ary executions that mark his progress seem to have
startled his own coadjutors, and even to have evoked some slight
remonstrance from Elizabeth herself. "Down they go at every corner!" the
Lord-deputy writes at this time triumphantly in an account of his own
proceedings, "and down, God willing, they shall go."

A plan for appointing presidents of provinces had been a favourite with
the late deputy, Sussex, and was now revived. Sir Edward Fitton, one of
the judges of the Queen's Bench, was appointed to the province of
Connaught--a miserably poor appointment as it turned out; Sir John
Perrot a little later to Munster; Leinster for the present the deputy
reserved for himself. This done he returned, first pausing to arrest the
Earl of Desmond and carrying him and his brother captive to Dublin and
eventually to London, where according to the queen's orders he was to be
brought in order that she might adjudicate herself in the quarrel
between him and Ormond.

The two earls--they were stepson and stepfather by the way--had for
years been at fierce feud, a feud which had desolated the greater part
of the South of Ireland. It was a question of titles and ownership, and
therefore exclusively one for the lawyers. The queen, however, was
resolved that it should be decided in Ormond's favour. Ormond was "sib
to the Boleyns;" Ormond had been the playmate of "that sainted young
Solomon, King Edward," and Ormond therefore, it was quite clear, must
know whether the lands were his own or not.

Against the present Desmond nothing worse was charged than that he had
enforced what he considered his palatinate rights in the old,
high-handed, time-immemorial fashion. His father, however, had been in
league with Spain, and he himself was held to be contumacious, and had
never been on good terms with any of the deputies.

On this occasion he had, however, surrendered himself voluntarily to
Sidney. Nevertheless, upon his arrival he was kept a close prisoner, and
upon attempting, sometime afterwards, to escape, was seized, and only
received his life on condition of surrendering the whole of his
ancestral estates to the Crown, a surrender which happened to fit in
very conveniently with a plan upon which the attention of the English
Council was at that time turned.

The expenses of Ireland were desperately heavy, and Elizabeth's frugal
soul was bent upon some plan for their reduction. A scheme for reducing
the cost of police duty by means of a