Chapter 3

The Lady of Desmond

How hight that Amazon (says Artegall)?

And where, and how far hence does she abide?

Her name (quoth he) they Radigund doe call,

A princess of great power and greater pride.

SPENSER, THE FAERIE QUEENE, III

It is perhaps a quirk of fate that, despite the ongoing feud, it was from the House of Butler that the Earl of Desmond should choose his new countess. On the surface it appeared that the earl sought to heal old wounds and re-establish connections with the House of Ormond which had been severed by Joan’s death. But the reverse was in fact more likely, as both the manner and choice of Garrett’s future bride could serve only to further antagonise his rival. For Joan Butler was no sooner laid to rest than her husband began a frantic courtship of Black Tom’s kinswoman, Eleanor Butler, the daughter of his out-of-favour liegeman, the Baron of Dunboyne.

At nineteen years of age, Eleanor was within marriageable age and had received her share of proposals. Either the suitors had proved unsuitable or the marriage settlements unsatisfactory, for in 1565, despite her good looks and connections, Eleanor was still available. Her father’s dispute with his brother still raged, with Black Tom Earl of Ormond ranged firmly on the side of her uncle. Relations between the Baron of Dunboyne and his powerful overlord remained strained. Consequently the Earl of Desmond’s choice of Eleanor as his future bride seemed deliberately motivated to exploit the differences between Black Tom and the baron. From the evidence of their subsequent relationship, however, it is more likely that the impulsive earl fell head over heels in love with the baron’s daughter.

They had had many opportunities to meet through the connections that already existed between their families. Eleanor’s half-brother, Donal-na-Píopaí MacCarthy Reagh, the nephew of the chieftain of Carbery, was married to the daughter of the earl’s half-brother. Garrett’s sister was married to Edmund Butler, Black Tom’s brother. Their most recent meeting might well have been at Askeaton, for the funeral of Garrett’s late countess. There Eleanor had perhaps fallen for the aristocratic earl, his pale, sensitive face starkly contrasted by the black velvet of his mourning apparel. Like everybody else throughout Munster, she had heard the gossip about his unlikely union with the middle-aged Dowager Countess of Ormond. While contemporary accounts, generally written by his adversaries, accuse Garrett of being weak, coarse, vain, hypersensitive and void of judgement, there is no doubt that he was attractive to women, particularly strong-willed women, to whom he appeared handsome, pensive and totally misunderstood; someone to be protected both from himself and his adversaries. ‘Behind him Desmond left no cool-eyed observers; he moved through his age enveloped in rumours and turmoil, and if his actions repelled some, the riddle of his personality irresistibly drew others.’1 Joan Butler had been a mature and intelligent woman. Eleanor Butler was also of a similar intelligent stamp, and both were irresistibly drawn to Garrett.

The entire Dunboyne household was thrown into disarray as the impatient earl conducted his ill-timed courtship at the same hectic pace as he was wont to gallop his horses. There is little doubt that Eleanor returned his advances. Her knight had arrived, albeit from an unexpected quarter. Eleanor’s intelligence and beauty had a powerful impact upon the complex personality of her suitor, that strange mixture of poet and warrior. His love for Eleanor and his penchant for verse perhaps inspired his only composition to have survived, aptly entitled ‘Against Blame of Women’:

Speak not ill of womankind,

’Tis no wisdom if you do.

You that fault in women find,

I would not be praised of you.

Sweetly speaking, witty, clear,

Tribe most lovely to my mind,

Blame of such I hate to hear.

Speak not ill of womankind.

Bloody treason, murderous act,

Not by women were designed,

Bells o’erthrown nor churches sacked.

Speak not ill of womankind.

Bishop, king upon his throne,

Primate skilled to loose and bind,

Spring of women every one!

Speak not ill of womankind.

For a brave young fellow long

Hearts of women oft have pined.

Who would dare their love to wrong?

Speak not ill of womankind.

Paunchy greybeards never more

Hope to please a woman’s mind.

Poor young chieftains they adore!

Speak not ill of womankind.2

Eleanor and Garrett were married at Kiltinan in late January 1565. The storm-clouds on the horizon would prevent the sun from shining for long on their union. For Eleanor was destined to become involved in a grim episode of history which would culminate in the most appalling personal tragedy and loss imaginable.

The earl and his new countess began their married life at Askeaton castle. Eleanor had a substantial dowry from her father, and Garrett endowed her with the castle and town of Bridgesford, County Tipperary, as part of her jointure. To judge by their later correspondence, despite their traumatic life together, Eleanor was devoted to Garrett, who in turn proved a respectful and caring husband. Her marriage introduced her to an environment markedly different from what she had been used to at Kiltinan and, in the more gaelicised and robust Desmond household, she strove to walk a diplomatic tight-rope with the Desmond clans and followers who despised the very name of Butler.

She accompanied Garrett on a tour of his lordship. His client lords received her with the hospitality and deference due their overlord’s countess. She viewed the great Desmond castles of Askeaton, Newcastle, Castlemaine, Shanid and the rest with a bride’s eye to future adjustments and refurbishment. For the moment she was content to accompany her lord and his retinue on a tour of inspection of his estates as he received the rents, services, homage and entertainment due his station, and enjoyed the festivities and pleasures of her brief honeymoon.

But political developments in Ireland waited for no such pleasant dalliances, not even for the great Earl of Desmond, whose impulsive spirit in any case was easily provoked especially where his feud with the rival House of Ormond was concerned. Eleanor was about to witness the intensity with which the two rivals were determined to pursue their differences. This time the row was sparked by Garrett’s claim to rents from Sir Maurice FitzGerald, Lord of Decies, in Waterford. The Decies was originally part of the Desmond estate, but Sir Maurice now claimed to hold it by feudal tenure from the Crown. Garrett, however, insisted on his right to the overlordship of Decies, which, he proclaimed, ‘is and always hathe beene a member of the house of Desmonde and in the rule and governance of the saide Earle and his ancestors’.3 Sir Maurice appealed to the Earl of Ormond for protection. Black Tom readily agreed. Garrett thereupon summoned a hosting. His dependent lords and clansmen flocked to his standard, anxious for any chance to avenge themselves on their Butler enemies.

The intensity of their hatred doubtless surprised and dismayed Eleanor as she watched the Desmond forces mass before Askeaton. The mail-coated MacSheehy galloglass, battle-axes slung over their shoulders, formed the vanguard, as they would in battle when their ferocious strength and inborn hunger for slaughter was unleashed on their opposing counterparts, the MacSweeneys. The lightly-armed kern with their short Irish bows, targets and swords milled impatiently around the gateway. Inside the courtyard the horses attended by horseboys awaited their masters, who emerged from the castle clad in protective helmets, mail-shirts and jackets of quilted leather. Each carried a sword and dagger in his belt and a long spear. Garrett himself took command of this hot-blooded and impatient force. As he swung into the saddle, his standard was raised and the ancient war-cry of the Desmond Geraldines erupted in a roar. Amid shouts of ‘Shanid abú!’ Garrett, fourteenth Earl of Desmond, led his army to war against the hereditary enemy.

Eleanor watched her husband and his soldiers disappear from view, enveloped in the long woollen cloaks which would serve both as shelter and bed for the duration of the campaign. This was her first parting from Garrett, and she experienced a sense of loneliness and an even greater sense of fear for his safety. She was also uneasily conscious of her own vulnerability and isolation in an alien lordship. But the loneliness and fear would of necessity pass. Her training and personal experience had conditioned her to accept her husband’s involvement in the unending litany of feuds, disputes, raids and rebellions, the hallmarks of the volatile society to which they all belonged. She busied herself in the administration of her husband’s estate. Her inexperience and her Butler origins might well have made her task more difficult, but Eleanor Butler FitzGerald proved to be no pushover when it came to asserting her rights. From the moment of her husband’s departure she determinedly set about establishing her position and authority in Desmond.

The years of skirmishing and verbal warfare between Garrett and Black Tom finally ended on 1 February 1565 at the ford of Affane near Lismore. This time no ‘angel of peace’ appeared to separate them. The rents of Decies were forgotten as, faced by the Ormond forces, Garrett put spurs to his horse and personally led the charge against his enemy. A brief but fierce battle ensued until Garrett, in a sharp encounter with Sir Edmund Butler, was ‘stryken doune by shott of hagbut throughe his leg and woundid dangerously in III severall places of his body, besides divers bruses’.4 Some three hundred of his men fell in battle, while others, who tried to swim to safety, were hacked to pieces by the Ormond galloglass along the banks of the Blackwater. Garrett was taken prisoner by an exultant Black Tom. As he was being carried shoulder-high on a litter from the battlefield by his enemies, they taunted him by asking: ‘Where now the great Earl of Desmond?’, to which Garrett haughtily replied: ‘Where he belongs, on the backs of the Butlers.’⁵ Brave words indeed. But for Garrett and Eleanor, Affane was to result in humiliation, imprisonment, loss of prestige, physical and mental deprivation, and the start of the slippery slope to rebellion and ruin.

The Queen was incensed at the entire episode and angrily ordered both earls to her presence. From Elizabeth’s point of view, the Affane incident was an insult to her dignity and sovereignty, two attributes jealously guarded by the Tudors. Affane was the last battle fought between two private armies in these islands and, as such, it accomplished little but provoke the Queen’s anger. ‘It was impossible for a reforming government to ignore this assumption by nominal loyalists of a right to settle a family dispute by an appeal to arms.’6 The two offending dynasts were to be put straight on the matter by an irate sovereign. Meanwhile, Black Tom exacted his personal revenge on his vanquished enemy. For six weeks he had Garrett incarcerated in his jail at Clonmel until the Lord Justice ordered both himself and his prisoner to Waterford. Fearing that he might be adjudged of equal guilt by the Crown, Black Tom was determined that the Earl of Desmond should be seen in public as the defeated and discredited villain of the piece, and himself the aggrieved but victorious party. He consequently had Garrett bound in chains and paraded through Waterford ‘with sounding of trumpett and gunne shott, in suche tryumphant sort as though he were an open enemye or traytours rebell . . . the whole inhabitants of the cyttie staring and wondering and diversly speking thereon to his shame and dishonour’.⁷ The jeers and catcalls of the citizens rang in Garrett’s ears as he was led, sick, stumbling and dishevelled, through the streets. It was a bitter humiliation for the proud Geraldine earl.

News of the defeat of Affane and of Garrett’s capture by the Butlers was brought to Askeaton by the defeated Desmond clansmen. Eleanor immediately set out for Waterford. She found Garrett in great agony from the wound in his thigh, a wound which was never to fully heal. Together they discussed the likely outcome of his capture and Eleanor soothed his feverish ramblings and bitter outbursts against the Butlers. Garrett entrusted the administration of his estates to her before being conducted to England to answer, with Black Tom, in person to the Queen for their presumptuous and precipitate action. To add to his discomfort, Garrett suffered greatly from sea-sickness on the trip. Consequently it was a haggard and ragged shadow of the vain, swaggering noble of their former meeting who was carried on a litter into the royal presence to answer for his crime. Garrett expected little mercy and even less justice from the angry Queen, well versed in his enemy’s version of events.

At Court the Ormond–Desmond feud became entangled in a wider political intrigue between the Sussex and Leicester factions. Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, had emerged as the Queen’s favourite and there was some trepidation in the Sussex camp, that her admiration ran to such lengths as to encourage speculation that she had found herself a prospective husband. Sussex defended Ormond and lauded his loyalty. He berated the Earl of Desmond, accused him of treason and of being an oppressor of his neighbours. Leicester, with the backing of Sir Henry Sidney, favoured Desmond, and they cautiously indicated that his claim over the Decies was no more than an assertion of a right enjoyed for generations by successive earls of Desmond. While Elizabeth was critical of the conduct of both adversaries, she reserved the sharper edge of her tongue for Garrett. Both earls were forced to enter into recognisances for £20,000 and to agree to abide henceforth by the Queen’s law. In an attempt to bridle Garrett’s influence in Munster, MacCarthy More, over whom he claimed supremacy, was created the Earl of Clancar. Temporarily chastened, but undoubtedly relieved, towards the end of 1565 Garrett was permitted to depart for Ireland, while Black Tom chose to remain at court.

Garrett returned to Eleanor not yet fully recovered from the wounds he received at Affane and bearing also the mental scars of his further alienation from the Crown. Eleanor listened as he bitterly complained about the humiliation he had endured in the English court and the favouritism displayed by Elizabeth. He had been cold-shouldered and snubbed, while his rival, Black Tom, equally culpable, had been favoured by the Queen and her officials. Even the Leicester–Sidney faction had merely used him as a pawn in their political schemes and court intrigues. Eleanor soothed the ruffled pride of her aggrieved husband. She urged him to maintain his relationship, however tentative, with Leicester and Sidney as a means to counter-balance Black Tom’s influence, as well as the antagonistic, ambitious petty officials in the Crown administration in Dublin. Initially Garrett seemed to take her advice and pursue a more loyal course. He refused to be drawn into a confederacy with the restless chieftain, Shane O’Neill of Tyrone, and even journeyed to Drogheda to meet Sidney, recently reappointed chief governor of Ireland, to offer him his services in the campaign against the Ulster chieftain.

Beneath the surface, however, the Geraldine–Butler feud simmered on. Factions from both sides raided and counter-raided the territory of the other. Both lordships were in a constant state of disorder. In the continued absence of Black Tom, his brothers contributed to the chaos in Ormond by their intemperate treatment of his dependent lords, tenants and town citizens, while the feud between Eleanor’s father and uncle continued unabated.

After his ineffectual foray into Ulster against Shane O’Neill, Sidney turned south to attempt to cool the seething cauldron of lawlessness and malpractice which, by now, seemed on the point of boiling over and plunging all Munster into ruin. He first took in hand the feud between the Baron of Dunboyne and his brother and promptly had them, together with their quarrelsome wives and Eleanor’s eldest brother James, committed to Dublin Castle. He next moved against Black Tom’s brothers and sent them for trial at Clonmel. Sidney then turned his attention to the vast, sprawling territory of the Earl of Desmond. Reports and rumours of the unbridled lawlessness of Garrett’s estates, the excesses of his rule, and the intolerable exactions he demanded from those over whom he claimed suzerainty, had reached Sidney. But neither he nor the Queen comprehended the determination and intensity with which the earl guarded the hereditary powers and privileges of his position, nor the fervour with which his adherents accepted his overlordship, which bound him to them as much as it did they to him.

For just as the Tudors claimed divine right to receive loyalty and exert total authority, so the Earl of Desmond claimed, by ancient Gaelic and feudal law, the loyalty and dues of his tributary lords. Garrett’s estate exceeded that of any other lord either in Ireland or England. His income, both in money and in kind, was immense, yet he paid not a penny to the Crown, either in tax or cess. He used the revenue to subsidise his private army to enforce his will. He brooked no interference in the administration of his estates and meted out a harsh and summary justice based on the Gaelic principle that the strong must naturally overcome the weak. He was proud, even vainglorious, but in this he was a typical product of a society that expected such traits in a leader. He was an autocratic dictator, reared to expect homage, power and wealth. The Crown administrators and officials sent to dislodge him from his lofty perch he considered mere lackeys and underlings to be contemptuously dismissed. He was an absolute ruler by right, and this he intended to remain.

Eleanor presided over her husband’s household and received the constant flow of chieftains, emissaries and spies who brought news of happenings in Ulster, Ormond, Dublin, London and the continent. Friars and priests came ashore at Youghal and Kinsale and beat a path to Askeaton to give tidings of the great religious crusade being contemplated on the continent against the ‘heretic queen’. The wider political developments, with their religious undertones, did not concern the Earl of Desmond. The real news related to his lordship and its immediate enemies. Smarting at his treatment by Elizabeth and needled into action by his ambitious brother John and his military captains, like a Celtic warrior the Earl led his raiding parties at will. What Eleanor thought of his reckless behaviour is open to conjecture. The wild excesses of her husband and his followers, she realised, however, were bound to invite the attention of the Crown. Eleanor attempted to restrain her husband’s more outrageous undertakings, more apt than he to see through the ill-advised plots of his brother. But for Garrett there was little choice but to play the Gaelic chieftain, keep his competitors for power within his own family at bay and still the wagging tongues that, on any sign of weakness on his part, might reopen the controversy surrounding his right to the earldom in the first place.

The number of his followers was legion and legendary. All the footloose and landless swordsmen of Munster flocked to his table and followed in his wake. The contrast between the earldoms of Ormond and Desmond was, in some aspects, remarkable. Black Tom assiduously flaunted his loyalty to Elizabeth while secretly retaining within his lordship many of the practices for which the Queen berated the Earl of Desmond. He had, however, made noticeable efforts to administer his estates by the English system, yet without foregoing any of the traditional dues and privileges he received under the Gaelic system. By his show of allegiance and a more circumspect and pragmatic administration of his lordship, Black Tom, in contrast to Garrett, presented to Elizabeth the commendable image of a loyal and anglicised Irish lord. Garrett, by his very nature and inability to adapt and play the politician, appeared the antithesis.

Incensed at the situation in Desmond, Elizabeth ordered Sidney to bestir himself and find out

why such rebells and offenders as be under the rule of the Earle of Desmond and his brother John . . . have not ben apprehendid by them or why the said Earle or his brother . . . have not ben charged and made answerable thereto being to be committed to prisons as they ought to be.8

The Queen could not forget that Sidney had favoured the Earl of Desmond at court, and she was suspicious that he might deal leniently with him at the expense of her protégé Black Tom. ‘Of which two persons,’ she reminded Sidney, ‘without any private respect of either of them, it is . . . most easiest to judge which of them aught to recyve favor and countenance.’⁹

With the royal accusation of favouritism ringing in his ear, Sidney hurried to Youghal to confront the object of the Queen’s anger. But Sidney well realised that any reform of the feudal lordships of Ireland must bring him into conflict, not only with the Earl of Desmond, but with the Earl of Ormond as well. Sidney planned to establish a militarily backed presidency in Munster with the aim to ‘undermine the power of the feudal lords by depriving them of their palatinate jurisdiction, by prohibiting the maintenance of private armies and by truncating their power’.¹⁰ The loyal Earl of Ormond would be affected as much as the disloyal Earl of Desmond. But Black Tom was at the seat of power in London and had access to the Queen who, in any event, had been less than enthusiastic for Sidney’s proposal which, she deemed, would necessitate further Crown expense.

When Sidney suggested Sir Warham St Leger for the post of council president, the Queen, prompted by Black Tom, gave full vent to her disapproval. ‘Wee did mislyke in deede to see you so addicted to the favour of the earle of Desmond’, she fumed, ‘as to the place St Leger the president of that Counsell, whose inward preferrid friendship towards the Earle of Desmond was notorious.’ ‘And’, she added, perhaps echoing Black Tom’s sentiments, ‘the old inimitye that St Leger’s father bore to the Earle of Ormond’s father, whome he brought to his end heere in England by prosequuting of him so as we assure you nether needid We the information of the Earle of Ormond to disallow St Leger to be president.’¹¹ While astounded at such overt prejudice, Sidney had little alternative but to let the presidency issue rest for the moment. Ormond’s objection to St Leger merely masked his opposition to an English presidency in Munster per se and its likely effects on his own power.

Eleanor and Garrett were at Youghal, where Eleanor was delivered of their first child, Margaret. Garrett’s spies brought news of Sidney’s progress through his territory. As Sidney drew closer to Youghal Garrett’s sense of grievance at the intrusion increased. He called for a ‘rising out’ of his tributary client lords and armed followers to show Sidney just who was master in Munster. As he rode through the Munster countryside, Sidney reported the waste and untended state of Garrett’s domain to the Queen:

Like as I never was in a more pleasant country in all my life, so never saw I a more waste and desolate land . . . and there heard I such lamentable cries and doleful complaints made by that small remain of poor people which yet are left, who (hardly escaping the fury of the sword and fire of their outrageous neighbours, or the famine which the same, or their extortious lords, hath driven them unto, either by taking their goods from them or by sending the same, by their extort, taking of coyne and livery) make demonstration of the miserable estate of that country. Besides this, such horrible and lamentable spectacles there are to behold as the burning of villages, the ruin of churches, the wasting of such as have been good towns and castles, yea, the view of the bones and skulls of your dead subjects, who, partly by murder, partly by famine, have died in the fields, as in troth hardly any Christian with dry eyes could behold.12

Early in 1567 Sidney confronted Garrett at Youghal, where the earl made little attempt to hide his displeasure at the Lord Deputy’s presence. Sidney ordered an investigation into Garrett’s long-standing dispute with Black Tom over possession of Kilsheelin castle. The investigation duly found in favour of the Earl of Ormond. The decision provoked Garrett into a passionate tirade, in Sidney’s presence, against the Crown. He swore that no English sovereign should ever have jurisdiction within his territory and ‘that he would never disperse with the old state of his family, but would have five gallowglasses where he had formerly had one’.¹³ Sidney brushed aside the earl’s intemperate outburst and, with some sympathy, attempted to excuse it to the Queen on the grounds of her preference for the Earl of Ormond which, as he had warned her, made Garrett ‘grow desperate for that he cannot have his causes ended between the Earl of Ormond and him, in which matters I suppose each doth the other wrong’.14 But mindful of his duty as a loyal servant of the Crown, Sidney also pointed out that if Garrett did rebel and was defeated, his lands could be confiscated and ‘thereby the Queen to be made mistress of a great part of the realm’.¹⁵ For the first time the idea of confiscation of the Desmond estates was, albeit hypothetically, propounded, and the attention of land-hungry speculators in England became fixed on the vast acres ruled by such an irresponsible and disloyal subject.

As Garrett sought to put his threat into action, Sidney attempted to clip his wings by inviting the earl’s dependent lords to make submission to him personally, independently of their overlord. Garrett acted to counter Sidney’s move, and soon messengers were bringing him word that the traditional Desmond allies had answered his call to arms and a thousand armed men were mustered to await his orders. Sidney’s force in Munster numbered only two hundred. With the odds in his favour, Garrett attempted to leave Youghal to assume control of his army. Sidney forestalled him and in March 1567 committed the irate earl under guard in Youghal.

Eleanor was recuperating after the birth of her child. Her husband’s rash behaviour made her greatly fear the consequences. She had tried to curb his intemperate conduct towards Sidney, the only potential English ally he had. But he would not be restrained and became even more incensed as he watched his tributary lords troop in, one by one, and submit to the Lord Deputy. Sidney listened as they recited long lists of complaints against Garrett, whose overbearing treatment ‘so injured and exacted upon by him as in effect they are or were become his thrals or slaves’.¹⁶ Sidney ordered Garrett to accompany him to Limerick, while Eleanor remained at Youghal. Moving towards Limerick with his small force, with Garrett in tow, Sidney received reports that the earl’s army intended to attack. He pre-empted the danger by placing the earl under arrest, and with this insurance was able to pass without hindrance through the Desmond heartland to Limerick. From there the proud Earl of Desmond was brought captive through Limerick, Galway, Athlone and back to Dublin, where he was confined to prison in Dublin Castle, branded by Sidney as ‘a man void of judgement to govern and will to be ruled’.¹⁷

News of her husband’s imprisonment was relayed to Eleanor, who greatly feared the effects of this new humiliation on his mental and physical well-being. His brother, Sir John, to whom Sidney had conveyed the administration of the Desmond estates in the earl’s absence, went to Dublin to seek terms for his brother’s release. But shortly after his arrival he found himself sharing the same cell as Garrett. Shades of the fate meted out by Henry VIII to the House of Kildare were revived. Was Henry’s daughter about to order a similar brutal chastisement on the House of Desmond? All Ireland awaited the fate of the earl and wondered in awe at the seizure of such a powerful lord. Even Elizabeth appeared somewhat aghast at the temerity of her Lord Deputy in seizing Desmond on his own ground with such a small army. In Munster there was little reaction to the imprisonment of the earl except from his kinsman the Knight of Glin who took the field with his son Thomas. They were eventually captured and condemned to death. By a legal loophole the Knight escaped his fate, but his son was hanged, drawn and quartered in Limerick. ‘There is a tradition that his mother was present at his execution, seized his head when he was beheaded and drank his blood and collected for burial at Lislaughtin abbey the parts of his dismembered body in a linen sheet.’18

Meanwhile Garrett languished with his brother in Dublin Castle, complaining bitterly to Sidney about the treachery of his capture. Sidney sought the Queen’s pleasure as to the fate of his troublesome prisoner. But Ormond had the Queen’s ear in England, and in September 1567 Elizabeth ordered that the earl and his brother should be transferred to the Tower of London. Eleanor’s worst fears were realised. She hurried to Dublin and received permission to visit her husband. There was no indication of what lay in store in London. But they both realised that his absence from Desmond was bound to be exploited by his enemies from both within and without. The old Gaelic dictum ‘a lordship without a lord is a dead lordship’¹⁹ was very much a reality in gaelicised Desmond. Few could be trusted. Officials and officers in the Crown’s pay now cast envious eyes on the Desmond estates, reckoning up their potential as a means of revenue both for themselves and their royal mistress. Garrett’s step-brother, Thomas Roe FitzGerald, the disinherited contender for the earldom, waited in the wings to reassert his claim by whatever means offered him the best opportunity of reinstatement. Garrett’s cousin, James FitzMaurice FitzGerald, was the most able and likely contender to take his place in his absence. But he too would have to be watched lest his unexpected promotion made him unduly ambitious.

Eleanor alone could be trusted, and once again Garrett entrusted her with the administration of his estates. He urged her to write regularly with details of her stewardship and to be vigilant in collecting his rents and dues. For in the grand Geraldine manner Garrett insisted on being escorted to his London prison by a princely retinue of followers. He intended to hold court in the traditional style, even though Elizabeth intended his palace to be a dungeon. But there were no multitudes of willing peasants in London to provide the earl with the means for this vain display. The rents and dues from his estates must pay for his self-indulgent and expensive outlay. Eleanor returned to Munster to begin the unenviable and daunting task of holding the fort in her husband’s absence.

Garrett and Sir John, accompanied by a hundred followers, were sent to London in December. Sir John fell ill during the voyage, and there was ‘much ado to get him to Lichfield’, where their escort reported they were ‘thus constrained to tarry there to see what he will do tomorrow, when if there be any health in him they will travel towardes London’.20 They eventually reached the capital where the brothers were lodged under confinement in the Tower. The terms of their custody permitted them access to their followers who daily flocked to the prison. From his cell Garrett, while the money lasted, kept ‘open house’ and a hospitable table for his dependants, generally holding court as if he were at home in the great hall of Askeaton.

While Garrett kept up the brave show in England, Eleanor was left with the responsibility of both funding her husband’s extravagances and safeguarding his interests in Munster. As she had anticipated, the vacant earldom unleashed the unquiet ambitions of Garrett’s relatives. In order to foment unrest within Desmond, rumours of the earl’s death were circulated, and there was little Eleanor could immediately do to counteract them; the borders of her husband’s territory were far-flung and communications primitive. The rumours provided the opportunity for the main contenders to throw their hats into the ring and revive their claims to the earldom. Garrett’s step-brother, Thomas Roe, ‘taking advantage of his brother’s misfortunes . . . took upon him to command in chiefe the Earledome of Desmond’.²¹ It was rumoured that Thomas Roe was supported in his bid for power by the Earl of Ormond. Thomas Roe was stopped in his tracks, however, as James FitzMaurice FitzGerald, proclaiming that his own interest in the vacancy was merely to preserve his cousin’s rights, ‘leapes into the lists, challenging any man that durst presume to question the Earle’s right’.22

Eleanor viewed the motives of both contenders with suspicion. Their bid to usurp her husband’s position seemed likely to split the lordship apart as both prepared to implement their claims by force. She acted swiftly to pre-empt their plans and summoned a hosting of Garrett’s retainers and galloglass. Like an avenging eagle she swooped on the two claimants and took them into custody until she could establish Garrett’s will in the matter. After some time she received his instructions from the Tower to appoint James FitzMaurice FitzGerald as ‘captain’ in Desmond during his absence. He further urged his dependent lords ‘to aid the countess and James FitzMaurice in collecting rents and in keeping the peace’.²³

Eleanor’s suspicions about FitzMaurice’s motives were unappeased. Garrett had been absent for almost six months, and his volatile sub-lords and chieftains needed an overlord to both protect and direct them. As the situation stood, any contender with even the vaguest claim to the lordship, but with sufficient strength to enforce it, could usurp Garrett’s position. Her husband was far removed from the real situation and, she felt, placed too much trust in his cousin. Eleanor could not be sure that FitzMaurice’s motives were as unselfish as he publicly proclaimed. Until her suspicions could be allayed Eleanor decided to keep FitzMaurice and Thomas Roe under lock and key.

She had also to contend with the Crown Commissioners in Munster, who also sought to take advantage of her husband’s absence to extend their authority into his lordship. In addition, she was under pressure from the Commissioners to deliver her two prisoners into their custody. But Eleanor well realised that such action on her part would achieve little but to incur the wrath of their respective followers and lead to even greater disorder within the lordship under her care. She knew she had to play for time.

The Commissioners summoned her to Waterford, but she fobbed them off, pleading the unsettled and poor state of her husband’s country and her own deprivation. ‘I can scant abyde in one house past two dayes and two nights,’ she told them, ‘though it be wynter, but trudging and travaylinge by day and ptly. by night from place to place meaninge to appease the fury of their lewd attempts the best I can.’²⁴ She had set out in January 1568, in the depths of a severe winter, to quell the rumours of her husband’s death, to appease the anxiety of his dependent lords, and to determine their views on the proposed appointment of James FitzMaurice FitzGerald as the earl’s temporary replacement. On her journey she tried to collect the rents due to her husband, but, as she informed the Commissioners (no doubt in order to dispel any hopes they might have of securing a share for the Crown) the state of the country was so poor that she ‘could not find in my harte to take up myne owne dutys of the inhabitants there’.25 But the Commissioners insisted on a meeting to discuss the situation in Desmond and urged her by return messenger ‘to lett us understand yor determinate answear whether yo will come to us or we to yo in any convenient place’.²⁶ They further ordered her to deliver her two prisoners to the Crown and to ensure that all the tributary lords of Desmond submit to the Commissioners. But following the abduction and imprisonment of the earl, Desmond’s sub-lords refused to meet the Commissioners, unless under Eleanor’s protection, whom they acknowledged as the earl’s true representative.

Despite her suspicions of the ulterior motives of FitzMaurice and Thomas Roe, Eleanor was loath to hand her prisoners over to the Crown. Desmond needed a strong lord at the helm, especially at this decisive time. She subsequently extracted pledges and securities for Thomas Roe’s release from the Munster lords, Roche and Power, and endorsed Garrett’s choice of James FitzMaurice to act in a caretaker capacity until his return. She then released them, pretending to the irate Commissioners that it had been perpetrated ‘by the rude people the erle’s captens of galloglasses, constables and other of the countrey’.²⁷ With her husband’s lordship for the moment under control and in relative peace, Eleanor set out, escorted by Hugh Lacy the Bishop of Limerick, to keep her long-postponed appointment with the Crown Commissioners at Cork. To keep them at bay she promised not to impede the extension of English law into Desmond, though qualifying her promise by stressing that it applied only ‘as far as my good will may thereunto extend’.²⁸

During 1568 Eleanor maintained a steady flow of correspondence with her imprisoned husband. From the Tower Garrett continued to urge her to be vigilant in his interests in Munster and to endeavour to collect his rents, of which he was in dire need. The Queen had reduced her allowance for his upkeep, considering it altogether contrary to her parsimonious nature that such an unfaithful subject, together with his overbearing retinue, should be maintained at her expense. Garrett’s health began to deteriorate in the damp, unhealthy confines of the prison. He became withdrawn and silent as he brooded over the humiliation and injustice of his detention. His thoughts were constantly on Munster and in one letter uncharacteristically rebuked Eleanor for her apparent tardiness in sending him news from home. Otherwise the tenor of his letters to her was warm and loving; they were generally addressed to ‘the Right honourable and my veray lovinge wife dame Elinor Countesse of Desmond in Ireland’,29 according her all the respect and affection pertaining to her position as his countess and wife. In his letters he frequently sent his commendations to Eleanor’s mother, the Baroness of Dunboyne who, on the death of her husband in 1567 and after their release from Dublin Castle, had continued to be harassed at Kiltinan by Peter Butler and his Ormond supporters. The heir of Dunboyne, Eleanor’s brother James, a minor, had been sent to England to further his education at Cambridge. In a letter to his step-brother, whom he addressed as ‘Mr Thomas of Desmond’, Garrett instructed him in his behaviour towards Eleanor:

This shalbe to desire you not to fayle as my trust is no less in you, to be vearie kindlie towardes my Ladie my wif, and that she maie not slacke nor perceive the contrarie but your good will and yt you and everie of yours, as you tender my good will and advoid my displeasure.³⁰

His seneschal, John FitzEdmund of Imokilly, he instructed to aid and protect Eleanor.

Conditions in the Tower continued to worsen. Elizabeth’s stop to the carnival atmosphere found Garrett now lodged ‘without furniture and left to suffer from the cold’.³¹ His vexation was exacerbated when he was compelled to appear before endless inquisitions to answer for his conduct within his own lordship. There were plenty of paid spies and informers ready to talk. He was accused of providing meat and drink to proclaimed traitors in Munster. Disdainfully he explained the Gaelic custom of liberal hospitality, but denied that he had aided any treasonable offenders. Reasserting the inherited powers conferred on him by right of the palatine status of his lordship, he loudly proclaimed to his inquisitors that he had sole authority to rule and to administer justice without regard to the Queen’s sheriffs, judges or administrators. His judges could scarcely comprehend such seemingly outlandish claims which harkened back to the bygone age of the independent barons of feudal England, long since moulded into obedient subjects by successive Tudor monarchs. That such a political dinosaur as the Earl of Desmond could still exist, even in Ireland, was beyond the comprehension of their Elizabethan minds.

Evidence of raids on his neighbours, of the disorder in his lordship and of intrigue with O’Neill against the Crown was produced against him. The whisper of treason began to circulate. Visions of the executioner’s block, at Tyburn, and the jeering mob flashed before his mind. The pale ghosts of his Kildare kinsmen came to haunt him. Not willing to place his head entirely in the lion’s mouth, in July 1568 he made a submission to the Privy Council at Howard House:

I, Garrett, Earl of Desmond, knowing myself to have offended the Queen’s laws and to stand in great peril of life and forfeiture of all my lands and goods; and besides knowing myself to be in danger of forfeiting £20,000 wherein I stand bound to Her Majesty by recognisance: therefore, to obtain her favour, I submit myself to her mercy and clemency, and do offer to Her Majesty all my possessions, thereof to take into her hands so much as she thinks convenient and to dispose of the same for benefit of the realm of Ireland, at her pleasure and I grant and promise that within days after her pleasure shall be signified to me, what castles, lands or liberties she shall think good to take, I will make assurance thereof to Her Majesty, her heirs and successors.32

With the imperious Geraldine where she wanted him, on his knees, and ‘so far as the law went, Elizabeth now had Munster at her mercy, but she kept fast hold on her prisoners until time should declare how far the law coincided with the facts’.³³ Garrett had saved his neck from the block, but at a terrible cost to both his pride and his pocket. His fate still hung on a thread, for, despite his submission, he was still in prison, destitute, ill and friendless. His sole hope depended on his wife’s ability to counter the intrigue, greed and double-dealing directed against him from every quarter. The outlook in the summer of 1568 looked as grim as the cold, grey stones of his prison cell.

Suddenly a new threat to the stability of Munster emerged and, for a time, seemed likely to spawn the unlikeliest of alliances between the rival houses of Desmond and Ormond. While his plan to establish a presidency in Munster had been forestalled by the machinations of the Earl of Ormond, Sidney now raised the idea of colonisation as a means to extend the Crown’s authority in the province. His proposal was examined by the English government. Sidney envisaged the establishment of English settlements ‘as oases of civility in a desert of barbarians’.34 Lands confiscated by the rebellion of their Irish owners, or land held by tenure that could be proved faulty or uncertain, would provide the means to subvent the proposed settlements. The Queen looked favourably on the proposal as a less expensive method of conquest and in keeping with the mood of discovery and colonisation in vogue among English financial entrepreneurs and intrepid, land-hungry adventurers. The settling of the disorderly areas of Ireland with English farmers, yeomen, artisans and soldiers, and the establishment of English shire practices therein, seemed practical and augured well for a more stable and less expensive administration.

Elizabeth’s domestic and foreign problems had intensified. Scotland, in complicity with the ever-scheming Mary Stuart and her French Catholic allies, threatened revolt. ‘The life-and-death wrestle between the Reformation and the unreformed Church had already settled into a permanent struggle between England and Spain.’³⁵ While the struggle was, as yet, fought ‘unofficially’ by Elizabeth’s privateers who plundered Spanish treasure ships as they returned from the Americas, Munster, with its unstable political situation, unreformed religion and strategically situated harbours like Youghal, Kinsale and Dingle, could yet provide Spain with the backdoor access to England.

The colonisation of Munster was greeted with enthusiasm in England. First into the fray, with a dubious claim originating from the Norman conquest, came Sir Peter Carew of Devon, an enterprising Elizabethan soldier and adventurer. Carew claimed lands in Cork, Kerry, Waterford, Meath, but also the barony of Idrone, the property of the Earl of Ormond’s brother, Sir Edmund Butler. The ire of the loyal Butlers was unleashed when Sidney had the claim confirmed by the Irish Privy Council. On the strength of Carew’s initial success, scores of enthusiastic English adventurers, including Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Warham St Leger, set their sights on the rich land of Munster in a mission of plunder on a grand scale. To the majority of these pirate-adventurers, Ireland was as remote and unknown as the far-off Americas, peopled by a race as alien as the Red Indians, governed by savage chiefs and mysterious brehons, an ideal terrain for the ambitions and energies of restless young men in search of wealth and adventure.

To add to the growing anxiety of both Gaelic and gaelicised landowners Sidney, on his return to Ireland, had failed to bring back the Earl of Desmond. Fear spread among the Irish chieftains and lords including the normally loyal House of Ormond. Ormond’s brother declared ‘that no man of Irish descent could be safe’36 from the seizure of either his land or his person. Sidney convened a parliament in 1569 which was primarily ‘used to promote the policy of conquest’³⁷ and which caused further unrest. In Ulster Shane O’Neill, recently murdered, was deemed ‘attainted, the name of O’Neill extinguished and the Queen entitled to Tyrone’;³⁸ thereby sounding a clear warning to every lord and chieftain ‘that there could be but one sovereignty in Ireland’³⁹ and that possession of their lordships was no longer guarantee of legality of tenure by English law.

The first wave of adventurers landed in Munster and laid claim to lands and castles in the vicinity of Cork, possessions of the Earl of Desmond and MacCarthy More. James FitzMaurice FitzGerald seized his chance to exploit these developments and convened a conference of Geraldine leaders, informing them that ‘their chief and his brother were condemned to death or at least to perpetual imprisonment’.⁴⁰ Garrett’s continued confinement, the uncertainty over land titles, the threatened colonisation, combined with the unlikelihood of Elizabeth being reconciled with the papacy, gave James FitzMaurice the opportunity he sought—to broaden the basis of the local struggle over land and lordship into the wider international religious and political crusade against Elizabeth. To seek international recognition and material assistance for his new-found cause, FitzMaurice sent Maurice FitzGibbon, papal appointee to the See of Cashel, to King Philip of Spain. FitzMaurice next sought to make common cause with the brothers of the Earl of Ormond, still smarting under Sidney’s chastisement and Carew’s threat to their lands. The brothers agreed to become involved, though, they maintained, not against the Crown but ‘against those that banish Ireland and mean conquest’.⁴¹ The prospect of an alliance between the usually loyal House of Ormond and the rebel House of Desmond, aided by foreign enemy intervention, sent shivers of apprehension down Elizabeth’s spine. She ordered Black Tom back to Ireland to resume his responsibilities in Ormond, but gave no such commission to the still captive Earl of Desmond.

Eleanor observed the unfolding events and wondered at the unnatural alliance being forged between FitzMaurice and the Ormond Butlers. They were no friends of her own family, and even less of the Desmonds. They had lately terrorised her mother and plundered her father’s estates. She was suspicious of FitzMaurice’s real intention, as he promoted his religious crusade. The question of religion mattered little in Munster, and FitzMaurice’s use of it she saw as merely a means to subvert her husband’s authority and position. She also feared the leadership abilities of FitzMaurice. In the continued absence of their overlord, and under the constant threat of colonisation and encroachment by the Crown, the loyalty of her husband’s followers might waver. Caught in a dilemma between the Queen’s refusal to release her husband and the unfolding ambitions and designs of FitzMaurice, she could do little but await developments and keep alive the fast-receding memory of her husband among his people.