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CHAPTER LIII.
ELIZABETHAN IRELAND

Natural features of Ireland

The physical features of a country must always have great influence on its history. Plains naturally submit to strong and centralised government, while mountains tend to isolation and to the development of local liberties. Where races have warred for the possession of a country, the weaker has been often driven into some mountainous corner, which the conquerors have been contented to bridle by castles or fortified towns. But where mountains or other natural strongholds are scattered over the face of the land, the conditions of conquest are different. It has been noted that while no country is more easily overrun than Spain, none is more difficult to occupy permanently. And this was the case of Ireland. As long as the Anglo-Norman settlement retained its vigour, the natives were driven into the less fertile districts, while fortresses protected the good land. But as the policy of the Plantagenet kings gradually weakened the colony, the castles were deserted and the native race resumed possession of the soil. Feudal law sought the protection of walled towns, which were of Danish or Anglo-Norman origin; and those nobles who retained their power did so only upon condition of more or less perfectly assimilating themselves to Irish chiefs. When the Tudor reconquest began, it was seen that two courses were open to the Crown. Englishmen were encouraged to settle, and a system of garrisons was gradually established. Sometimes the prevailing idea was to substitute English for Irish proprietors; at other times it was thought better to conciliate the native chiefs, while taking such military precautions as might prevent them from preying upon the settlers. During the whole of the sixteenth century statesmen did what they could to persuade the Irish chiefs to hold of the Crown, and thus to become liable to forfeiture.

Want of communications

Irish strongholds

Ireland has long been covered with a network of good roads, but a glance at any tolerable map will show how difficult it was to occupy before the roads were made. In clear weather mountains are always visible, both to the crew of a circumnavigating ship and to the sportsman who seeks snipe or waterfowl in the central bogs. It is said that when the ordnance survey was made, fires lit upon the Galties in Tipperary were answered by fires on a mountain in Cavan; and the great range of Slieve Bloom must be passed between those two points. Nor was it with mountains only that Elizabethan generals had to deal. Lord Grey is said to have introduced the first coach, but Ireland had no tolerable roads for long after his time. There were a few stone causeways, but great part of the island was covered with natural woods, and these could be crossed only by passes which the chiefs periodically agreed to cut both for troops and for peaceful travellers. When war broke out – and the doors of Janus were seldom shut for long – these rudimentary roads were easily closed. A few trees were felled, so as to prevent horse from passing at all. The branches of others were partially cut and skilfully interlaced, so that even infantry, while they struggled through the barrier, were exposed to the fire of an unseen enemy. Bridges were but few, and holes dug in the beds of rivers made the fords impassable, or at least very dangerous. When the Irish were hard pressed, they could retire to dry spots surrounded by bogs, and nearly every little lake contained a crannoge, where some oats had been stored, and which might be held until the assailants had exhausted their provisions. The little active cattle accompanied their light-footed masters, while the soldiers, whose clothes were seldom dry, perished miserably of dysentery and marsh-fever. In the absence of field artillery, very rude earthworks might be long held, and in any case they could be easily abandoned, while Tyrone made it a point of not defending castles, which experience had shown to be untenable against cannon. Garrisons, and garrisons only, could starve out the guerillas, and it was by their multiplication and maintenance that Mountjoy was enabled to accomplish Elizabeth’s lifelong task.

Natural defences. Ulster

Connaught

Leinster

Munster

Ulster is, on the whole, very hilly, and it is easy to see how strong it must have been when the woods were still uncut, when there were practically no roads, and when drainage had not yet been thought of. The most inaccessible forest was that of Glenconkein, about Draperstown in Londonderry; but the whole province was a stronghold, and a mere enumeration of woods and bogs would be useless. Connaught also is a land of mountains and bogs, and was once a land of woods. It was about the Curlews that the hardest fighting took place, and the northern part of Leitrim was very difficult to attack. In Leinster Glenmalure was famous for a great disaster to the English arms, and was the chief stronghold of Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne. The oak wood of Shillelagh in Wicklow was a noted fastness, and, from having given its name to a rustic weapon, it is of all the best remembered. Both King’s and Queen’s Counties were full of woods and lurking places, the great bog called the Togher, near Maryborough, being one of the most important. The Slievemargy range between Monasterevan and Carlow was the frequent resort of Rory Oge O’More and of his son Owen MacRory, and the O’Byrnes were not very far off. Wexford had many bogs and woods; but the Kavanaghs and other turbulent clans were scarcely formidable towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, except during the general collapse of authority which followed the disaster of 1598. In Munster what was generally called the ‘great wood’ lay to the north of Mallow. Glengariffe was another great Cork stronghold, and Limerick was full of forests. In Kerry, besides Glanageenty, where Desmond was killed, there was Glenflesk near Killarney, and indeed the whole county is evidently suited for guerilla warfare. Sir Nicholas Browne reported, in 1597, that Iraghticonnor, the country of O’Connor Kerry, was wedged in between his deadly enemies, Lord Fitzmaurice and the Knight of Glin: ‘his country is but small, and he is not able to make above seven score men, but by reason of his woods and bogs he was wont to hold his own in spite of them both.’ But of all the Munster strongholds none was so famous as the glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. ‘Who knows not Arlo-hill?’ says Spenser, applying the name of the vale to the lofty peak of Galtymore which overshadows it. The poet had much to tell of a mythical golden age in those wilds, but a curse had come upon them, and in his time, he says:

 
‘those woods, and all that goodly chase,
Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound;
Which too, too true that land’s indwellers since have found.’
 

Inseparably connected as it is with his memory, that glen of Aherlow caused Spenser’s ruin; for from it Owen MacRory and Tyrrell issued forth to destroy the undertakers and all their works.

Field sports

Hawks

Hounds

Horses

Game

Fighting in Ireland was the serious business of life, but soldiers, officials, and settlers found some time for amusement also. Irish hawks, hounds, and horses were all thought worthy to be sent as presents to great men in England; and hawks were often made the subject of treaties with Irish chiefs. Falconry no doubt was practised in Ireland, but we hear much more of hunting, and the game was plentiful. Irish wolf-hounds were famous, and were considered handsome presents; the Great Mogul, Jehangir, being glad to accept some in 1615. Perrott sent a brace, one black and the other white, to Walsingham. ‘This great white dog,’ said Sir S. Bagenal when sending one to Cecil, ‘is the most furious beast that ever I saw.’ These hounds were of great size, but doctors differ as to their points, and it is not even certain whether they had rough or smooth coats. A modern club, which has tried to restore the breed, lays down that the Irish wolf-hound should be ‘not quite so heavy or massive as the Great Dane, but more so than the deer-hound, which in general type he should otherwise resemble.’ Red deer abounded all over the country; and martens, now almost extinct, were so plentiful that the Earl of Ossory, in Henry VIII.’s time, kept a pack of hounds for them alone. As many as twelve dozen marten-skins could sometimes be sent as a present, and even Strafford hoped to get enough to line a gown for Archbishop Laud. The ambling nags called hobbies were also much valued in England. Wolves were very common, and neither they nor the hounds which pursued them died out until the eighteenth century. Wild fowl, of course, abounded, and Moryson says he had seen sixty pheasants served at one feast; but partridges were scarce. Magpies seem to have been introduced late in the seventeenth century.⁴²²

Agriculture

Cattle

About the towns, and in the parts settled by Englishmen, tillage was carried on as in England. Many of the Irish chiefs also encouraged corn-growing, and in time of war the soldiers were much occupied in destroying these crops. No doubt the husbandry was rude, as it long continued to be, and the barbarous custom of ploughing by the tail was restrained by order in Council in 1606, but was still practised in remote places as late as Charles II.’s reign, when it was prohibited by Act of Parliament. The custom of burning oats from the straw, and so making cakes without threshing, was equally long-lived and had also to be restrained by authority. But the chief wealth of the Irish was in their cattle, and the following statement of Moryson is sustained by innumerable letters: —

‘Ireland, after much blood spilt in the civil wars, became less populous, and as well great lords of countries as other inferior gentlemen laboured more to get new possessions for inheritance than by husbandry and peopling of their old lands to increase their revenues, so as I then observed much grass (with which the island so much abounds) to have perished without use, and either to have rotted, or in the next spring-time to be burned, lest it should hinder the coming of new grass. This plenty of grass makes the Irish have infinite multitudes of cattle, and in the late rebellion (Tyrone’s) the very vagabond rebels had great multitude of cows, which they still (like the Nomades) drove with them, whithersoever themselves were driven, and fought for them as for their altars and families. By this abundance of cattle the Irish have a frequent, though somewhat poor, traffic for their hides, the cattle being in general very small, and only the men and the greyhounds of great stature. Neither can the cattle possibly be great, since they eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard, without so much as a lock of hay, whereof they make little for sluggishness, and that little they altogether keep for their horses. And they are thus brought in by night for fear of thieves, the Irish using almost no other kind of theft, or else for fear of wolves, the destruction whereof being much neglected by the inhabitants, oppressed by greater mischiefs, they are so much grown in numbers, as sometimes in winter nights they will come to prey in villages and the suburbs of cities… The wild Irish feed mostly on whitemeats, and esteem for a great dainty sour curds, vulgarly called by them bonnyclabber. And for this cause they watchfully keep their cows, and fight for them as for religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no milk. Yet will they upon hunger in time of war open a vein of the cow, and drink the blood, but in no case kill or much weaken it.’

Sir Nicholas White has recorded that the first red cattle were brought to Dingle from Cornwall, and it is probably from the cross between these red Devon or Cornish beasts and the black cattle of the country that the famous Kerry breed is descended. The butter commonly made in Ireland in the sixteenth century is described as very bad.⁴²³

Exports. Fish

Guicciardini says the Irish exported hides, fur, and coarse linens and woollens to Antwerp. The consumption of wine was great; and for this the chief article sent in exchange was fish. In 1553 Philip II. agreed to pay 1,000l. a year for twenty-one years to gain for his subjects the right to fish on the Irish coast. Fishermen of all nations resorted to Berehaven, paying O’Sullivan Bere for leave. In the North O’Donnell was called the King of Fish, and he owned the salmon-leap at Ballyshannon. A Norse writer, older than the Tudor period, had already noted that Lough Erne contained salmon enough to feed all the people in Ireland. The fisheries of the Bann and Foyle were also of great importance, and Spenser says that both the Suir and the Barrow were full of salmon. As to sea fish, we hear more of foreign than of native vessels. The few port towns certainly produced good sailors, and among native clans the O’Driscolls, O’Flaherties, and O’Malleys loved the sea. About the famous sea-Amazon, Grace O’Malley, many legends have been preserved; but of her, and of all the other Celtic rovers, it may be said that they were rather pirates than peaceful traders or fishermen.⁴²⁴

Manufactures

Woollens

The only Irish manufacture of much importance was that of woollens, though frequent attempts were made to introduce others. Linen was made to a limited extent, and furnished the material for the enormous shirts, ‘thirty or forty ells in a shirt, all gathered and wrinkled and washed in saffron, because they never put them off till they were worn out,’ which fashion died out with the sixteenth century; but flax continued to be grown and yarn exported chiefly from Ulster, and it was upon this foundation that Strafford built. Irish frieze and other coarse woollens had been famous in the middle ages. Drugget is said by French antiquaries to have been so called from Drogheda. In the sixteenth century Ireland had come to be specially famous for a kind of rug, of which Moryson says the best were made at Waterford. They were thought worthy of kings’ houses, and Vice-Chamberlain Heneage asked Sir George Carew to ‘provide half-a-dozen of the finest and lightest Irish rugs to lay upon beds, that can be gotten.’ The little sheep of the country were numerous, but it is agreed that the wool was coarse. The making of the rugs was a craft in itself, and was probably known to few. Petty, who wrote under Charles II., remarks that the rebellion had injured the cloth trade, and that making the ‘excellent, thick, spungy, warm coverlets’ was a lost art. In Elizabeth’s time restraints were placed on the export of wool, with a view to encourage manufactures, but the prohibition was never really effective.⁴²⁵

Drinking

Wine

Whisky

Ale and beer

Hard drinking was but too common, and the materials were abundant. The trade in claret had gone on from the time when Gascony belonged to the kings of England. But sherry and other strong vintages of the Peninsula were even more popular. ‘When they come to any market town,’ says Moryson, ‘to sell a cow or a horse, they never return home till they have drunk the price in Spanish wine (which they call the King of Spain’s daughter) or in Irish usquebagh, and till they have outslept two or three days’ drunkenness. And not only the common sort, but even the lords and their wives, the more they want this drink at home, the more they swallow it when they come to it, till they be as drunk as beggars.’ Usquebagh, that is whisky, was made in many places in the primitive fashion followed by illicit distillers in our own time. It was generally considered more wholesome than any spirit produced in England, and the damp climate was made the excuse for excessive indulgence. Raisins and fennel-seeds were used to flavour it. An Act of Parliament passed in 1556 recites that ‘aqua vitæ, a drink nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally throughout this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen; and thereby much corn, grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted;’ and its manufacture was prohibited except with the Lord-Deputy’s licence. A fine of 4l. and imprisonment during pleasure were the prescribed penalties for each offence; but peers, landowners worth 10l. a year, and freemen of cities and boroughs were allowed to make enough for their own use; and the Act was probably a dead letter. Bodley, who wrote in 1603, tells us that it was usual for lay and cleric, churl and noble, in short ‘men and women of every rank, to pour usquebaugh down their throats by day and by night; and that not for hilarity only (which would be praiseworthy), but for constant drunkenness, which is detestable. Beer made of malt and hops was not yet brewed in Ireland, and what the soldiers consumed was imported. But strong ale was produced in the country and was probably preferred by the people, for hops were not in general use even in 1690. Early in James I.’s reign nothing struck an Englishman more than the number of alehouses in Dublin. ‘I am now,’ says one, ‘to speak of a certain kind of commodity that outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the selling of ale in Dublin: a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every house in the town every day in the week, at every hour in the day, and in every minute in the hour. There is no merchandize so vendible, it is the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole profit of the town stands upon ale-houses and selling of ale.’⁴²⁶

Description of the people

Dymmok

Moryson

Trollope

‘The people,’ says Dymmok, ‘are of nature very glorious, frank, ireful, good horsemen, able to endure great pains, delighted in war, great hospitality, of religion for the most part Papists, great gluttons, and of a sensual and vicious life, deep dissemblers, secret in displeasure, of a cruel revenging mind and irreconcilable. Of wit they are quick and capable, kind-hearted where they take, and of exceeding love towards their foster brethren. Of complexion they are clear and well-favoured, both men and women, tall and corpulent bodies, and of themselves careless and bestial.’ This is very much the view taken by English travellers generally, and in many points they are confirmed by the Spaniard Cuellar. Mountjoy complains of the want of clean linen, and his secretary has much to say on that subject. ‘Many of the English-Irish,’ he tells us, ‘have by little and little been infected with the Irish filthiness, and that in the very cities, excepting Dublin, and some of the better sort in Waterford, where the English continually lodging in their houses, they more retain the English diet… In cities passengers may have feather-beds soft and good, but most commonly lousy, especially in the high ways; whether that come by their being forced to lodge common soldiers or from the nasty filthiness of the nation in general. For even in the best city, as at Cork, I have observed that my own and other Englishmen’s chambers hired of the citizens, were scarce swept once in the week, and the dust laid in a corner was perhaps cast out once in a month or two. I did never see any public inns with signs hanged out among the English or English-Irish; but the officers of cities and villages appoint lodgings to the passengers, and perhaps in each city they shall find one or two houses where they will dress meat, and these be commonly houses of Englishmen, seldom of the Irish; so as these houses having no sign hung out, a passenger cannot challenge right to be entertained in them, but must have it of courtesy and by entreaty… Some of our carriage horses falling into wild Irish hands, when they found soap or starch carried for the use of our laundresses, they did eat them greedily, and when they stuck in their teeth, cursed bitterly the gluttony of us English churls, for so they term us.’ And Andrew Trollope, an English lawyer, who wrote with more force than politeness, says the Irish, except in the walled towns, were almost savages, and that ‘at night Mr., or Mrs., or dame, men-servants, maid-servants – women-servants I should have said, for I think there be no maids – guests, strangers, and all, lie in one little room not so good or handsome as many a hogscote in England, and when they rise in the morning they shake their ears and go their ways, without any serving of God or other making of them a-ready.’ On arriving in Dublin, he says, ‘I lodged in a lawyer’s house, a man of my own profession, where I found my entertainment better than my welcome, as all Englishmen shall do.’⁴²⁷

Tyrone’s soldiers

How they were armed

Diet and pay

The gallowglasses, with their axes, and the kerne, with their darts, became gradually obsolete during the Elizabethan period, pikemen taking the place of the former and musketeers of the latter. Tyrone taught his men the use of firearms, and they became better shots than the English. The difficulty of recruiting in England was great, and deserters were habitually replaced by Irishmen, who often passed over to their countrymen, arms and all. When Tyrone was loyal he was allowed a certain number of men in the Queen’s pay, and these he frequently changed, so as to increase the number of trained soldiers about him; thus anticipating on a small scale the famous expedient of Scharnhorst. From Spain there was a constant supply of arms, and the merchants in corporate towns made no difficulty about selling contraband of war to rebels with whom they had religious sympathies. Deserters sold their matchlocks, and they were resold to the Irish. Even officers were accused of selling powder. Nor were English ports closed to such good customers. ‘I dare not trust any Chester man,’ said the mayor of that town, and Liverpool turned an honest penny in the same way. Powder could not be made in Ulster, for there was no sulphur, but it was imported even from Dantzig. There was also a constant supply of ammunition from Scotland, and Fenton proposed that the Queen should employ factors to buy up all the powder at Glasgow and Ayr, which could only have made the trade more lucrative. Tyrone fed his men on oatmeal and butter, which was exacted, according to certain rules, from the people on whom they were billeted. The pay was at the rate of 24s. a quarter, and when money was scarce the deficiency was made up in milk. If a prisoner was ransomed, his captor had one-third of the amount and the rest went to the chief. Mountjoy believed that Tyrone raised a revenue of more than 80,000l. a year in Ulster.⁴²⁸

Dress

The Irish mantle

‘In Ireland,’ says Moryson, who spoke from actual observation, ‘the English and the English-Irish are attired after the English manner, for the most part, yet not with such pride and inconstancy, perhaps for want of means: yet the English-Irish, forgetting their own country, are somewhat infected with the Irish rudeness, and with them are delighted in simple light colours, as red and yellow. And in like sort the degenerated citizens are somewhat infected with the Irish filthiness, as well in lousy beds, foul sheets, and all linen, as in many other particulars; but as well in diet and apparell, the citizens of Dublin most of all other, and the citizens of Waterford and Galway in some good measure, retain the English cleanliness. Touching the meer or wild Irish, it may truly be said of them, which of old was spoken of the Germans, that they wander slovenly and naked, and lodge in the same house (if it may be called a house) with their beasts. Among them the gentlemen or lords of countries wear close breeches and stockings of the same piece of cloth, of red or such light colour, and a loose coat, and a cloak or three-cornered mantle, commonly of coarse, light stuff made at home, and their linen is coarse and slovenly. I say slovenly, because they seldom put off a shirt till it be worn; and these shirts, in our memory before the last rebellion, were made of some twenty or thirty ells folded in wrinkles and coloured with saffron to avoid lousiness, incident to the wearing of foul linen… Their wives living among the English are attired in a sluttish gown, to be fastened at the breast with a lace, and in a more sluttish mantle and more sluttish linen; and their heads be covered after the Turkish manner with many ells of linen: only the Turkish heads or turbans are round in the top, but the attire of the Irish women’s heads is more flat in the top and broader on the sides, not much unlike a cheese-mot, if it had a hole to put in the head.’ Moryson also mentions the loose mantles worn by both men and women, often as an excuse for wearing nothing else, which Spenser, who is very eloquent on the subject, calls ‘a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief.’ The shock-heads of curled hair called glibbs also excited the poet’s wrath, ‘being as fit masks as a mantle is for a thief. For whensoever he hath run himself into that peril of law, that he will not be known, he either cutteth of his glibb quite, by which he becometh nothing like himself, or putteth it so low down over his eyes that it is very hard to discern his thievish countenance.’ In a contemporary drawing of Tirlogh Luineach’s submission to Sidney all his followers are represented with glibbs, and it became a matter of treaty with Tyrone that he should allow none of his people to wear them.⁴²⁹

Progress of civilisation. Richard, Earl of Clanricarde

As the tribal age passed away, Irish and Anglo-Irish chiefs became more civilised. Among the native nobility the house of Clanricarde had been remarkable for lawlessness; but Earl Richard, who succeeded in 1601, not only distinguished himself at Kinsale but also made a great figure at court. ‘The affairs of Ireland,’ said the French ambassador, ‘prosper, so that not a single rebel keeps the field. I believe that this prosperous condition of things proceeds from the favour which that Irish Earl enjoys here. On the other hand, he is very cold by nature and in his love, and has neither understanding nor conduct to lift himself high, although there is no lack of counsel and support to him. Flatterers of the court, to curry favour, say that he resembles Essex; on the other hand the Queen declares, with equal dissimulation, that she cannot love him, inasmuch as he recalls her sorrow for the Earl; and this contest occupies the entire court.’ Clanricarde, who is described by another contemporary as ‘a goodly, personable gentleman, something resembling the late Earl of Essex,’ spent lavishly but paid honestly. The gossips at first coupled his name with that of Lady Strange, but in the autumn of 1602 he married Frances Walsingham, widow of the unfortunate favourite whom he was thought to resemble, and of Sir Philip Sidney. In 1604 Sir John Davies saw the Earl and Countess living together at Athlone in most honourable fashion, and reported that she was very well contented, and every way as well served as ever he saw her in England.⁴³⁰

Bards and musicians

Gamblers

Spenser, and every other Englishman, condemned the Irish bards as stirrers of sedition and preservers of barbarism. They were often very highly paid, and were feared as well as admired, for they knew how to satirise their hosts where the cheer was not abundant or to their liking. The bagpipe was commonly used in the field, and harps became scarce towards the close of the sixteenth century, so that in 1588 Maguire said he hardly knew of a good one in his country. It sometimes formed part of the furniture of a gentleman’s house, the portion of a bride in Tipperary being sworn to as ‘four score cows, four-and-twenty mares, five horses, and a pair of playing tables (backgammon probably), and a harp, besides household stuff.’ Professional card-players, called carrows, abounded, and Campion says they would play away their clothes, and then, wrapping themselves in straw, would stake their glibbs, or bits of their flesh, against any chance-comer’s money. Captain Bodley tells how certain Irish gentlemen came masquerading to the officers’ quarters at Downpatrick, asking to be allowed to play. These prudent gamblers brought ten pounds of the new debased currency wrapped up in a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and their hosts sent them empty away at two o’clock in the morning. Sometimes higher stakes were played for than a few pounds of copper, and there is a tradition that Kilbritain Castle was lost by Lord Courcey to MacCarthy Reagh, who only risked a white weasel or ferret.⁴³¹

Introduction of tobacco

Tobacco was still too dear to be generally used in Ireland, but English officers could enjoy this consolation. We have seen that one was killed in the retreat from the Blackwater while indulging in a pipe by the roadside. Carew was a smoker, and both Raleigh and Cecil were among those who kept him supplied with tobacco. Captain Bodley, to whom we owe so many interesting details, is most eloquent on this subject, and will not allow that the enemies of tobacco have any reason on their side. ‘Almost all,’ he says, ‘have but one argument, that would make a dog laugh and a horse burst his halter, saying that neither our sires or grandsires took tobacco, yet lived I know not how long. Indeed they lived till they died without tobacco, but who knows whether they would not have lived longer had they used it. And if a smoker now dies of any disease, who knows if he might not have died sooner had he abstained from it.’⁴³²

Garrison life

Irish warfare was full of misery, but garrison life had its pleasures, such as they were. Captain Bodley has left an account of a week’s visit paid in January 1603 to Sir Richard Moryson, the historian’s brother, who was in command at Downpatrick. At Newry they found only lean beef, scarcely any mutton, very bad wine, and no bread; biscuit being used even in the governor’s house. Bodley, with Captains Caulfield and Jephson, halted at Magennis’s house at Castle Wellan, which he calls an island. They were entertained by Lady Sara Magennis, Tyrone’s daughter, ‘a very beautiful woman, and the three hours’ halt seemed to pass in one minute. We drank ale and whisky with our hostess, and, having all kissed her in turn, took the road again.’ At Downpatrick the visitors were well treated, and their horses attended to, but they all occupied one bed-room. They washed before dinner, all in the same silver basin, and seemingly had but one towel, and this was done in the dining-room. Healths were drunk from a glass goblet of claret nearly a foot in circumference, which went from hand to hand, and there was a good deal of conviviality, whisky flowing freely as well as claret. The dishes mentioned are brawn, stuffed geese, venison pasties, and game-pies, mince-pies, and tarts – that is Bodley’s word – made of beef, mutton, and veal. Besides drinking there was smoking, dicing, and a kind of horseplay which has been called cock-fighting in modern times. The Irish gentlemen who came in to gamble, and lost their money, wore long shirts decked with ivy-leaves, dog-skin masks, and paper noses, and tall paper caps with ivy wreaths. In the morning, ale or beer, with spices or toast, was taken ‘to allay thirst, to steady the head, and to cool the liver,’ and pipes were smoked before breakfast. The life was rough enough, but Bodley wrote in Latin, and shows a knowledge of Latin authors, and he and his friends conversed learnedly about Roman history.⁴³³