THE ARRIVAL
In Ireland--The state of the country--Cruelty of the wars--At
Rakele--Illustrative anecdotes--Smerwick--Ralegh's initiative--
Lord Grey de Wilton--Exploit at Bally--In touch with the home
authorities.
The scene changes to Ireland, where the continual fighting served as a
training-ground--with France and the Netherlands--for the energies of
the young gentleman of the period. Ireland seemed at this time to popish
powers a suitable starting-place from which to overset the rule of the
woman Elizabeth, who dared to establish again a Church independent of
Rome, and to put her woman's self at the head of it. But the popish
powers were mistaken in their choice. It is true that the Irish were
devoutly Catholic; they were better pleased however to fight out their
own feuds than to join together in any way for any cause. They were
lawless and savage; and not even their hatred of the invading English
could serve to concentrate them. They were far too impatient for serious
warfare. They liked to come upon a foe--a Butler on a Geraldine--like a
whirlwind, fight a terrific battle, and make off to their homes to
listen to the songs by their bards, chanted in praise of their undying
prowess, "as those Bardes and rythmers doe for a little reward or a
share of a stolen cow," until the man of prowess praised "waxed most
insolent and halfe madde with the love of himself and his own lewd
deeds. Of a most notorious thiefe ... one of their Bardes will say, That
he was none of the milkesops that was brought up by the fireside, but
that most of his dayes he spent in armes and valiant enterprises, that
he did never eat his meat until it was won by the sword, that he lay not
all night slugging under his mantle but used commonly to keep others
waking to defend their lives, and did light his candle at the flames of
their houses to bade him in the darknesse ... and finally that he died
not bewayled of many, but made many waile when he died, that dearly
bought his death."
Such men were not ripe for the burden of a great cause. But one Sanders,
an English Jesuit already past middle age, meeting with Fitzmaurice in
Spain, formed a capital project of passing over to Ireland, subduing it,
and passing from Ireland to England and driving out Elizabeth and her
nation of Protestants.
In May, 1579, they landed at Dingle, after having on their voyage taken
a small Bristol vessel, the sailors and captain of which they pitched
into the sea. The landing at Dingle was impressive as the ceremony,
which inaugurated the coming of the true religion, must needs be. "Two
friars stepped first on shore; a bishop followed, mitre on head and
crosier in hand, then Sanders, with the consecrated banner, and after
him Fitzmaurice."
But the expedition did not rise to the level of its inauguration. It
served only to stir up a savage rebellion in Munster, and to bring
devastation upon the country.
It was to help quell the insurrection that Ralegh came to Ireland as
captain of a company of one hundred foot-soldiers at the end of 1579, or
the beginning of 1580.
The war--if war it can be called--was carried on with savage cruelty on
both sides. Less could not be expected. The times were not gentle, when
little girls in London might see men hung and quartered, and limbs
stared down from the chief gates of most cities. Nor would mercy be
expected from generals who came to Ireland as Pelham came, and as Lord
Grey de Wilton came, regarding Ireland as the grave of reputation. To
Ralegh, too, the service was itself distasteful. He writes with
characteristic vigour of phrase to the Earl of Leicester, "I would
disdayn it as mich to keap sheepe. I will not trouble your honor with
the busyness of this loste land; for that Sir Warram Sentleger can best
of any man deliver unto your lordshipe the good, the bad, the mischief,
the means to amende, and all in all of this common welthe or rather
common woe."
The English soldiery regarded the Irish as savages who would not live at
peace, and must be exterminated, with the exception of the actual
tillers of the ground or churls as they were called. And this point of
view was encouraged by those in authority, who had neither men nor money
to spare for guarding and feeding prisoners. "Death," as Froude says,
"was the only gaoler their finances could support." Nothing can
extenuate cruelty; but it is well to face the fact that cruelty, and
cruelty not greatly less atrocious than this, was an absolute attribute
of the Elizabethan age. The one quality, which runs through all the
pages of every history of every man and every movement, is
vitality--intense, burning vitality; and this vitality illumined the
literature, chaotic as much of it is, and beat pulsing through the veins
of the nation, explaining its magnificent advance, and enthusiasm and
greatness, even as it explains its brutality. England was like a boy who
is suddenly conscious of being strong and of being free, with all the
capacity of some young Hercules and all his reckless faults.
When Ralegh joined the Irish service, Lord Justice Pelham was in the
position of Lord Deputy. Soon after his arrival, however, Pelham was
recalled, greatly to his pleasure, and Lord Grey de Wilton, Gascoigne's
patron and general in the Netherlands, undertook the command of the
forces, and the Earl of Ormond, an Irishman, was made Lieutenant of
Munster. These were Ralegh's chiefs; and his criticism of their methods
of management first brought him, as will be seen later, under the direct
notice of the great Burghley.
As an active soldier, however, his exploits are exciting and
adventurous, and they are not hidden in the obscurity which hid his
exploits in France. The same Hooker who has been already quoted, records
them with pride in his continuation of Holinshed's Chronicles.
Ralegh was once stationed with a troop of cavalry at Rakele under Lord
Grey. He was always a well-eyed man and observed that the Irish were in
the habit of hurrying down upon an encampment immediately it had been
abandoned. Accordingly, he made a plan to surprise them, and the plan
was successful. He captured a considerable number of prisoners. One of
the Irish carried a bundle of withies, and Ralegh went up to him and
asked him why he carried the withies. "To hang English churls with," was
the blunt answer. "Is that so?" said Ralegh. "They shall now serve for
an Irish kerne." And without more ado he bade his men hang him to the
nearest tree. The repartee was prompt and savage. It is typical of the
time that it should have happened; and intensely typical that a careful
record should have been made in contemporary history.
Another time we read that Ralegh, on a small expedition to a certain
Lord Barry, of Barry Court, in a fight against great odds, twice at his
own personal peril rescued one Henry Moyle, who twice was caught in the
soft bog. "He was unhorsed, and stood with his pistol and quarter-staff,
one man against twenty." History does not relate what he said to Henry
Moyle on his return to camp. The two stories stand well side by side. At
the tragic sacking of Smerwick Ralegh was one of the captains ordered to
carry out the last desperate instructions: the siege is illustrative not
only of that bad Irish campaign, but also shows what a personal part
high officers used to take in battles.
A second band of Papal soldiers, comprised of Italians, Spaniards and
Frenchmen, came to Ireland in 1580, and made Smerwick their
headquarters, a fort on the shore fully exposed to the Atlantic winds.
Here Lord Grey came upon them, but was obliged to wait eight days with
his men until Sir William Winter arrived in Ventry harbour with cannon
and ammunition, and at length joined Admiral Bingham in Smerwick Bay.
Lord Grey galloped down over the sands to welcome Winter. Speedily the
cannon were landed and placed in position before the fort, and the
bombardment began. The English crept nearer after the first day, until
the cannon were within a cable's length of the wall, and Sir William
Winter himself taking careful aim, brought down the enemy's chief piece,
and a man appeared on the ramparts waving a white hand-kerchief. The
firing ceased. Then Signor Jeffrey, an Italian, came to entreat grace
from the Lord Deputy, but grace was refused him. "Afterward their
Coronnel Don Sebastian came forth to intreate that they might part with
their armes like souldiers, at the least with their lives according to
the custome of war ... it was strongly denied him and told him by the
Lord Deputie himselfe that they could not justly pleade either custome
of warre or lawe of nations--for that they were not any lawfull
enemies...." The Pope sent them? asked Lord Grey de Wilton, and declared
himself surprised, the bitter old enthusiast, that gentlemen should
undertake a commission from "a detestable shaveling the right antichrist
and patron of the doctrine of devils." He would only agree to wait till
morning. So on the morning of the next November day, the garrison, seven
hundred men, piled their arms, and with a few women and children stood
waiting, while the great Atlantic waves beat coldly, sullenly on the
shore. "Then put I in certain bands who fell straight to execution,"
writes Grey, with grim brevity. Six hundred men in all were slain that
November morning, and Grey had the bodies stripped and laid in neat
lines upon the shore, and Grey looked at them without emotion, and
thought them "as gallant and goodly personages as ever I saw." So he
wrote to the Queen, informing her of the victory, and the Queen wrote
back thanking him, adding a postscript in her own hand (a special mark
of honour) warmly approving of his action: and Camden courteously lies
when he says that Grey shed tears and Elizabeth wished the cruelty had
been unnecessary. Captain of one of these "certain bands" was Walter
Ralegh. Edmund Spenser was at this time secretary to Lord Grey de
Wilton, and he writes in that scholarly graphic treatise in dialogue
form, which has been already quoted, namely the "View of the State of
Ireland"--"Whereupon the said Coronell did absolutely yeeld himselfe and
the fort, with all therein, and craved only mercy, which it being not
thought good to shew them, for danger of them, if, being saved they
should afterwards join with the Irish; and also for terrour to the Irish
who are much imboldened by those forraigne succours, and also put in
hope of more ere long: there was no other way, but to make that short
end of them as was made." Thus writes Edmund Spenser, the author of the
"Faerie Queen," a man not famous for his ferity.
Praise and blame are easy to dispense: but they are dangerous
commodities. They raise too freely the thick white dust of prejudice
which even dims eyes which are anxious to observe a neighbour, and
effectually blinds eyes that wish to peer into the recesses of a bygone
age. Let us be glad if we are more human and more humane, and avoid
hugging ourselves too closely on imagined superiority. Violent death
stalked down every alley of life; and violent death is not more dreadful
than the haggard existence in which millions are nursed to-day. Our
cruelty is a little less apparent, and more respectable. That is at any
rate something. Let us be thankful for that, and let us by all means
subscribe to the Home for Lost Cats.
But Ralegh was not content with the perils and excitement of active
service. He possessed initiative. He saw the masses of money that were
being spent, and saw that full value was not being obtained. The war in
his opinion was being mismanaged. He did not hesitate to write to the
authorities at home, stating in round terms what his opinion was. It is
not surprising that Lord Grey de Wilton was annoyed by the young man's
audacity. "I neither like his carriage," he writes to Walsingham, "nor
his company: and therefore other than by direction and commandment, and
what his right can require he is not to expect at my hands." Apart from
the administration of the war there was little in common between the two
men. Lord Grey was a staunch Protestant, unwavering in his religious
zeal, and blind in his hatred of Popery. He would have passed through
Ireland, had he had his will, with the sword gripped in one hand and the
Bible and the English Prayer-book clasped tightly in the other.
Ralegh was not that order of man. There was nothing grim and nothing
austere about him. He was a man of address. Lord Grey was stiff and
blunt, a Puritan a little before his proper time. Very characteristic is
the sentence in his letter to the Queen, telling of the death of young
Cheke. "So wrought in him God's spirit, plainly declaring him a child of
his; elected to be no less comfort of his good and godly friends than
great instruction and manifest motion of every other hearer that stood
by, of whom there was a good troop." He was inclined to regard most
things from the standpoint of religious experience. He was not addicted
to humanity.
The Irish were not only rebels against his country; they were what was
far worse--rebels against his own faith, and he sullenly objected to any
measures which might serve to bring them into line with English
interests. He wished to force his own salvation upon them rather than to
make them useful subjects of the Queen.
That must have been where Ralegh chiefly differed from him. And there is
an interesting example of this difference and of one of Ralegh's chief
powers, to wit his influence over men. For Ralegh was wise and politic.
He saw the state of affairs in Ireland and formed in his mind a definite
plan of action--to use Irish factions to English purpose, and not to
allow them to try and join under the cause of another religion. The most
dangerous enemies were the crafty instigators in the background; and one
of the most influential of these was an Anglo-Irish chieftain, named
Lord Roche, who lived at Bally, some twenty miles from Cork where Ralegh
was stationed. Ralegh convinced Lord Grey of the importance of bringing
this feeder of revolt as prisoner to Cork, and undertook to do so
himself with his small band of followers. And this he did by sheer
dexterity and daring in the teeth of overwhelming difficulty. For the
Seneschal of Imokelly, one Fitz-Edmonds, had wind of Ralegh's intention,
and lay in ambush for him with eight hundred men. But Ralegh outwitted
him by his speed and dashed with his small party through the ambuscade.
That was not all. Arrived at Bally, he was met by five hundred townsmen
and tenantry of Lord Roche. These men he held at bay with the larger
part of his band, and himself, with six chosen men, rode on to Lord
Roche's castle. At the gate he called out that he desired to speak with
Lord Roche, and was answered that he would not be permitted to enter
with more than two followers. But while he and the seneschal were
parleying, the six of them slipped into the gate, and gained admission
for another party which Ralegh had bidden follow him at a short
interval, the attention of the warders being engaged by Ralegh, so that
before the Irish knew what had happened, they found the castle courtyard
full of musketeers, armed and standing to attention. Ralegh meanwhile
was in the presence of Lord Roche, who was forced to treat the intruder
as a guest, and sturdily maintaining his loyalty to the Queen, ordered
his servants to bring in a banquet. Ralegh listened with all courtesy;
and said that it was the will of the Lord Deputy of Ireland to hear with
his own ears this noble confession of loyalty, and that he must beg
leave to escort Lord Roche and his family to Cork. Lord Roche demurred.
Ralegh insisted. It is difficult to decide whether the situation
appealed more strongly to his sense of humour or to his sense of power.
The Irish chieftain at his own table in the banqueting-hall of his own
castle, surrounded by his men and the young captain with his two
soldiers inside, some dozen in the courtyard and a few more dozen in the
town, twenty miles from any assistance! "Desperation begetteth courage
but not greater nor so lively as doth assured confidence," he wrote some
thirty years later. Now his courage was certainly backed by both.
Gradually Lord Roche came to realize the inflexible determination of the
young man; and agreed to what by Ralegh's inevitable personal strength
of will became his only possible course. He consented to go to Cork, and
went. The story does not end here. Not only did he go to Cork, but from
being the Queen's dangerous foe, he became, through Ralegh's influence,
the Queen's loyal supporter and staunch friend, and three of his sons
actually were slain fighting for the Queen's cause in Ireland. That was
one of Ralegh's triumphs. It shows the mettle of the man and his power
over others, and more than that it bears out strikingly a distinct line
of policy, which he formed then and expressed later, in dealing with the
disaffected. Minding these Irish experiences, it is interesting to read
what he says of Amilcar's treatment of the mercenaries in revolt.
"Against these inconveniences, Mercy and Severity, used with due
respect, are the best remedies. In neither of which Amilcar failed. For
as long as these his own soldiours were in any way likely to be
reclaimed by gentle courses, his humanitie was ready to invite them. But
when they were transported with beastly outrage beyond all regard of
honesty and shame, he rewarded their villainie with answerable
vengeance, casting them unto wilde beasts to be devoured."
Moreover, it is certain that Lord Burghley respected Ralegh's judgment,
for there is a remarkable paper extant written in the handwriting of
both, which shows that Burghley conferred privately with Ralegh about
the Irish rebellion. The document is dated October 25, 1582, and is
inscribed with the words, "The opinion of Mr. Rawley upon motions made
to hym for the meanes of subduyng the Rebellion in Monster." And in it
the point upon which Ralegh chiefly insists is the pressing need to win
over the Irish chieftains to the Queen's cause; as he had himself
already done conspicuously in the case of Lord Roche.
There is a story that Ralegh owed his first introduction to the Queen's
favour by his address in a conference before her, in which he proved his
opinion, man to man, against Lord Grey de Wilton, his superior; but
whether this story with all its dramatic possibilities is valid or not,
it is certain that his conduct in Ireland brought him into great notice:
and he was not the man easily to slip from any advantage he had gained.
We hear of him joining the Earl of Leicester in a state mission to the
Netherlands, and then he bursts into final brilliant prominence as
courtier and his Queen's favourite.