Chapter 4

Exile

We have been here much molested with the erle of

Desmond’s wief . . . pretending that she hath not

brought with her wherewith to mayntayne her

owne charge nor the charge of her husbande . . .

QUEEN ELIZABETH TO SIR HENRY SIDNEY, 17 APRIL 1570

In July 1569 James FitzMaurice FitzGerald raised his crusading banner over Munster and with fire and sword swept through the province with the avenging fury of a convert hell-bent on doing the Lord’s work. In Ormond his confederates, the Butler brothers, plundered and raided the countryside on the less lofty but nonetheless bloody mission of defence of their land. Confronted by the 4,500 men of this diversely motivated force, the newly-settled English planters and their families fled for their lives and cowered for safety behind the high protective walls of Cork, Kinsale and Youghal. Leaving a trail of corpses, looted and burnt-out houses and hovels, bare fields and thousands of cattle stampeded into the wilderness, FitzMaurice arrived before the gates of Cork on 15 July 1569 and ordered the mayor to ‘destroy out of the town all the Huguenots with the first wind’.1

Sidney proclaimed the Butler brothers and FitzMaurice traitors, and Carew commenced a campaign of retaliatory but indiscriminate slaughter in Ormond. News of the atrocities spread. In Connaught the earls of Clanrickard and Thomond bestirred themselves into action and united with their Geraldine and Butler counterparts to defend their land. In Leinster the Earl of Kildare wavered in the direction of his Geraldine kinsmen. Black Tom prepared to return to Ormond and made no secret that ‘anti-Geraldine though he was, if the lands of the ancient owners were to be seized by strangers, then he would make common cause with his countrymen’.2

The situation was getting rapidly out of hand. The Queen made Sidney her scapegoat. She berated him for tarring Black Tom’s brothers with the same brush as FitzMaurice, blithely ignoring their participation with him in besieging Kilkenny. Upon the arrival of their brother at Rosslare in August, however, they deserted FitzMaurice and, spurning Sidney, submitted instead to Black Tom. Shortly afterwards Carew’s colonisation schemes in Ormond were abandoned. Sidney was ordered by the Queen to leave the Butlers to their own devices and to concentrate his efforts against FitzMaurice.

At Sidney’s approach FitzMaurice fell back from Cork and sought shelter deep inside the Kerry mountains. For a second time in a matter of months Munster was subjected to a baptism of slaughter and rapine as Sidney retaliated with the same ferocity as FitzMaurice had shown to the planters. The earls of Clanrickard and Thomond promptly submitted, together with many of the confederates. Deserted by his erstwhile allies, FitzMaurice established his camp within the inaccessible fastness of the Glen of Aherlow. His first attempt to promote a religious confederacy, linked to international developments, had failed. But he had sufficient political awareness to realise that the question of religion had not, as yet, penetrated as a political issue in Ireland, which was ‘merely a pawn in the great game of European diplomacy’.³ He could afford to lie low for a while, consolidate his position and formulate his plans to raise his banner another day.

But FitzMaurice’s hasty action and Sidney’s reprisal focused the attention of the Crown once more on the lordship of the Earl of Desmond. Eleanor soundly cursed the ill-advised revolt which had presented the Crown with the opportunity to establish garrisons in the abandoned castles of Garrett’s tributary chieftains who had followed FitzMaurice. The countryside bore the scars of the revolt and, as Eleanor testified, ‘was utterly distroid and wasted by the unhappie rebellion of James Fitzmorrish’.⁴ She found it impossible to collect the rents and dues owed to her husband, and whatever meagre sums were forthcoming were summarily expropriated by the Crown to redeem the expenses incurred in suppressing the revolt. Oblivious to the state of affairs within his lordship, Garrett begged her to come personally to him with as much money as she could obtain for the relief of himself and Sir John, both of whom, he told her, ‘greatly lack apparel and other necessities and especially money’.5 Their situation in prison had deteriorated to the level of common felons. But there was little that Eleanor could do to relieve their condition. She wrote to Garrett of the desperate conditions prevailing in Desmond which had prevented her from collecting ‘no pte of yor rents or other duties that maye enable me to repaire toward you’.⁶ She held FitzMaurice responsible for the destruction and voiced her suspicions about his true motives, which she saw as being ‘to bring you yf he could in further displeasor but also usurpe all yor enheritance to himself’.⁷ The ostensible religious overtones of FitzMaurice’s revolt cut little ice with Eleanor. The misery and depression she suffered at this time is evident in a letter to Garrett in which she confided: ‘I pray God send us joyfull meeting or me shorte departure out of this world.—Yor loving miserable wief Ellynor Desmond.’⁸

She sought permission from Sidney to go to her husband and moved to Kinsale in anticipation of his reply. Whether out of a sense of genuine sympathy for her plight, or with the intention of using her as a means to secure the release of the earl (a better alternative from the Lord Deputy’s point of view than have to contend with the more dangerous aspirations of the earl’s deputy, FitzMaurice), Sidney secured Eleanor a pass into England. Accompanied by her husband’s lawyer and friend, Morris Sheehan, who throughout the traumatic years that were to follow was seldom from her side, and a small company of servants, Eleanor arrived in Bristol in the early weeks of 1570. From there she journeyed down the long, bleak road to London.

It was Eleanor’s first visit to the great metropolis but, as she made her way through the maze of narrow, bustling streets, flanked by the wooden-fronted houses, taverns and shops, there was little time to wonder or admire. Hers was a mission fraught with danger and uncertainty. Her means were meagre, and the awesome task that confronted her, to effect her husband’s release, would take every ounce of her energy, ability and resources. She had to move the mind of a resolute, autocratic queen whose known antipathy towards her husband seemed as unyielding as the hard, grey stone of his tower prison. She was conducted through the grim, dark corridors of the infamous Tower, and as the heavy iron-bound door closed with a shuddering bang behind her, she was reunited with a husband whom she scarcely recognised.

They had been apart for eighteen months. The once handsome, proud, richly-attired noble was no more. In his place stood a trembling, gaunt and shabby figure who with red-rimmed eyes cried out his welcome and his fear. The reality of their awful dilemma was perhaps temporarily banished as for a moment a beam of happiness shone on their reunion and briefly lighted their gloomy surroundings. Through the prison bars they looked down on the slow-moving, muddied waters of the Thames, flanked by a jumble of dingy, riverside buildings, and thought perhaps of Askeaton and the rushing Deel and the green pasturelands of Limerick. Eleanor related the tidings from Munster and the changes that had occurred in Desmond during Garrett’s absence. It was of the utmost urgency that he should find a way out of the Tower and back to Ireland to salvage what remained of his lordship and his authority. But with Munster subdued, there seemed even less likelihood that the Queen would see any reason to restore him. If, however, Munster was to relapse into disorder, then the heavy cost of restoring peace and the Queen’s known aversion to paying the piper, allied to Sidney’s advice, that the vacant Desmond lordship was the source of internal discord and a temptation to England’s enemies, might well have the effect of making Garrett’s restoration seem the lesser of two evils. Consequently FitzMaurice had to be encouraged in his religious rebellion and foreign intrigues. But before Garrett’s return to Ireland could be contemplated, Eleanor first set about securing his release from the Tower.

From both financial necessity and a desire to be with her husband, Eleanor took up residence in the Tower. The ancient stronghold, situated in the south-east corner of the old city of London, on the north bank of the Thames, built by William the Conqueror, was initially constructed as a secure enclosure within the surviving Roman city walls. Within this enclosure the imposing White Tower was erected. Over succeeding centuries the site developed with the addition of a series of smaller towers, connected by high curtain walls and surrounded by a moat. Eventually by the sixteenth century the Tower complex was to encompass some twenty-three individual towers, a chapel, and various lodgings, gardens and walks. Henry VIII was the last monarch to occupy it as a residence, and it gradually came to be used as a prison to lodge important political prisoners.

One of its towers, the Beauchamp Tower, had a tragic association with the FitzGeralds. It was in the apartments of this tower, following in the tradition of former inmates, that Silken Thomas, to pass away the days leading to his execution, started to carve his name on the brick wall. The inscription, still visible today, was abruptly cut short, however, at ‘THOMAS FITG’ as the executioner of Tyburn interrupted the doomed engraver. Like his kinsman, the Earl of Desmond had also been allotted an apartment in one of the towers. The degree of comfort in the cold, cheerless rooms depended on one’s own means or the generosity and influence of friends outside. Garrett’s distinct lack of both meant that there were for him few comforts to ease the agony of his imprisonment.

From the Tower Eleanor daily sallied forth to Whitehall, Westminster and further afield to Greenwich and Richmond, wherever Elizabeth and her court happened to be in residence, to seek her husband’s release. From the fringes of the court circles and cliques she importuned, bribed and cajoled the influential and corrupt in her endeavour to obtain access to the Queen. She endured humiliation and defeat as backs were turned and doors slammed in her face. Her lack of means was reflected in her meagre and threadbare wardrobe. The powdered, coifed and bejewelled court ladies and their elegantly attired male counterparts, would have little truck with the down-at-heel countess from Ireland. The powerful Ormond faction spied on her every move as she picked her way through the spider-like web of intrigue and double-dealing on the long and perilous road to the Queen. A cash handout here, a promise of land there, it was a costly mission which soon absorbed her slim resources. In desperation Garrett wrote directly to Elizabeth’s chief secretary, Sir William Cecil, explaining that as ‘verie extreme necessitie’ had prohibited Eleanor from continuing ‘her sute for my delyverance into the cyttie of Londone’, he was appealing to Cecil ‘to have rememberance the futherance of her sute’.9 On foot of her husband’s message, Eleanor redoubled her efforts, and eventually her persistence was rewarded. In May 1570 she was informed that Elizabeth had, albeit reluctantly, agreed to grant her an audience.

The audience was held at Hampton Court. The ill-feeling that the Queen bore her husband was extended to Eleanor. She realised that her petition to the unfriendly, short-tempered Queen must be couched in humble and repentant tones. With cold, calculating eyes the older Queen looked down on the younger countess who knelt before her and listened to her plea for sustenance for herself and her husband and for his release from the Tower. Eleanor promised in return to steer her husband on a path of loyalty and obedience. Elizabeth appeared unmoved by her request, and her attitude was reflected in the atmosphere of her court, which evinced little friendship or support to the Irish countess. It was dangerous to appear sympathetic to the wife of a rebel, personally out of favour with the Queen and currently awaiting his fate in the most dreaded prison in the land. A friendly look, a quick word of consolation or encouragement to his wife could be misinterpreted. Elizabeth’s impenetrable face gave little indication of the likely outcome of their meeting, and Eleanor withdrew from the royal presence to her prison home to await the outcome.

She had not long to wait. In a letter that bristled with indignation and impatience at Eleanor’s dogged persistence and her alleged penury, Elizabeth informed Sidney that

We have been here much molested with the erle of Desmond’s wief who pretending that she hath not brought with her wherewith to mayntayne her owne charge nor the charge of her husbande and on the other parte we have been at no smale charges with him and his synce his comying over.10

As ever, the cost factor involved in the maintenance, however frugally, of the Desmonds was Elizabeth’s preoccupation. To rid herself of the burden, she acceded to Eleanor’s request and ordered their removal from the Tower to the custody of Sidney’s protégé, Sir Warham St Leger, on whom she also dumped the cost of their maintenance. Eleanor, Garrett, Sir John and fourteen servants were subsequently transferred from the Tower and lodged at Leeds castle, the country estate of St Leger in Kent.

Garrett and Eleanor were well acquainted with their jailer. St Leger held a fee farm from the Earl in Desmond at a rent of 53s 4d per annum. He had obtained additional land west of Cork city, in recompense for financial assistance to Garrett during his period of captivity. St Leger’s known antagonism to the Earl of Ormond and his friendship with the Sidney faction at court had initially drawn Garrett to him. Anxious to expand his estate in Munster, St Leger had provided his destitute landlord with money, but at a price. In any event, Eleanor had accomplished the first step towards achieving her husband’s repatriation. And after the long months of captivity in the Tower, the relative freedom of Leeds castle and the fresh summer air of the Kentish countryside must have acted as a tonic to the physical and mental well-being of Eleanor and her husband.

For a few short months of the summer of 1570 they enjoyed partial liberty in unfamiliar but pleasant surroundings. But soon St Leger’s resources began to feel the strain of their upkeep. In October 1570 he complained of the dire straits of both himself and his prisoners. He begged the Privy Council for ‘a warrant for receipt of money for their diet; otherwise’, he threatened, ‘I shall be constrayned to bring them to court, being not able, by my greate losses sustayned in Ireland, to beare the chardges thereof any longer’.11 The earl and his family, St Leger complained, had not ‘any thing of their owne to relieve them selfes withal, having your honnrs not so muche as to buy them a pair of shooes, nor have not had since their cominge in to my chardge and stand in despair to have any thing out of their owne country’.¹² No rents were being forwarded from the earl’s estates in Ireland. He and his retinue were totally dependent for their food, clothing, shelter and necessities of life on their reluctant custodian. Garrett in captivity had cost Elizabeth more than when unrestrained in Desmond. Yet Elizabeth was not prepared to risk sending him back to Ireland. St Leger’s protest of impoverishment fell on deaf ears, and the straitened conditions into which he and his aristocratic charges had fallen were allowed to continue.

In December 1570 the long-postponed decision to appoint a president in Munster was reached. The Queen nominated Sir John Perrot to the office with explicit instructions to seize ‘the castle of the Earl of Desmond in Kerry [i.e. Castlemaine] . . . for the use of the Lord President and Council and also to seize the Liberty of Kerry which Desmond claimed as a palatine’.¹³ By the establishment of a presidency and the negation of the Earl of Desmond’s hereditary palatine rights in Kerry, Elizabeth sought to undermine the power he exerted by right of Gaelic law over his tributary lords and to institute English law and administration in its stead. The choice of Perrot as President and the ‘vigorous career of law enforcement and the discouragement of Gaelic institutions’¹⁴ that he was about to pursue put him on a collision course with the House of Desmond. Sir John Perrot, the supposed illegitimate son of Henry VIII, a bluff, energetic, if somewhat imprudent, Elizabethan knight, had been educated with the Earl of Ormond at court, and initially showed little enthusiasm for his new appointment in Ireland.

News of the new regime in Munster, and of the Crown’s intention to render him powerless, filtered through to the Earl of Desmond, adding to the torment that afflicted his mind. In his captivity in England it was to be expected that the distracted earl would champ at the bit that restrained him from his patrimony and power. By now St Leger had been forced to move himself and his destitute charges from Leeds castle to his town house at Southwark, across the river from the Tower, a grim reminder to the Desmonds of their vulnerable circumstances. The house was unfashionably located ‘east of London Bridge beside a depot for municipal building materials. The house had once been a friary in the country, but grown up about it was Bankside, a rowdy neighbourhood of breweries, brothels, the Clink Prison and the Paris Garden bear pits.’15 It was a dark, damp building, far too cramped for the two large households compelled to reside there in varying degrees of poverty and despair. The fog, damp and stench of the Thames seeped through every chink and hole in its timber-faced façade, while the cries, shouts and curses of the squalid tenement area that surrounded it permeated to further disturb and harass the inhabitants.

Eleanor bravely soldiered on. She was now pregnant, and the misery and unhealthiness of her surroundings added greatly to her discomfiture. Garrett’s health, reprieved by the brief sojourn in the Kentish countryside, succumbed again to the unwholesome environment and inadequate nourishment. The bills for the attendance of physicians and for pills and potions mounted. In desperation St Leger again beseeched the Privy Council for some relief and even offered to go to prison to free himself from the financial responsibility of his imposed guests. Too ragged to be seen by her peers in public, and in dread of the low dockland society that surrounded her, Eleanor was forced to remain cooped up within St Leger’s house and was very ill throughout the duration of her confinement. Eventually, through the good offices of Sir William Cecil, a sum of £130 was sent for their relief, which, according to St Leger, ‘hath ben ymployed uppon necessary apparel and phisick, they having been all very sick, the lady his wife yet so, and his lordship and Sr John but lately recovered. Their health cannot be long,’ he warned, ‘being pent upp in so little a rome altogether.’¹⁶ St Leger once again pleaded that he might ‘be delivered of them, whereby I may bend myself towarde Ireland to seek to recover some pte of my losses’.¹⁷ The rich pasturelands of his prisoner beckoned the jailer.

In the stifling, deprived environment of their Bankside abode Eleanor was delivered of a son in June 1571, whom they called James. The birth of a son, heir to the great Desmond dynasty, should have been an occasion of great jubilation and festivity but for the circumstances of the infant’s birth and the dark shadow that hung over the fate of his father, his mother and his inheritance. In their drab surroundings Eleanor and Garrett briefly celebrated the joyful event. News of the birth was less joyfully communicated to the royal court, where the continuation of the ‘cankered’ rebellious Desmond line was hardly considered an event for celebration. Nor was the birth of a son and heir to the Desmond title and estate welcomed by all the Desmond party at Southwark. Over the months a rift had grown between Eleanor and Sir John. The Desmond historian Russell later concluded that after Eleanor ‘had become the mother of that young son the Ld. James, Sr. John of Desmond was out of all hopes to enjoy or inherite the Earledome after his brother’s death; whereas before the birth of that child he conceived otherwise’.18 But the strain of their long captivity, destitute condition, frequent illness and close confinement had, even before this, driven a wedge between Garrett and his brother. Their frequent arguments merely intensified when Eleanor bore the earl a son. Sir John had anticipated that Garrett’s frail health would succumb to the harsh conditions of his long imprisonment, and that he would then succeed to the earldom. He had not foreseen that Eleanor would choose to leave Ireland to be with Garrett, or that his brother would withstand the rigours of prison and father a son.

Eleanor, for her part, viewed Sir John with deep suspicion, and the rift that emerged between them in London was never to heal. She suspected him of evil intentions towards her new-born son, whom she guarded like a lioness. The safeguarding of the infant’s life and his inheritance was to become her sole aim. Oblivious to the intrigue and danger that surrounded him, the young Desmond heir, sickly from birth, fought for life, which was to prove as unfortunate as the circumstances of his birth.

Shortly after the birth of his son it came to the earl’s attention that his brother had offered, in return for his own freedom, to accept a commission from the Crown to suppress James FitzMaurice. And it appeared that he had also convinced Sir John Perrot, who in August 1571 advised the Privy Council that Sir John should be returned to rule in Munster instead of his brother. The earl protested to the Privy Council that if permission was thus granted to Sir John, it would only serve to undermine his own position in Munster and, as he phrased it, ‘geve me occasion to thinke that your honnours do either suspect my trewe and loyall service towards my soveraigne Lady the Queene or els do judge me unhable to geve them the overthrowe’.19 The rebels, the earl maintained, ‘who besedes that they are traytours to her Matie so have they bene utter enemyes and spoylers of all my patrymony’,²⁰ which to a degree was true. In the event, however, Sir John’s proposal, even with the endorsement of Perrot, did not find favour with the new Lord Deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, who bluntly advised Lord Burghley: ‘God keep both Sir John of Desmond and base money out of Ireland.’²¹

The birth of his son in captivity and destitution, his wife’s protracted illness, uncertainty about the state of his inheritance in Ireland, and, above all, the Queen’s negative response to his continued pleas for repatriation—all drove Garrett to acts of recklessness in his desperate desire for freedom. Throwing caution to the winds, he openly abused the semi-free status that had been allowed him. St Leger complained that he was no longer able to control the earl, who, he claimed, ‘refused to go down to Kent with him and in his absence had rashly ranged into sundry parts of London’²² outside the confines of his allotted parole. St Leger ‘prayed to be delivered of him or to have command to keep him prisoner without liberty’.²³ Garrett had been granted the liberty of Southwark, Bankside and the marshes west of Lambeth Palace. Tormented by his obsession to return to Munster, he roamed the narrow streets and alleys and hung around the seedy riverside taverns, desperately seeking some scheme for his deliverance. He listened to the chimerical plans and projects offered by the waterfront confidence tricksters and rogues who filled his head with wild plans of escape but who, with the earl’s deposit of gold in their grasping hands, simply slunk away and disappeared among the milling dockside crowds.

Whispers of the frantic attempts by the Earl of Desmond to effect his escape back to Ireland reached the court and reverberated abroad where it became entangled in the more complex web of international intrigue. The St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 4,000 Huguenots in Paris, masterminded by the Catholic Queen, Catherine de Medici, and her son Charles IX, coupled with the excommunication of Elizabeth by the Pope, had finally polarised the European power struggle of England, Spain and France into a religious conflict. In Ireland the initial attempt by FitzMaurice to ‘use religion as a catalyst to make a common cause of local grievances’24 appeared a more serious threat in light of international developments and attracted the attention of Elizabeth’s enemies on the continent. Papal emissaries were despatched to Ireland. Sir John Perrot intercepted Edmund O’Donnell with letters to the Geraldine leader from Pope Gregory XIII. Agents from Rome had also infiltrated England to exhort the remnants of the Catholic aristocracy there.

In his daily prowls along the Thames dockside Garrett was watched lest he too should be contacted by papal or Spanish conspirators. Both Eleanor and Garrett had secretly written to encourage FitzMaurice in his revolt as a means to obtain their freedom and reinstatement in Desmond. Some of their letters had been intercepted by Perrot, who cautioned against allowing the Earl of Desmond return to Munster and recommended to Elizabeth that he should be restrained indefinitely in London. Garrett and Eleanor also wrote to the Earl of Leicester to inform him of their plight and of the condition of the Desmond estate in Munster. To further exploit the prevailing court factions, their trusted confidant, Morris Sheehan, was sent to Leicester armed with details of their version of the Desmond–Ormond dispute over the lordship of the Decies and the ownership of Kilfeakle and Kilsheelin, which, as Garrett informed Leicester, ‘are wrongfully witholden from him by the saide Erie of Ormonde’.²⁵ Not to be outdone in the subterfuge the Earl of Ormond arrived in London and invited Garrett to dine with him. Black Tom made sympathetic noises about his rival’s miserable plight. Lulled into a false sense of security Garrett readily accepted his rival’s offer of help. But the Earl of Ormond and his cronies, as part of their vendetta against their opposite camp at court, and also in the hope of augmenting their fortunes out of Garrett’s estates in Munster, had set a trap for the unsuspecting captive, who unwittingly found himself implicated in a more sinister political plot of international dimensions. Shortly after his meeting with Ormond, captain Martin Frobisher introduced himself to Garrett in a Bankside tavern. Frobisher offered to effect the earl’s escape to Ireland for a suitable fee, together with the island of Valentia in lieu. Garrett eagerly agreed to the proposal and, elated at the prospect of freedom, and encouraged by Frobisher, talked wildly of treason, foreign schemes, intrigues and rebellion, all of which Frobisher reported back to Court.

But before Garrett could be apprehended, events in the international political arena intervened to have him unexpectedly restored to his lordship. Elizabeth’s change of heart sprang from her fear—and Eleanor’s hope—that the dangerous and unstable situation that was developing in Munster would get out of hand. Exhorted by promises from the papal and Spanish courts, James FitzMaurice FitzGerald had emerged from his retreat and raised the banner of crusade aloft once more in Munster. The English President, Sir John Perrot, despite his initial resolve to wipe out the rebels and to eradicate all semblance of Gaelic law and custom in the province, was by 1572 forced to admit that he was merely whistling into the wind. Despite the severity of his rule, the rebellion still raged and Munster was more ruinous and desolate than when he had taken office. Well might Perrot wonder, as he wearily led his surviving hungry, underpaid soldiers through the wastelands of Munster in search of FitzMaurice, what it took to conquer such a wild land and such headstrong lords. There were no words of encouragement from the Queen, only impatience at his lack of success against FitzMaurice and incredulity that the bogs and marshes of Munster could so relentlessly soak up her precious revenue. Gradually Perrot was forced to adopt some of the Gaelic customs which he sought to destroy. He learned the advantage of ambushes by small numbers of lightly-armed soldiers, and how Gaelic rather than English military dress was better suited to the climate and terrain of Ireland.

Perrot’s war with FitzMaurice had developed into a personal vendetta. This was turned to his advantage by FitzMaurice when, with characteristic rashness, Perrot allowed himself to be drawn into a well-planned trap, from which he barely escaped with his life. His pride had been dented and his energy sapped by the unceasing, unrewarding campaign against an elusive enemy. He resolved to resort to the ancient Celtic method of single combat in an attempt to bring the inconclusive war with FitzMaurice to an end. FitzMaurice accepted his challenge, but insisted on the use of Gaelic weapons, the sword and dart, and stipulated that both combatants should wear Gaelic attire. At the appointed time and place the English President duly arrived, sporting his short, pleated tunic, tight worsted Gaelic trews and leather quilted jerkin. Thus arrayed for battle, the former champion of the Queen’s tiltyard waited for his Gaelic adversary. The hours passed, but FitzMaurice failed to appear. Finally FitzMaurice’s bard approached and spoke his master’s message to the waiting Perrot:

If I should kill Sir John Perrot, the Queen of England can send another President unto this province; but if he do kill me, there is none other to succeed me or to command as I do, therefore I will not willingly fight with him, and so tell him from me.26

All Munster soon knew about Perrot’s humiliation, and when the news reached the Queen only the restraining hand of Burghley prevented Perrot’s recall. Perrot redoubled his efforts against FitzMaurice and vowed ‘to hunt the fox out of his hole’.²⁷ Driving him back into the Kerry mountains, he took the strategic Desmond fortress of Castlemaine, but the elusive FitzMaurice still evaded him. Then, in February 1573, FitzMaurice unexpectedly submitted to the President who pardoned him, maintaining that like ‘a second St Paul’²⁸ FitzMaurice had seen the error of his ways. But FitzMaurice was merely playing for time, waiting for developments to unfold on the continent that would enable him to resume his crusade in Ireland with even greater vigour.

From Eleanor and Garrett’s point of view, FitzMaurice’s rebellion had accomplished the objective for which they had hoped and plotted. The rebellion made it impossible for the colonisation process started by Carew to make headway in Garrett’s lordship during his absence. It had demonstrated to the Crown that the earl’s removal had not produced the results anticipated, namely the extension of English law and custom throughout Desmond. His removal merely exchanged one Gaelic leader for a far more dangerous and able one. Elizabeth had seen no improvement in her finances resulting from the long imprisonment of the Earl of Desmond. On the contrary, she had to dig even deeper into her pocket to support her prisoner and his retinue in England, while at the same time endeavouring to suppress an expensive rebellion within his territory in Ireland.

In the hope that the wayward earl had learned his lesson and that he might conform, if only to ensure his son’s succession to his estates and title, Elizabeth signified her intention to rid herself of her tiresome prisoner. After much discussion, terms for his release were agreed. Garrett undertook to be

answerable to the laws, ordinances and statutes of the realm, as the Earles of Kildare and Ormond are, and shall assist the Queen’s ministers in Munster to serve and execute and process writs and the levying of her rents, customs, subsidies, services and duties.29

He also promised to apprehend all known malefactors within his territory, to renounce all foreign jurisdictions, and to put down the remaining vestiges of FitzMaurice’s rebellion. He agreed to the suspension of his palatine liberties in Kerry, pending an investigation as to their legality, and to the forfeiture of such castles in his lordship, recently seized by Perrot, for as long as the Crown deemed it necessary for the public good. In theory, Garrett effectively signed away the hereditary powers and privileges of his earldom enjoyed by the House of Desmond for centuries; in practice, however, the Crown had yet to prove its ability to hold that which had been forfeited. But in the spring of 1573, after an exile and imprisonment lasting six years, freedom meant everything to the Earl of Desmond: freedom from humiliation, squalor, fear and poverty. For Eleanor, cooped up with her child in St Leger’s house, still weak from the ordeal of the birth, from undernourishment and the unhealthy atmosphere of her surroundings, the prospect of freedom and return to Munster was as heady as potent wine.

Shortly before their departure for Ireland the prisoners were ordered to appear before the Queen. Still unable to conceal her personal dislike of Garrett, Elizabeth instead concentrated her attention on Sir John, to whom ‘she gave a privy nip, that as he hath a good wit, so he should hereafter use it wele’.³⁰ The Queen seemed better disposed to Eleanor than at their previous meeting and, knowing Eleanor’s ability to control her husband’s rash nature, urged her to direct him on a more loyal and law-abiding course. The Queen perceived the ragged condition of the Desmonds and, in a rare display of generosity, ordered presents ‘of some silks for apparel and some money in reward.’³¹ Garrett boldly asked that the Earl of Ormond should also be returned to his lordship—as a means, he maintained, to deter rebels driven out of Desmond from seeking refuge in Ormond. For Garrett could not let the opportunity pass to remind Elizabeth that there were others in Ireland who had, despite their proclaimed loyalty, harboured rebellious subjects, not to mention relations, within their lordships but whom she had not thought fit to punish as he had been. Moreover, he would prefer to have his enemy in sight in Munster than at court in London, where Black Tom could more effectively intrigue against him. The cold eyes of the Tudor Queen flashed dangerously at his suggestion.

Before they set out on their journey Eleanor had to endure one final heartbreak. It was decided that her infant son, scarcely two years old, should be left in care in England. There is no evidence to suggest that the child was demanded by the Crown as a hostage for his father’s future loyalty. On the contrary, the evidence points to the fact that he was presented to the Queen by his parents on their own initiative. He was taken into the care of their mentor, the Earl of Leicester, who stated in a later letter to Garrett and Eleanor that

Yor Ls request for the presentinge of yor sonne to Her Matie I have also accomplished. Her Highness accepteth of him and taketh yor offer of him in very good pte as I have signefied by lres to my Lady yor wife and by cause he is yet too younge to be brought hither, Her Matie hath taken ordre for his plasinge until he shal be fit to be removed.32

The child had been sickly from birth, and Eleanor may well have considered that the long and arduous journey to Ireland might further compromise the infant’s welfare. It was, however, more likely that the decision to leave their child in England sprang from fears for his safety from Garrett’s own relatives and competitors in Munster. The rift between Eleanor and Sir John of Desmond had continued to widen. The unsettled state of her husband’s lordship and the uncertainty of their future there were hardly conducive to the safety and health of the heir to the earldom of Desmond. Under the patronage and care of the powerful and friendly Earl of Leicester, her son’s life and future might be better assured.

Despite despatches from the President of Munster, who unceasingly had advised the Queen against Garrett’s restoration, the Desmonds were permitted to depart for Ireland. They were conducted there under the charge of the newly-appointed vice-treasurer, Sir Edward Fitton. Rumours of Perrot’s opposition to their return reached them in London; and, suspecting that Fitton and Perrot were in league, Garrett, Eleanor and Sir John made a dash across England and Wales for Beaumaris in search of a quick passage to Ireland. But Fitton caught up with his fugitive captives, and eventually the entire party set sail for Dublin. They landed at White Friars in Dublin on 25 March 1573 after an exile of almost six years.