me of our
prisoners desired to be set on shore on the Azores islands, hoping to be
thence transported into England, and which liberty had been formerly
promised by the Spanish general; one Morice Fitz John, (son of old John
of Desmond, a notable traitor, who was cousin-german to the late earl of
Desmond,) was sent from ship to ship to endeavour to persuade the
English prisoners to serve the king of Spain. The arguments he used to
induce them were these. Increase of pay to treble their present
allowance; advancement to the better sort; and the free exercise of the
true catholic religion, ensuring the safety of all their souls. For the
first of these, the beggarly and unnatural behaviour of those English
and Irish rebels that served the king of Spain in that action was a
sufficient answer; for so poor and ragged were they, that, for want of
apparel, they stripped the poor prisoners their countrymen of their
ragged garments, worn out by six months service, not even sparing to
despoil them of their bloody shirts from their wounded bodies, and the
very shoes from their feet; a noble testimony of their rich
entertainment and high pay. As to the second argument, of hope of
advancement if they served well and continued faithful to the king of
Spain; what man could be so blockishly ignorant ever to expect promotion
and honour from a foreign king, having no other merit or pretension than
his own disloyalty, his unnatural desertion of his country and parents,
and rebellion against his true prince, to whose obedience he is bound by
oath, by nature, and by religion? No! such men are only assured to be
employed on all desperate enterprizes, and to be held in scorn and
disdain even among those they serve. That ever a traitor was either
trusted or advanced I have never learnt, neither can I remember a single
example. No man could have less becomed the office of orator for such a
purpose, than this Morice of Desmond: For, the earl his cousin, being
one of the greatest subjects in the kingdom of Ireland, possessing
almost whole counties in his large property, many goodly manors,
castles, and lordships, the county palatine of Kerry, 500 gentlemen of
his own family and name ready to follow him, all which he and his
ancestors had enjoyed in peace for three or four hundred years: Yet this
man, in less than three years after his rebellion and adherence to the
Spaniards, was beaten from all his holds, not so many as ten gentlemen
of his name le