expected however to hear some person named as the husband desired for her.

all.'

'You have more to tell me,' she said, 'let me hear

Randolph answered that his commission extended no further.

Lord Argyle approached the bed. 'My Lord,' she said to him, 'Randolph here would have me marry in England. What say you?'

'Is the Queen of England become a man?' said Argyle.

Who is there, my Lord,' said she, 'that you would wish me to marry?'

'Whoever your Majesty can like well enough,' the Earl answered. 'I would there was so noble a man in England as you could like.'

"That would not please the Hamiltons,' said the Queen.

'If it please God and be good for your Majesty's country,' Argyle rejoined, 'what matter it who is displeased ?'

She passed the subject off.1

She dismissed Randolph without an answer, and weeks passed before she sent for him again. He spoke to Murray and Maitland, to all those lords who were under the deepest obligations to England, but they were cold and reserved.

'The Lord everlasting bring it to pass,' he wrote to

Randolph to Cecil, December 13, December 21, and December 30: Scotch MSS. Rolls House.

Elizabeth, 'that we may rather rejoice in the birth of your Majesty's body before any other without the same, whom God may put in your heart to yield your right unto after your Majesty's days.'1

1 Randolph to Elizabeth, January 21, 1564: Scotch MSS. Rolls House.

NOTE TO p. 30.

EXTRACT from the Sermon of Dr Nowell made at the opening of Parliament, January 12, 1562-3, from a manuscript in the library of Caius College, Cambridge :—

'Furthermore, where the Queen's Majesty of her own nature is wholly given to clemency and mercy, as full well appeareth hitherto; for in this realm was never seen a change so quiet and so long since reigning without blood (God be thanked for it); howbeit those which hitherto will not be reformed, but obstinate and can skill by no clemency or courtesy, ought otherwise to be used. But now will some say, 'Oh, bloody man that calleth this the house of right, and now would have it made a house of blood.' But the Scripture teacheth us that divers faults ought to be punished by death, and therefore following God's precepts it cannot be accounted cruel; and it is not against this house, but the part thereof; to see justice ministered to them who will abuse clemency. Therefore the goodness of Her Majesty's clemency may well and ought now therefore to be changed to justice, seeing it will not help. But now to explicate myself, I say, if any man keeping his opinion, will, and mind, close within himself, and so not open the same, then he ought not to be punished, but when he openeth it abroad then it hurteth and ought to be cut off: And especially, if in anything it touch the Queen's Majesty; for such errors of heresy, ought not, as well for God's quarrel as the realm's, to be unlooked unto, for clemency ought not to be given to

the wolves to kill and devour as they do the lambs, for which cause it ought to be foreseen; for that the Prince shall answer for all that so perish, it lying in her power to redress it, for by the Scriptures murderers, breakers of the holy day, and maintainers of false religion ought to die by the sword.

Also some other sharp laws for adultery, and also for murder, more stricter than for felony-which in France is well used, as the wheel for the one, the halter for the other, which if we had here I doubt not within few years would save many a man's life.'

CHAPTER XLII.

SHAN O'NEIL.

HE currency speculations of the Government of

THE

Edward the Sixth had not recommended to the Irish the morals of the Reformation; the plays of Bishop Bale had failed to convert them to its theology. On the accession of Mary the Protestant missionaries had fled from their duties, being unambitious of martyrdom, and the English service which had been forced into the churches disappeared without sound or effort. The monasteries of the four shires, wherever the estates had remained with the Crown, were rebuilt and reinhabited; beyond the border of the Pale the Irish chieftains followed the example, wherever piety or superstition were stronger than avarice. In the south the religious houses had been protected from spoliation by the Earl of Desmond, and the monks had been secretly supported; with the change of government they were reinstated in their homes, and the country reverted to its natural condition. The English garrisons cessed and pillaged the farmers of Meath and Dublin; the

chiefs made forays upon each other, killing, robbing, and burning. When the war broke out between England and France there were the usual conspiracies and uprisings of nationality; the young Earl of Kildare, in reward to the Queen who had restored him to his rank, appearing as the natural leader of the patriots.

Ireland was thus happy in the gratification of all its natural tendencies. The Brehon law readvanced upon the narrow limits to which, by the exertions of Henry the Eighth, the circuits of the judges had been extended; and with the Brehon law came anarchy as its inseparable attendant. 'The Lords and Gentiles of the Irish Pale that were not governed under the Queen's laws were compelled to keep and maintain a great number of idle men of war to rule their people at home, and exact from their neighbours abroad-working every one his own wilful will for a law-to the spoil of his country and decay and waste of the common weal of the same.' 'The idle men of war ate up all together;' the lord and his men took what they pleased, 'destroying their tenants and themselves never the better;' 'the common people having nothing left to lose,' became 'as idle and careless in their behaviour as the rest,' 'stealing by day and robbing by night.' Yet it was a state of things which they seemed all equally to enjoy, and high and low alike 'were always ready to bury their own quarrels to join against the Queen and the English.'

1

1 The disorders of the Irishry, 1559: Irish MSS. Rolls House.