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sent him to the castle with the rest of the offenders. Deep leading drains were cut through the corrupting the shaking ground grew firm; and honest, healthy human life was again made possible. With the provinces beyond the Pale Arnold meddled little, save where, taking a rough view of the necessities of the case, he could help the Irish chiefs to destroy each other. To Cecil he wrote

'I am with all the wild Irish at the same point I am at with bears and bandogs; when I see them fight, so they fight earnestly indeed and tug each other well, I care not who has the worst.'

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Why not, indeed? Better so than to hire assassins! Cecil, with the modesty of genius, confessed his ignorance of the country and his inability to judge; yet in such opinions as he allowed himself to give there was generally a certain nobility of tone and sentiment.

'You be of that opinion,' he replied,' which many wise men are of-from which I do not dissent, being an Englishman; but being as I am a Christian man, I am not without some perplexity to enjoy of such cruelties.'"

Arnold however, though perhaps not personally responsible, saw the Irish rending each other as he desired. The formal division into presidencies could not be completed on the moment; but English authority having ceased to cast its shadow beyond the Pale, the leading chiefs seized or contended for the rule. In the north O'Neil was without a rival. In the west the

1 Sir Nicholas Arnold to Cecil, January 29, 1565: Irish MSS.
2 Cecil to Sir N. Arnold, February 28; Irish MSS.

O'Briens and the Clanrickards shared without disputing for them the glens and moors of Galway, Clare, and Mayo. The richer counties of Munster were a prize to excite a keener competition; and when the English Government was no longer in a position to interfere, the feud between the Butlers and the Geraldines of the south burst like a volcano in fury, and like a volcano in the havoc which it spread. Even now the picture drawn by Sir Henry Sidney and repeated by Spenser can scarcely be contemplated without emotion. The rich limestone pastures were burnt into a wilderness; through Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Cork, ‘a man might ride twenty or thirty miles nor ever find a house standing;''and the miserable poor were brought to such wretchedness that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them; yea, they did eat one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for a time. Yet were they not all long to continue therewithal, so that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country was suddenly left void of man and beast; yet surely in all that war there perished not many by the

sword, but all by the extremity of famine which they themselves had wrought.'1

1 Compare Spenser's State of | The original of Sidney's despatch is Ireland' with 'A Description of in the Record Office. It was printed Munster,' by Sir Henry Sidney, | by Collins.—Sidney Papers, vol. i. after a journey through it in 1566.

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CHAPTER XLIII.

THE EMBASSY OF DE SILVA.

THE policy of Elizabeth towards the French Protest

ants had not been successful. Had her assistance

been moderately disinterested she would have secured their friendship, and at the close of the eight years, fixed by the Treaty of Cambray for the restoration of Calais, she would have experienced the effects of their gratitude. By the forcible retention of Havre after the civil war was ended she had rekindled hereditary animosities; she had thrown additional doubt on her sincerity as a friend of the Reformation; she had sacrificed an English army, while she had provided the French Government with a fair pretext for disowning its obligations, and was left with a war upon her hands from which she could hardly extricate herself with honour. A fortnight before Havre surrendered, the Prince of Condé had offered, if she would withdraw from it, that the clause in the Treaty of Cambray affecting Calais should be reaccepted by the King of France, the Queenmother, the Council, the Noblesse, and the Parliament.

She had angrily and contemptuously refused; and now with crippled finances, with trade ruined, with the necessity growing upon her, as it had grown upon her sister, of contracting loans at Antwerp, her utmost hope was to extort the terms which she had then rejected.

Unable to maintain a regular fleet at sea she had let loose the privateers, whose exploits hereafter will be more particularly related. In this place it is enough to say that they had found in the ships of Spain, Flanders, or even of their own country, more tempting booty than in the coasting traders of Brittany. English merchants and sailors were arrested in Spanish harbours and imprisoned in Spanish dungeons in retaliation for 'depredations committed by the adventurers;' while a bill was presented by the Madrid Government of two million ducats for injuries inflicted by them on Spanish subjects. In vain Philip struggled to avoid a quarrel with Elizabeth; in vain Elizabeth refused to be the champion of the Reformation: the animosities of their subjects and the necessity of things were driving them forward towards the eventually inevitable breach. Mary Stuart was looking to the King of Spain and the King of Spain to Mary Stuart, each as the ally designed by Providence for the other; and the English Government in this unlucky war with France was quarrelling with the only European power which, since the breach of Henry the Eighth with the Papacy, had been cordially its friend. The House of Guise was

1 Reasons for a peace with France, March 10, 1564: French MSS. Rolls House.

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