Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

John Derricke's "Image of Irelande", Sir Henry Sidney, and the Massacre at Mullaghmast, 1578 The Image of Irelande by John Derricke Review by: Vincent P. Carey Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 31, No. 123 (May, 1999), pp. 305-327 Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30007144 . Accessed: 28/12/2011 23:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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HISTORICAL STUDIES

Vol.XXXINo.123

May1999

John Derricke's Image of Irelande,

Sir Henry Sidney,and the massacreat Mullaghmast,1578 ne of the bitterest fruits of human conflict is the resort to massacre. O Fromthe St Bartholomew'sDay massacrein 1572 to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, combatantshave regularlyattempted to defeat their enemies through acts of indiscriminate killing. The history of early modern Europeancolonialexpansionis replete with such incidents.The remembering and recountingof them has become the stuff of historicaland political controversy.The aim of this articleis not to review these painfulepisodes, but to examinethe sixteenth-centurycontextin whichthese resortsto massacre occurred;to focus on one particularatrocitythat achievedsome notoriety in Irelandin the earlymodernperiod;and to suggestthata now largely forgottenepisode,at Mullaghmastin CountyKildarein 1578,was partof a patternof conquestwhichimplicatednot only the soldiersand settlerswho served in the Gaelic localities,but also the upper echelons of the English administrationin Ireland.This patternwas aceompaniedby an apologetic ideology of civility and savagery best reflected in a central text, John Derricke's Image of Irelande (1581). Derricke's Image provides us with sufficientevidence to suggestthat indiscriminateslaughterwas an accepted tool in the effort to subdue Gaelic Ireland.Indeed, Derricke'stext adds weightto the conclusionthat the atrocityat Mullaghmastin 1578implicates no less a figure than Sir Henry Sidney, the quintessential renaissance English official in Ireland.Mullaghmastis importantnot only because it demonstratesthe officiallysanctionedbrutalityof the conquest,but also because it raises the questionof how memoryand historyare constructed. In Irelandatrocitieslike it were rememberedand passed down the generations in folklore and in the politically motivated polemics of partisan chroniclers.ProfessionalIrishhistoriansare reluctantto trustthese sources, and thus tend to downplaythe more traumaticaspectsof popularmemory.

I The backgroundto the Mullaghmastmassacrelies in the Tudorgovernment'sefforts to expandthe bordersof the Pale in Irelandin the aftermath of the Kildare rebellion in-the early 1530s.The Gaelic midlands and its powerfulclans or septs,the O'Mores and O'Connors,had for much of the 305

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later medieval period threatened the Pale, the heartland of English settlement, government and culture. The Old English earls of Kildare had traditionally protected this region in return for control of the apparatus of government in Ireland. As a result, the crown was spared the difficulty of dealing directly with Gaelic Ireland. With the collapse of this arrangement in the 1530s, the Kildare buffer zone which had sheltered the Pale disappeared, and the Tudors were forced to deal directly for the first time with the Gaelic Irish.' Despite some initial conciliation, this contact rapidly became hostile. The O'Mores and O'Connors had originally entered into a series of negotiated arrangements similar to the procedure known to historians as 'surrender and regrant'. This process involved surrendering title to their lands to the crown and having them regranted under English law.2 The attendant conditions included living according to English law and culture, accepting the jurisdiction of the government in Dublin, and practising inheritance by primogeniture. Though theoretically an attempt at a peaceful transformation of society, it quickly led to instability in the form of succession disputes and internal strife.3 A good example of how the Gaelic lords found it difficult to observe the conditions attached to the recognition of English authority is provided by the O'More lordship of Laois. The recognition of Ruaidhrf Caoch mac Conaill O'More as 'captain of his name' by the crown in 1542, and the potential for a surrender and regrant of his lands, set off a bitter dispute with his brother Giolla Padraig, who under Gaelic custom was legitimately entitled to succeed to the title of O'More. The ensuing struggles spilled over onto the Pale borders and provided the government with the excuse it needed to intervene in the area.4 The key to initial English military success was the construction of forts, the expropriation of the native lords, and the 'planting' of English soldiersettlers in their place. Initially a haphazard process, the drive towards

1Steven G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: crown, community and the conflict of cultures, 1470-1603 (London, 1985), pp 85-150; Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-century Ireland: the incomplete conquest (Dublin, 1994), pp 65-113.

2Submissionof RuaidhriCaochO'More,13 May 1542,in KildareArch.Soc.Jn.,vi (1909-11), p. 79; Robert Dunlop,'The plantationof Leix and Offaly' in E.H.R.,vi (1891),pp 61-2. 3Likethe rest of Gaelic Ireland,the O'Moresand O'Connorsheld to a form of communaltitle for theirlandsandpractisedpartibleinheritance.Successionto leadershipwithintheirsepts was accordingto the age-oldcustomof competitionwithin a four-generational groupknownas the 'derbfhine'.Fora moreextensiveaccountof these issuessee VincentP Carey,'Theend of the Gaelic politicalorder:the O'More lordshipof Laois,1536-1603'in PaidraigLane (ed.), Laois historyandsociety(forthcoming);idem,'Gaelicreactionto plantation:the case of the O'MoreandO'Connor lordships of Laois and Offaly' (unpublishedM.A. thesis, St Patrick'sCollege, Maynooth,1982),pp 10-48.For a discussionof the formationof this and other colonial schemesup to 1570see D. G. White,'Tudorplantationsin Irelandbefore 1571' (unpublishedPh.D.thesis,TrinityCollege,Dublin,1968). 4SeeDunlop,'Plantation'and,for more detail,Carey,'End of the Gaelic political order'.

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English settlement was to accelerate after 1556 when Lord Deputy Sussex unveiled a comprehensive colonisation scheme. Under its terms, the O'More and O'Connor territories of Laois and Offaly were to be made shire ground and Gaelic law abolished. The native population was to be transplanted to a zone in the west along the river Shannon, and the remaining area was to be divided between the newly established forts, Fort Governor and Fort Protector, and English colonists. This scheme received the endorsement of the crown, and in June 1557 the O'Mores and O'Connors were declared rebels and their lands forfeit. Sussex was given authority to grant this land to English settlers.5 The native septs refused to go along with the scheme, and as a result Sussex was forced to spend years trying to clear the lands and suppress the Gaelic leadership. His failure to do so resulted in a delay in granting estates to the settlers, and in the eventual recognition that the natives could not be entirely cleared from their territories. In fact it was not until 1563 that a comprehensive settlement of the area took place. This revamped colony differed slightly from its failed predecessor in that it included grants of land to select and amenable Gaelic tenants. Aside from the obvious strategic purpose, the colony was now to serve a reforming or exemplary function whereby the native population were to be introduced to the benefits of English 'civility'. The hope was to draw the Gaelic Irish to'civility' by allowing them to participate in a 'model' English colony. To guarantee this societal transformation, all the settlers, including the Gaelic Irish, were to adhere to a set of strict conditions which required them to use English language, dress and customs, and not to make use of the Gaelic brehon law system or to maintain Gaelic military men.6 Any hope for the successful integration of these Gaelic Irish into the English community was, however, dashed by the simple fact that a substantial segment of the dispossessed Gaelic 61ite was excluded from the scheme and was likely to try to subvert it. In addition, the majority of the English grantees were in fact the very soldiers who had been serving in the area, and who had already acquired a reputation for brutality and greed among the native population. This brutality and greed was officially sanctioned, as Lord Deputy Sussex increasingly resorted to the use of martial law. This form of r6gime was cost-effective because the commissioners were licensed to collect the profits of their work. Commissions of martial law 'legally' entitled the bearer to a third of the moveable goods and possessions of the dead 'traitors'. According to David Edwards,'this acted as an incentive to slaughter: the more "suspected traitors" the commissioners killed, the more traitors' goods they and their followers received'.7 Between 1558 and 'Ibid. 6FiantsIre.,Eliz.,no. 474,is representativeof the majorityof these grants. 7David Edwards,'Beyond reform: martial law and the Tudor reconquest of Ireland'in HistoryIreland,v, no. 2 (1997),pp 16-22;the quote is from p. 18.These 'entrepreneurial'tendencieswere endorsedas a complementto reformfor most of the sixteenthcentury:see CiaranBrady,'The captains'games:armyand society in ElizabethanIreland'in ThomasBartlettand Keith Jeffery(eds), A militaryhistory of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp 135-59.

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1560 various commissions were issued to Francis Cosby, then sheriff of Kildare, to Henry Colley, and to Henry Radcliffe, lieutenant of the King's and Queen's Counties, to execute martial law in this region.8 It was unlikely that these military men would make exemplary neighbours. Even before the actual settlement of most of the grantees with their hundreds of tenants had been completed in the summer of 1564, the garrison had managed to prod the leading native grantee, Callough (An Calbhach) O'Connor, to take arms and to flee to the bogs.9 By the time Callough had been hunted down and killed the garrison claimed a headcount of ninety O'Connors and thirty-five O'Mores'o Sussex's plantation scheme, which was to ensure the peaceful assimilation of the Gaelic Irish, was already compromised by the very warlords who were supposed to be its bulwark. A rare Gaelic source from this period supports this conclusion. It attributes native mistrust of the English to the arrogance and cultural disdain of the soldiers, and to the fact that they murdered members of the Gaelic l1ites with impunity. This Gaelic source assigned responsibility for the state of relations to the absolute power wielded by the English captains and claimed that they deviseidsuche shiftesand practicesto slaunderand accusethe lorde and quietgentlemen and inosent people of the contreesthat w[ith]outfarthertriallor profe if it wear ones spoken of a ... captensmoutheit was a sufficientquarellfor the capten to rob,prayand kill the p[er]son... and all his ten[an]tesw[ith]owtother attoryte or commisconthen the captensowne allegacon.11 Sir Henry Sidney, the lord deputy who succeeded Sussex in October 1565, shared his predecessor's commitment to the midland colony. He considered it a small but integral part of a wider project for the reform of Ireland. Envious of the Spanish example in America and inspired by the works of classical writers, Sidney's colonial projects were to be tested in Gaelic Ireland. The deputy envisaged the establishment of colonies of Englishmen throughout the country to serve, to use Nicholas Canny's terminology, as 'oases of civility in a desert of barbarism'.12Three major colonial initiatives in this period were supported by his administration: Sir Thomas Smith's colony of Ards in County Down, the earl of Essex's scheme in Clandeboye, in the same area, and the settlement of Sir Warham St Leger in Cork. All three schemes were abysmal failures. The experience of these settlements is important, however, for the long-term development of English colonisation. In each instance initial schemes for Roman-style settlements quickly faded as the colonists struggled to expel a hostile indigenous population. 'Fiants Ire., Eliz., nos 32, 69, 193.

9Wrotheto Dudley,23 July1564(P.R.O.,SP 63/11/37);'A declarationmadeby the earl of Sussexto the lordsof the council',29 Jan.1565 (ibid.,SP 63/12/19);lordjustice [Arnold]and councilto earl of Ormond,7 Aug.1564(ibid.,SP 63/11/65). 'oArnoldand councilto ElizabethI, 31 Oct. 1564(ibid.,SP 63/11/97). 11'Bywhatmeans the countriesof Ophalyand Leix may be broughtto peace and quiete',1559(ibid.,SP 63/1/84). 12Nicholas P. Canny, The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: a pattern established,

1565-76 (Hassocks,1976),p. 67.

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Frustrated by their own inability to do the necessary agricultural work, and infuriated by constant resistance, the settlers lashed out at the natives. The result was outbursts of orgiastic slaughter like Essex's extermination of 600 unarmed men, women and children on Rathlin Island in 1574.13 The significance of this event and others like it lay in the fact that increasingly some New English officials articulated the view that the Gaelic Irish were an unreasonable people and that normal ethical restraints were unnecessary when dealing with them. Queen Elizabeth herself commended Essex for the Rathlin Island venture, and seemed unperturbed by the lengths to which Sir Humphrey Gilbert, her military governor in Munster, went to preserve the colony there. Gilbert terrorised the Gaelic septs by practices like the one described by his pamphleteer Thomas Churchyarde: The heddes of all those... which were killed in the daie, should be cutte of from their bodies and broughtto the place where he [Gilbert]incampedat night, and should there bee laied on the groundby each side of the waie ... ledyinginto his owne tente so that none could come into his tente for any cause but commanlyhe must passe througha lane of heddes ... and yet did it bringgreate terrourto the people when thei sawe the heddesof theirdede fathers,brothers,children,kinsfolke and friendes,lye on the groundebefore their faces,as they came to speakewith the said collonell.14 Nicholas Canny argues convincingly that these colonisation experiences of the 1570s produced a new and heightened ferocity in English treatment of the Gaelic Irish. He controversially attributes this departure to the fact that most of the colonists were preconditioned (by an emerging renaissance civilisation theory) to believe themselves absolved from ethical reproach when dealing with cultural inferiors. By contemporary standards, it seemed evident that the Irish were a pagan and barbaric people. Canny argues that the settlers came expecting to find in indigenous society all the attributes of a people lower down on the ladder of human evolution. Canny cites as evidence the contemporary English descriptions which frequently labelled the Irish as cannibals, idolaters, debauched, incestuous, nomads, etc. Examples of this language of invective can be found scattered throughout the state paper and pamphlet literature. According to one pamphleteer, Barnaby Rich, the English could not be 'severe' enough, as the Irish lived 'like beastes, voide of lawe and all good order' and were more 'uncleanly, more barbarous and more brutish in their customs and demeanures, than in any other part of the world that is known'.'5 Certainly by the mid-1590s the poet Edmund Spenser would argue that the Irish were by nature beyond the common law, and that only by the extermination of their ruling 61ites,the starvation of the masses and the brutality of martial law could they be brought from their 'delight of licentious barbarism, unto the love of goodness and civility'.16 13Forthe failureof these schemessee ibid.,ch. 4, esp.pp 120-21. 14Thomas choise,quoted ibid.,p. 122. Churchyarde,Churchyarde's 15Quotedin Canny, Elizabethan conquest, p. 127.

16Ciaran Brady,'Spenser'sIrishcrisis:humanismand experiencein the 1590s'in

Past & Present, no. 111 (1986), pp 24-5.

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While SirHenrySidneymaynot have entirelysharedsuchextremeviews - he is describedin the most recent study of the period as a 'conservative constitutionalist'and by Canny as more 'moderate'- his commitmentto At the same time that he was promotingthe plancolonisationwas real."17 tationsin Ulster and Munsterhe set about reconstructingthe colony in the Gaelic midlands.Between 1566 and 1569 he reorganisedits administrative structuresand optimisticallyincorporatedthe two garrisontowns(formerly FortsProctectorand Governor)of Maryboroughand Philipstown.18 Before completinghis second tour of dutyin 1571,Sidneyeven triedto ensurethat the settlerswouldnot be harassed,by eliminatingthe survivingdispossessed O'Moreleaders.19 In fact only one significantleader of the fugitiveO'More septs survived: Owingto the connexionsof fosterageand marriage,the Rory Og O'More.20 social cement of Gaelic society,Rory Og was to emerge as the most formidable leader of the resistance.Because Gaelic customwas still maintained among the disinherited,he was in 1571elected 'chief of his sept'.21In part becauseof the powerof this title,he was able to attractlargenumbersof disaffectedO'MoresandO'Connors.RoryOg soon becamea nightmareto the settlers and governmentalike.As justificationfor this campaignof Gaelic terror, O'More cited the vicious nature of the plantation environment where natives were cut down at will and with impunity.Rory dismissed Englishcivilityandjustice on the evidence of settler brutalityand the arbitrary executions of his relatives.He concluded that peaceful coexistence with the colonists was impossible when Gaelic life was held in such contempt.22A determined O'More proceeded to terrorise the settlers. Effective guerrillatactics made him impossible to capture,and privately some membersof the administrationbegan to grope towardsmore drastic

'7Ciaran Brady, The chief governors: the rise and fall of reform government in

TudorIreland,1536-1588(Cambridge,1994),p. xii.Thisinterpretationis challenged in NicholasCanny,'Revisingthe revisionist'in LH.S.,xxx, no. 118 (Nov. 1996),pp 242-54. '"'TheIrishin Fitzwilliam'sbandof footmen',1565 (P.R.O.,SP 63/15/4);Sidneyto Cecil,20 Apr. 1566 (ibid.,SP 63/17/26);Sidneyand councilto privycouncil,13 Apr. 1566(ibid.,SP 63/17/18);Sidneyto Cecil,18Nov.1566(ibid.,SP 63/19/51);FiantsIre., Eliz., nos 1500,1510. 19Hehad two of these, Laoighseachand CathaoirMacKedaghO'More,executed (Acts privy council, Ire., 1556-71, p. 241; Sidney to Sir Peter Carew, 28 May 1570 (PR.O., SP 63/30/52)).

20Heis described as dangerous- with six or seven hundred followers- in February1571.His previousservice to the local English warlordFrancisCosby is noted (Fitzwilliamto Cecil,5 Feb.1571(P.R.O.,SP 63/31/8)). 21LordJustice Fitzwilliamand council to Elizabeth I, 7 Apr. 1571 (ibid., SP 63/32/2). 22Asevidenceof this,O'Moreassertedthat he 'hathno other assuranceof his life but the defence of his self and his [500]men' (reportby the earls of Ormondand Kildareto the lord deputyand privycouncil,14 Aug. 1572 (ibid.,SP 63/37/25)).For the size of O'More'sfollowing see Lord Deputy Fitzwilliamto ElizabethI, 4 Jan. 1572(ibid.,SP 63/35/2).

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solutions to the problem. As one official , Sir William Fitzwilliam, darkly hinted, the government's intended response could not be committed to writing as it would 'admit matters disputable'.23A subsequent document of April 1573 outlines his plan for a revamping of the colony based on the extermination of O'More and his followers then ensconced in the upland refuge of Galin in the south-west of Laois. Fitzwilliam advocated the regrant of this rugged area to a bitter Gaelic enemy of the O'Mores, Eoghan mac Aodha O'Dempsey, who 'for safety of his own and revenge' was the 'likeliest man to be made a minister of their plague'.24 By the time Sidney returned to Ireland as lord deputy again in late 1575 his midlands colony had been torn apart by an unscrupulous campaign of attrition. While Sidney at first hoped that he could somehow induce O'More to come to the table, the free hand given to the English captains had produced such a fear on the part of the Gaelic Irish that conciliation was no longer possible.25 The war of attrition waged by the English captains produced on the part of the Gaelic Irish an equally desperate response which included kidnapping and the burning of English towns. The government's reaction included among its victims non-combatants like O'More's aged relatives and his wife.26Unable to negotiate with O'More and frustrated by the latter's ability to elude him, as well as being embarrassed by the utter failure of the colony and facing severe criticism of his policies in the Pale and at court, Sidney too began to contemplate drastic action. The deputy did not return to Ireland with the expressed intent of eliminating Rory Og; in fact he was willing to meet him in the formal atmosphere of St Canice's cathedral in Kilkenny in early December 1575. Here Sidney allowed O'More to submit and even held out the possibility of a grant of lands in Laois to the Gaelic lord. He refused to accept O'More's traditional claim to the lordship of Laois, dismissing it as 'that aspiringe imagination of tytle to the countrie'. Yet Sidney was clear that if Rory Og persisted

to ElizabethI, 18 Feb. 1573 (ibid., SP 63/39/27),where the deputy 23Fitzwilliam writes:'Thotherconsistethof sondriecircumstances, as it cannotbe comittedto writting,but it will admitmattersdisputable,wherebyin sendingand resendingto and fro,the fit serviceof this yere wilbe mispent,and the opportunitielost.' to Burghley,Apr. 1573 (ibid.,SP 63/40/3), where the deputy sought 24Fitzwilliam the authorityto regrantall the vacantestates in the colony and the right to settle O'Dempsey in Galin (modernbaronyof Cullenagh).This strategicthough inhospitable location was held by Laoighseachand CathaoirMacKedaghO'More until 1570, when they were arbitrarilymurderedby Sidney.CiaranBrady mistakenly refersto it as inhabitedby O'Connorsand suggeststhat it is located to the west of Offaly (Brady, Chief governors, p. 262).

25Thebrutalityof the conflict is referredto obliquelyin NicholasWhite's condemnation of Cosby's governmentin Laois. He informed Burghley that some O'Mores of 'great lynadge' were cut down to the 'terror' of others (White to Burghley,17 July1573(PR.O.,SP 63/41/80)). 26Sidneyto privycouncil,17 Mar.1577 (Letters and memorials of state ... written

and collected by Sir Henry Sidney, Sir Philip Sidney and his brother, Sir Robert

Sidney,ed. ArthurCollins(2 vols,London,1746) (henceforthcited as Sidneyletters), i, 164-8).

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in his claims,he would 'forgoe lyffe,land and all'.27Sidney'sreasoningwas simple.If he recognisedRory Og's claims,then the settlementof Laois and Offaly was undermined;on the other hand,if Rory Og was not settled,the plantationwould know no peace.As it was,the colony was a constantfinancial drainand at that moment on the verge of collapse.Sidneyhad learned the hardway in Laois and Offaly that there was a high price to pay for the colonial dream;yet he was unyieldingin his commitmentto the colony:'I will never consent that the countryshould be abandonedin any sorte,for helde it shalbe.'28 II

A contemporaryview from an Englishwriterassociatedwith the Sidneys gives us some insightinto this frustrationand to the developmentof a novel and significantNew English mentality.In John Derricke'sverse work The Imageof Irelande(1581),dedicatedto PhilipSidney,a luridportraitof Rory Og O'Moreis constructedfor the contemporaryEnglishreader.Ratherthan accept the fact that O'More was a dispossessedl1ite figurefightingfor his lands,Derrickeportrayshim as a savage 'woodkern'(rootless mercenary) addicted by nature to rebellion and destruction.As a symbol of anarchy, O'More's'pestiferousgeneration'is dehumanisedand demonised.Derricke suggeststhatonly the blindcouldignorethe savageryof these 'beasts':'How then may man have companywith this hurtfulgeneration?/ Or sons of men with noisome worms enjoy their consolation?'29Derricke's praise poem includesgraphicillustrationof the natureof the warin this area and credits Sir Henry Sidneywith the miseryvisited upon the natives.In fact Sidney's failed tour of duty (1575-8) forced Derricke to attemptwhat was in effect the literaryrescueof the lorddeputy'sreputationby inflatingthe seriousness of the threatfrom Rory Og O'More.It is againstthis backdropof exaggerated anxiety that the author's argumentfor severe brutalityagainst the Gaelic Irishis advanced.Significantly, Derricke'sProtestantand apocalyptic Image of divine retributionagainst the native population precedes the extremeviews of tractslike Spenser'sViewby almosttwentyyears. In the 'first parte of the Image of Irelande' Derricke places Sidney's achievements in Ireland in the unlikely tradition of the great kings of English history(especiallyunlikelysince Sidney'slast period in office had been sucha failure).StartingwithArthur,these divinelyordainedmonarchs had assertedEngland'splace in the world.In Derricke'sretrospectiveview, their most notable actions involved an assault on the authority of the 27Sidneyto privycouncil,15 Dec. 1575(P.R.O.,SP 63/54/17;Sidneyletters,i, 81-5). 2Sidney to Walsingham,28 Apr. 1576 (P.R.O.,SP 63/55/37;Sidney letters,i, 110-11), where he concludesthat the cost of the Laois-Offalyexperimentwas suggestive of the difficultiesof colonisationin general:'Whata deare purchasethis is, andhathbene to the crowne;and,by exampleof this,you mayjudge of the rest,that are of this nature.' 29JohnDerricke,Theimageof Irelande(London,1581),p. 185.

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papacy. Derricke's anti-Catholic invective gives Henry VIII pride of place in this regard: This is the man that put the pope and popish foes to foil Thisis the man that made his bulls go flittingdown the streams, And thrustout all his peltingtrash out of his highness'realms.30 Derricke not only stresses the providentialist aspect of English history, but also, little short of egotistically, claims that God had spurred him to write this account. Divine concern and intervention is necessary here because, as Derrricke presents it, Ireland is a land of God-given and magical beauty where naked sprites dance, yet also, sadly, it is a land which has spawned a malignant life form. In introducing his subject, the Irish kern, Derricke compares these lightly armed Gaelic foot-soldiers to vermin.3' Derricke playfully attempts to explain the origins of this problem by imagining a debate held by the gods as to the utility and fate of vermin, in particular the Irish kern. According to The Image of Irelande, the kern had originally sprung from wood nymphs. Unlike the playful nature of their ancestors, however, these contemporary denizens of the woods are for Derricke the source of Ireland's anarchy. Comparing the kern to venomous beasts, he advises that they be annihilated. Yet Derricke's allegory of the viper presents him with the unusual problem of the absence of poisonous reptiles on Irish soil. Using the gods of classical Rome as his mouthpiece (in this instance, Apollo), Derricke suggests that these particular 'beasts' were preserved in Ireland in order to provide a repository for human malice. Opposing Apollo in Derricke's imagined debate, Mars counter-argues that it is unnatural for loyal men to live amidst such bestiality. Eventually the gods agree that the venomous reptiles should be banished, but the woodkern with their 'glibbed heads ... monstrous malice, ireful hearts and bloody hands' should remain 'their malice to express'.32Derricke admits that his whimsical discussion of the elimination of vipers and the origins of the kern would not convince contemporary Irishmen, who credited St Patrick, 'still worshipped of all that stock with holy veneration', with the banishment of snakes from Ireland.33 The key to understanding Derricke's distinction between Ireland's natural beasts and the woodkern is the notion that while the former can be tamed (and he uses the example of the hawk here), the latter cannot because they are essentially satanic in nature. The Irish woodkern are seen as a diabolical force, a 'crooked generation' not amenable to reform. In their incorrigibility they contrast unfavourably with the animal creation, for 'yea the very fowls of the air and beasts of the field have a certain reverence and fear towards those whom they consider to work them any good, but only 30Ibid.,pp 177-80,esp.p. 180. 31Ibid.,pp 181-3. 32Ibid., pp 183-6, esp.p. 186. 33Ibid.,p. 186.

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these monstets of the world, these pernicious members of Satan, these wretched wretches have no consideration'.34 He concludes unequivocally that civility and the English reform mission are wasted on the woodkern. For him, not eVen an upbringing at court could salvage a people addicted to sin,'as the sow returns to the mire, and the dog to his vomit again'.35 It is at this point that the Image takes a darker turn. Derricke rhetorically asks St Patrick why he killed the 'silly beasts', the 'wriggling snake','whenas thou leftest more spiteful beasts ... the footers of the bogs'.36Yet in excusing St Patrick for the oversight, Derricke assures the reader that the kern are divinely ordained for annihilation: 'No strength may prevail whom God doth withstand, no physic can cure whom God in his ire striketh, showing that God hath given up the woodkern to a reprobate sense.'37Thus the 'first parte of the Image of Irelande' ends with the assertion that the Gaelic kern are a marked people awaiting divine retribution. In the 'second part of the Image' Derricke presents the reader with evidence of the 'most pestilent nature of the wild villainous woodkern'. The dress, manners and culture of the Gaelic Irish are described in the language of ethnic disdain. With infamous graphic illustrations to back up his argument, Derricke described Gaelic dining habits as a 'swinish fashion found out amongst hogs, / Deserving for manners to sit amongst dogs'.38In fact most of these illustrations and their accompanying descriptions, though strident, conform to a well-known renaissance construction of savagery (i.e. standard accusation of licentiousness, rudeness of dress, etc.). What sets Derricke's tract apart is its sectarian, anti-Catholic emphasis. Derricke's portrayal of the role of the Catholic friar in Gaelic society is central to an understanding of this text. The woodkern, the Gaelic Irish, are marked by God for retribution because they are driven by a Catholic clergy to act against the legitimate civil order established by a divinely ordained monarchy.The English 'civilising' mission in Ireland, represented in the Image by Sir Henry Sidney, is thwarted not only by the inherent beastliness of the woodkern, but also by a satanic Catholic clergy. In Derricke's eyes, the friars are the chief instigators of Gaelic rebellion: The friarof his counselsvile to rebelsdoth impart Affirmingthat it is an almsdeed to God To make the Englishsubjectstaste the Irishrebelsrod To spoil,to kill,to burn, this friar'scounselis. And for the doingof the same he warrantsheavenlybliss. He tells a holy tale, the white he turnsto black, And throughthe pardonsin his mail he worksa knavishknack.39 34Ibid., p. 187. 36Ibid.,pp 187-8. 38Ibid., p. 192.

35Ibid. 37Ibid., p. 188. 39Ibid., p. 193.

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In Derricke's virulent Foxeian language, the friar's bell, book and candle, his 'apish toys', and his 'papistical monkish momes' delude the kern to rebellion, and ultimately to their divinely ordained destruction. The friars 'are the cause, the fountain and the spring, / of hurly-burlies in this land, of each unhappy thing'.40It is the fact that ultimately the pope, the Antichrist in Derricke's eyes, is behind the actions of the kern that explains why no mercy can be shown to them. Yet having identified the cause, Derricke's text also celebrates the solution. A sense of foreboding and tension ('The pot now begins to seethe, the fire it is so great') is created before Sidney, God's avenger, is reintroduced. Unequivocally Sidney's intention to rid Ireland of the plague of the kern is expressed in the following terms: '[He] falling upon them, showeth no mercy or compassion, whose eye doth neither pity them, nor yet his hand spare them.'41The illustrations and the text go on to depict and describe the ensuing slaughter: Here lies a rebel'shead fromshoulderstakenquite And here the lion'stearingpaws on woodkern'scostardlight. The eagle with the rest no lesserhonourhath, Whenashis bill and talons both in rebels'blood he bath.42 Having established the nature of the problem, and graphically described the solution, Derricke turns his attention to a more in-depth study of a typical Gaelic rebel. His subject is Sidney's immediate nemesis, Rory Og O'More. This is not an idle choice; in fact Derricke explains it as the'foundation of my attempt, and sure substantial corner stone'.43Written some time between 1577 and 1578, Derricke's account attaches an importance to Rory Og that can only be explained by the fact that the Gaelic lord was outmanoeuvring the embattled lord deputy.The Image attributes this success to Rory's devious nature ('I falser am than thief that picks the locks'), but also to a diabolical compact with the prince of evil. The Image has Rory confess: 'Thus Satan he my senses doth allure, / who makes them thrall to serve his appetite, / So that in nought but sin I do delight.'" Rory 0g O'More is in fact a diabolical tool, an agent in a cosmic war now being waged by Elizabeth's agents in Ireland. Yet the text soon makes clear, and in a not very sophisticated fashion, how this morality tale will end. The second part of Derricke's tract soon presents us with the imaginary confession of the rebel Rory Og O'More. Recognising his own inveterate nature, in Derricke's scheme of things the Gaelic lord

40Ibid.,p. 194. 41Ibid. 42Ibid.,p. 196. 43Ibid.,p. 199. 44Ibid.,pp 199-200.

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anxiouslydescribeshis huntedstate andisolationfromthe companyof men. The Image is at pains to portraythe archetypalrebel as little more than a hunted beast expecting his inevitable destruction.Derricke introducesa graphicillustrationof a 'wolfish'Roryin a wood,'a grossand corpulentman ... overwhelmedwith misery',45who in an accompanyingverse utters the followingwords: PursuedI am and broughtto such a bay, As I expect noughtbut my dismalday. Sir Henrynow,who governsIrishsoil Hath made an oath to breviatemy days Whose stratagemshave given me such a foil, As all the landsoundsout his noble praise... In fine,twas he whichmade of bondmenfree, And put to swordfor my unstabletruth My spousedwife,the garlandof my youth. Withmanymore my dearand specialfriends, Whose breathlesscorpseswere given to the flamesof fire.46

In Derricke'stext Rory Og is seen to recognisethat it is his destiny,as by implicationit is for all the Gaelic Irishwho resist Sidney's'civilising'mission, to lose his family,his friends,his supportersand eventuallyhis own life. He had sampleda precursorof whatwas to come in the traplaidfor him by Sidney where his entire inner circle,includinghis wife, two of his children and his tdnaisteShane mac RuaidhriReagh, met their deaths in a burning cabin in 1577.Rory Og was barelyable to make his escape and had to hack his wayout againstall the odds.It is possiblethatthe prisoners,includingthe non-combatants,were killed in the campafterthe engagement.47 Rory's escape is attributedby Derricke to supernaturalpowers,and he contends that these also provide the Gaelic lord with the capacityto read astronomicalsigns.Rory encountersthese shortlyafter his escape fromthe cabin,and they foretell his inevitabledeath.Although he admitsthat both heaven and earth are his mortalfoes, Rory's skill enables him to read the stars, the 'fiery streams', which suggest not alone his own end but, in Derricke's terms,the speedy fall of a 'ThousandMs and Cs [Mores and Derricke'stext thus suggestsa final end to the problemof the Connors]'.48 O'MoresandO'Connors;in factit intimatesthat Sidney'spolicywouldhave preciselythis effect.As this portionof the text comes to an end Rory foretells that the 'sleight of Sidney'sprudentskill',as the agent of God's plan, will destroyhim and his people.49In Derricke'sverse the rebel'sforeboding of the finalretributionis renderedthus:

45Ibid.,p. 201. 46Ibid.,p. 202. For more detail on this dramaticincident see Sidney to privy council,26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O.,SP 63/59/57;Sidneyletters,i, 229-31). The Annals of Loch C6 add the fact that two of Rory Og's childrenwere also killed. 47Derricke, Image of Irelande, pp 202-4. 48Ibid.,p. 204. 49Ibid.,p. 205.

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Thattime drawsnigh and hour is at hand, In whichthe sept of my rebellingrace, Shallbe extirpedand abolishedclean the land, ForGod himselfdo sit in judgementplace. Tojudge I say,withjustice now the case ... Lo,lo, I see in mower'scruelhand, A fearfulscythewhichdoth prognosticate Both here and there throughoutthis Irishland, Thatgrowthof thingsare at theirripenedstate, Whichmustbe croppedby scytheof dismalfate. For God and time hath swornby sacredoath, Thatneed and huskshallsufferpenanceboth.50 III Derricke's doggerel, replete with images of the Protestant apocalyptic foreboding for the enemies of the English civilising mission, is reflected in Sidney's own narrative or 'memoir' of his proceedings in Ireland in this period and in the contemporary correspondence in state papers. Here the deputy admits to the necessity for stratagems to end (to use Derricke's phrase) the 'insolencie of the rebelles'. While Sidney's determination is clear - he writes: 'I waste hym and Kyll of his men daylie' - so also is his frustration.51After O'More burned down the towns of Naas in the Pale and Leighlin on the borders, the deputy, by way of compensation, reported in September 1577 that his subordinates had cut down hundreds of their followers. By November 1577, after O'More had kidnapped Sidney's nephew Captain Harrington and a relative, Alexander Cosby, and added the town of Carlow to the list of his incendiarist exploits, Sidney made clear his intention of the total elimination of the rebels: I ... hope,on all sides,so to hedge theimin, as sommeone or other of the companye (in soch streigthes as I shall apointe theim to lye) shall light upon theim. And althoughI have to deal with a flyengefoe ... yet so maneystartingholes and muffets he hath to fly unto,and soch ayde and succorof somme of his neighbours,as I shallnot so easilyelightuponhym,but onelyeby good guydinge;yet some of his best andprincipallfollowersI daylecut of, andpare hiswingesby little andlittle as I can; for I will neithersparetravellnor chardgiesto make some good ende of this service ... I meane,by the totall extirpacionof those rebells.52 Vowing to 'follow him to the last', Sidney intended by either 'device or

50Ibid. 51Sidneyto privy council, 20 Feb. 1578 (P.R.O.,SP 63/60/14;Sidney letters,i, 240-44);'Memorialsandnotes for Mr LodovickBriskettfor the court',14 June1578 (ibid., pp 261-2). 52Sidneyto privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O.,SP 63/59/57;Sidney letters,i, 229-31).

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force' to solve a frustrating problem which by his own estimation had already cost the crown £200,000.53 Sidney claims in his memoir to have made 'as actual and as cunning warre' as he could upon Rory Og O'More. The capture of his own nephew ('for I love him and do love him as a sonne of my owne') made the problem created by O'More's rebellion more acute than the damage done and the actual financial cost, for it added an element of intense personal hostility. Rory Og had scornfully mistreated his highly connected prisoner, 'carying him from place to place' in a manner described in Sidney's memoir as 'most like a slave'. Although the nineteenth-century editor of the memoir left out this phrase, the use of it in the manuscript original suggests the slight that Rory Og's actions represented to Sidney's sense of personal and family honour. O'More went on to add insult to injury when, despite entrapment in the woods, he viciously mutilated Harrington and then, to use Sidney's term, 'miracouslye' escaped: The villanousrebellfell upon my most dearnephue,being tyed in chaynesand him most shamefullyhacked with my nephue's own sword,to the effusion of such a quantityof blood as was incredibleto be tould. He brake his arm with that blunt sword,andcut off the littlefingerof one of his hands,and in sondrypartsof hishead so woundedhim as I myselfin his dressingdid see his braynesmoving.54 There is evidence to suggest that the lord deputy even authorised a plot to assassinate Rory Og. But the resort to poisoning, the same method used unsuccessfully by Sussex in his attempt to rid the government of the headache of Shane O'Neill, also failed." O'More's survival was especially baffling considering the intensity and, by Sidney's own admission, the brutality of the massive hunt for him: 'straunge that the prosecucion of hym, having bene so fervent, his escapes so beyond all opinion, the execucion so blouddye, by cutting of his company from 500 to 50'.6 Sidney could only attribute, like his propagandist Derricke, Rory Og's escapes from the largest search-and-destroy mission the area had ever seen 'to either Swiftness of his footmanship, or else rather (if it be lawfull so to deme) by Sorcerie or enchauntement', i.e. witchcraft.57 Certainly the reputation of Rory's demonic power was common enough among the ordinary English soldiers

to privycouncil,17 Mar.1577(PR.O.,SP 63/57/39;Sidneyletters,i, 164-8); 53Sidney Sidney to Elizabeth I, Aug. 1577 (Sidney letters,i, 205-6); council in Ireland to Elizabeth I, 12 Sept. 1577 (PR.O., SP 63/59/6; Sidney letters,i, 216-18); Sidney to privycouncil,26 Nov. 1577(P.R.O.,SP 63/59/57;Sidneyletters,i, 229-31). 54SirHenrySidney,'Narrative... to SirFrancisWalsingham',1 Mar.1583(PR.O., SP 12/159/1),publishedas 'Memoiror narrativeaddressedto Sir FrancisWalsingham, 1583' in UJ.A., 1st ser., iii (1855), pp 33-44, 85-90,336-57; v (1857), pp 299-315;

viii (1860),pp 179-95.

55Thisplot is referred to in Henry Chettle, Englandes mourning garment (London, 1603). For government efforts to kill Shane O'Neill see Ciaran Brady, Shane O'Neill (Dublin, 1996), esp. pp 51-2.

56Sidneyand council to Elizabeth I, 20 Apr. 1578 (P.R.O.,SP 63/60/42;Sidney

letters, i, 248-51).

57Sidneyand councilto privycouncil,1 July 1578(Sidneyletters,i, 263).

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that as late as the 1590s it surfaced in the correspondence of the writer Sir John Harrington. Harrington's version of Rory's escape from the cabin in 1577 also focused on his magical powers: '[Rory] made his way through the whole band and escaped, notwithstanding his walls were only mud. Such was their panick, as verily thinking he effected all by dint of witchery, and had by magic compell'd them not to touch him.'58 From this perspective, extraordinary circumstances necessitated extreme measures. It is in this context of a demonised enemy and an already horrific campaign of attrition that we must view the attempt to eliminate a significant party of O'Mores at Mullaghmast in March 1578 by the settlers Francis Cosby and Robert Hartpole and the pro-government O'Dempsey Gaelic enemies of the O'Mores. The circumstances of the massacre at Mullaghmast are described in the Annals of the Four Masters as follows: A horribleand abominableact of treacherywas committedby the English... upon that part of the people of Offaly and Leix ... It was effected thus,they were all summonedto show themselveswith greatest numberthey could be able to bring with them, at the greatrath of Mullagh-Maistean; and on their arrivalat that place, they were surroundedon every side by four lines of soldiersand cavalry,who proceeded to shoot and slaughter without mercy, so that not a single individual escaped.59 It should not surprise us that official sources are virtually silent on this event; it is, nevertheless, already apparent by this time that Sidney endorsed the type of activities which culminated in this particular atrocity. Derricke provides us with sufficient evidence to suggest that the annihilation of Gaelic Irish resistance to the plantation was not an uncommon goal within the Sidney camp. The level of hatred expressed against the demonised O'Mores is well expressed in Derricke's 'stop-press' conclusion which he added to the printed edition of the Image. On contemplating Rory's recent death on 30 June 1578, after Mullaghmast in March 1578, Derricke asks the reader to 'suppose that you see a monstrous devil, a trunkless head and a headless body... the one hid in some mixen and dunghill, but the other exalted, yea mounted upon a pole, a proper sight'.60 The closest we come to a suggestion of Sidney's more immediate involvement in the slaughter in the midlands is a reference in the English state paper evidence of 1577. Sidney, in a letter to the privy council in London, praises his subordinates, Francis Cosby and Robert Hartpole, for the 'great diligence, pollecye and payne takinge' in the elimination of the 'principal men' of the O'Mores and O'Connors.61Cosby's commission of martial law issued in March 1577 specifically cleared him of responsibility for the elimination of 'Rory Oge ... and all other traitors and rebels in any place where they may be found'.62Cosby's discretion was sweeping: 'and where he shall 58SirJohnHarringtonto SirAnthonyStanden,1599,in SirJohnHarrington,Nugae antiquae,ed HenryHarrington(3 vols,London,1779),ii, 23-4. 59A.FM.,v, 1694-6;and commentary,pp 1694-8. 60Derricke,Image of Irelande, p. 213.

61Sidneyto privycouncil,17 Mar.1577(Sidneyletters,i, 167). issuedto FrancisCosby18 Mar.1577 (FiantsIre.,Eliz., no. 2997). 62Commission

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find the rebels have been maintained or aided by any persons, he may commit such to gaol or execute them by martial law at his discretion'.63Sidney endorses these sweeping powers when he declares later in November 1577 that he intends the 'totall extirpacion of those rebells'.64This and the earlier cited suggestions of a knowledge and approval of efforts to eliminate the recalcitrant midland Gaelic Irish, while not irrefutable proof of Sidney's direct hand in the slaughter at Mullaghmast, have to be taken seriously when considered in the light of Derricke's text, which suggests Sidney's determination through 'sleight' and 'stratagems' to achieve this end.65 The Gaelic sources, specifically the passage already cited from the Annals of the Four Masters, clarify what happened at Mullaghmast and give meaning to Sidney's use of the term 'pollecye' in his letter to the privy council of March 1577. This 'horrible and abominable act of treachery' is also described in another Gaelic source, the Annals of Loch Cd: Treacherywas committedby MasterFrancisand by Macomasand the Saxons on MuirchertachO'Mordhaand on his people:and the place where this treacherywas committedwas in the greatrathof MullaghMaistin;and Muirchertachand seventyfour men were slain there; and no uglier deed than that was ever committedin Eirinn.66 Both the Four Masters and Loch Cd accounts suggest that the victims went to the meeting under a protection, the standard military mechanism for safe passage and parley. Yet there are problems with these version of events. There are differences in detail, and the texts have disparate composition dates. The Four Masters version was not compiled until the seventeenth century,while the Loch C6 version is wildly misdated at 1567.67Despite the dating issue, the latter version is the more reliable of the two. It mentions a specific victim, Muircheartach [mac Laoighseach] O'More, a supporter of Rory Og, and a specific perpetrator, the seneschal of the Queen's County, Francis Cosby. This veteran colonist was a relative, collaborator and subordinate of Sidney's. Thady Dowling's 'Annales Hiberniae' adds further and more reliable detail. This local source was based on the memory of a contemporary. Dowling, treasurer and chancellor of the diocese of Leighlin, was in his 63Ibid.(italicsadded). 64Sidneyto privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (PR.O., SP 63/59/57;Sidney letters,i, 229-31). 65For'stratagems'and 'sleights'see Derricke,Imageof Ireland,pp 202,205. 66A.L.C ii,396-7. 67Thismisdatingmay be attributableto the custom of adding materialto the annalsat the pointwhereblankspaceswereleft in the vellummanuscriptsat the end of each yearby the originalscribe.Laterevents andcorrectionswere often addedby subsequentscribes.In this instancethe entry on Mullaghmastwas 'transposed'by WilliamHennessy,the editor of the printed version,who also added in marginal notes in a differenthand.The nineteenth-centuryeditor (1871) took the libertyof rearrangingthe entries in order to place 'them in their proper order [sic]'.The originaltext of the Annals of Loch C6 ended in 1577;the remainder(to 1590) was added by Hennessyfrom anothermanuscriptin the BritishLibrary.See A.L.C., i, pp xxx-lix;ii, 396-7.

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thirties at the time of the massacre. Despite the generally pro-English bias, Dowling leaves little doubt as to the treachery involved in 1578 or the identity of the leading colonist perpetrators, Cosby and Hartpole, the constable of Carlow: MorisMcLasyMc Conylldominusde Merggi(ut ille asseruit)et baronisde OMergi successor,cum 40 hominibusde sua familiapost confederationemsuam cum Rory O'Moardhaet super.quadamprotectione interfectusfuit apud Molaghmastynin comitatu Kildarie,ad eundum locum ob id propositumper magistrumCosby et Robert Harpoll,sub umbraservitiiaccersituscollusorie.68 Contemporary descriptions of events from a native perspective are rare, yet Mullaghmast was such a shock to Gaelic Ireland that it also uncharacteristically survives in the most unlikely of immediate Irish written sources. A Gaelic surgeon and scribe, Corc Og O Cadhla, records in the margins of a manuscript medical treatise the details of an unusual case of menstrual bleeding (o hseachran fola mista) on which he had been a consultant in March 1578.69O Cadhla's notes, the closest thing to a diary entry we will find for Gaelic Ireland, also record what he refers to as the 'disgraceful deeds' (gnimha nachar dhaighmaiseach) which occurred 'a short time ago' (beacan reimhe) at Mullaghmast. The medical scribe had no doubts as to who was to blame for the atrocity. According to O Cadhla, the O'Mores were tricked into a meeting under the protection of 'an ghiusdis ... Sir Henry Sitny' and were slaughtered by 'Harpol ... Saxanach do muinntir an ghiuisdis sin'.70In O Cadhla's text this incident is part of a pattern directly linked to Sidney and the effort to exterminate the more stubborn elements of Gaelic resistance: Agus do tinnsenadhgnimha roghrainemlaleo sin do denamh ar fud choigedh Laighen a ninphaidhsin la Saxanachaibh... a raibhe do clannaibhGaoideal a 68'MorisMc Lasy Mc Conyll,lord of Merggi,as he asserted,and successorof the baron of OMergi,with forty of his followers,after his confederationwith Rory O'Moardha,and after a certainpromiseof protection,was slain at Molaghmast,in the county of Kildare,the place appointed for it, by Master Cosby and Robert Harpoll,havingbeen summonedthere treacherouslyunderpretenceof performing service.'ThadyDowling,'AnnalesHiberniae'in Annalsof lrelandby FriarJohnClyn and ThadyDowling,ed. RichardButler (Dublin, 1849),p. 42. 'MorisMc Lasy Mc Conyll'O'Morewas a memberof the MacLaoighseachsept of the O'Mores,known supportersof Rory Og. 'MortagheMc Lyse Moore and Conell Mc Neale [Mac Lisagh] Moore', a brother and nephew, are described by Fitzwilliamas two of O'More's'principalland trustiestmen' (P.R.O.,SP 63/40/3),while anotherbrother, Niall mac Laoighseach,is described as Rory's tdnaisteby Sidney in June 1578 ('Memorialsand notes for Mr LodovickBriskett',14 June 1578 (Sidneyletters,i, 262)). medicinae'(R.I.A.,MS 24 P 14;copied in R.I.A.cat.Ir.MSS,x, 1176-80; 69'Lilium edited by Paul Walsh,'Scrapsfrom Irish scribes' in CatholicBulletin and Book Review,xx (1930),pp 141-55). 70Accordingto O Cadhla,Muircheartachmac LaoighseachO'More surrendered his hostagesto Sidney in returnfor this protection,Hartpolethen killed them the next day.This act was followed shortlyafterwardsby the atrocityat Mullaghmast. The quotationis fromWalsh,'ScrapsfromIrishscribes',p. 146.

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nasardagus a naimhreadhinnti a mbreithfein do thabairtdoibh agus toidhechd chumlaithreachclannaGall agusan ghiuisdis.Agus ni ni do badhferrna mardo rinneadhrisinfedain adubramardogentaidheru uili da dtigidis. And a commencementwas made at that time by the Englishof the doing of other very horribledeeds throughoutthe provinceof Leinster,namely,all the difficultand troublesomemen of the provincewere ordered,underthreatof penalty,to present themselvesbefore the Englishand the lordjustice.And a fate not better than that which befell those we have spoken of would have overtakenthem all had they so presentedthemselves.7'

The scribelinks Mullaghmastto the effort to eliminateRory Og and insists on the unprecedentednatureof this headhuntwhen he relates how Rory's wife was killed: 'and with her have been killed women, and boys, and humble folk, and people young and old, who according to all seeming, deserved not to be put to the sword'.72 This breaking of protection and the devious entrapment and slaughter of aristocratic figures reverberated throughout Gaelic Ireland. On the Gaelic side at least, this act continued to be a cause of mistrust in relations with the

Englishgovernment.Certainlywhen Mullaghmastis viewed in conjunction with the widespread killing of non-combatants (women, boys and the lower classes) in the war against the O'Mores, it was likely that some natives would conclude that the English were intent on a policy of extermination in the Gaelic midlands. Even by the standards of contemporary English military theory and practice, these measures represented a departure from the

norm.

Barbara Donagan argues that early modern Europeans placed 'overwhelming importance' on 'keeping faith' and on the 'reliability of the given word'.73 This ethic was not restricted to military affairs and was 'derived from the utilitarian value of dependable promises as well as from the religious quality of the oath'.74 Thus the breaking of protections went against 71Textand translation,ibid.,pp 147-8. 72Ibid.: 'agusmna agus macaimagus mindaoineagus daoine oga agus arsaidhido marbhadhmaillerianacharthuilla marbhadhdo rerbharamhla.'O Cadhla'sdating of this portionof the manuscripton 22 March1577,and his relationof the death of 'MairghredMhaol',Rory'swife, helps us positivelyfix the date of the massacrein March1578.Margaretwas killed in the cabin assaultin October 1577 (P.R.O.,SP 63/59/6).RoryOg escapedfromthiseffortandwasstill alivein March1578whenthe atrocitywas committed.O Cadhlaclearlystatesthat'RudhraidhiOg o Mordhaagus an chuidmhairesda hslichdarnaninnarbadhag Gallaibhasa nduthaighagus nach lamhuida n-aighthiuirrele roinertGall' (Rory Og O'More and all his livingkinsmen have been drivenfrom their countryby the English and they dare not show their faces there because of the tyranny of the foreigners).Ciaran Brady sees Mullaghmastas a mopping-upoperation after the death of Rory Og, and he identifiesthe victimas Laoighseachmac ConaillO'More.In fact Dowling,O Cadhla and the Annals of Loch C6 all agree that it was Muircheartach[Murrough]mac Laoighseach.His father Laoighseachmac Conaill died in 1537.See Brady,Chief

governors, p. 264.

Donagan,'Atrocity,war crime,and treasonin the EnglishCivilWar'in 73Barbara A.H.R.,xcix (1994),pp 1137-66;quotationon p. 1139. 74Ibid., pp 1139-40.

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the contemporary dictates of religion and morality, as did the assault on certain categories of persons, including the 'weak, the defenceless and the holy'. One of the factors which Donagan suggests leads to extreme bitterness in the aftermath of war is 'the degree to which the enemy is believed to have observed or transgressed the codes of war and to have been guilty of atrocities and war crimes: not merely the unorganised, random outrages committed in all wars by troops out of control but, more important, institutionalised, officially sanctioned acts of policy'.75 It is in this regard that the association of Sir Henry Sidney with the atrocity in question is important. If true - and the evidence is compelling - it would seem to suggest that it was the sanctioned nature of this act which caused the lasting bitterness. Almost twenty years later, in 1597, Mullaghmast was cited in a long list by Hugh O'Neill as one of 'certen articles of greefe as well towchinge myselfe as others joyned with me, of sondry abuses don againste us'.76'The feare that lived of the Moores and Conners one daye most shamefully murdered at a place called Molloughmaste' was one of many betrayals in the previous quarter-century which convinced Tyrone and his followers 'to fear the like measure, to be don against us'.77 In contrast to the Gaelic sources, the silence of immediate English correspondence is revealing. Derricke's rhetoric of sectarian retribution and Sidney's dark hints aside, we have to wait until 1594 before we get a hint in a semi-official source that such atrocities took place and that they were sanctioned by the upper echelons of the English government in Ireland.78 Here, in Captain Thomas Lee's 'Brief declaration', a tract based on his service in Ireland, we read how the authorities drew 'unto them by protection three or four hundred of those country people ... and brought them to a place of meeting, where ... garrison soldiers ... dishonourably put them all to the sword; and this hath been by the consent and practice of the lord deputy for the time being'.79If Lee is referring to Mullaghmast - and there is reason to believe he may not be - there could be no better evidence to corroborate the native oral and written basis for interpreting this slaughter as an officially sanctioned act. Even if, on the other hand, he is referring to 75Ibid., pp 1137-8. book of grevances',13 Dec. 1597(BodI., MS LaudMisc.612,ff 55-9). 1 76'Tyrones am extremelygratefulto Dr HiramMorganfor this referenceand for a copy of this manuscript. 77Ibid. maybe obliquelyreferringto the slaughterwhenin April 1578he relates: 78Sidney 'Touchingethe rebell Rorie Oge, and his complices,it is straungethat the prosecucion of hym,havingbene so fervent,his escapesso beyonde all opinion,the execucion so blouddye,by cuttinge of his companyfrom 500 to 50, which are now his remayneat the uttermost'(PR.O., SP 63/60/42;Sidney letters,i, 250). Sidney had to wait until 1 July 1578 to reporton the death of Rory Og on 30 June (Sidney to privycouncil,1 July1578(PR.O.,SP 63/61/29;Sidneyletters,pp 263-5)). Sidneyleft Irelandin September1578,havingbeen replacedas lord justice on 27 April by Sir WilliamDrury. 79ThomasLee, 'A brief declarationof the governmentof Ireland'in Desid. cur. Hib., ii, 91.

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an earlier Ulster atrocity (the massacre of Clandeboye O'Neills in Belfast in 1574-5), the pattern of brutalities he describes, where pardons and protections were frequently ignored and Gaelic el1itefigures were killed by 'the consent of your deputies', is suggestive of a pattern of heightened brutality which had its origins in the Gaelic midlands in the 1550s.80

IV Historians are not inclined to accept uncritically the survivals of bitter folk memory; the pain of recollection, it is believed, can only distort. Yet there is a surprising coincidence of detail between the versions in the various annals and the tale that would persist down the centuries in the folklore. Though oral testimony from local people was not written down until 1705, it was nevertheless based on the stories of those who claimed to have spoken to people who had lived nearby when the extermination attempt was made. The vibrant local tradition surrounding the sixteenth century was noted by the Gaelic scholar John O'Donovan in the 1830s. This tradition preserves similar descriptions of a devious plot and heaped corpses and widens the victim group to include all the leading Gaelic families of Laois. It also lists the settler perpetrators, again naming Sidney's close associates, Cosby and Hartpole.81 As late as the 1890s detailed, and surprisingly similar, accounts of the event survived in the local area and provide evidence of a legacy of bitterness and lurid storytelling relating to the atrocity. In fact the idea that Mullaghmast was part of a plan to exterminate the O'Mores as a people, if not supported by contemporary evidence, survived in the folklore of the Laois-Offaly-Kildare area. A local tale related to the antiquarian historian Lord Walter Fitzgerald suggested that in the period of the 'She Wolf' (Elizabeth I), and just days after the atrocity, 'the English ... issued a proclamation from Mullaghmast ordering that all boys of a certain age belonging to the O'More sept should be put to death'.82 The lore of events like Mullaghmast also went on to form an essential component of an emerging Irish Catholic nationalism. Fleeing the collapse of Gaelic Ireland at the end of the sixteenth century, 6migr6 historians working on the Continent elaborated on incidents like this to provide evidence of a systematic English attempt at ethnic cleansing. As an exile in Spain, Philip O'Sullivan Beare, the quintessential exponent of this type of 80Ibid., p. 92.Dr HiramMorganis of the opinionthatthe atrocityin questionis the 1574-5 slaughterof the ClandeboyeO'Neillsand thatthe officialresponsiblewasSir WilliamFitzwilliam,the then governor,as he was also in 1594('the lord deputyfor the time being') whenLee was writing. 81Thismaterialis recordedby JohnO'Donovanin his notes to the A.EM. entryon Mullaghmast(see above, n. 59). It is also the basis of 'Accountof the murderof Mullamast'(R.I.A., MS 12012,ff 1-4). 82Thistale, from a LarryMoore,is reproducedwith more local traditionin Lord WalterFitzgerald,'Mullaghmast: its historyand traditions'in KildareArch.Soc.Jn., i (1891-5), pp 379-91, esp. pp 385-7.

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polemical history, enshrined the story of Mullaghmast in his Historiae Catholicae Iberniae compendium (1621). His anti-English hatred was so intense that he was not averse to pilfering atrocity stories from Las Casas and attributing them to the English colonists in Ireland. Anyone familiar with the Dominican's story of the 'conquistadors' who delighted in hanging women from trees, and then hanging infants from their mother's hair, will be shocked to find similar acts attributed as the favourite pastime of the seneschal of the Queen's County, Francis Cosby.83 O'Sullivan Beare's history treated Mullaghmast as just another incident in a sixteenth-century war of Protestants against Catholics. Despite the presence of a Gaelic O'Dempsey contingent on the government side at the slaughter, O'Sullivan Beare turned Mullaghmast into a Cosby-inspired extermination of Catholics: FrancisCosby,governorof Leix, and his son Alexanderragedsavagelyagainstthe entire Catholicbody.He summonedthe men of his provinceto Mullaghmastfor a He suddenlysurroundedthe assemconventionto discussmattersof administration. bly with armedbands,and,of the familyof O'More,killed on the spot one hundred and eightyunarmedand unsuspectingmen.84 Mullaghmast not only survived in every major work of nationalist Irish history from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, but was also kept alive in the local popular culture. And the two fed off each other. John O'Donovan noted stories of Mullaghmast in the area in the 1830s, and, in particular, the association with the Cosby family: The story told by O'Sullivanof FrancisCosby (Proinsiasna Saile6ige)and his tree is still rememberedat Stradbally,but while the Cosbyswere in powerit was treason to speak of it. The Cosbysare now fast decaying;their fortunesin the progressof being ruined, the prophecy connected with them fulfilled, and the massacreof Mullaghmast... is mentionedas a historicalinstanceof whatevils a tyrannicalfamily can bringaboutwhen placedin power.85 Oral history versions of the event are precisely reproduced in nationalist polemics, while at the same time the products of literate culture, like Cosby's hanging-tree, became a part of the folklore.86And if local tradition continued to associate the act with Cosby, a wider popular culture created by an orthodox Catholic history maintained the connexion with Sidney - to such an extent, indeed, that Sidney's part in the Mullaghmast atrocity was by the middle of the nineteenth century an established part of the nationalist canon. This was certainly guaranteed in October 1843 by the decision of Daniel O'Connell to hold one of his Repeal monster meetings at the Great 83Philip O'Sullivan Beare, Historiae Catholicae Iberniae compendium (1621),

trans.M.J.Byrne as IrelandunderElizabeth(Dublin,1903), pp 6-9, esp.p. 8. 84Ibid., p. 8. 850.S.letters,Kildare, pp 81-2.

86A good eighteenth-century exampleis Abb6 JamesMacGeoghegan,Histoirede l'Irlande(3 vols, Paris,1758-63;trans.Patrick O'Kelly,New York, 1868), p. 478.

A. M. Sullivan, Atlas and cyclopedia of Ireland and general history (New York, 1905),

pp 95-6, is a good nineteenth-centuryexample.

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Rath of Mullaghmast. O'Connell chose the Mullaghmast site because of its place in folklore and polemical history as a scene and symbol of English treachery, and with the implication that the Repeal campaign would not succumb to a similar 'Saxon ingenuity and falsehood'.87 The Liberator's banquet speech embellished the various accounts of the slaughter and utilised the rhetoric of martyred Catholic nationalism to suggest that the Repeal campaign would not fall victim to the same bloody fate as the O'Mores.88 Mass circulation newspapers such as the Freeman's Journal and The Nation ensured that the memory of Mullaghmast would remain in the popular consciousness far beyond the immediate local area.89 And in the creation of this national consciousness or memory of the event, there was to be no doubt as to the person ultimately responsible for the act. The issue of The Nation that reproduced O'Connell's Mullaghmast speech also included a ballad on the subject that laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of Sir Henry Sidney.90 The songwriter R. D. Williams's lurid 'Ballad of Mullaghmast' ignored the local perpetrators and in the interest of contemporary Repeal politics placed the blame on the upper echelons of English government.91 Since the 1930s mainstream Irish historians have reacted against these popular mythologies of romantic nationalism. Basing their efforts on methodology of professionalism and 'value-free' scientific research, they have attempted to overthrow the legends that generated and nurtured Irish nationalism. With a few exceptions, this has often meant a downplaying of the more brutal aspects of the early modern conquest. These historians find repugnant the animosities that fed the recent conflict in Northern Ireland and thus, to paraphrase one recent commentator, have endeavoured to filter out the trauma of the Irish historical record in the interest of healing old wounds.92This disavowal of the more catastrophic aspects of Irish history was often motivated by a fear of fanning the flames of a resurgent and radical nationalism. While this desire is certainly not malicious, it is misguided. The fact that polemical history and popular memory have nurtured contemporary 87O'Connell's Mullaghmastspeeches on 1 October 1843 are reprintedin Eamon

Kane, Daniel O'Connell: rath of Mullaghmast (Castledermot, 1993), pp 58-9.

88Hestood in frontof a painting'representinga groupof wolfhounds,howlingover the graves of the martyreddead' and a motto which read:'No more shall Saxon butcherygive blood gouts for repast,/ The dog is raisedand treacheryexpels from Mullaghmast'(ibid.,pp 38-9). 89Freeman'sJournal, 2 Oct. 1843; The Nation, 7 Oct. 1843.

"9Fitzgerald, 'Mullaghmast',p. 387. 91'Hark!hollow moans ariseI Throughthe black tempestuousskies,/ From the lone Rath swell;/ For bloody Sydney there / Nightly fills the lurid air/ With the unholypomp and glare/ Of the foul,deep hell. / FalseSydney!knighthood'sstain,/ The trustingbravein vain- / Thyguests- ride o'er the plain/ To thy darkcow'rd snare' (Kane, Daniel O'Connell, pp 74-5).

92HereI paraphraseBrendanBradshaw,'Nationalism andhistoricalscholarshipin modernIreland'in I.H.S.,xxvi,no. 104 (Nov.1989),pp 329-51.

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hatreds does not necessarily, mean that crimes and atrocities were imaginary.The war against Rory Og O'More was a war to the death. He himself certainly thought that it was so, and acted accordingly, as witnessed by his brutalities against the authorities and their allies. In the earlier sections of this article I have detailed how he harassed the midland settlers, burnt the towns of Naas and Carlow, and brutally treated his captives Harrington and Cosby. There is even evidence to suggest that some Gaelic poets gloried in his ruthless responses to English aggression: 'the Irish rimers extol him like And O'More was not the first Gaelic lord he that burnt Diana his temple'."93 to devastate a region. Shane O'Neill's campaign in Tyrconnell in 1564 is cited as an unprecedented level of violence inflicted by a Gaelic figure on his Gaelic neighbours.94Yet the official sanctioning of ruthlessness, a severity that went beyond the contemporary codes of the conduct of war (breaking of protections, killing of women and children), is also a significant fact of the war against the O'Mores in this period. The government in Dublin was aware of the activities on the ground that culminated in the atrocity at Mullaghmast. It was not only aware of them, but effectively approved of these acts in order to rid the Laois-Offaly plantation of the scourge of the dispossessed O'Mores.95 It is clear that sixteenth-century Gaelic evidence, and to a large extent English state paper evidence, suggest that Sir Henry Sidney was willing to go to any lengths to eliminate Rory Og O'More and his followers. While the lord deputy may not have planned the Mullaghmast atrocity, it is clear that he gave 'carte blanche' authority to his subordinates for the 'totall extirpacion of those rebels'.96 Contemporary Gaelic commentators certainly believed him to be ultimately responsible. Government-sponsored slaughter was a fact of the English colonial experience in Ireland from the 1570s onwards, and this policy contributed to a legacy of bitterness and hatred. Only by acknowledging such historical realities, and by constructing a narrative that empathises with the victims of both sides, can we better understand the violent heritage that concerns us today.97 VINCENT P. CAREY

Department of History, State University of New York,Plattsburgh

Hiberniae',p. 42. 93Dowling,'Annales Shane O'Neill, p. 55, where a reputed 4,500 people were killed in the 94Brady, O'Donnelllordship. 95Thegovernment cited a total headcount of 725 by the end of the conflict (councilto ElizabethI, 12 Sept. 1578(P.R.O.,SP 63/62/8)). 96Sidneyto privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (PER.O.,SP 63/59/57;Sidney letters,i, 229-31). 97Iwould like to acknowledgethe assistanceof KarlBottigheimer,Clare Carroll andBernadetteCunningham,who readvariousdraftsof this article.I am also grateful to JacquelynConnellyfor her encouragement.I owe a particulardebt to Hiram Morganfor invitingme to presentan earlierversionto the FolgerInstituteseminar, 'Text and conquest',in September1995, and who also commentedon the draft. Any errorsare,of course,mine.