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The Queen blames Essex severely, and he leaves Ireland without leave

‘If these wars end by treaty,’ Wotton had said on his first arrival, ‘the Earl of Tyrone must be very humble.’ But the wars were ended so far as Essex was concerned, and the rebels had conceded nothing. A week before his meeting with Tyrone, Essex had written to the Queen, warning her to expect nothing from a man weary of life, whose past services had been requited by ‘banishment and proscription into the most cursed of all countries,’ and almost suggesting that he meditated suicide as the only means of escape. Nor were Elizabeth’s letters such as to encourage him. He had disappointed the world’s expectation, and his actions had been contrary to her orders, ‘though carried in such sort as we were sure to have no time to countermand them.’ ‘Before your departure,’ she wrote, ‘no man’s counsel was held sound which persuaded not presently the main prosecution in Ulster; all was nothing without that, and nothing was too much for that.’ An army and a summer had been wasted, and nothing had been done. The only way of accounting for the way in which the available troops had dwindled from 19,000 to less than 4,000 was by supposing that he had dispersed them in unnecessary garrisons, ‘especially since, by your continual report of the state of every province, you describe them all to be in worse condition than ever they were before you put foot in that kingdom.’ He had condemned all his predecessors, he had had everything he asked for, and he had done worse than anyone. Two days after the despatch of this letter Elizabeth received the account of the truce with Tyrone, which she promptly characterised as the ‘quick end made of a slow proceeding.’ She had never doubted that Tyrone would be ready to parley ‘specially with our supreme general of the kingdom, having often done it with those of subaltern authority; always seeking these cessations with like words, like protestations.’ She blamed Essex severely for his private interview – not, she was careful to say, that she suspected treason; ‘yet both for comeliness, example, and your own discharge, we marvel you would carry it no better.’ He had neglected her orders and sheltered himself systematically behind a council which had already wrapped Ireland in calamities. If she had intended to leave all to them, it was ‘very superfluous to have sent over such a personage as yourself.’ His despatches were as meagre as his actions, and he had told her nothing of what passed between him and Tyrone, nor of his instructions to the commissioners, so that ‘we cannot tell, but by divination, what to think may be the issue of this proceeding… to trust this traitor upon oath is to trust a devil upon his religion. To trust him upon pledges is a mere illusory… unless he yield to have garrisons planted in his own country to master him, and to come over to us personally here.’ The letter concluded with a positive order not to ratify the truce, nor to grant a pardon without further authority from herself, ‘after he had particularly advised by writing.’ One week after the date of the letter Essex left Ireland, in spite of the most stringent orders not to do so without a special warrant.³²⁷

The O’Neill in his hold

Some account of Tyrone, as he appeared among his own people near Dunkalk, has been fortunately preserved in a letter from Sir John Harrington, who was at once a keen observer and a lively writer, and who had already seen him at Ormonde’s house in London. Tyrone apologised for not remembering him personally, and said that the troubles had made him almost forget his friends. While the Earl was in private conversation with Sir William Warren, Harrington amused himself by ‘posing his two sons in their learning, and their tutors, which were one Friar Nangle, a Franciscan, and a younger scholar, whose name I know not; and finding the two children of good towardly spirit, their age between thirteen and fifteen, in English clothes like a nobleman’s sons; with velvet jerkins and gold lace; of a good cheerful aspect, freckle-faced, not tall of stature, but strong and well-set; both of them speaking the English tongue; I gave them (not without the advice of Sir William Warren) my English translation of Ariosto, which I got at Dublin; which their teachers took very thankfully, and soon after shewed it to the Earl, who called to see it openly, and would needs hear some part of it read. I turned (as it had been by chance) to the beginning of the forty-fifth canto, and some other passages of the book, which he seemed to like so well that he solemnly swore his boys should read all the book over to him.’ Harrington was not insensible to flattery of this sort, for he has recorded the reception of his work at Galway and its soothing effect upon ‘a great lady, a young lady, and a fair lady’ who had been jilted by Sir Calisthenes Brooke; but it did not prevent him from afterwards calling Tyrone a damnable rebel. It was O’Neill’s cue to speak fairly, and he took occasion to say that he had seen his visitor’s cousin, Sir Henry, in the field, and that he must have been wrongly accused of misconduct in the fight near Wicklow. Tyrone deplored his ‘own hard life,’ comparing himself to wolves, that ‘fill their bellies sometimes, and fast as long for it;’ but he was merry at dinner, and seemed rather pleased when Harrington worsted one of his priests in an argument. ‘There were fern tables and fern forms, spread under the stately canopy of heaven. His guard for the most part were beardless boys without shirts, who, in the frost, wade as familiarly through rivers as water-spaniels. With what charms such a master makes them love him I know not; but if he bid come, they come; if go, they do go; if he say do this, they do it.’ He made peaceable professions, and spoke much about freedom of conscience; but Harrington perceived that his only object was to temporise, and ‘one pretty thing I noted, that the paper being drawn for him to sign, and his signing it with O’Neill, Sir William (though with very great difficulty) made him to new write it and subscribe Hugh Tyrone.’³²⁸

Essex deserts his post (September)

His reception at Court

The only possible excuse for Essex’s leaving Ireland against orders was the Queen’s last direction to ‘advise by writing’ the progress of his negotiations with Tyrone. He had given a promise – a foolish and rash promise – that he would ‘only verbally deliver’ the conditions demanded by the arch-rebel. A letter to Sir John Norris had been sent into Spain, and Tyrone refused to open his heart if writing was to be used. Essex could, however, refer to the instructions given by him to Warren, and in any case he might have waited until her Majesty had expressed her opinion as to his promise of secrecy. After all, the most probable supposition is that he was sick of Ireland, that he felt his own failure, and that he hoped to reassert over the Queen that power which absence had so evidently weakened. He swore in Archbishop Loftus and Sir George Carey as Lords Justices, Ormonde remaining in command of the army under his old commission, and charged them all to keep the cessation precisely, but to stand on their guard and to have all garrisons fully victualled for six months. He sailed the same day, and travelled post, with the evident intention of himself announcing his departure from Ireland. Having embarked on the 24th, he reached London very early on the 28th, hurried to the ferry between Westminster and Lambeth, and appropriated the horses which he found waiting there. Lord Grey de Wilton, who had not forgiven his arrest, was in front, and it was proposed by Sir Thomas Gerrard that he should let the Earl pass him. ‘Doth he desire it?’ said Lord Grey. ‘No,’ was the answer, ‘nor will he, I think, ask anything at your hands.’ ‘Then,’ said his lordship, ‘I have business at Court.’ He hurried on to Nonsuch, and went straight to Cecil.³²⁹ Essex arrived only a quarter of an hour later, and although ‘so full of dirt and mire that his very face was full of it,’ made his way at once to the Queen’s bedchamber. It was ten o’clock, and Elizabeth was an early riser, but on this occasion she was ‘newly up, the hair about her face.’ He fell on his knees and kissed her hands, and the goodness of his reception was inferred from his own words that, ‘though he had suffered much trouble and storm abroad, he found a sweet calm at home.’ He dressed, and at eleven had another audience, which lasted an hour. Still all went well. The Queen was gracious, and the courtiers as yet saw no reason to stand aloof; but Cecil and his friends were thought to be rather cold. Elizabeth was evidently glad to see her favourite, and for a moment forgot his real position. The first meeting of the Privy Council dispelled the illusion, and on the 1st of October he was committed to the custody of Lord-Keeper Egerton.³³⁰

Negotiations with Tyrone (October and November)

It was very uncertain as to what would be the consequences of Essex’s escapade, and those who were left in charge could only temporise as best they might. In about two months Sir William Warren had three separate parleys with Tyrone, and in each case it was the English diplomatist that urged a continuance of the cessation of arms. Tyrone, who had his immediate followers extraordinarily well in hand, seems to have kept the truce, and he had reasons to complain of injuries done him by the English party. In the paralysis of government outrage upon the borders could scarcely be avoided, and Tyrone’s allies were less steady than himself. ‘In all the speeches,’ Warren wrote, ‘passed between him and me, he seemed to stand chiefly upon a general liberty of religion throughout the kingdom. I wished him to demand some other thing reasonable to be had from her Majesty, for I told him that I thought her Majesty would no more yield to that demand than she would give her crown from her head.’ Warren laughed at a letter addressed to Lord O’Neill Chief Lieutenant of Ireland. ‘I asked him,’ he says, ‘to whom the devil he could be Lieutenant. He answered me, Why should I not be a Lieutenant as well as the Earl of Ormonde.’ The reasoning is not very clear, and it seems at least probable that many regarded him as the Pope’s viceroy. In making James Fitzthomas an earl he had greatly exceeded even the most ample viceregal powers. From the meeting with Essex to the date at which he resolved to begin fighting again, his official letters are signed Hugh Tyrone, but on November 8 he gave Warren fourteen days’ notice to conclude the truce, on the ground of injuries done him by Thomond and Clanricarde. That letter and those succeeding it, with one significant exception, he signs as O’Neill. In repeating the notice to Ormonde he says, ‘I wish you command your secretary to be more discreet and to use the word Traitor as seldom as he may. By chiding there is little gotten at my hands, and they that are joined with me fight for the Catholic religion, and liberties of our country, the which I protest before God is my whole intention.’ In all these negotiations Tyrone professes to rely entirely upon Essex to see justice done, and declares war ‘first of all for having seven score of my men killed by the Earl of Ormonde in time of cessation, besides divers others of the Geraldines, who were slain by the Earl of Kildare. Another cause is because I made my agreement only with your lordship, in whom I had my only confidence, who, as I am given to understand, is now restrained from your liberty, for what cause I know not.’ And this letter, being intended for English consumption, is signed Hugh Tyrone. Immediately after writing it he again took the field.³³¹

Amount of blame imputable to Essex

‘The conditions demanded by Tyrone,’ says Essex himself, ‘I was fain to give my word that I would only verbally deliver.’ The consequence was that there is not and cannot be any absolutely authentic statement of those conditions. There is, however, a paper printed in a collection of repute, and immediately after one of Cecil’s letters, which professes to be a statement of ‘Tyrone’s Propositions, 1599.’ The Queen herself says that Essex, on his return, acquainted her with Tyrone’s offers, but in so confused a manner as could only be explained by supposing that ‘the short time of their conference made him not fully conceive the particular meaning of Tyrone in divers of those articles.’ What probably happened was that Tyrone talked big, and that when Essex came to think over it afterwards, he could not clearly distinguish between extreme claims which had been mentioned, and serious proposals which had been made. But the 16th article in ‘Tyrone’s Propositions’ is clearly not invented by the writer, who was probably hostile to Essex. It demands ‘that O’Neill, O’Donnell, Desmond, and their partakers, shall have such lands as their ancestors enjoyed 200 years ago.’ Whether Tyrone ever demanded any such thing is doubtful, but it is certain that this, or something very like it, was what Essex told the Queen. ‘Tyrone’s offers,’ she says, ‘are both full of scandal to our realm, and future peril in the State. What would become of all Munster, Leix, and Offaly, if all the ancient exiled rebels be restored to all that our laws and hereditary succession have bestowed upon us?’ And again, ‘we will not assent in other provinces [than Ulster] to the restitution of all traitors to their livings, or the displantation of our subjects that have spent their lives in the just defences of their possessions which they have taken and held from us or our ancestors.’ It is quite evident then that Essex actually laid before Elizabeth a proposal which involved the reversal of every attainder and the expropriation of all settlers upon forfeited lands. After this it hardly seems worth discussing matters of commerce, or proposals that Englishmen should be debarred from all preferment in Church and State in Ireland, while all statutes prejudicing the preferment of Irishmen in England should be repealed.’³³²

What Tyrone meant by ‘liberty of conscience.’

Liberty of conscience was what Tyrone continually asked for, but not what he or his friends were prepared to grant. He undertook generally to ‘plant the Catholic faith throughout Ireland,’ and when did Rome bear a rival near her throne? In a letter to the King of Spain he acknowledged his object to be the ‘extirpation of heresy,’ and recalcitrant chiefs were reminded that present ruin and eternal damnation would be their lot if they did not help to ‘erect the Catholic religion.’ Jesuits boasted that his victories had already made it impossible for Protestants to live in certain districts. Tyrone claimed personal inviolability for priests, and treated the imprisonment of one as a breach of the cessation. In the paper already discussed he is said to have demanded that the Catholic religion should be openly preached, the churches governed by the Pope, cathedrals restored, Irish priests released from prison and left free to come and go over sea, and that no Englishmen should be churchmen in Ireland. The article about the release of clerical prisoners is just such a coincidence as Paley would have urged in proof that ‘Tyrone’s Propositions’ form a genuine document. But here again it is probable that this was only laid before the Queen as Tyrone’s extreme claim, and that Essex gave her some reason to suppose that he would be satisfied with less. ‘For any other personal coming of himself,’ she wrote, ‘or constraint in religion, we can be content, for the first, that he may know he shall not be peremptorily concluded, and in the second that we leave to God, who knows best how to work his will in these things, by means more fit than violence, which doth rather obdurate than reform. And, therefore, as in that case he need not to dread us, so we intend not to bind ourselves further for his security than by our former course we have witnessed; who have not used rigour in that point, even when we might with more probability have forced others.’³³³

CHAPTER XLIX.
GOVERNMENT OF MOUNTJOY, 1600

The government is entrusted to Mountjoy

In October 1599 the government of Ireland was offered to Mountjoy, who refused it. He may have thought that Essex would have to go back, or he may have been unwilling to leave Lady Rich. But in the following month he was nevertheless ordered to be ready within twenty days. It became evident that Essex would not be employed again; he made Mountjoy and Southampton guardians of his interests, and for his sake they both went perilously near to treason. Mountjoy undertook the thankless office with a heavy heart. He told the Queen that everyone of his predecessors had without exception been blamed, and that there was no one in Ireland whom he could trust. Very unjustly, he included even Ormonde in this sweeping censure. It was Raleigh who had insisted that he should be appointed, and the Queen listened chiefly to him about Irish affairs. ‘This employment of me is by a private man that never knew what it was to divide public and honourable ends from his own, propounded and laboured to you (without any respect to your public service) the more eagerly, by any means to rise to his long expected fortune. Wherein, by reason of the experience I have heard your Majesty holds him to have in that country, he is like to become my judge, and is already so proud of this plot that he cannot keep himself from bragging of it.’³³⁴

Raleigh’s advice

The usual delays took place, and the twenty days were prolonged to eleven weeks. Raleigh’s advice, like that of everyone who really understood the problem, was for a system of garrisons. A Lord President in Munster with a considerable force, a local governor in Connaught with smaller means, a strong post at Lough Foyle, and the remaining troops under the Lord Deputy’s immediate command – these were the means by which it was hoped to reduce Ireland. A large army under Essex had failed, and his successor was expected to do everything with 12,000 foot and 1,200 horse, though everyone but the Queen thought this force too small. Lord Grey de Wilton, who was Essex’s known enemy, desired the command at Lough Foyle; but Mountjoy resented this idea as an insult, and the choice fell upon Sir Henry Docwra, who had served under Bingham in Connaught and under Essex at Cadiz. Grey consoled himself by sending a challenge to Southampton, who said he was ready to fight when time and place served, but that one so out of favour as himself could hope for no mercy if he broke the law in England. Mountjoy took leave of the Queen on the 24th of January, but was not made a Privy Councillor, that honour being reserved till his return. Those who were to accompany him also kissed hands, and Elizabeth read a little lecture to each upon his duties. A fortnight later the Lord Deputy left London with an escort of 100 horse, and wrote from Daventry to Cecil begging that he might not be kept too closely to the 13,000 men. Southampton was not allowed to go with him.³³⁵

Tyrone’s Holy War in Munster

Whether Tyrone cared much or little for religion, it became an object with him to appear publicly as the champion of Rome, and as such he sought help from Spain and Austria. He then marched into Munster, and, acting in concert with Desmond and the ecclesiastics there, called upon all to take part in the holy war. He wasted a considerable part of Westmeath, and carefully ravaged Ely O’Carroll. ‘All its movable possessions,’ say the Four Masters, ‘were carried away, and nothing left but ashes instead of corn, and embers in place of mansions. Great numbers of men, women, sons, and daughters were left in a dying state.’ The reason or pretext for this severity was that O’Carroll had hired certain warriors of the Macmahons, and had killed instead of paying them when the settling day came round. At Holy Cross Abbey the relic, which had been hitherto preserved in spite of the dissolution, was brought out to do him honour. Ormonde and Delvin watched his course, but did not venture to attack him. The annalists oddly remark that on his progress by Cashel to the neighbourhood of Bandon he only injured those who were opposed to him. Among these was David Lord Barry, who had remained firmly loyal since his pardon in Lord Grey’s time. Tyrone reviled him for deserting the cause of the Church, and as the principal means of preventing the southern nobility from joining him in rebellion. ‘Her Highness,’ replied Barry, ‘hath never restrained me for matters of religion,’ and he demanded the restoration of some of his followers who had been captured, and of 4,000 kine and 3,000 horses. He defied Tyrone, and promised to have his revenge some day, with her Majesty’s assistance. He had hoped to save the island on which Queenstown now stands, but the castle commanding the bridge over the narrow strait was of no avail to protect his property. Tyrone landed his parties in boats, and not a single house was left unburned.³³⁶

Arrival of Mountjoy and Carew (February)

In the meantime Mountjoy had been appointed Deputy, and Carew President of Munster. They landed together at Howth on February 26, and found things in as bad a state as possible, almost the whole island being virtually under the sway of the victorious rebel. The Queen realised that the country could not be bridled without fixed garrisons, but she cautioned Mountjoy against frittering away his strength by multiplying small posts. It had long been recognised that fortifications at Lough Foyle would do more than anything to cripple the O’Neills, and 4,000 foot and 200 horse were assigned for this service to Docwra; while 3,000 foot and 250 horse were allotted, by official orders from England, to the presidency of Munster. The force left under Mountjoy’s immediate control did not, therefore, exceed 5,000 men, and he was thus prevented from repeating Essex’s mistake, that of ‘making progresses’ at a great expense without achieving any permanent results.³³⁷

Tyrone plays the king in Munster

Carew was necessarily delayed in Dublin for about six weeks, and in the meantime Tyrone went where he pleased in Munster. His principal camp was at Inniscarra on the Lee, and thither came friendly messages or hostages from nearly all the neighbouring magnates, whether of English or Irish race. Among his trustiest lieutenants was his son-in-law, Hugh Maguire, who, on or about the last day of February, made a raid in the immediate neighbourhood of Cork. Sir Warham St. Leger and Sir Henry Power, the acting commissioners for Munster, went out for a ride, in no expectation of an attack so near the town. Their men were marching at ease and in loose order when they suddenly came in contact with Maguire’s party. St. Leger fired his pistol at the chief with fatal effect, but the latter had strength enough to retaliate with his half-pike; and so the two leaders fell by each other’s hands, and with few or no other casualties on either side. To Tyrone the loss was great, and probably decided him to leave the province before Carew could appear. Marching through the eastern part of Cork, and leaving Cashel on his right hand, he passed through Westmeath and reached his own country without striking a blow or ever seeing an enemy. Ormonde and Thomond came out from Limerick with a considerable force, but no battle took place, though Carew has recorded his opinion that the loyal Earls were very anxious to fight.³³⁸

Tyrone’s march through Ireland

Tyrone left about 1,800 men behind him in Munster, chiefly under the command of Richard Tyrrell, and with 600, which were probably his best, he travelled so fast as to elude Mountjoy, who had made preparations for intercepting him in Westmeath. The Ulster men marched twenty-seven miles in one day, and reached Tyrone in less than a quarter of the time that it had taken them to perform the outward journey. The Queen and her viceroy did not escape ‘the great dishonour of this traitor passing home to his den unfought with.’ Ormonde and Thomond, who had been keeping Easter together at Kilkenny, then repaired to Dublin; and Mountjoy matured his plan for the re-conquest of Ireland in detail. Carew was ready before Docwra, and on April 7 he set out for his province, the two Earls having preceded him to Kilkenny.³³⁹

Ormonde is taken prisoner by the O’Mores (April)

The Jesuit Archer

Carew reached Kilkenny on the third day, and his company of 100 horse were billeted in the neighbourhood by Ormonde’s directions. Each day the Earl proposed that the President should accompany him to a parley with Owen MacRory at a point between Ballyragget and Ballinakill in the Queen’s County. So little did he dream of danger on the border of his own county, that he refused Carew’s proffered escort, and set out with about forty mounted men, of whom more than one half were ‘lawyers, merchants, and others, upon hackneys,’ and with no weapons but the swords ordinarily worn. His company of 200 foot were left two miles short of the place of meeting. O’More brought a picked troop of spearmen with him, leaving in the rear 500 foot and twenty horse, ‘the best furnished for war and the best apparelled that we have seen in this kingdom,’ 300 of them being Ulster mercenaries, left by Tyrone on his return to the North. The two parties met upon a heath sloping down towards a narrow defile, and with a bushy wood on each side, ‘the choice of which ground,’ says Carew, ‘we much misliked.’ An hour’s conversation then ensued between Ormonde and O’More about such questions as would naturally arise between warlike neighbours. Carew, who noticed that the Irish kept edging further forward in the covert on each side, was for departing before mischief could happen; but Ormonde, who was quite unsuspicious, desired first to speak with Archer, who as a Kilkenny man might be open to the arguments of his natural chief. The Jesuit came forward, and after some talk the Earl called him a traitor, and upbraided him with seducing the Queen’s subjects into rebellion. Archer replied that the Pope was the Sovereign of Ireland, and that he had excommunicated Elizabeth. Ormonde then spoke of the Pope in contemptuous terms, whereupon Archer threatened him with his stick. At this signal, whether premeditated or not, the two parties became suddenly intermingled, and Melaghlin O’More pulled the Earl off his pony. Others, wrote Carew, and Thomond, ‘tried to seize us too. We had more hanging upon us than is credibly to be believed; but our horses were strong and by that means did break through them, tumbling down on all sides those that were before and behind us; and, thanks be to God, we escaped the pass of their pikes, which they freely bestowed and the flinging of their skeynes… Owen MacRory laid hands on me the President, and, next unto God, I must thank my Lord of Thomond for my escape, who thrust his horse upon him. And at my back a rebel, newly protected at my suit, called Brian MacDonogh Kavanagh, being a-foot, did me good service. For the rest I must thank my horse, whose strength bore down all about him.’ Thomond received the stab of a pike in his back, but the wound did not prove dangerous.³⁴⁰

Mountjoy and Ormonde

Ormonde a prisoner, (April to June)

His release (June)

Mountjoy distrusted Ormonde, more perhaps from jealousy than because there was any real pretext for doing so. ‘Taking notice,’ the Queen told her Deputy, ‘of our cousin of Ormonde’s good services, and in respect that he hath been much toiled now in his latter years, we have left unto him the choice whether he will retain the place of Lieutenant under you or not. We would have himself and all the world know that we make extraordinary estimation of him.’ He retained his post with an allowance of three pounds a day, and his almost independent position galled Mountjoy, as it had galled other Deputies before his time. Ormonde had trusted to his own vast influence, and he would certainly have been warned had the intention of seizing him been known generally among O’More’s followers. If there was any premeditated design, it was probably divulged only to a few. At first he was confined at Gortnaclea Castle, near Abbeyleix, where he was allowed to have his own cook and other comforts, but not to see anyone, except in Owen MacRory’s presence. Archer plied him hard with religious argument, and some believed that he conformed to Rome; but this is at least extremely doubtful. Tyrone was anxious to get him into his power, but O’More had no idea of giving up such a hostage, and it is probable that the Leinster men would, in any case, have refused to let him be carried out of their province. A rescue was feared, and after a month the Earl was removed from Gortnaclea, and carried from cabin to cabin in the woods. From the intolerable hardship of this life he was relieved by Sir Terence O’Dempsey, who allowed his castle of Ballybrittas, near Portarlington, to be used as a prison. It was supposed that the Ulster mercenaries, or Bonaghts, wished to carry off the Earl to Tyrone by force, and the transfer was made by the O’Mores without their knowledge. Besides this, Dermot MacGrath, papal bishop of Cork, who is called legate by the English, and who was, perhaps, vicar-apostolic, was of opinion that the capture had been treacherous, and was thus opposed to Archer. Fenton managed to get access, for his spies, to the Earl, among whom a ‘gentlewoman’ named Honora is particularly mentioned. Finding, perhaps, that his prisoner was not likely to be as useful as he first supposed, and fearing that he might lose all advantage by death, O’More gradually relaxed his demands. The first terms offered were that all garrisons should be removed out of both Leix and Offaly; that the former county should be given up to Owen MacRory; that all his nominees should have protection for six weeks; and that during that time there should be no invasion of Ulster. Afterwards there was an attempt to make Ormonde sign a paper, which would have involved him in the guilt of O’More’s rebellion, but he eluded these snares, and was released after two months’ detention. ‘It may please your sacred Majesty to be advertised,’ he wrote to the Queen, ‘that it pleased God of his goodness to deliver me, though weak and sick, from the most malicious, arrogant, and vile traitor of the world, Owen MacRory, forced to put into his hands certain hostages for payment of 3,000l. if at any time hereafter I shall seek revenge against him or his, which manner of agreement, although it be very hard, could not be obtained before he saw me in that extremity and weakness, as I was like, very shortly, to have ended my life in his hands.’ He believed that he owed his liberty to the report that Leinster would be overrun with troops, to prevent which the Irishry of the province themselves offered hostages, and were ready to quarrel with O’More should he refuse them. They were twelve in number, one being Sir Terence O’Dempsey’s son, and Ormonde’s intention was to ransom them one by one. Sir Terence had married a Butler, and whatever became of the other hostages, a ransom appears to have been paid for this one.