But Bermingham, who was Arnold’s principal adviser, understood the duties of the Commission differently. According to his view every officer, from the Lord-Lieutenant downwards, was to be visited with extreme penalties for every technical error. No allowance was to be made for men who were irregularly and not highly paid, and who had too often to make her Majesty’s bricks without straw. It was hard in Queen Elizabeth’s time – it is hard enough in Queen Victoria’s – to apportion the blame between the English Government and its servants in Ireland, but the irregularities themselves were scandalous enough. Even Bermingham had some doubts about the policy of employing anyone living in Ireland to inquire into matters personally affecting the Queen’s representative, but the Commissioners were peremptory, and he had to deliver a book of exceptions to the Lord-Lieutenant’s muster. A roll of his own, accompanying this document, contained 213 names, but of these twenty-five were holders of other offices, thirty were occasionally employed by other captains, and sixty-four were of Irish birth, though by rights all but eight should have been Englishmen. Of the Englishmen born ten were no soldiers, but at best retainers. A soldier’s pay was drawn in the name of the clerk of Christ Church, and still more strangely in the name of Adam Loftus, ‘primate and bishop of Armagh, almost these two years.’ Sussex could muster 155 men, but no more than forty-three were really fit for service, and of these twenty-eight were officers. Thomas Smythe, the apothecary, who probably kept drugs for poisoning as well as for healing, was borne on the strength, and so were butchers, carters, woodcutters, scullions, makers of arras, musicians, a mariner, an old fisherman, a blind man, and a dead man. Brian Fitzwilliam’s company should have mustered 200, exclusive of officers, whereas the rank and file in reality only numbered 128. Captain Fortescue’s followers were found to be nearly all Irish; they were disbanded, and as Fortescue declined to account, he was committed to prison.79
When the Commission had been at work for a year, Elizabeth found out that it was very slow and very expensive. She recalled Wrothe, much to his own delight, but to the despair of Dixe, who was left single-handed to cope with Arnold and Bermingham. Unrestrained by an English colleague, the Lord Justice now proceeded to extremities, a course in which he was encouraged by the local magnates joined with him in the Commission. The captains were required to enter into recognizances, binding themselves under penalties to give a detailed account of all they had received, and to make good deficiencies. The captains were willing to bind themselves to account for all the money or value which they could be proved to have received, and confessed that they had been negligent about the preservation of books, but refused to admit the evidence of private soldiers instead of documentary proofs. Any one who has had anything to do with paying troops will know that they were amply justified in the refusal. The Commissioners proceeded in the most arbitrary way, refusing to make any allowance for men employed as servants, and proposing to pay all according to the roll, and without the knowledge of the captains. All Irishmen above six in each company were to be peremptorily disallowed, without considering the explanations offered on this head. The Commissioners swore in twelve soldiers from each company, and encouraged them to say all they could against their captains; and having thus collected much hostile evidence, they refused copies to the officers concerned. Captain George Delves having declined to submit to the requirements of the Commissioners, though he offered to give all reasonable security, was sent to prison. Sir Henry Radclyffe, the Lord-Lieutenant’s brother, and Sir George Stanley, the Marshal, ‘seeing their staves to stand next the door,’ as they themselves expressed it, protested strongly against the ‘opening of matters, we do not say the forging of matters,’ to their prejudice. They significantly added that all the Commissioners were blood-relations to each other and to Bermingham. Auditor Dixe, who seems to have been really anxious to do right, heard the Lord Justice talk much of the ‘exactions, impositions, cessings, and cuttings,’ of Sussex and the captains, to the impoverishment of the Pale, and warned him that he would be considered partial if he did not report the same of the native nobility, who extorted twice as much. The auditor reminded Cecil that he was but one man against fourteen. The jobbing of family parties, as they have been called, has indeed been for centuries one of the chief difficulties of ministers who have been successively charged with the government of Ireland.80
Sir Henry Radclyffe, the most highly placed and best connected officer in Ireland, was summoned before Arnold to give fuller answers to Bermingham’s charges. He refused to go back to a period before the last general payment, but offered to wait on the Commission at any time after one hour’s notice, and begged that his soldiers might not be paid in his absence. Well might Radclyffe exclaim, ‘fiat justitia,’ when this common measure of justice was denied to him. Dixe was ordered to settle with Sir Henry’s company according to their own report. He obeyed; but took the precaution to have some of the Commissioners present, and declined to be bound by the results of such a monstrous order. It was hardly worth while to brand the character of the Queen’s officers, and to destroy the discipline of her troops for the sake of 10l., saved in the payment of a company of fifty. Radclyffe asked for a passport, and even offered to be tried by his own soldiers. Both requests were refused, and the Commissioners, who seem to have surrendered themselves to Bermingham’s guidance, declared that if fraud appeared on the face of the incriminating document drawn up by him, they would force Radclyffe to give the details which he had already refused. He was made to appear about 6,000l. in debt, nearly half of which was on account of Irishmen enlisted above the number officially allowed. The accused officer was then committed to prison, and Arnold, having undertaken to see his men paid, refused to settle the tradesmen’s bills for necessaries, alleging that all should fall on the captains. There may have been great negligence, but the Lord Justice did not venture to accuse Radclyffe of any false statement; and it must be admitted that, whatever his faults, he had managed to keep Leix and Offaly quiet. As much could not be said for Arnold, whom the English Council gently rebuked for taking such an extreme course with an officer of high rank, a Privy Councillor, and a man of family. There could be no objection to detaining him in Ireland if necessary, but he might have been left at liberty. Cecil and Leicester, after privately examining the voluminous and contradictory reports, declared themselves puzzled in some things, and advised Arnold to take a good many of the Irish Council into his confidence. They reminded him that Dixe, with whom he appeared unable to agree, was chosen for a man of honesty and ability. What Leicester and Cecil could not fully understand at the time, we shall hardly be able to clear up now. That Radclyffe had committed irregularities was not denied, that they were much smaller both in amount and in kind than Arnold supposed may be gathered from the fact that he was afterwards allowed to give a bond for 600l. to repay all moneys overpaid to him, if the balance should be against him at a final closing. Sir George Stanley gave a similar bond for 300l. Nicholas Heron, another captain whom Arnold treated with great rigour, was afterwards knighted, and died in the enjoyment of the Queen’s favour.81
While Arnold was occupied in exposing, and perhaps exaggerating the defects of military administration, the optimist Cusack was trying to keep Shane O’Neill in good humour. ‘Sir Thomas Cusack’s peaces’ became