When Grey returned to Dublin he found the whole official circle bent upon disgracing Kildare, and after some days’ consideration he summoned the general body of nobles to meet the Council, ostensibly for the discussion of military dispositions. Delvin saw that he was suspected, and vehemently demanded an enquiry, putting in a written declaration in answer to rumoured accusations. The full Council, including Kildare, found this statement inconsistent with known facts, and committed him to the Castle. Then Gerard, who had conducted the private investigation, rashly disclosed his whole case, and openly accused the Earl of complicity with the treason of Baltinglas. Wallop, who believed that no good thing could come out of Galilee, observed that the Chancellor ‘would needs have the attorney and serjeant by, who are of this country birth, and so were many councillors then present, by means of which it is now in every man’s mouth what the Earl is to be charged with.’
The Vice-Treasurer adds that his lands were worth 3,000l. a year, but that he had taken good care to return them to England as worth only 1,500l., that the only road towards good government lay through severity, and that unless traitors were made to pay both in person and lands, Ireland would always be what it long had been, – ‘the sink of the treasure of England.’ Waterhouse, whose office it was to look after unconsidered trifles of revenue, thought the original cause of war was Kildare’s military commission, and that treason should be made to pay its own expenses. ‘I will hear your honour’s opinion,’ he wrote to Walsingham, ‘whether her Majesty will be content to have her great charges answered out of the livings of the conspirators, and to use a sharp and a severe course without respect of any man’s greatness, wheresoever law will catch hold, or whether all faults must be lapped up in lenity with pardons, protections, and fair semblance, as in times past; if severity, then is there hope enough of good reformation; if mildness, then discharge the army and officers, and leave this nation to themselves, for sure the mean will do no good. We must embrace one of these extremities.’71
Grey could not deny that appearances were strong against the Earl, and he ordered his arrest, giving full credit for their exertions to Gerard and Loftus. He believed that ‘greediness of pay and arrogant zeal to Popish government’ were the stumbling-blocks of great personages in Ireland, and that Delvin certainly was ‘a wicked creature who had cut the poor Earl’s throat.’ As if to add to the suspicion, Kildare’s son and heir ran off to the O’Connors, and they refused to let him go when Grey sent for him. At last, fearing the construction that might be put upon this, they handed him over to Ormonde, and he was shut up in the Castle with his father and Lord Delvin. All three were sent over to England, Secretary Fenton carrying the despatches, and Gerard going with him to tell his own story.72
The capture of Smerwick did not put down the Munster rebellion; but Ormonde, or some of those about him, contemptuously reported that Desmond, his brother, and Baltinglas had ‘but a company of rascals and four Spaniards, and a drum to make men believe that they had a great number of the strangers.’ Both Youghal and Ross thought themselves in danger, and Wallop reported that communications between the capital and Limerick were only kept up by ‘simple fellows that pass afoot in nature of beggars, in wages not accustomed.’ Grey and Ormonde having turned their backs, Desmond appeared again near Dingle, and Bingham felt that there might be an attack at any moment. Half of Captain Zouch’s men were dead and buried, the survivors being too ill to work or fight. Captain Case’s company were little better, and they would have made no resistance without Bingham and his sailors, who worked with a will and raised a breastwork tenable by 20 men against 2,000 kernes and gallowglasses. The men were put on short allowance, and having thus made the provisions last thirteen days longer than they would otherwise have done, Bingham was compelled to return to England. His crew were so reduced by spare diet that they were unable to work the ship up Channel, and had to run into Bristol. He left Ireland, to quote a correspondent of Walsingham, ‘in as great confusion as the Tower of Babylon was a building.’ There were more soldiers in Munster than had been since the first conquest, and war material was abundant. But no two officers agreed with each other personally, or were agreed upon the policy to be pursued. Ormonde was in Dublin, looking after his own interests, and leaving his lieutenants to shift for themselves. Sir Warham St. Leger, Chief Commissioner at Cork, claimed superiority over Sir George Bourchier at Kilmallock, while the latter acted as a captain of free lances and granted protections to whom he pleased. Sir William Morgan at Youghal would give way to neither, and there seemed no escape from the difficulty but once more to appoint an English President, ‘upright, valiant, severe, and wise.’ In the meantime the rebellion was as strong as ever, and what the rebels spared the soldiers ravaged. In Connaught the young Burkes daily razed houses and fences, northern Leinster lay waste, in Munster nothing was left standing save towns and cities, and Ulster was ready to break out on the smallest provocation.73
The English officials all maintained that Ormonde had shown himself unfit to conduct the war. One writer estimates his emoluments at 215l. a month, and another at 3,677l. a year, and the first result of a peace would be to deprive him of these comfortable subsidies. He was mixed up with Irish families and Irish lawsuits, and could not have a single eye to the public service. He owed the Queen over 3,000l. in rents, and the war was an excuse for not paying. Nor was his system of warfare calculated to finish a rebellion, for all experienced officers said that could be done only by settled garrisons. ‘He followeth,’ says his enemy St. Leger, ‘with a running host, which is to no end but only wearing out and consuming of men by travel, for I can compare the difference between our footmen and the traitors to a mastiff and wight greyhound.’ According to the same authority Ormonde was generally disliked, and those whom he was set over would ‘rather be hanged than follow him, finding their travel and great pains altogether in vain.’ He procured the imprisonment of the Baron of Upper Ossory, whom he accused of treason, of harbouring papists and consorting with rebels, and of meeting Desmond after he had been proclaimed; but Wallop thought the Earl coveted his neighbour’s land, being ‘so imperious as he can abide none near him that dependeth not on him.’ Spenser’s friend Ludovic Bryskett said the Lord General did nothing of moment with his 2,000 men, and as for his toil and travel, ‘the noble gentleman was worthy of pity to take so much labour in vain.’ Wallop, Waterhouse, Fenton, and St. Leger agreed that Ireland could only be pacified by severity, and that Ormonde was not the man to do it. But perhaps the heaviest, as it is certainly the most graphic, indictment was that which Captain Raleigh forwarded to Walsingham.74
Lord Barrymore’s eldest son David, Lord Roche’s eldest son Maurice, Florence MacCarthy, Patrick Condon, and others, long professed loyalty because it seemed the winning side. But Barry’s country lay open to the seneschal of Imokilly, and in passing through it Raleigh had an adventure by which the world was near losing some of its brightest memories. On his return from Dublin, and having at the time only two followers with him and as many more within shot, he was attacked at a ford by the seneschal with seventy-four men. The place seems to have been Midleton or Ballinacurra, and Raleigh’s aim was to gain an old castle, which may have been Ballivodig, to which his Irish guide at once fled. In crossing the river Henry Moile was unhorsed, and begged his captain not to desert him. Raleigh rode back into the river, and recovered both man and horse; but in his hurry to remount, Moile fell into a bog on the off side, while his horse ran away to the enemy. ‘The captain nevertheless stood still, and did abide for the coming of the residue of his company, of the four shot which as yet were not come forth, and for his man Jenkin, who had about 200l. in money about him; and sat upon his horse in the meanwhile, having his staff in one hand, and his pistol charged in the other.’ Like an Homeric hero he kept the seneschal’s whole party at bay, although they were twenty to one. Raleigh modestly left the details to others, and only reported that the escape was strange to all.75
Two days later David Barry was in open rebellion,