, an English officer, had been
busy the day before stirring up the smouldering embers of anger.
Suddenly a taunt was flung out by one of the guests at the discomfited
hero. Shane--forgetting perhaps where he was--sprang up to revenge it. A
dozen swords and skeans blazed out upon him, and he fell, pierced by
three or four of his entertainers at once. His body was then tossed into
an old ruined chapel hard by, where the next day his head was hacked off
by Captain Pierce, and carried to Sidney, who sent it to be spiked upon
Dublin Castle. It was but too characteristic an end of an eminently
characteristic career.

[Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S BELL.]

XXV.

BETWEEN TWO STORMS.

By 1566 Sir Henry Sidney became Lord-deputy, not now in the room of
another, but fully appointed. With the possible exception of Sir John
Perrot, he was certainly the ablest of all the viceroys to whom
Elizabeth committed power in Ireland. Unlike others he had the
advantage, too, of having served first in the country in subordinate
capacities, and so earning his experience. He even seems to have been
fairly popular, which, considering the nature of some of his
proceedings, throws a somewhat sinister light, it must be owned, upon
those of his successors and predecessors.

After the death and defeat of Shane the Proud a lull took place, and the
new deputy took the opportunity of making a progress through the south
and west of the island, which he reports to be all terribly wasted by
war. Many districts, he says, "had but one-twentieth part of their
former population." Galway, worn out by incessant attacks, could
scarcely defend her walls. Athenry had but four respectable householders
left, who "sadly presenting the rusty keys of their once famous town,
confessed themselves unable to defend it."

[Illustration: SIR HENRY SIDNEY, LORD-DEPUTY FROM 1565 TO 1587. (_From
an engraving by Harding_.)]

Sidney was one of the first to relinquish what had hitherto been the
favourite and traditional policy of all English governors, that, namely,
of playing one great lord or chieftain against another, and to attempt
the larger task of putting down and punishing all signs of
insubordination especially in the great. In this respect he was the
political parent of Strafford, who acted the same part sixty years
later. He had not--any more than his great successor--to reproach
himself either with feebleness in the execution of his policy. The
number of milit