In White’s quaint language, all the lords and chiefs ‘cisalpine and transalpine the mountains of Slieve Logher,’ were present at Cork. Pelham found that nearly as many Barries as Geraldines were in rebellion; but nevertheless Lord Barrymore stood the stiffest on his defence. The rest had very little to say for themselves, and Ormonde bitterly upbraided them, ‘charging himself with their faults for making of Her Majesty to conceive so well of them.’ Desmond, he says, was their ancient scourge and enemy, and as they had favoured him he would cast them off and bid each shift for himself. He would utterly refuse their friendship and spend his blood against them all and against all Her Majesty’s enemies, ‘advising such as loved him to follow his ways, and such as would not bade them defiance, swearing a great oath and clapping his hand upon the Bible, that if Her Majesty did proclaim them traitors with the rest he would lay it on their skins, and in conclusion advised the Lord Justice to carry them all with him to Limerick till better order were taken with them.’ All were received to mercy except Lord Barrymore, who was committed for trial. ‘He is,’ said Ormonde, ‘an arrant Papist, who a long time kept in his house Dr. Tanner, made bishop here by the Pope, who died in my Lord of Upper Ossory’s house, being secretly kept there. Believe me, Mr. Secretary, you shall find my Lord of Upper Ossory as bad a man as may be.’ Pelham took Clancare, Barrymore, and several others with him, and, having been delayed at Mallow by a summer flood in the Blackwater, arrived at Limerick without further adventure. He professed himself fairly satisfied with the progress made. Frequent inroads, and still more the steady pressure of the garrisons, would soon starve out the rebels, unless help came from abroad. In that case, he said, ‘I look their strength will be infinitely multiplied.’42
As if to fill the time till the Spaniards came, a movement now began which defeated Pelham’s calculations. The new rebel was James Eustace, who had lately succeeded his father as Viscount Baltinglas, and who was an enthusiastic Catholic. He was already connected with the turbulent O’Byrnes, and his father had been in opposition on the cess question; but it is clear that religion was the chief motive. Before he succeeded to the title, Sanders and others persuaded him to go to Rome, and what he saw there under Gregory XIII. had exactly a contrary effect on him to what the Rome of Leo X. had upon Luther. On his return he heard mass, boldly gloried in the fact before the Ecclesiastical Commission, and was mulcted in the statutable fine of 100 marks, Sidney quaintly declaring that he could not countenance ‘Papistry and abolished religion.’ Loftus was told to exact the money or a bond, and to imprison in default. The young lord went to gaol for twenty-four hours, and was pardoned on signing the bond. But fine and imprisonment never convince, though they sometimes silence, and Baltinglas was in no way changed by what courtly officials called her Majesty’s godly proceedings. ‘I mean,’ he wrote to a Waterford merchant, ‘to take this holy enterprise in hand by the authority of the Supreme Head of the Church.’
The letter fell into Ormonde’s hands, and the bearer seems to have been hanged in chains. Ormonde had already warned the Viscount to be careful, and he now sent an answer which at once committed him irretrievably and almost without hope of pardon. He said he had been commanded to take the sword by the highest power on earth, and would maintain the truth to the extent of his means.
‘Questionless,’ he added, ‘it is great want of knowledge, and more of grace, to think and believe that a woman uncapax of all holy orders, should be the supreme governor of Christ’s Church; a thing that Christ did not grant unto his own mother. If the Queen’s pleasure be, as you allege, to minister justice, it were time to begin; for in this twenty years’ part of her reign we have seen more damnable doctrine maintained, more oppressing of poor subjects, under pretence of justice, within this land than ever we read or heard… If Thomas Becket, the Bishop of Canterbury, had never suffered death in the defence of the Church, Thomas Butler, alias Becket, had never been Earl of Ormonde.’43 Ormonde sent the letter by express to Walsingham, for the Queen’s eye, characterising it as ‘foolish, traitorous, popish, and devil-persuaded,’ praying that God might confound all her unnatural subjects and give her victory over all His enemies.
‘Sir, I pray you tell her Majesty that poor Lucas will remain constant in the true faith, whoever follow the Pope and do the contrary, and that neither Becket nor Canterbury shall alter him.’
It was a year of great activity among the English Catholics. Parsons and Campion had just landed; the air teemed with rumours, and papers were freely circulated to prepare men for something extraordinary. A Devonshire gentleman named Eve brought one of these to Waterford, and it was not calculated to make the task of the Irish Government easier. Ten or twelve thousand men from the Pope, rather more from the King of Spain, and rather fewer from the Duke of Florence, were expected to invade England, and there to reassert the Pope’s lawful sovereignty. Elizabeth was declared ineligible, both as bastard and as heretic, to wear the vassal crown, and it was proposed to publish the Bull of excommunication in every Christian church and court. The English Catholic nobles were, however, to be allowed to crown one of their own number, who was to be independent of Spain, but her faithful ally in reducing the Hollanders. All Church lands were to be restored. The importer of this notable scheme was arrested by the Mayor of Waterford, and sent in irons to Clonmel, with his companion, a merchant of Bridgewater, to be dealt with by Pelham. We may, however, be sure that for one such production intercepted, many escaped the notice of the officials, and that Baltinglas had reason to expect support from outside. But he probably rested his hopes mainly upon the help of his neighbours, and even fancied he could get Kildare to join him.44
On July 14th, nearly a fortnight before the insurrection actually broke out, the Archbishop of Dublin met Kildare on the legendary hill of Tara. Baltinglas was only two miles off, and in charge of the Earl’s own troop. Kildare had been told everything, and he informed Loftus that the Viscount and other Papists had conspired and were ready to rebel. ‘The first exploit they will do,’ he said, ‘is to kill you and me; you, for the envy they bear to your religion, and me, for that being taken away, they think there is no one to make head against them.’ Dr. Loftus indeed might have had a bad chance had he fallen into their hands, but there is no likelihood that they had any murderous intention towards Kildare. The threat was probably used as likely to have weight with one whose sympathies were already more than half-gained: The Archbishop pressed the Earl to arrest the traitor and more than once received an evasive answer; but at last Kildare confessed what was doubtless the true cause of his inaction. ‘I should heap to myself universally the hatred and illwill