EXPEDITION TO DERRY–TREACHEROUS POLICY OF MOUNTJOY.
Whilst the prince of Ulster was awakening and organizing the South, a new English deputy had arrived in Dublin, a more formidable enemy by far than any whom O’Neill had yet encountered. Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy, who was not only an experienced officer, but a nobleman of much learning and taste, a “bookish man,” as his secretary describes him,— a powerful theologian and confuter of Papists, arrived in February to take the command in Ireland. He had strict instructions to establish at once powerful garrisons in Derry and Ballyshannon;[1] and to effect this paramount object, additional troops were to be poured into Ireland and placed at the governor’s disposal;—fleet of transport ships was to be provided. — No toil, or peril, or blood; no fraud, corruption,
or treasure, was to be spared which might become necessary for the reduction of this renowned Northern chieftain and his gallant Ulster septs under the sway of England. Not that the queen of that country had any claim to the North, or any subjects there, or any just quarrel with the inhabitants or their chiefs; but English undertakers lusted after the broad lands of Ulster;—English divines longed to undertake the rich livings, the fertile carucates, ballyboes, and plow-lands wherewith Catholic piety had endowed that Northern church. And besides, an Irish annalist tells us, “it was great vexation of mind to the queen and her councils in England and Ireland, that the Kinel Conal, Kinel Eoghain and all Ulster, besides those chiefs that were confederated with them, had made so long and successful a defence against them. They also remembered, yea, it secretly preyed like a consumption upon their hearts, that so many of their people had been lost and so much of their money and wealth consumed in carrying on the Irish war.”[2] So the preparations of England were on a larger scale than ever : another desperate effort was determined upon ; and the ablest man in the queen’s dominions was sent to conduct it.
Mountjoy had not been a week in Ireland when news reached him that O’Neill was on his march northward, and intended to pass through Westmeath. He instantly drew together all his available force and set forth from Dublin to intercept him:[3] but O’Neill had advanced so rapidly that when Mountjoy arrived in Westmeath the Irish were already in O’Reilly’s country: he did not follow them into the North, but returned to the Pale to take counsel with the other English officers, on the operations of that grand campaign which was now meditated against every province of the Island.
In the same ship that carried Mountjoy to Ireland came Sir George Carew, to whom the queen gave the title of “President of Munster,” and assigned a body of three thousand foot and two hundred and fifty horse, for serving in that province. About the same time a powerful armament, destined for Lough Foyle, embarked at Chester and sailed to Carrickfergus bay, where it was joined by a thousand additional troops drafted from various garrisons in Ireland. Sir Henry Docwra was chosen to command it; and on the 7th of May he set sail from Carrickfergus, with a fleet of sixty-seven sail, carrying four thousand infantry and two hundred horse[4], besides the seamen. They took with them, according to Sir Henry’s own account, “a quantitie of dealboards and spars of timber, 100 flocke bedds, with other necessaries to furnish an hospitall withall; one piece of demy cannon of brass, two culverins of iron, a master-gunner, two mastermasons, and two master-carpenters, allowed in pay, with a great number of tooles and other utensils, and with all victuall and munition requisite.”[5]
On the 14th this strong force entered Lough Foyle.
During those same days that Docwra’s fleet was coasting round the headlands of Antrim, Lord Mountjoy with another army was marching northwards in order to draw away the attention of O’Neill and O’Donnell from the Foyle. On Whit-Sunday morning he passed the Moyry, and by the l6th of May had occupied the country around Newry. On the l7th Lord Southampton and Sir Oliver Lambert were to form a junction with him; and Mountjoy sent Captain Edward Blaney with five hundred foot and fifty horse to secure their passage through the dreaded Moyry defile, where O’Neill had often before turned back the tide of invasion. O’Neill was in the neighbourhood watching all these movements at the head of fourteen hundred men. Blaney was suffered to pass unmolested towards Dundalk; and then the Irish took up a position at the “fourmile-water,” where there was a ford all environed by woods in the very middle of the pass. The English soon appeared, with Southampton, Lambert and Blaney, commanding a force much greater than O’Neill’s. The Irish however fought every foot of ground, and, though finally forced back, retired in good order aid with but little loss.[6]
Mountjoy received his reinforcements; but as the troops of O’Neill and O’Donnell were now collecting in great force, and occupied every pass and position north of Newry; and as he calculated that Docwra had by this time effected his landing in the North, the deputy hastily withdrew his army towards the Pale, without having penetrated even so far as Armagh. He stationed however strong detachments in garrison at Newry, Carlingford, and Dundalk.
On the day of the fight at Moyry Pass, Docwra’s fleet was lying at Culraore, where the river Foyle expands itself into the broad “lake of Feval, the son of Lodan.” The troops disembarked and began to build a fort there;[7] while the O’Doghertys of Inishowen and O’Cahans of Arachty, though fully able to repel any invasion, such as had ever been attempted before, were totally unprepared for so vast an armament as this, and looked on in astonishment. Most of the available forces were beyond Armagh, with O’Neill and O’Donnell; and no resistance was offered to the enemy until they had finished their fort, landed their whole army, taken Aileach, a castle of O’Dogherty’s, and finally made themselves masters of the hill of Derry, which Docwra describes as “a place in manner of an island, comprehending within it forty acres of ground, wherein were the mines of an old abbay, of a bishopp’s house, of two churches, and at one of the ends of it an old castle, the river called Lough Foyle, encompassing it all on one side, and a bogg most commonlie wett, and not easilie passable, except in two or three places, dividing it from the maine land.” These ruins were the remains of Randolph’s fortification, and of the churches he had turned into castles, and which had never been repaired since his men were driven from that post in Shane O’Neill’s time.
Docwra began with energy to fortify the hill, and lay out a town there. He sent ships along the shores of Lough Foyle, to pull down all houses near the beach, and bring away the timber for building; and as there was a fine wood, containing abundance of old birch trees, lying on the other side of the river, in O’Cahan’s country, he sent daily parties of woodcutters, with a guard of soldiers, to hew it down, and “there was not,” he says, “a stick of it brought home but was first well fought for.”[8]
When Mountjoy had withdrawn to Dublin, O’Neill and O’Donnell, hearing of this new enemy on the Foyle, once more turned their faces northward, and suddenly appeared with five thousand men before Derry, hoping to take it by surprise. They attacked a party of horsemen whom they found early in the morning, patrolling outside the entrenchments, drove them in to the foot sentinels, and “made a countenance,” says Docwra, “as if they came to make but that one day’s work of it; but, the alarum taken, and our men in arms, they contented themselves to attempte no further; but seeking to draw us forth into the country, where they hoped to take us at some advantages; and finding we stood upon the defensive onlie, after the greatest parte of the day spent in scrimish, a little without our campe, they departed towards the evening, whither did wee think it not fitt to pursue them.”
Docwra’s instructions were, so soon as he should have established himself in Derry, to detach one thousand foot and fifty horse, and send them by sea to Ballyshannon, under Sir Matthew Morgan, to effect another landing there; but he very soon found that it would need all the force he had to hold his ground in Derry. Morgan’s expedition was therefore deferred: and although Docwra had, between soldiers and seamen, a larger force than the whole Irish army of Ulster, yet the garrison of Derry for several months attempted no military operations in the country: they found they must “sitt it out all winter,” and besides, Docwra says, “the country was yet unknown to us; and those we had to deal with were such as I am sure would chuse or refuse to feight with us as they saw their own advantage.”
But it was not on battle-field that the main part of the new Deputy’s work was to be done. Elizabeth’s government had now fully adopted that policy which is contained in the two memorable precepts of Bacon: to weaken the Irish by disunion—and to cheat them by a temporary indulgence of their worship. A relaxation of the penal code would at once, it was hoped, detach the Anglo-Irish race from O’Neill’s standard, and even break the strongest bond of union amongst the old Irish tribes themselves; and with that view, Lord Essex had already begun to discourage prosecutions in the High Commission Court, had connived at the illegal celebration of mass, and set at liberty several priests then imprisoned for religion.[9] Mountjoy also, from the day of his coming over, acted with similar forbearance; and we find, passing between this deputy and Queen Elizabeth’s council, a correspondence displaying all the liberality, all the tenderness, for Irish Catholics, that a British minister has never failed to assume, when a storm of Irish wrath was to be weathered, or the hope of Irish nationhood to be crushed. “Whereas,” says the Deputy, “it hath pleased your lordships in your last letters to command us to deal moderately in the great matter of religion, I had, before the receipt of your lordship’s letters, presumed to advise such as dealt in it, for a time, to hold a more restrained hand therein.” And again: “We should be advised how we do punish in their bodies or goods any such for religion as do profess to be faithful subjects to her Majesty, and against whom the contrary cannot be proved.[10]” Thus the act of Uniformity being for a time suspended, all the Irish, even in the cities, where they had been compelled by pains and penalties to attend upon the Queen’s clergy, (for they were all Catholics still,) immediately abandoned the reformed churches, and set the churchwardens at defiance[11].
This policy, however, could hardly operate in the North, where the war was national, not religious; and where Reformation and persecution were still unknown. For the North, therefore, another artifice was used: the ambition of certain members of ruling families was excited by secret offers of English support, if they would revolt against their chiefs, and aspire to the leading of their respective septs; and, accordingly, in the course of this summer arose three pretenders to northern chieftaincies. Niall O’Donnell, surnamed Garbh, “the Rugged,” one of the ablest leaders of Clan-Conal, and whose name was distinguished in the Thomond expedition, sold himself to the enemy; and upon pretence of some injustice done him by the O’Donnell, entered into communication with Docwra, gained over many of the clansmen to his side, revolted against his lawful prince, and received an English garrison into the castle of Lifford. In Tyr-owen, Art, the son of Tirlough Lynnogh, and who probably still held his father’s castle of Strabane, became, by favour of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Arthur O’Neill, and encouraged by the near neighbourhood of an English army, dared to claim the chieftaincy of his sept. Both these traitors became close allies of Sir Henry Docwra, and by their assistance he was soon enabled to push his operations somewhat farther up the river. Pie built the fort of Dun-na-long, six miles from Derry, and stationed eight hundred men there; while the rebellious Irish were wasting and plundering the country of their kinsmen on both sides of the Foyle. On the southern frontier of Ulster, also, Connor Roe MacGwire, having been in like manner tampered with by the Deputy, took arras against his country in the character of “Queen’s MacGwire.”
It is plain that these revolted Irish did not aid the Queen’s forces from any servile “loyalty” to foreign princess; but rather accepted the proffered aid of Docwra and Mountjoy, to further, as they fondly imagined, their own schemes of weak ambition.[12] They were treated by those officers, for the present, as allies and independent Irish chiefs—were addressed by them, for a time, as the O’Neill and the O’Donnel[13]l, and afterwards fared as we shall see.
In Munster, Sir George Carew was at this time shut up in Cork, as Docwra was in Derry; and wrote to the council in Dublin that he could for the present do nothing in the field, with his three or four thousand men. “Yet,” says his secretary, “relying upon the justnesse of the warre, more than upon the number of his forces, he resolved to try the uttermost of his witt and cunning, without committing the matter to the hazard of fortune;” and “the President discernning the warre in Mounster to be like a monster with many heads, or a servant that must obey divers masters, did thinke thus: that if the heads themselves might be set at variance they would prove the most fit instruments to ruine one another.”[14]
The two most powerful leaders of the national army in Munster were James, Earl of Desmond, and Dermot O’Connor, who commanded fourteen hundred Bonnoghts, or mercenary troops, consisting of northerns and Connaughtmen, as O’Neill’s lieutenant in the south. O’Connor was married to a Geraldine lady, daughter of the late Earl Gerald, and sister to the present heir of that title, who was still a prisoner in the Tower, while his dignity and estates were usurped by O’Neill’s Desmond. Here were elements of intrigue, incentives and materials for treachery, which English statesmanship was not long in turning to account. Carew, “in a very secret manner, provided and sent a fit agent to sound the inclination of the Lady Margaret, and, finding her fit to be wrought upon, the conditions should be propounded—namely, that if her husband would take Desmond prisoner, and deliver him into the hands of the President, he should incontinently receive one thousand pounds sterling; and that he should have a company of men in pay from the Queene, and other conditions of satisfaction to herself and her brother.”[15] This president’s secretary and historian details with much candour, rather indeed as matter of triumph, many other dark machinations of his crafty master; how he suborned one Nugent to assassinate his officer, John Fitzgerald, brother to the earl; how he practised with Florence MacCarthy and by his means got hold of O’Sullivan More; how showers of English gold, a net-work of English intrigue and perfidy, covered the land, until the leaders of the confederacy in Munster knew not whom to trust, or where they were safe from treason and assassination. Nugent’s story may serve as an example of this policy of Carew, and is told with much coolness by his secretary: “Nugent came to make his submission to the President, and to desire pardon for his faults committed; answer was made, that for so much 16 his crimes and offences had been extraordinary, he could not hope to be reconciled unto the state, except he would deserve it by extraordinary service, which, saith the President, if you shall perform you may deserve not only pardon for your faults committed heretofore, but also some store of crownes to releeve your wantes liereafter. Hee presently promised not to be wanting in any thing that lay in the power of one man to accomplish, and in private made offer to the president, that if hee might bee well recompensed, hee would ruine within a short space either the Sugan earle, or John Fitzthomas, his brother. And indeed very likely he was both to attempte and perform as much as he spake—to attempte, because he was so valiant and daring, as that he did not feare anything; and to execute, because by reason of his many outrages before committed, the cheefe rebels did repose great confidence in him. The President having contrived a plot for James Fitzthomas, (as is before sliewed,[16]) gave him in charge to undertake John, his brother.” Shortly after the secretary continues:
“Whilst these things were in handling, Nugent (whose promises to the President before we recited) intending no longer to deferre the enterprize, attempted the execution in this sort. The President being past Loughgwire, John Fitzthomas riding forth of the iland towards the fastness of Arloghe, where most of his men remained, with one other called John Coppinger,- whom he (Nugent) had acquainted with the enterprise, and, as he thought, made sure to him, he attended this great captaine, and being now passed a certain distance from all companie, permitted John Fitzthomas to ride a little ‘before him, minding, (his backe being turned,) to shoote him through with his pistoll, which for the purpose was well charged witli two bullets: the opportunitie offered, the pistoll bent, both heart and hand ready to doe the deed, when Coppinger, at the instant, snatched the pistoll from him, crying treason; wherewith John Fitzthomas, turning himself about, perceived his intent. Nugent, thinking to escape by the goodnesse of his horse, spurred hard: the horse stumbled, and hee taken, and the next day after examination and confession of his intent, hanged. This plot, although it attained not fully the desired successe, yet it proved to be of great consequence; for now was
John Fitzthomas possessed with such a jealous suspicion of every one, that he durst not remaine long at Loughgwire, for feare of some other like attempte.”
Demot O’Connor, the traitor who undertook to betray Desmond, succeeded somewhat better. He took an opportunity to arrest him and confine him in Castlelishin; but would not give him up to the President until he should first be paid a thousand pounds.[17] His wife, the Lady Margaret, was to meet Carew at Kilmallock, and receive the money; but before these pecuniary matters could be fully arranged Desmond was rescued by his kinsmen and Pierce Lacy of the Brough. Carew, however, was not deterred by one failure. There was no man of account,” says his secretary, “in all Mounster whom the President had not oftentimes laboured about the taking of the reputed earl, promising very bountiful and liberal rewards to all, or any such as would draw such a draught, whereby he might be gotten, alive or dead.” At last the White Knight, a Geraldine, and kinsman of his own, was fortunate enough to draw the successful draught, delivered up the earl in safety to Carew, and received his thousand pounds[18]. The unfortunate “Suggawn earl” was confined in Shandon castle for a time, and then forwarded to London, where he died in the Tower.
O’Neill, who was kept fully employed in Ulster by Mountjoy, began to perceive that the national party in the South was fast breaking up. The religious toleration (though for a time not definite) by removing the common terror of persecution, had allowed the ancient national animosities to revive; and the nobles of Anglo-Norman descent were plainly not to be counted upon as faithful to the cause of Irish nationhood.[19]
On Florence Mac Carthy, -whom he had made chief of Clan-Carrha, seems to have been placed O’Neill’s greatest reliance:—”Our commendations to you, Mac Carthy More,” thus he writes to Florence, ” I send shortly unto you according to our trust of you, that you will doe a stout and hopefull thing against the pagan beast; and thereupon our armie is to goe into Mounster… And since this cause of Mounster was left to you (next under God) let no weakeness or imbecillitie bee found in you; and the time of help is neere you and all the reste. From Donganon, the sixth of February, 1601.” – “O’Neill.”
But Mac Carthy More’s wife was also trepanned into the English interest. “She refused,” says Stafford, “to come to his bed until he had reconciled himself unto her Majestic.” This lady was a daughter of the former Earl of Clancarty; and “she knew,” she said, “in what manner her father had that earldome from her highnesse; and though she be not pleased to bestow the same wholly upon her, yet she doubted not to obtain some part thereof; but if neither of these could be gotten, yet was not she minded to goe a begging either unto Ulster, nor into Spaine.”[20] And we soon find this chief trafficking and bargaining with the President, until Carew, having made use of him so far as he could, at length seized his person, had an accusation of high treason preferred against him, and sent him a prisoner to England, along with the Earl of Desmond.[21] Carew having thus “tried the uttermost of his witt and cunning” to set at variance the heads of the southern confederacy, and so to destroy them by each other’s means; and besides, being steadily supported throughout by the Lords Clanrickarde, Thomond, Barry, and other Anglo-Irish families, was soon enabled to overrun all Desmond, and to reduce, by force or treachery, the castles of Askeaton, Glynn, Carrig-a-foyle, Ardart, Liscaghan, Loughgwire, and many others, everywhere driving off the cattle, and burning the houses and corn stacks; so that by the month of December there was not one castle in all Munster held against the queen; nor, in the language of Moryson, “any company of ten rebels together.”
During the summer of 1600 Mountjoy himself had traversed Leix and O’Fally, with a numerous army, burning the country, until the 23rd of August. He had the good fortune to kill O’More, of Leix, in a skirmish, and, after cutting down all the green corn of the district, returned to Dublin. His biographer calculates that in this expedition he destroyed ten thousand pounds worth of corn; and, at the same time, by the usual contrivances, he detached some Leinster chiefs from the cause of Ireland, and introduced treachery and distrust into their councils.
O’Neill and O’Donnell now fully understood the nature of the contest in which they were to be engaged with this new Deputy. Fraud, perfidy, and assassination were to take the place of open battle; the chink of gold was to be heard, instead of clashing steel; and the swords of these false Saxons were to be turned into sickles, to prostrate the unripe grain, and so to war against women and children as well as fighting men. But the northern chiefs had still a gallant army at their backs, and were yet able to keep the English garrisons imprisoned within their walls and moats. They were in daily expectation of succour from King Philip, and hoped full soon to cut asunder the meshes of this traitor policy with their good swords.
[1] Camden.
[2]Cited in the admirable historical sketch of Derry in the Ordnance Memoir
[3]Pacata Hibernia.
[4]It is an instance of Moryson’s uncandid practice of falsifying numbers that he officially states Docwre’s cavalry at 100 men; when Sr Henry himself admits he had twice that number.
[5]“A narration of the services of the army employed to Lough Foyle under the leading of me Sir H. Docwra, Knight.”
[6]Moryson.
[7]Docwra’s “Narration.”
[8]Docwra’s “Narration.”
[9]Mac Geognegan
[10]Moryson
[11]“They be all Papists by profession.” — Spnser. The zealous reformers of that day treated the government policy of temporising with what they called “idolatry” much as a similar policy has been received by the corresponding class in later times. The illustrious James Ussher was leader of that extreme section; and “his spirit,” in the words of Dr. Mant, “was strongly stirred within him by this new condition of things.” “He availed himself,” continues the bishop, “of a special solemnity, when it was in his course to preach before the government at Christ Church, for delivering a remarkable sermon, in which he plainly expressed his sense of the recent proceeding: choosing for his text the 6th verse of the 4th chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet, by lying on his side, was to ‘ bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee a day for a year’—a prophecy which he noted to signify the time of forty years to the destruction of Jerusalem, and that nation for their idolatry; and then, making direct application to his own country, in relation to its connivance at Popery, in these impressive words: From this year will I reckon the sin of Ireland, that those whom you now embrace shall be your ruin, and you shall bear their iniquity. This application of the prophecy was made in 1601, and in 1641 broke out that rebellion which was consummated in the massacre of many thousands of its Protestant inhabitants by those whose idolatrous religion was now connived at.”
Dr. Mant is a Christian bishop, of eminent piety and profound learning. He has written an able, an erudite, and, as the present writer heartily believes, an honest book, upon the history of Irish Protestantism; yet this in the light in which he, for his part, views the war of 1641. and the causes that led to it.
[12]Pac. Hibernia.
[13]” Eadem principatus affectatio incitavit Nellum O’Donuellum, cognomento Asperum, ut adversus O’Donnellum belligerando, Tirconnellae excidium afferret.”—O’Sullivan. He pronounces them, as he well may, worse than heretics.
[14]Pac. Hib.
[15]Pac. Hib. Another part of the preparation for this villanous transaction was a letter written by the President to Desmond, in which he pretends to treat with the earl for the betrayal of Dermot O’Connor: this letter was placed in O’Connor’s hands; and he was to pretend that he had intercepted it, and so was obliged, in self defence, to seize upon his secret enemy. The letter was as follows:
“Sir, your last letters I have received, and am exceeding glad to see your constant resolution of returneto subjection, and to leave the rebellious courses Avherein you have long persevered. You may rest assured that promises shall bee kept; and you shall no sooner bring Dermond O’Connor to me, alive or dead and banish his Bownoghs out of the countrie, but you shall have your demand satisfied, which I thanke God I am both able and willing to performe. Beleeve me, you have no better way to recover your desperate estate than by this good service, which you have proffered; and therefore I cannot but commend your judgment in choosing the same to redeeme your former faults: and I do the rather beleeve the performance of it by your late action touching Loghguire, wberein your brother and yourself have well merited; and, as I promised, you shall find mee so just as no creature living sliall ever know that either of you did assent to the surrender of it. All your letters I have received, as also the joint letter from your brother and yourselfe. I pray lose no time, for delays m great actions are subject to many dangers. Now tliat tlie Queen’s armie is in the field, you may worke your determination with most securitie, being ready to releeve you upon a day’s warning. So praying God to assist you in this meritorious enterprize, I doe leave you to his protection this twentie ninthe of May, 1600.”
There might be some difficulty in believing that the English commanders in Munster resorted to these base tricks, unknown to all honourable warfare; but that the authority for it is Carew himself, writing under the name of his secretary Stafford. He describes the whole plot minutely, and publishes the letter “to manifest the invention.”
[16]He alludes to the plot formed with Dermot O’Connor’s wife.
[17]Pac. Hib.
[18]Pac. Hib.
[19]” Of one thing I thinke good to give you particular notice, which is, not to put any confidence in any of Mounster, of the English nation: for -whatsoever they professe or protest unto you, they meane not to deale faithfully with us, but will forsake us in our greatest need.” Letter of Cormac Carty to O’Neill. Pac. Hib.
[20]Pac. Hib
[21]Pac. Hib. Moryson. Carewhad strict commands from his government to get Florence into his hands; which, he says, “without some temporising could not yet conveniently be performed.” He therefore wrote to him to say, that the “state was well persuaded of his loyaltie and innocencie,” and requested him earnestly to visit him, that he might have his advice about affairs of state. But all this was in vain until the lady was taken into the plot.