the Queen took care that Spain should be fully occupied, and the capture of Brill, which coincided with the discharge of the troops in Ireland, made a Spanish descent on that country exceedingly improbable. Alva had never been able to replace the Genoese treasure detained in England, and it was pretty clear that there would be none to spare for less important services. But by the relaxation of English efforts in Ireland, nearly all that had been done there was neutralised, and it is impossible not to feel some pity for Fitzwilliam.²¹⁹

Fitton in Connaught

The Presidency of Connaught did not flourish greatly under Fitton’s charge; perhaps no one could have done anything there without a considerable army. He could indict O’Connor Don and MacDermot for high treason, he could lay whole baronies waste, and he could generally take castles. But he could not establish either peace or respect for the common law, and he dared not, while he remained in the province, leave the Brehon law in undisputed possession of the field. The civil and the canon law, as well as the law of England, all declared that a man should be held liable only for his own acts. But Irish custom extended the liability to descendants and to collaterals, and Fitton seems to have thought it possible to play fast and loose with the two systems, and to use their own customs against the Irish, though contrary, as he believed, to all law, human and divine.

Clanricarde’s sons

The Earl of Clanricarde’s two sons were in open rebellion, and he was bound to answer for them both by Irish law, of which he had accepted the liabilities, and by agreement under his own hand. The Earl was loyal enough, as his whole career showed, but he was unable to control his clan, and was perhaps not sorry to get out of a temporary difficulty by surrendering himself. There were frequent and very circumstantial reports of an intended Spanish descent, and he may well have dreaded the necessity either of joining or of opposing an invader who was under papal patronage. Fitton seems to have had no other case against the old lord than that he levied exactions like his ancestors, a charge which came with remarkably bad grace from the President. Fitzwilliam said openly that he could only be chastised by bringing in the Mayo Burkes, who had always been rebels, and he very justifiably shrank from such a miserable expedient. A more respectable plan was to send Thomond home and encourage him to earn a complete restoration by his service against the Clanricarde rebels.²²⁰

Fitton and Clanricarde

On first arriving in Dublin, Clanricarde had been shut up in the castle. After a month he was released on his own recognisances, and three months later he was again committed on Fitton preferring against him a formal charge of being the counsellor, comforter, and procurer of his son’s doings. A few months before Fitzwilliam had pronounced Fitton a wise and sober man, very conscientious, severely just, and not subject to gusts of passion. He now complained that the President had refused to reveal the charge against Clanricarde at the Council Board. This the Lord Deputy considered a stain on his own loyalty, and he demanded an opportunity of clearing himself. The Earl’s offence, if offence there was, fell far short of treason, and he could be very badly spared from his own country. The Queen rebuked Fitton severely for his secret ways, and for arresting the old Earl, who made his submission to the Lord President of Connaught, only asking that he might in future have the assistance of a councillor to keep order. This was granted, and he was soon sent back to Connaught with a general commission to grant pardons at discretion; a wonderful end to a trial for high treason. The Council patched up a truce between Fitton and Fitzwilliam, but the flame soon burst forth again. Clanricarde’s detention in Dublin lasted about six months, and he never quite forgave Fitton. ‘After being set at liberty,’ he said, ‘I did within one twelvemonth hang my own son, my brother’s son, my cousin-german’s son, and one of the captains of my gallowglasses, besides fifty of my own followers that bare armour and weapons; which the Archbishop of Tuam, the Bishop of Clonfert, and the whole corporation of Galway may witness.’²²¹

Fitton driven into a corner

When Fitton wrote to say that he expected soon to have no place in his power except Galway, Fitzwilliam sneeringly answered that he would be a very old man before the rebels came to seek him at Athlone. For a few weeks longer the President kept the field. Clare Galway was yielded at his approach, and a few kerne were shot here and there, but the young Burkes eluded him as completely as David eluded Saul. On one occasion they were close, and Ulick, taking an axe in his hand, declared that he would lead on; but the captain of gallowglasses, wiser in his generation, advised a fitter opportunity. Lady Mary Burke escaped out of Galway, and went to join her brothers. Then provisions ran short, the Mayo Burkes, whom Fitzwilliam had thought it possible to retain as allies, joined their namesake, and Fitton retired to Athlone, leaving the whole province free from any pretence of settled government.²²²

Even Athlone is not safe

Fitton was only three months older when he saw his dismal prophecy fulfilled. Having demolished most of the castles in Clanricarde, lest they should offer a refuge to the English, the young Burkes, with a force estimated at from 500 to 2,000, and largely composed of Scots mercenaries, plundered the district between the Suck and Shannon, then crossed the great river, and burned all along the left bank as far as Athlone. James Fitzmaurice was with them, chiefly in the vain hope of relieving Castlemaine, before which Perrott had again sat down. Turning to the east, the wild bands harried Roscommon and Westmeath, burned Mullingar, Meelick, and other places, and then doubled back to Athlone, to which they set fire. In spite of the guns in the castle and the musketeers on the steeple of the church, they approached boldly from the north side, broke into the cloister with the help of masons, and, being aided by a high wind, burned most of the malt and biscuit stored above. Of the 350 soldiers promised by Fitzwilliam not one had arrived, and the President could only look on while the town burned. Meeting with no resistance, the rebels again crossed the Shannon and went to Galway. That town was too strong for them to attempt, but they killed an English captain in a skirmish, and on two separate occasions passed the walls without serious opposition and penetrated into Connemara, where they chastised the O’Flaherties for their adherence to English rule. Fitton could do nothing but beg the Lord Deputy not to pardon the treason after the old fashion of Ireland. ‘It is comforted,’ he said, ‘and fostered from under your own elbows, I mean Dublin itself.’²²³

Fitton is forced to leave Connaught to itself

Fitton lingered at Athlone for a few weeks and then retired, first to Dublin and then to England. Fitzwilliam announced that Connaught would soon be quiet, for there would be no one left to resist the rebels. The unlucky President was not to be blamed, for he ‘could not work miracles as Moses did.’ After one more attempt to give trouble, which was frustrated by Perrott’s energy, Clanricarde’s sons – the MacIarlas, as they were called – saw that there was no fear of punishment, and that they might as well sue for mercy. They told the Deputy that they were in a wretched and damnable state; and this was true, for they were very vicious young men. They knew not where to turn, and they offered to give themselves up and be good subjects for ever if only they might be assured of the pardon which they feared to ask. Their father was powerless to control them, and he supported their petition on the ground that despair might ‘make them follow young counsels.’ He himself was ready for any service, or even to go to prison, and would welcome any president that had no property in Connaught, ‘excepting always Sir Edward Fitton, who sought my blood.’ A good salary, he added fairly enough, would be the best defence against corruption. Believing that Fitton would traduce him, he sent an agent to England to enter a cross case. The late president’s prayer was so far heard that the young Burkes received no immediate pardon. In the meantime Athlone was held by a scanty garrison. In one of the long nights just after the new year Art Maguire, who had the watch, arranged with some of the O’Kellys to betray the castle. A ladder was planted and thirty-four men scaled the walls unobserved, when a chance noise startled the guard. The assailants called out in English to make way for the Earl of Clanricarde’s sons; but they were worsted in the scuffle and jumped off the battlements, several legs being broken. ‘If the devils had not made great shifts they had broken most of their necks.’ Fitzwilliam attributed the result entirely to God’s providence. The Irish had been two hours inside the castle and were probably waiting for reinforcements, very likely for the graceless young men in whose names they professed to act.²²⁴