‘THE MOST BLOODY AND TREACHEROUS TRAITOR’
IF THE JESUITS lived up to their description as the Vatican’s shock troops, Fr James Archer was one of their top special-ops men. A tall, melancholy figure whose long, solemn face was further elongated by a salt-and-pepper beard, he looked an unlikely Pimpernel – which is probably how he managed to evade capture during his extended secret missions.
One description read: ‘Archer the traitor is black of complexion, his hair spotted grey, his apparel commonly a white doublet.’ Another said he was ‘tall, black, and in visage long and thin’. He was dubbed ‘the poison of Ireland’ and officials were told: ‘To have him taken would be a great service.’
Aged in his early fifties at the time of the invasion, Archer was much more than a humble priest. As an envoy for the Irish insurgent leader Hugh O’Neill, he had ready access to King Felipe of Spain and the Archduke of Austria as well as the Vatican’s top diplomats. The English regarded him as ‘a principal plotter to draw [the Spanish] into Ireland’ – and he would have taken that as a compliment.
What made him particularly dangerous was that he posed a threat to the life of La Inglesa, the English Queen. Nine years beforehand, Archer had allegedly asked a sympathiser to find him an assassin – a ‘tall soldier, an Irishman’ – who would be willing to kill Queen Elizabeth. Archer explained that it would be ‘a most godly act’. He offered 2,000 crowns, a pension, and eternal salvation.
A Tipperary man named Hugh Cahill volunteered for the contract.
—Go to London and buy a horse, Cahill was instructed. When La Inglesa rides out to take the air, set spurs to your horse and strike your sword at her head.
Failing that, Cahill should wait at a palace door and ‘thrust a dagger or a strong knife into her body’. Cahill went to London all right, but instead went straight to the authorities and confessed everything.
Whatever truth lay behind this story, it was enough to elevate Archer to the ‘most wanted’ list. Every English reference to Archer burns with genuine loathing. ‘Detestable’ is a typical description. ‘The most bloody and treacherous traitor,’ says another. His power was said to be ‘absolute’. The greatest Lords held him in awe. ‘None dare gainsay him.’
Archer would sail into Ireland incognito and live undercover for months at a time. His religious role was to promote the faith, but he affected a military air and sometimes crossed the line between pastor and soldier.
He could slip into any identity with ease. He sometimes posed as ‘a courtier, and other times like a farmer’, wrote his exasperated pursuers. Often he would sleep in ditches and cattle sheds, at other times in grand castles. He was present for the Irish insurgents’ victory at the Yellow Ford, where he wrote: ‘The English Government hates me very much … [and has] set a price on my head. This forces me to live in the woods and in hiding places … there are spies in every port on the lookout for me.’
His narrow escapes were so incredible – once he even escaped from under lock and key in a London jail – that his hunters felt he must have used witchcraft. ‘They believed him able to walk dry-footed over the sea; to fly through the air; and to possess other superhuman power,’ wrote the Irish historian Philip O’Sullivan.
All nonsense, obviously. What Archer did possess was a sharp intelligence, limitless energy, and access to the Jesuits’ network of highly placed secret sympathisers. He was also – like his great rival Juan del Águila – a man born without fear.
Let’s picture Archer in Kinsale on Sunday, 15 November – a tall, soldierly man in black, striding quickly and purposefully through the rubble-strewn mediaeval streets. Perhaps he is dressed as an English sketch artist depicted him. If so, he cuts a dashing figure in a long black cloak which swirls around his hurrying frame. His collar is a ring of fur, and his unruly hair is half-hidden by a tall white hat which he clutches against the wind and rain. His eyes are large, dark and watchful, his face grim.
He is rushing to Águila’s house to put forward another plan. Fr James Archer is never short of plans – but, since they usually involve the transfer of military power to Fr James Archer, the Spanish commander usually gives him short shrift.
Today, the town is abuzz with news. Six Irish clan leaders have ridden into town, offering to support the rebellion. Archer is convinced his moment has come. He confronts Águila in his new quarters, a private house formerly occupied by a Kinsale man named Philip Roche.
—If I join these men and travel throughout the countryside, Archer says eagerly, I can convince the entire nation to join our cause.
He might even meet Hugh O’Neill and persuade him to hurry to Kinsale.
Águila must have sighed inwardly. He remembered the last time a disenchanted cleric left a beleaguered fort to travel up-country to enlist help from a nearby insurgent army. Instead, the cleric convinced the insurgents that the commander was incompetent and that they should stay well away. The outcome was massacre. The cleric in that case was Mateo de Oviedo. The fort was Smerwick.
So once again, Águila refused permission. And once again, Fr Archer fumed silently and scribbled in his journal, waiting for his day of retribution.
If truth be told, Águila was rapidly losing patience with Hugh O’Neill after fifty days. He had sent several messengers to the northern insurgent chieftain, but to no avail.
Águila still didn’t know whom he could trust. A few days earlier there had been a stir in Kinsale when a man crept to the town walls on his hands and knees. He claimed to be a priest with a letter from O’Neill. He was escorted to Águila, who read O’Neill’s prevarications and lost patience. His reply to the northern leader took a tough line.
—You must come immediately with all the forces you can gather, he told O’Neill. If you delay any longer, I will withdraw my forces.
The priest nodded and conveyed the reply … not to O’Neill, but to Charles Blount. He was a genuine messenger from O’Neill, but he had been turned and was now Blount’s double agent.
The English officers took some black humour out of the Spaniards’ threat to withdraw.
—I believe them, one officer laughed. They would withdraw in a heartbeat … if they only could.
Dealing with Águila always left Fr Archer furious. But then, anger was not a feeling that was unfamiliar to him. As an evangelist, he had always worked at the rough end of muscular Christianity. He deliberately chose the toughest targets to convert – Protestant sea-merchants at the Galician docks, or stubborn Scotsmen in the north of Ireland. Once he had tried to convince a soldier to stop his ‘evil-doing’. When words weren’t enough, Archer flew into a rage and used blows – unfortunately in this case the priestly attacker came off worst and was badly beaten up.
This was a strange vocation for a man who had been born into a staid establishment family of Kilkenny lawyers. According to one source he was ‘altogether Englished’. He once wrote that the Irish were ‘an uncultivated and barbarous people’.
After attending a Continental seminary, he became a Jesuit novice. The Jesuits were extremely good at reading character. They observed that at times Archer would be ‘melancholic’ and at other times ‘choleric’ – hot tempered and irascible. Today, these opposing traits might prompt a psychologist to think of two other words: bipolar disorder.
The low cycle of this disorder is marked by a debilitating depression – the Jesuits’ ‘melancholia’. But far from enjoying untroubled good cheer in the high cycle, sufferers often become impatient, irritable and irascible. They can develop what leading psychiatrist and author Kay Jamison describes as ‘an inflated self-esteem, as well as a certainty of conviction about the correctness and importance of their ideas’. Sufferers sometimes believe they are messiah figures. Tellingly, Archer compared himself to a Biblical patriarch who would lead his people out of bondage. During his sermons, he was ‘calling the Queen King Pharaoh, the rebels the afflicted Israelites, and to himself arrogates the name of Moses’.
But, of course, in relation to Fr Archer the bipolar theory is pure speculation. As a military chaplain, Fr Archer was undeniably a brave and resourceful man who chose to work undercover in Ireland knowing full well the horrific torture he would face if captured.
However, his zeal sometimes put his own flock in danger. Officially, Jesuits were not supposed to become involved in politics. When radical priests like Fr Archer worked to overturn the regime, it stoked up Protestant paranoia and resulted in an increase in persecution. Ordinary worshippers asked Archer to stay away from their areas – even his suspected presence gave them a hard time. Less radical Jesuit priests complained: ‘[He has] made us all be called seditious men.’
The manhunt for Archer was intensive, but somehow the English could never manage to run this ‘detestable enemy’ to ground.
Until now. Now they had him pinned down within the besieged town of Kinsale.
It was only a matter of time before James Archer fell into their hands. And George Carew, for one, just could not wait.