one of those abortive tragedies of which the whole
history of Ireland is full. Our pity for the victims' doom, and our
indignation for the cold-blooded cruelty with which that doom was
carried out, is mingled with a reluctant realization of the fact that
the state of things which preceded it was practically impossible, that
it had become an anomaly, and that as such it was bound either to change
or to perish.

[Illustration: CAHIR CASTLE, TIPPERARY, TAKEN BY THE EARL OF ESSEX IN
1599. _(From the "Pacata Hibernia.")_]

From the twelfth century onwards, the Desmond Geraldines had been lords,
as has been seen, of a vast tract of Ireland, covering the greater part
of Munster. Earlier and perhaps more completely than any of the other
great Norman houses, they had become Irish chieftains rather than
English subjects, and the opening of Elizabeth's reign found them still
what for centuries past they had been, and with their power, within
their own limits, little if at all curtailed. The Desmond of the day had
still his own judges or Brehons, by whose judgment he professed to rule.
He had still his own palatinate courts; he still collected his dues by
force, driving away his clansmen's cattle, and distraining those who
resisted him. Only a few years before this time, during an expedition of
the kind, he and Ormond had encountered one another in the open field at
Affane, upon the Southern Blackwater, each side flying their banners,
and shouting their war cries as if no queen's representative had ever
been seen or heard of.

Such a state of things, it was plain, could not go on indefinitely,
would not indeed have gone on as long but for the confusion and disorder
in which the country had always been plunged, and especially the want of
all settled communication. The palatinate of Ormond, it is true, was
theoretically in much the same state, but then Ormond was a keener
sighted and a wiser man than Desmond, and knew when the times demanded
redress. He had of late even made some effort to abolish the abominable
system of "coyne and livery," although, as he himself frankly admits, he
was forced to impose it again in another form not long afterwards.

Sir James meanwhile had left Ireland, and at every Catholic Court in
Europe was busily pleading for aid towards a crusade against England.
Failing in France, he appealed to Philip of Spain. Philip, however, at
the moment was not prepared to break with Elizabeth, whereupon
Fitzmaurice