Chapter 7

Rebellion

The wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

And make them keep their caves: since I was man

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never

Remember to have heard: man’s nature cannot carry

The affliction nor the fear

KING LEAR, III, ii

As news of the Desmond rebellion spread across the country, initially it seemed likely to provoke a wider conspiracy among the Gaelic and gaelicised lords. In Connaught the clans of Mayo and Galway rose in support. Scots mercenaries poured into Ulster. In Leinster James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass, a determined Catholic, conspired with the Wicklow chieftain, Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne. There was unrest in Limerick city, and the mayor was taken prisoner by insurgents. Sir John of Desmond plundered Kerry and burned the town of Tralee. The rebels attacked the lands of a grantee, John Rowly, and left him nailed to his castle door as a warning to others. Dr Sanders exhorted the leaders and promised more assistance from the Pope and the Most Catholic King of Spain.

But solitary in the Escorial palace the black-garbed lay leader of the Counter-Reformation, God’s lieutenant on earth, Philip II, gloomily contemplated a batch of despatches from his spies in England. They were proof of the distinct lack of progress being made against his heretic sister-in-law and her godless kingdom. But the blame could be squarely laid at Philip’s own door whose predilection for deliberation and detail made progress virtually impossible. Every despatch was scrutinised, every emissary personally interviewed, every detail gleaned was methodically stored in the dispassionate mind of the anointed head of the greatest and most Catholic leader in the world. Now that the House of Guise in France had become part of his orbit, and that his control over the Netherlands was restored, there was time to contemplate how best to resume the crusade against Elizabeth and to fulfil his ‘gossamer vision of a Europe purged of heresy and united in the ample bosom of mother church’.1 Had not Elizabeth blatantly aided and comforted his rebellious and heretical Dutch subjects? Now with news of a crusade in Ireland against her, led by an Irish leader who sought his help, the King pondered over the direction his religious zeal and political revenge might take against his sister monarch.

While the banner of rebellion, emblazoned with the cross of the crusade, had been placed in the hands of her reluctant husband, Eleanor was yet hopeful that Garrett’s slide into ruin could be reversed. She had not been included in the Lord Justice’s proclamation and was therefore free to negotiate with the authorities and put her diplomatic skill to use on her husband’s behalf. But she had no trustworthy contact in the Dublin Council. Her only remaining recourse was to gain direct access to the Queen and her Council in England. Elizabeth must be made aware of the conduct of her officers in Ireland who, for reasons other than duty, had alienated her husband from the Crown. Eleanor well knew that many servants of the Crown, both in Ireland and in England, had greedy eyes fastened on the fertile acres of her husband’s estates. A push towards rebellion rather than a pull towards loyalty presented the prospect of rich reward for such energetic and ambitious officials. Her letters to England were liable to be intercepted by the self-same officials, determined they did not reach their destination. But there was another, albeit desperate, way. On 4 November 1579, two days after her husband was publicly proclaimed a traitor, a despatch, signed by Pelham, Ormond and Malby to the Queen’s secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, made the startling announcement: ‘To be a solicitor that in respect since the proclamation, the Countess of Desmond hath left her husband that she may enjoy her jointure.’²

Even as Garrett was hustled away into rebellion and as the great wood of Clonlish swallowed him and his followers, Eleanor put her plan into action. She obtained a meeting with her kinsman the Earl of Ormond, to whom she revealed her intention to divorce Garrett, ostensibly because of the shame and ruin his actions had brought on her and on his family. She asked that her marriage portion or dowry be returned to her in order that she might sustain herself. Initially her request was taken at face value. It was on record that the Countess of Desmond had long endeavoured to keep the earl loyal to the Crown, and she had letters from a grateful Queen to prove it. Divorce was common among the Gaelic and gaelicised aristocracy. Ormond himself had been recently divorced. Aware of Eleanor’s long devotion to Garrett, Ormond became suspicious of her sudden desire to obtain her jointure. Her real reason, he suspected, was to obtain funding to enable her to take her husband’s case to London. And Eleanor was forced to admit her real intent. ‘Now that it hath pleased God to wrap my husband into these late troubles,’ she wrote to Ormond, ‘I wish to repair to Her Majesty’s preserve and desire you to send me a passport. I mind to take shipping at Cork or Kinsale.’3

As Ormond deliberated over her request, desperate to attain her goal before Garrett, by some precipitate action, could put himself totally beyond all help, Eleanor had some cattle rounded up and asked Ormond ‘to make sale of such kine as I sent to your country to bear my charges in England for that both my husband and I have incurred certain debts in England, it is needful that you send me a protection to pass with my stuff and goods until I shall come to Her Majesty without any molestation’.⁴ Ormond informed her that he had not the authority to issue her with a pass, but that he would forward her request to Lord Justice Pelham. However, he took care to forewarn Pelham: ‘I have had a letter from my Lady of Desmond. It is thought, I dare say, by those that wrote it to be cunningly penned and devised but the intent is easy to understand.’⁵ Pelham, in any event, had no intention of allowing the Countess of Desmond access to the Queen. Elizabeth had sounded the first notes of disquiet about the peremptory way he had proclaimed the Earl of Desmond. Desmond’s wife pleading her husband’s case, with the support of the Cecil faction at Court, might well mean dismissal or even imprisonment. Pelham wrote his reply to the Earl of Ormond: ‘I have considered of my Lady of Desmond’s letter. Pray you stay your hand from these her vain petitions till our meeting and answer her letter with silence.’⁶

But Eleanor refused to accept silence as an answer. She demanded and received an audience with the Lord Justice. She asked him to suspend the proclamation against her husband until she could further Eleanor, Countess of Desmond negotiate with him. Pelham refused but granted her permission to go to her husband and promised her ‘that grace would be showid to her husband if he would consent to ye delivery of his brother and Doctor Saunders’.7 Pelham warned her that she must return ‘within certaine daies to live in the Pale or with the barron of Dunboine her brother’.⁸ Eleanor realised that Pelham would never permit her access to the Queen or retract the proclamation, short of Garrett’s unconditional surrender. Gathering her few belongings, she fled to join her husband, and failed to return within the allotted time. To damage whatever credibility she might have with the Queen, Pelham informed Sir Francis Walsingham ‘that there is not any emonge the conspiratours that more encouradgeth the disloyaltie of them than she. And therefore I believe that her messadge is but collorable . . . to gaine intellegence for purpose.’⁹

By now, however, the Queen’s disquiet over the proclamation of the Earl of Desmond and the continuation of the war in Munster had changed to anger. She ordered Pelham to explain his actions. Pelham protested that Desmond had been covertly involved in rebellious conspiracy since the time of James FitzMaurice. To sting her princely pride, Pelham further informed the Queen that ‘in all his skirmishes and outrages since the proclamation, Desmond crieth Papa aboo, which is the Pope above even above you and your imperial crown’.¹⁰ But Elizabeth was not satisfied. Rebellions cost money, while pardons, particularly on conditions favourable to the Crown, cost nothing. She had learned of the attempts of the Countess of Desmond to gain her royal ear and also of Pelham’s efforts to prevent her. Elizabeth demanded further explanation from her Lord Justice.

But before Pelham could compose an excuse, the Earl of Desmond, as Eleanor feared, put himself beyond redemption by an inexplicable attack on the town of Youghal. The town was in a state of total unpreparedness for the assault. In the middle of a thunderstorm the rebel army, with Garrett at its head, entered through a breach in the walls. Then, amid scenes of wanton carnage and cruelty, Youghal was sacked. Houses were set on fire, citizens put to the sword, women ravished, while the Desmond hordes, with wild exultant cries, ransacked buildings and stuffed their clothes with gold and silver from the town’s coffers. It was reported that the Earl of Desmond, Sir John and the Seneschal of Imokilly tore down the emblem of the Queen’s coat of arms from the courthouse and hacked it asunder with their daggers. For four days and nights the rebels looted the town. Laden with booty and prisoners, the Earl of Desmond and his ‘crusaders’ marched away, leaving Youghal in flames.

Eleanor’s reaction to the sack of Youghal was one of disbelief that her husband would allow his own town to be destroyed. But religious fanaticism had by then fuelled the flames of rebellion. Dr Sanders ardently preached the message of the Counter-Reformation and exhorted the earl that his secular struggle against the Queen in Ireland was part of a glorious international crusade against heresy. The Pope and King Philip would soon come to his assistance, Sanders assured him. The Earl of Desmond listened and felt uplifted, no longer hamstrung by his physical deformities or political deficiencies. Religion elevated him to his true status as the great rebel Geraldine fighting the just cause of faith and fatherland. His letters to the Gaelic chieftains and to the Catholic lords of the Pale reflected his belated conversion to the crusading cause. Writing to Viscount Baltinglass, Garrett now maintained:

It is so that I and my brothers are entered into the Defence of the Catholick Faith, the overthrow of our Country by Englishmen which had overthrown the Holy Church and go about to over-run our country and make it their own and make us their Bond men.11

Messengers and letters of support flowed into his base at Newcastle from Turlough Luineach O’Neill, Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne, Baltinglass, and lords and chieftains from every province. They made extravagant promises of Scottish galloglass and Gaelic kern. But promises were easily made, and the Earl of Desmond had yet to prove how much support his cause commanded abroad before the effusive pledges of his erstwhile allies in Ireland could be translated into practical assistance.

As the mournful winter winds howled around Newcastle, Eleanor realised that she was powerless to stem the fast-flowing tide which bore her husband and his house steadily towards their doom. She looked across the dimly-lit room to where Garrett, seated with Dr Sanders, dictated to a secretary the now interwoven words of religion and rebellion. She observed the almost skeletal features of her husband, his sickly pallor and hunched shoulders. The winter campaign had taken further toll on his health. She thought of her son, alone in his dark cell in Dublin Castle. The servants she had sent to care for him had been dismissed, and Pelham had ordered ‘that the constable of the Castle shall provide for his diett and wantes and that his nurse shall onely attend him there’.12 Yet she was satisfied that even Dublin Castle was a safer haven for her child than his native Munster over which the storm was about to break.

For the hunt was on—one of the greatest manhunts in history—for the most feeble prey that ever went to ground. While the Queen dithered to finance an all-out offensive against the Earl of Desmond, the Earl of Ormond took matters into his own hands. Passing between Askeaton and Newcastle, he burned and looted right up to the foothills of Slieve Logher, on a mission of vengeance on his ancient enemy until, hampered by appalling weather conditions and lack of supplies, he reluctantly returned to Ormond, hopeful that in the new year Elizabeth might loosen the purse-strings and he could continue the campaign against his step-father.

Towards the end of January 1580 two well-appointed ships arrived off Dingle. They carried letters for the Earl of Desmond and his brothers from the King of Spain. Garrett hurried to Castlemaine to confer with the king’s messengers. Both the success of the rebellion and his own fate depended on help from Philip. He told the messengers to urge their master to send the long-awaited assistance without delay. He promised support from all the lords of the country and confidently declared that he would have a substantial army at his disposal. And during the early months of 1580 many hitherto undecided lords wavered to the cause. The Earl of Clancar was either compelled by Garrett or exhorted by Dr Sanders to join the rebellion. It was even rumoured that Edmund Butler, the Earl of Ormond’s brother, who was married to Garrett’s sister, had ‘stood a little wavering and was to be doubted’,¹³ before being pulled back into line by his brother, Black Tom. But since the sack of Youghal, militarily Garrett had accomplished little. Ever fearful for his safety, like a shadow he flitted from Newcastle to Aherlow, to Adare, to Carraigafoyle on the Shannon, until he finally came to rest at the more secure fortress of Castlemaine. His landless adherents, while they awaited action against the enemy, looted and ravaged the countryside. The peasants, as ever, bore the brunt of their excesses and sought protection in the woods and mountain foothills. Eleanor also momentarily disappeared from view. There was no one with whom she could negotiate, and little reason for her to do so. She spent the winter months with her daughters between the fortresses of Castlemaine and Castleisland deep in her husband’s territory.

In the spring of 1580 the war recommenced with a vengeance. It was reported that King Philip had troops and ships massed at Spanish ports, ready to sail to Ireland to support the rebel Earl of Desmond. Elizabeth’s nightmare, that Spain would use Ireland as a backdoor into England, seemed likely to become a reality. The English court factions closed ranks and united to repel the foreign threat. The hitherto divided coteries led by Cecil and Walsingham were now of one voice. They urged the Queen to back Ormond and Pelham and to provide the means for an all-out offensive against the Earl of Desmond. Cecil, Ormond’s one-time adversary, admitted:

So must I merely say with others, Butler aboo against all that cry as I hear in a new language Papa aboo. God send you your heart’s desire, which I know is agreeable to mine, to banish or vanquish those cankered Desmonds and to plant again the Queen’s Majesty’s honour and reputation.14

And finally, with the approval of the Privy Council and a reluctant nod from Elizabeth, the armed might of the Crown was unleashed on the Earl of Desmond. In March 1580 Ormond joined forces with Pelham at Rathkeale, and together they commenced a dreadful war of retribution. They divided their forces: Ormond moved towards the Shannon; Pelham kept inland, towards Newcastle. It was said that they each kept track of the other’s progress by the billowing clouds of smoke they left in their wake as they burned and pillaged their way west.

The country people fled for their lives before the new fury. But to Pelham every peasant or tenant who resided within the Desmond lordship was deemed a rebel and the English scouting parties indiscriminately sought out and slew panic-stricken men, women and children. His despatches to the Privy Council unashamedly detailed acts of remorseless barbarity and deprivation committed against a largely defenceless peasantry. Exultantly describing a typically punitive raid, he wrote:

The people and cattle flying before us in the mountains were followed by some horsemen and light footmen. There were slain that day by the fury of the soldiers above 400 people found in the woods; and wheresoever any house or corn was found, it was consumed by fire.15

The unfortunate people who were subjected to such treatment were shamelessly abandoned by their overlord and left to stand defenceless before his enemies. The Desmonds, Dr Sanders and their swordsmen were far removed, safe in their remote castle outposts, out of range of the pitiful cries of the abandoned peasantry. In vain the people waited for the banner of their hereditary protector to appear and save them from their doom. But the great Geraldine lord did not come to their rescue, and Pelham’s soldiers and Ormond’s galloglass found nothing to obstruct them. Steel fell on unprotected bone and hacked its way over the mutilated bodies of its unresisting victims. From the branches of the Munster oaks the putrefying corpses hung in gruesome proof of Pelham’s progress. The once lush Desmond pasturelands were reduced to a blackened heath as Ormond sated his revenge on his old enemy and Pelham, one of the new breed of Puritan military commanders, merely did his job.

But Munster was not ravaged just by the armies of the Crown. As the Earl of Desmond and his army withdrew into remoter areas, they too burned and looted everything in their path. Every fortress between Castleisland and Tralee was demolished to prevent its use by the enemy. Cattle were seized and driven into secret valleys and hidden recesses in the mountains to provide sustenance for the fighting men. The peasantry were left to fend for themselves as best they could, and any who remonstrated were summarily dealt with.

Some of the stronger Desmond castles, such as Askeaton, Newcastle, Adare, Glin and Carraigafoyle, directly in Pelham’s path, remained intact, secure in the impregnability of their thick stone walls. Carraigafoyle on the Shannon was considered one of the most formidable and its destruction was to open a new chapter in military warfare in Ireland. The castle commanded a strategic position at the entrance to the Shannon estuary. It was garrisoned for the Earl of Desmond by a mixture of papal and Irish troops under the command of captain Julian. In view of the aid expected from Spain, defence of the castle took on a new urgency. Unable to risk the journey himself, Garrett sent Eleanor to convey plans for the defence of the castle to the garrison. With a small escort she set out on the hazardous journey. Although not technically a wanted rebel like her husband, nonetheless she could not afford to fall into the hands of the Crown forces. Successfully eluding English scouting parties from the armies of Pelham and Ormond she delivered her husband’s instructions. Great earthworks were immediately constructed on the estuary side of the castle to provide additional protection for the ships expected daily from Spain. On the landward side two separate ditches with a wall and a further earthwork were erected. Every chink and cranny in the outer walls of the castle was filled with masonry to prevent potential besiegers obtaining a foothold. In Garrett’s estimation, and indeed by the military convention of the day, Carraigafoyle was thus rendered impregnable.

When English ships, under the command of Sir William Winter, however, anchored off the castle with a cargo of siege guns, Garrett’s defensive modifications, earthworks, ditches and smooth masonry proved useless as for two days the guns pounded the defences of Carraigafoyle. On 29 March a breach was finally made in the barbican. Pelham’s troops poured into the castle and spared none of the defenders. As the cannon and culverins boomed their relentless message of victory across the Kerry countryside, Pelham next prepared to move against the heart of the Desmond lordship. The siege cannon were pointed at Askeaton. But there was little need to fire even one shell. On learning about the destruction of Carraigafoyle and the fate of the defenders, Garrett’s garrison at Askeaton fled for their lives and, as they departed, set fire to the magazine, which blew the greater part of the castle asunder. Pelham appointed a garrison under Sir Peter Carew and Sir Henry Wallop in the ruins of Askeaton, while Sir George Carew and Captain Hollingworth encamped in the adjacent abbey.

Reports of the destruction of Carraigafoyle and the partial destruction of Askeaton were brought to the earl, who, with Eleanor, was at Tralee. The fall of Askeaton must have been a severe blow, being not merely a place of great significance in the Desmond heritage and history, but also the home in which they had snatched a few brief years of happiness and contentment.

As Pelham’s army closed in, Garrett’s followers, who had so vociferously and eagerly prevailed upon him to lead the great crusade, began to desert in numbers. There was still no sign of the Spanish aid promised by Dr Sanders. With the exception of a brief, isolated uprising by Richard-in-Iron Bourke in Mayo, Connaught too had failed to rise in support of the crusade. There was a shortage of food and supplies, and Garrett’s swordsmen preyed far and wide over the impoverished land. To stem the tide, Garrett was reported to have told his followers ‘that yf aid from Spaine and the Pope cam not before Whitsontide he would leave them to make their composition with the Englishe as well as thei colde’.16 Numbed by the ferocity of Pelham’s tactics, few could envisage such a course of action. The English forces pressed ever closer, and the list of garrisons established by them grew. Captain Bouchier occupied Kilmallock and captain Wilks held Adare. The hunt was on for the Earl and Countess of Desmond, Dr Sanders and the earl’s brothers. Each day scouting parties from the various garrisons scoured the forests, mountain foothills and the secret recesses of Aherlow for the fugitives. Even Eleanor’s brother, the Baron of Dunboyne, joined in the hunt for his sister and brother-in-law.

As the net tightened, the Desmond fugitives flitted from place to place. Everything now depended on Spain. Garrett became suspicious that Dr Sanders intended to desert him, and kept a close watch on the cleric who, for better or worse, had become his one remaining hope of salvation. In his present position there seemed little possibility of reconciliation with the Crown and restoration to his title and estates. Only from a position of strength could he hope to negotiate with Elizabeth. In the large rambling fortress of Castleisland the earl and Eleanor waited. The winter had been difficult with severe frost and snow. The earl could scarcely walk. His personal physician, Maurice Lee, deserted him and sought Pelham’s protection. Aqua vitae was now the only medicine with which the earl could obtain relief from the pain that racked his feeble body, and with which he could deaden his mind to the reality of his dreadful predicament.

Eleanor sent their daughters to be cared for in the few remaining friendly houses. She entrusted her children to the protection of her half-brother, Donal MacCarthy of Carbery, and her brother-in-law, Owen MacDonagh MacCarthy of Duhallow, both of whom were subsequently imprisoned by Pelham when they refused to divulge the whereabouts of their charges. Eleanor sent another daughter to the care of her sister, the Countess of Clancar. The strain, both physical and mental, had taken its toll. She had been sucked into the morass against her better judgement. Her husband had succumbed to the pressures exerted on him from both sides. She had her opportunity to desert him and chance her luck with the English authorities. But the persistence and constancy that were the hallmarks of her character were difficult to shed, even if she had wished to do so. Her influential position in the Desmond household even yet attracted the attention of the English administration. In an attempt to reduce English unease at the ruthlessness of his campaign in Munster, Pelham sought, through Eleanor’s brother, to involve her in a government plot ‘for ye apprehencion of John of Desmond and Saunders’17 in return for Garrett’s pardon. While there was little love lost between Eleanor and Sir John and Sanders, she had even less trust in the Lord Justice. She too had come to the conclusion that in the present situation the only solution to their dreadful dilemma was a Spanish one.

But the strain of watching and waiting had begun to affect the relationship between the fugitives at Castleisland. Sir John bitterly accused the earl of cowardice and inaction. After heated exchanges the brothers separated. Sir John led his followers on a series of wild forages, while Garrett made a short sortie into Limerick, where he was surprised by the ward out of Adare castle. In the ensuing engagement his horse was shot from under him, and it was only with considerable difficulty that his followers managed to hustle him back to the safety of Castleisland.

In June 1580 Pelham and Ormond combined once more for an offensive against the Earl of Desmond. They drove the MacCarthys and O’Callaghans, together with their cattle herds, before them and advanced along the Blackwater on a long, energy-sapping trek into the palatinate of Kerry. News of their progress reached Eleanor and Garrett belatedly. With Pelham at their heels, there was little time for an orderly withdrawal from Castleisland, and, as Pelham reported, ‘the erle of Desmond being ther with his ladie was forced to forsake his horse and betwixt some of his gallowglass to take to the bogg.’¹⁸ Eleanor had to abandon several items of clothing from her personal wardrobe, which, together with some vestments belonging to Dr Sanders, were derisively torn to shreds by Pelham’s soldiers. Aided by the strong arms of the galloglass, the Earl and Countess of Desmond fled into the night. Splashing and stumbling through the bogs and marshes around Castleisland, the cries of their hunters in their ears, they ran for their lives. Garrett fell down exhausted, unable to continue, and had to be carried on the shoulders of his galloglass to the safety of the mountains. Here the fugitives took a brief respite, then separated.

With a small escort, Eleanor set out for Newcastle to lead the pursuers away from her husband. On her journey she encountered the admiral of the English fleet, Sir William Winter. Since the fall of Carraigafoyle, Winter’s fleet remained anchored in the Shannon estuary but, following a rendezvous with Pelham, he had taken the fleet around to Dingle Bay. On his return he encountered the Countess of Desmond. Eleanor informed him of the sequence of developments that had forced her husband into rebellion. She begged him to take a letter to the English Privy Council so that she might negotiate directly with them for her husband’s pardon and for a cessation of the war in Munster. The pitiful sight of the dishevelled countess touched Winter, who agreed to forward her letter to England.

Eleanor sat down to compose the most honest and poignant letter of the entire tragic saga. It is at once a powerful and compelling document. It demonstrates her knowledge and understanding of the minds of those she sought to change. She gives an objective analysis of her husband’s shortcomings, but also her conviction that he had been pushed by Pelham and Malby into a rebellion he did not want. ‘My husband and his countrie have bene bled by persons who are in authoritie here,’ she wrote, and reminded the Council of her husband’s loyal conduct until the death of Sir William Drury. Then, Eleanor contends, Sir Nicholas Malby was allowed free rein in Munster and ‘the place of Justice was void. Malbie’, she asserts, ‘marched therewith into my husbands countrie, murdered certaine of his men, toke and spoyled certaine of his castles, burned within houses old men and children and within churches bourned certaine monuments of his ancestors and, a thinge which’, as Eleanor asserts, ‘greeved him most, openlie called him a traytor within the cytye of Lymerick.’

Eleanor grasps the opportunity to explain how both she and her husband had been denied access to the Privy Council by English officials in Ireland. Despite her husband’s promise to disassociate himself from those whom she describes as ‘his unnaturall biethern and the traitor Saunders’, and the delivery of their son to the Crown, her husband had been left with no option but to join in the rebellion or be overrun. For her own part, she declares that after her husband had been publicly proclaimed a traitor, she had indicated to Pelham and Ormond that she wished to leave Munster and go to the Queen, but this had been denied her. She puts on record her suspicions concerning the evil intent of her brother-in-law, Sir John of Desmond, who, she claims,

since the tyme I was married and especiallie settens yt shall be please God to send my husband a sonne . . . hathe allwaies enveyied the prosperitie of my husband and by all meanes sought both in Englande and here to throwe him into some action, wherebie he might incure her Maties indignaction hopinge thereby (as nowe he doth manifest havinge shott at the marke which longe he desired) to come by the Erledome as with hope he hathe ben alwaies prevented by my meanes and the actions of those that loved my husband.19

In her letter Eleanor fearlessly apportioned the blame for her husband’s rebellion, as she adjudged it, on both sides: on the provocative actions of Pelham and Malby on the one hand, and on the greed and jealousy of her husband’s brothers on the other, while in between lay the devious aspirations and plots of Ormond, Sanders and the rest. Winter accepted her missive for the Privy Council and promised, when the opportunity arose, he would have it delivered. Eleanor later rejoined her husband, determined to keep him alive until either the hoped-for Spanish aid arrived or her letter produced a pardon from Elizabeth.

Meanwhile the hunt continued unabated. There was to be no respite for the rebel Irish earl and his adherents. From the sod cabins of the lowliest kern to cold mountain caves, to the dens of wild animals, the Earl and Countess of Desmond crept stealthily. With a handful of faithful attendants, like ‘deere they laie upon their keepings and so fearfull they were, that they would not tarrie in anie one place anie long time but where they did dress their meat, then they would remove and eat it in another place to lie’.²⁰ They ranged over the more mountainous and marshy parts of Munster. At times her husband had to be carried on a pallet while, ever watchful, Eleanor rode at the head of the band, ready to sound the alarm at the first sight of danger. She endured many narrow escapes from pursuing English scouting parties, on the watch for her in the hope that by finding her they might also discover the earl’s whereabouts. ‘We had the Countess of Desmond in chase two myles’, captain Bouchier of the Kilmallock garrison reported, ‘and myssinge her selfe took a great prey of three hundred kyne from her.’21 It became too risky to travel by day. Too many eyes, both native and foreign, sought the fugitives, to secure the silver on their heads. Munster was pockmarked with English garrisons from which scouting parties daily emerged to scour the countryside, while the earl’s own followers cursed their overlord and blamed him for the ruination of crops, the seizure of livestock and for their hunger. But the main thrust of their anger was directed against Dr Sanders. Even in the earl’s company he became reviled by the people for his hollow promises of Spanish arms and gold. The earl’s authority alone protected him, and now for reasons that had little to do with a religious crusade.

During the summer many of the Earl of Desmond’s erstwhile allies, including the Earl of Clancar, O’Sullivan Beare and O’Sullivan More, O’Callaghan and O’Donoghue, submitted to Pelham. Rumours of the likely appointment of a new lord deputy began to circulate. Pelham redoubled his efforts in his attempt to capture the rebel earl and his family.

I give the rebels no breath to relieve themselves [he boasted to the Queen] but by one of your garrisons or other they be continually hunted. I keep them from their harvest and have taken great preys of cattle from them by which it seemeth the poor people that lived only upon labour and fed by their milch cows are so distressed as they follow their goods and offer themselves with their wives and children rather to be slain by the army than to suffer the famine that now in extremity beginneth to pinch them.²²

As Pelham reported, the first signs of a serious famine had appeared, as the devastated land and terrified people succumbed to the awful consequences of the long war.

Suddenly the focus of political attention was diverted from Munster to the hitherto loyal English Pale, where James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass, aided by Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne, raised the papal banner high over Leinster. This latest revolt was part of the wider intensification of the counter-reformation movement abroad. Jesuit agents, Parsons and Campion, had been smuggled into England and were actively exhorting English Catholics to rebel for faith and freedom. The objectives of the Counter-Reformation were espoused by Baltinglass who, unlike the Earl of Desmond, exemplified the true reforming zeal of the movement. Urged on by Dr Sanders, with whom he had been in contact, Baltinglass now displaced the Earl of Desmond and moved centre-stage in the revolutionary crusade. He exhorted Sir John and Dr Sanders to join him and move the thrust of the crusade to Leinster. Sir John had little patience or respect for his sickly brother, while Sanders had detected a marked falling-off in the earl’s crusading fervour. The earl might well be the chosen receptacle for the seeds of the most holy revolution, but his true motives seemed to derive from more worldly and material considerations. The real crusading spirit of the Counter-Reformation appeared to Dr Sanders to be embodied in Viscount Baltinglass and Sanders secretly made plans to make his way to County Wicklow.

Despite the events in Leinster, there was no respite from Pelham in Munster. Deserted by both relatives and allies, Eleanor interceded again with Pelham, tracing him to Askeaton, where he received her amid the ruins of her castle home. The harrowing circumstances of her life during the past year had taken their toll on the haggard figure who knelt before the Lord Justice to again plead her husband’s cause. But the resolute and pitiless faces of Pelham and his assistant, Geoffrey Fenton, were mirrored in Fenton’s report of the meeting: ‘The Countess came in . . . but with the same impudencie wherewith she hath covered her face since her last breaking out with her husband; yet taketh she uppon her to worke hym to submission.’23 Pelham would not relent. Again he refused Eleanor permission to present her husband’s case at court. There was no option but to keep the field, survive the winter and hope that the rumours that had begun to circulate about Pelham’s impending recall proved true.

Meantime Pelham’s harassment continued unabated as he sought to isolate the fugitives from their remaining supporters. It was rumoured that Sir John had secretly conspired with Sir Warham St Leger, the newly appointed provost-marshal of Munster, to betray his brother and secure a pardon for himself, while Rory MacSheehy, a captain of the Desmond galloglass, was urged by Pelham to capture Dr Sanders. Pelham warned Lord FitzMorris not to succour the fugitives. ‘You have had in your country’, he wrote to him, ‘the traitor earl, his wife, his brother and Sanders, whom you might have apprehended if you had listed.’ To ensure FitzMorris’s future actions, Pelham informed him that his two sons were to be detained ‘until I may see some service done by you in delivering up some of the principal conspirators above named, dead or alive’.²⁴

While the whispers and rumours flew, Garrett’s half-brother, Sir James ‘Sussex’, was wounded on a plundering raid in Muskerry and captured by the Sheriff of Cork. He was delivered in chains to St Leger and imprisoned in Cork goal. After two months of physical and mental torture, Sir James was executed in October 1580, as St Leger reported to the Privy Council: ‘Sir James of Desmond who (by direction of the Lord Deputie) I caused to be hanged drawen and quartered at the gates of this town . . . who yeelded to godward a better end than otherwise would have don if he had not dyed to death.’25 James had pleaded for summary decapitation. But the twenty-two-year-old rebel had instead to suffer the ignoble and gruesome form of execution reserved for traitors. He had faced his ordeal bravely. The English administration in Dublin noted his death and merely observed that ‘the pestilent hydra hath lost another of his heads’.²⁶

In September 1580 Arthur, Baron Grey de Wilton took office as Lord Deputy. Pelham reluctantly surrendered the sword of office in the knowledge that he had failed to complete his mission against the Earl of Desmond and that the methods he had employed in Munster had found little favour at Court. Moreover, Admiral Winter had kept his word to Eleanor, and her letter had eventually reached the Queen. Elizabeth had little time for the Puritan fanaticism of Pelham and his kind, particularly where such zeal cost her money. Where loyalty could be purchased, even for a time, Elizabeth was willing to overlook political and religious shortcomings. She had scant regard for the Earl of Desmond; she cursed him roundly for being a drain on her resources, and wished him dead or in exile. Yet the Countess of Desmond’s letter made the Queen question the appropriateness of Pelham’s precipitate actions against the earl and his subsequent policy of annihilation which had accomplished little but to devastate one-quarter of her Irish realm. Pelham felt bitter about the criticism. His companion and aide, Sir Nicholas Malby, protested to the Queen’s secretary on his behalf. It was unjustifiable, Malby stated,

that the wordes of an infamous woman, the wyfe of a proclaymed traytor herselfe a nowtorious traytoress, the great worcker of these wicked rebellions in the popes behalf should cary their credyt to deface the faythfull service of a dutyfull and honest servant.²⁷

But Pelham’s day had come and gone. Elizabeth dismissed his protests as more urgent and disturbing events unfolded.

The new, untried but impatient Lord Deputy carried the fight to Baltinglass and Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne, deep in the recesses of the Wicklow mountains, and thereby paid the penalty. At Glenmalure the O’Byrne kern and galloglass decimated Grey’s raw English recruits. The effects of the victory were instantaneous. In the north O’Rourke and O’Donnell rose in revolt, while Turlough Luineach O’Neill prepared to attack the Pale with an army of 5,000 clansmen. His rival, the English-educated Hugh O’Neill, the Baron of Dungannon, hid himself in the woods and loudly protested his loyalty to Elizabeth ‘even if all the Irishry in Ireland should rebel’.28 Sir John of Desmond besieged Maryborough and Ormond was attacked by the rebels. To add to the explosive situation Spanish aid arrived, undetected, at the ill-fated harbour of Smerwick.

The news of the uprisings and the arrival of the long-awaited aid from Spain spurred Eleanor and Garrett into action. The years of intrigue and subterfuge, of tears and humiliation, of deprivation, hunger and loss, seemed at last likely to be vindicated. The long, lonely vigil was over. The King of Spain had kept his word; the army of salvation had arrived. As they urged their horses over the steep mountain passes towards Dingle, the depression and misery of their situation momentarily lifted and Garrett swore to avenge the wrongs they had suffered. As they topped the last hill before the descent to Dún an Óir, the promontory fort standing stark and windswept against the sea, their elation turned to disbelief. Instead of the army of well-appointed troops promised by Sanders, they saw a force of 700 ‘poor simple bisognos, very ragged and a great part of them boys’.²⁹ Philip had sent aid to the crusaders in Ireland, but his interests in the Low Countries took precedence. It was significant that the majority of the troops were Italian. With the soldiers was Friar Mateo de Oviedo, the apostolic commissary, Friar Cornelius O’Mulrian, the papal Bishop of Killaloe, and some Jesuit preachers.

Ill-clothed and totally inexperienced in warfare, the soldiers quickly succumbed to the cold and damp of the Irish climate. Their leader, Sebastino di San Joseppi from Bologna, was equally incredulous to learn that the pale, sickly man who had to be lifted off his horse was the great Irish crusader who was to lead them to victory against the army of the English heretic queen. Philip had sent sufficient arms for the 4,000-strong army promised him by the Earl of Desmond and Dr Sanders. Where was this great army the Italians wanted to know? They were assured that over the hills the army waited. But San Joseppi would never know that beyond the high peak of Slieve Mish lay a people decimated by war and famine, too hungry and unwilling to bear arms in a cause they did not understand.

A massive confidence trick had been practised by both sides, for which each would pay a costly price. Sir John and Dr Sanders hurried to Smerwick and sent urgent messages back to Philip to the effect that nothing less than 8,000 well-equipped, experienced troops could ensure the success of the crusade. Rashly Garrett also outlined to the king the miserable circumstances of his situation, the seizure of his estates, his poverty, and how both he and his countess were daily driven from pillar to post in their own estates by the army of Philip’s heretic sister-in-law. The effect of this plaintive tale on the cold, reserved king was no more than an indifferent shrug of the black-caped shoulders and a detached resolve to pursue Christ’s crusade elsewhere, under the leadership of a less distressed leader.

Reports of the ‘invasion’ reached Dublin where Lord Deputy Grey, impatient to blot out the embarrassment of Glenmalure, joined forces with the Earl of Ormond and made for Dingle. The Golden Fort might yet provide him with the chance to restore his tarnished image. In Grey’s army were Walter Raleigh, captains Zouche and Mackworth, while the poet Edmund Spenser acted as the Lord Deputy’s secretary. At the beginning of November Grey pitched camp at Dingle. As the English army approached, the Desmond leaders and their supporters hurried away with empty promises of aid to the Italians. Admiral Winter sailed into Smerwick and cut off any chance of escape by sea. The siege of Dún an Óir commenced. Initially the Italians flew the papal insignia from the fort. As the siege intensified, it was replaced by a black and white banner, a signal to the Geraldine army to attack the English in the rear. No army materialised and the Geraldine leaders remained hidden. The Italians sued for terms, but Grey would only consider an unconditional surrender, to which, it was controversially reported, San Joseppi agreed. Grey, the hero of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the brave knight Artegal, then ordered Raleigh and Mackworth to implement, to the letter of the law, the prevailing rules of sixteenth-century warfare. The unarmed survivors of the siege, with the exception of a handful of officers, were mercilessly slaughtered.

Six hundred died at Smerwick, a dreadful indictment of the subhuman cruelty of warfare, and the tragedy of broken promises and incomprehensible and ineffectual alliances. San Joseppi and his inexperienced youths were the sacrificial victims of the deviousness of international politics, fuelled by the raging flames of religious fanaticism. The shame of Dún an Óir must rest on the Puritan shoulders of Lord Deputy Grey, but also on Dr Sanders and the Earl of Desmond, whose rash and empty promises had first lured and then abandoned the Italians to their fate. While Grey’s action at Smerwick was sharply criticised by some factions at the English court, the Queen viewed it merely as a removal of another threat to the security of her realm. Accordingly she thanked and commended Grey for his endeavours. It is significant to note that there was no official remonstration by the Catholic powers, who, if the positions were reversed, would have probably acted likewise.

For Garrett Smerwick was the final, fateful step which placed him beyond all hope of redemption. His action made reconciliation with the Queen now virtually impossible. He had aroused the deepest anger in Elizabeth as he turned her greatest fear into stark reality by bringing England’s most dreaded enemy into Ireland; for that the Queen would never forgive him. Garrett’s great gamble had failed, and the fortunes of war were once again in England’s favour. The risk of Spanish intervention in Ireland receded; the honour of the Crown had been bloodily restored; Turlough O’Neill no longer threatened the Pale; the Burkes of Connaught had been subdued; and Viscount Baltinglass, his cause clearly lost, was attempting to flee to the continent. Hope abounded that the tiresome Earl of Desmond might do likewise.

For Eleanor the débâcle of Smerwick proved her long-held misgivings. Dr Sanders and his religious crusade had pushed Garrett onto the wrong horse. But a strange change now occurred in her husband. After Smerwick the earl had parted company with Dr Sanders, each embittered by his brief association with the other. Released from the pretence of espousing a cause in which he had no real interest, Garrett reverted to the cause which was life itself to him, the defence of the power and privilege of his title. The Queen, who after Smerwick considered the earl to be of little consequence, was amazed when it was reported that the Earle of Desmond, who was thought to be either dead or fled, ‘beginneth to appear and to show himselfe, having assembled a great companie.’30 The foreign ‘Pápa abú!’ exhortation of the crusade was replaced by the native war-cry of ‘Shanid abú!’ as the Earl of Desmond prepared to lead his followers in the only real crusade he knew.

For Dr Sanders the long, dismal, aimless campaign in Ireland finally exacted its price. Totally disillusioned with the Gaelic leaders and their Gaelic ways, so different from the glorious crusade envisaged by FitzMaurice, the sodden woods and oozing bogs of Kerry had sapped the fiery zeal and burning energy of the scholarly agitator. While English steel for three long years had diligently sought his head, ironically it was the Irish ague and famine that eventually killed ‘the supporting pillar of the Catholic faith’³¹ somewhere among the briary thickets of Clonlish wood in the damp spring of 1581.

While Eleanor might well have been amazed at the change in her husband and his determination to continue the rebellion, her amazement was compounded by the policy of peace and reconciliation suddenly being preached by his bitter rival, the Earl of Ormond. For years Ormond had opposed and plotted against Garrett and aided officers of the Crown in the spoliation of his estates. The extent and ferocity of the expeditions perpetrated by the new breed of English officials and soldiers in Ireland now alarmed him. Munster had already suffered more than enough. But Grey and the avaricious freebooting captains in his retinue, eager for the spoils of war, would not be stopped. While the Earl of Desmond’s estates and property were now easy pickings, Ormond could not help but wonder whether the greed and lust for land of the new breed of English military conquistadores would stop short at the lands of his enemy. Might equally greedy eyes be eventually cast on his own domain and questions raised regarding his extensive powers? Black Tom had to tread warily lest his hesitancy be interpreted as disloyalty and his estates subjected to the same fate as those of Desmond.

During the winter months of 1580–81 Eleanor lay low. Garrett was determined to continue the fight, and his rekindled resolution had also tended to make him stronger physically. Consequently when, in April 1581, the Countess of Desmond and her sister presented themselves to Ormond at Cork city, the reasons for their appearance were again open to conjecture. Ormond authorised protections for both women. Eleanor was examined before the Munster Commissioners, among whom was her former jailer in London, Sir Warham St Leger. Asked if she came on her husband’s behalf, she replied ‘that she was not authorised by him to sue for him but did it of her owne head’.32 She was then escorted back to her lodgings with instructions to commit her petition to paper. Ormond permitted her sister to depart to live under the custody of her brother, the Baron of Dunboyne. The real reasons for Eleanor’s unexpected appearance at Cork became apparent. Her husband was determined to continue a campaign in which she had suffered immeasurably and, it was reasonable to assume, she could take no more of the physical fatigue and mental anguish. But her written petition reflects a more likely reason: that she might find in Ormond, who now also wished for a cessation of hostilities, a likely means to achieve access to the Queen. Despite his new-found pride and determination, she realised that her husband could not hold out much longer.

In her letter Eleanor requested permission to take her case to the Queen so ‘that my travell maye be a meanes to brede a generall quiet into this province and precure mercie to my husbande nowe driven to distresse’.³³ She did not directly request a pardon for her husband, as Garrett had forfeited that right by aligning himself with a foreign power. She merely requested that she be permitted to seek the Queen’s mercy for herself and her husband. Her dilemma, she stated, was such that ‘as nature tyeth me to the companie of my Lord my husbande (who so unhapely is fallen into her Maties heavie displeasure) yet’, she assured them, ‘my dutie remembered to her Matie’.³⁴ She pleaded for the welfare and safety of her daughters who had suffered considerable distress and want during the course of their young lives. ‘I doe also beseche your wisdom’, she asked, ‘that I may take my daughters with me into England or els to leave them with my ffrendes untyll my retorne out of England . . . to remaine free and not as prisoners.’³⁵

Ormond forwarded her petition to the Lord Deputy and Council in Dublin, where it was received and endorsed by Grey’s secretary, Edmund Spenser. Spenser was influenced in writing his epic The Faerie Queene³⁶ by his term of service with Lord Grey in Ireland and, it is believed, he based the character of the evil temptress Radigund on Eleanor. Grey and his Council were unmoved by Eleanor’s petition and recoiled in assumed horror at what they termed ‘so arrogant a petition made without submission or confession of her husband’s horrible treason and her owne’.³⁷ They accused her of

the treason of bringing in of strangers into this realme by the practize of her husband, and by all conjecture much furdered by her, hath in all reasonable opinion so aggravated her former offences as we see lesse cause nowe than before to graunt a matter so offensive to her highness.38

Grey sought to continue the policy of his predecessor Pelham, to ensure that the Earl of Desmond would have no option but to continue in his rebellion, so that there could be no last-minute pardon from the Queen. Half a million acres of land was at stake, far too lucrative a prize to have snatched away by the tears of the rebel’s wife. Grey ordered that Eleanor be sent back to her husband so that her presence might slow him down; otherwise, he argued, ‘he maie go with as few companie as pleaseth him from wood to wood and from bogg to bogg or to Spaine or Scotland when to warrant further help . . . but’, Grey reasoned, ‘having hir in his train he cannot chuse whether he leaveth or goe’.³⁹ It was Grey’s opinion that the Earl of Desmond ‘hath more care for the said Countesse and her traine to leave them than he hath of himself’.⁴⁰

Eleanor’s case was not helped by the actions of Sir Warham St Leger, already with a foothold in Desmond land which he hoped to extend. His differences with the Earl of Ormond at this time were common knowledge; any sign that Black Tom favoured the rebel’s wife would likely be seized upon by St Leger as proof of his disloyalty. He wrote to Lord Burghley, the Queen’s chief secretary, to add a further impediment to Eleanor’s passage to the Queen:

In my simple opinion, ther can no good growe of her going thither. I vow to God . . . I know her to bee as wicked a woman as ever was bred in Ireland and one that hath ben the chief instrument of her husband’s rebellion. And if she bee licensed to go out, your lordship shall doo as good an act as ever you did in your life to this realme to cause hir hed to be stroken of or else to be kept in perpetuall ymprisonment.⁴¹

The cries of the avaricious became more strident against the slightest possibility which might deprive them of the prize so near their grasp. With the weight of official opinion firmly against her, Eleanor knew she was fighting a losing battle in her attempt to gain access to the Queen. Ormond was powerless, even if he wished, to help her and Grey accused him of dangerous and suspicious tendencies and relieved him of his position as military governor of Munster. He also persuaded the Queen to exclude the Earl and Countess of Desmond and Sir John of Desmond from any amnesty. Thus, with Ormond sidelined and Eleanor barred from England, Grey ensured that the devastation in Munster would continue until the Earl of Desmond was taken dead or alive in rebellion. The scent of potential riches wafted stronger than the acrid stench of decaying corpses and scorched earth as the eager English bloodhounds leapt from the slips and tore after their prey.

Eleanor rejoined her husband in the wilderness for the final agonising phase of the war. She had done everything in her power to salvage something, anything, from the ruins. Stalked like wild beasts, she and Garrett went to ground. The long winter months of 1581–2 were, according to the annals, notable for ‘great wind, constant rain, lightning and much tempestuous weather’.42 Like demented spectres they flitted across the decayed Munster landscape. They were pursued without respite by captain Zouche, an eager, uncompromising officer in the Munster service. He reported that he had almost caught the countess on several occasions, but Eleanor had merely lured his posse away from where her husband lay, too exhausted to flee further.

To the English soldiers who pursued her, the Countess of Desmond became an obsessive figure, dominating their gossip and nightmares. Stories of her evil, devious ways were peddled from camp-fire to camp-fire. She became the object of their fear, hatred and lust; the she-devil, the mythical harpy, a wanton woman. Was it true that under the pretence of seeking pardon from the Lord Deputy she had spied for the rebels? Was it not whispered that she was a witch? What self-respecting woman—and a countess to boot—would willingly live like a wild animal in the woods and bogs of this godforsaken country? The soldiers savagely cursed her as the incessant rain soaked them to the skin and quenched their camp-fires. They swore at her as they spat the spoiled biscuit and chewed the tainted, uncooked meat of their rations. They cursed her and the country that gave her birth as they vomited their guts out and shivered uncontrollably with ague and dysentery amid the oozing marshes and frozen mountain passes of Munster. Was it true that she traded her favours easily? The redrimmed, hungry eyes of the war-weary soldiers gloated at the prospect of her capture.

In the middle of a cold, misty November night the soldiers’ desire was almost fulfilled. A scouting party from the nearby garrison at Kilmallock came upon an isolated wattle cabin hidden deep in a wood. Eleanor, her nerves as taut as the strings of a crossbow, heard the sound of movement outside. She roused her exhausted husband. There was no time to awaken the galloglass, who, shrouded in their great woollen cloaks, were asleep under the surrounding trees. Supporting her husband, Eleanor stumbled from the cabin and into the darkness. The clansmen sprang to arms and engaged the English soldiers in a fierce battle. Desperately Eleanor looked for an escape. Before her was the dark outline of a river, swollen by the winter deluges. Behind her the victorious shouts of the English as they put the galloglass to flight. There was no escape. Quickly she helped Garrett to the river bank and into the ice-cold water. The river rose almost to their chins which with difficulty they kept above the fast-flowing current. Hidden from sight by the overhanging bank, they waited. The soldiers surrounded the cabin, and captain Zouche entered to effect the capture of the wretched fugitives. A makeshift bed stood in the corner, the coverings still warm to the touch.

Zouche ordered a search for the occupants, convinced that they were still in the vicinity. The soldiers spread out. They came to the river and searched in the undergrowth above the bank. Beneath them Eleanor held the sagging body of her husband afloat, her body almost numb in the icy water. She could scarcely breathe. Finally Zouche called off the search, and in silent agony Eleanor waited until the last sounds of the English posse faded and the strong arms of the surviving galloglass came to her rescue to lift her from the river. Returning to the cabin, they found that Eleanor’s clothing had been ripped to pieces and trampled into the mud by the frustrated soldiers. There was no time to recover. A voluminous Irish woollen mantle was wrapped about each of them, and they were carried into the night by the faithful Desmond retainers to seek another temporary shelter before sunrise.

While Zouche was to be again denied the capture of the elusive earl and countess, it was he who was destined to draw first blood in the renewed campaign at the beginning of 1582. Since the massacre at Smerwick, the subsequent death of Dr Sanders and the flight to the continent of Baltinglass, Sir John of Desmond had remained in Munster. In early January he set out to rendezvous with the Seneschal of Imokilly near Castlelyons, County Cork. On information received from a spy, Zouche lay in wait and, in the ensuing struggle, Sir John was killed by a spear thrown by his former servant named Fleming. Thus the life of a turbulent, unscrupulous and bold Geraldine was brought to a bloody end. Sir John was the most active leader of the Geraldines and, while he could be accused of many dark deeds and even darker designs, there was a certain decisiveness about his actions, in marked contrast to the vacillations of his elder brother. His antagonism to Eleanor and the deep mutual dislike that existed between them stemmed from many causes. Her Butler origins perhaps aroused his Geraldine prejudice; he resented her influence over Garrett; furthermore, she had borne his sickly brother an heir, thereby eliminating his own chances of succession.

The decapitated body of Sir John of Desmond was hung in chains over the main gate of Cork city. There it remained for almost three years, a grisly spectacle, until the skeletal remains were blown away into the river by a storm. Zouche despatched the head as a new year’s gift to Grey in Dublin, while the Queen was presented with Sir John’s ‘fair torquoise [ring] set in gold’.43 His estates in County Cork were later granted to captain Thomas Norris and Sir Walter Raleigh, while the poet Edmund Spenser received the castle and lands of Kilcolman. The war-mongers and war correspondents of the long campaign were amply rewarded for their efforts.

The Earl of Desmond alone remained to carry on the resistance. It was confidently expected that he would capitulate. But the earl rarely did what was expected of him. There was to be no surrender on his part. Moreover, the remaining Geraldine supporters clung to him as their sole means of salvation. If the earl received a pardon, it would be conditional, and preserve his life only. The estates of his dependent lords and clansmen were likely to be expropriated and parcelled out to the land-hungry English freebooters as payment for their services. The earl had no option but to continue the rebellion, or at least stay alive, until aid came from abroad or until Elizabeth relented. Garrett had become a prisoner of his heritage and during 1582 his liegemen and followers once more flocked to his banner. There was growing unease at the continued policy of spoliation being pursued in Munster. Even former perpetrators of the destruction, hardened campaigners like Raleigh and St Leger, now echoed the Earl of Ormond’s reservations for which they had previously condemned him. They expressed concern over the scorched-earth policy of Grey when it seemed likely that the Desmond estates might be forfeited and divided among themselves. Elizabeth swore at her Lord Deputy who, despite the resources she had given him, had accomplished little. Desmond, the ‘arch-rebel’, still roamed free, and Munster was desolate.

The earl still held out and, as one observer noted, ‘he continued still in his old accustomed spoiling and wasting the countries and trusting to no house nor castell did shrow himselfe in woods and bogs’.44 From his hiding-place, deep in the Glen of Aherlow, the earl reverted to attacks on his hereditary enemy, raiding the nearby lands of Ormond and skirmishing occasionally with the English patrols sent to track him down. Eleanor continued to accompany him and, as late as June 1582, Zouche reported yet another running encounter with the Countess of Desmond, whom he claimed he had ‘distressed’.

Although not named with Garrett in the original proclamation of 1579, Eleanor had loyally shared his hunted existence and had been on the run with him for over two years, enduring the greatest hardships imaginable. Her physical and mental health was near breaking-point. Her devotion and loyalty had been tried and tested in the icy waters of Munster’s marshes and rivers, on the cold floors of huts and caves, in hunger and in the countless sleepless nights, when every rustle and stir in the dark heralded the end. She had faced the wrath and vengeance of the Crown as she strove to intercede and negotiate on her husband’s behalf. Whether physically unable to bear the strain any longer, or, as is more likely, in yet another effort to intercede and seek some terms by which Garrett might yet surrender and survive, Eleanor appeared before Lord Deputy Grey at the English camp near Maryborough on 15 June 1582. Grey was moved by the emaciated woman who, in dirty ragged clothing, courageously stood before him to plead her husband’s case. But with his usual self-righteousness and sense of duty, ‘yet weighing the nature and quallitie of her actions and howe farre she might participate in the trayterous councelles and conspiracies of her husband’, he had her conducted ‘to the house of an honest merchant of Dublin there to remeine in estate of a prysoner untill . . . we might be directed how to dispose of her further’.⁴⁵

In semi-captivity in Dublin, Eleanor awaited her chance to intervene on her husband’s behalf. But by now Elizabeth and her Privy Council wanted an end to the war, and an end to the troublesome Earl of Desmond. There were to be no further negotiations or time- wasting interventions. Walsingham instructed Grey to withdraw the protection he had given Eleanor and ordered that she was ‘to retourne back agayne to her said husband within a certain tyme’, after which ‘if shee happen to bee taken she must then bee subject to such punishment as the laws will laye uppon her for her conduct’.46 The Crown demanded the unconditional surrender of the Earl of Desmond so that his estates and property could be used to pay the expenses incurred by the war. His death, however, would also bring the same result. In the somewhat naïve belief that Grey shared his desire for rapprochement, Walsingham advised him:

You should appoint some such person to delyver unto the countesse by wave of friendly advice that if she could persuade the said Earle her husband to come in and submitt him selfe simplie to her Maties mercie, the only waye hee can nowe take for his safetie, the Queen might then consider not only to leave him his liefe but also to use some further clemencie towardes him.⁴⁷

But Grey neglected to put the Queen’s offer to Eleanor, who was unaware that it had been made until some time later. Neither Grey nor his administration wished for any last-minute chances of reconciliation. Fortunes and reputations were at stake.

During the summer months of 1582, while Eleanor awaited her fate in Dublin, she was allowed to visit her son, still incarcerated in Dublin castle. James was now eleven years of age, and Eleanor was greatly distressed at the conditions under which he was being detained. She wrote to Lord Burghley and reminded him that she had voluntarily placed her son in the Crown’s care, but that the ‘boy now remaineth in the Castell of Dublin, without any kynd of learninge or brenginge upp or any to attend uppon him. . . . In consideracion of his innocency and tender yeares’,⁴⁸ she asked that he should be transferred from the unsuitable environment of the Castle and sent to England where, she hoped, someone in power might take a friendly interest in his welfare and future. As her husband had forfeited his chance of retaining his title and estates, it was an appropriate time to remind the Crown of the existence of his son. If her husband’s estates were attainted Eleanor hoped the Queen might agree to restore at least part of them, together with the hereditary Desmond title, to his son when he came of age, as she had done in the case of his kinsman the Earl of Kildare. An English education and upbringing, as with Hugh O’Neill, might be the way to ensure her son’s eventual succession to his inheritance. Her request for her son’s removal to England was subsequently granted.

Forced to rejoin her husband on the run, Eleanor protested to the authorities against the decision which, she maintained, ‘above all things in this world she abhoreth and ever hath and the greatest thing against her nature and bringing upp’.49 She again asked to be allowed to plead her case before the Queen, but the stern, immovable faces of Grey and the Council gave her her answer. The unconditional surrender of her husband was the only outcome they were prepared to accept. Wearily Eleanor returned to Garrett with the ‘offer’ of the Lord Deputy and Council. Infuriated, Garrett stepped up the tempo of his campaign against the Crown. He had now simply nothing to lose. A demonstration of power might yet induce the Crown to offer better terms to bring an end to the conflict. Moreover, the old Geraldine pride had been once again ignited, as he mounted his horse to instil the fire of battle into his war-weary liege lords and famine-stricken followers. All Geraldines who defied his call to arms were summarily dealt with. When informed that four of them had accepted Crown pardons, he ordered their arrest. They were brought before him and, it was reported, ‘calling them traitors, he had them stripped naked and slashed to death by his kinsmen, every sword in the band taking part in their death’.⁵⁰ ‘So shall every Geraldine be served who shall not follow me,’⁵¹ the rebel earl decreed. His actions shed the last vestiges of the pseudo-ideologies that had motivated him previously. The ageold aspirations for supremacy and independence resurfaced as the Earl of Desmond mustered his hereditary men-at-arms in a final attempt to halt the march of time. ‘Misery had given the man courage. . . . English ruthlessness threw him back into the life mould of the Gaelic captain.’⁵²

Significantly, as he had begun, Garrett took the fight to the territory of his rival, Black Tom of Ormond, and plundered Tipperary along the Suir valley to the borders of Waterford. At Knockgraffon, near Cahir, he soundly defeated Ormond’s brothers to put a winning touch on the age-old Desmond-Ormond feud. He was supreme in the palatinate of Kerry, where the English garrisons cowered for cover. Garrett’s old ally, the Seneschal of Imokilly, plundered east Cork and west Waterford and looted the Earl of Ormond’s grand new house at Carrick-on-Suir. The starving kern and weary galloglass flocked to the Earl of Desmond’s standard in one final furious drive in defence of the archaic world that had bred and sustained them. Their overlord for the first time assumed the dignity and stature of a hero and, as such, was destined to become a legend in folk memory.

By now Eleanor’s term of protection from Grey was drawing to an end. She had failed—perhaps she had not wanted to succeed—in persuading Garrett to seek a conference with the Lord Deputy and Council, who were now agreeable ‘to meet the erle 20 myles from Dublin if shee by any persuasion may drawe her husband thither’.53 Eleanor requested an extension of her protection, and this was granted. She also asked for a ten-day truce for Garrett and his followers, but this was denied. Eleanor brought three of her daughters, Margaret, Joan and Katherine, into Cork city and obtained Crown protection for them. There she was enveloped in a web of intrigue and double-dealing. She obtained an interview with Sir Warham St Leger, who informed her that Garrett’s life might be spared but that his restoration was not negotiable. St Leger knew better than anyone that such terms were repugnant to the earl, and, in any event, he had no desire to see the earl reconciled with the Crown and risk losing a slice of the Desmond estates.

At the same time as his offer to Eleanor, St Leger warned the Privy Council in England: ‘Desmond if received to mercy, will ever be a hollow-hearted subject.’⁵⁴ He informed the Queen that Desmond had embarked on a new conspiracy with Spain and was planning another invasion. But Elizabeth was weary of the long campaign and was still susceptible ‘to have the rebellion ended without blood’.⁵⁵ She urged that Desmond be induced to surrender. But too much blood had already been shed, and the Queen’s hopes were frustrated by her officers’ greed, as well as by the earl’s new-found enthusiasm for the fight.

It is ironic that the saga of the fall of the House of Desmond should be terminated by the self-same feud with which it had started. While Elizabeth had run out of money, ideas, and patience regarding the Desmond rebellion, the old rivalry between two Irish lords would achieve what her best administrators and military men had failed to do. And thus she left it to her old friend, Black Tom, to bring the bitter war to an end. Despite the misgivings of her officials in Ireland, she appointed him Lord General, with a force of a thousand soldiers and power to grant pardons to all rebels in the Earl of Desmond’s camp. By this time the plight of Munster had become desperate. The famine raging there for many months now spread across the country to the walls of Dublin city. In Munster, particularly towards the west, the situation was beyond belief. ‘The lowing of a cow or the voice of a ploughman was not heard from Dingle to the Rock of Cashel,’56 the annalists recorded.

Ormond’s plan was to confine the Earl of Desmond to one locality, preferably within Kerry, which had suffered particularly severely from famine. From Clonmel, Ormond drove Garrett, Eleanor and their followers before him westward, while the English garrisons of Limerick and Kilmallock attacked Desmond’s seneschal. One by one the earl’s allies deserted him and accepted the pardons offered. The Baron of Lixnaw submitted, as did lords Roche and Barry. The greatest blow to the Desmond cause came when Garrett’s long-time ally, the Seneschal of Imokilly, fearful for the welfare of his only son, then in the custody of St Leger, made his submission to the Earl of Ormond.

Deserted, but for a few galloglass and retainers, Garrett and Eleanor made the exhausting journey once more over the mountains into Kerry and were hunted day and night without respite. Eleanor’s female attendants were captured by the soldiers while, aided by a heavy fog, Eleanor and Garrett barely effected their escape. Garrett’s health had further deteriorated, and the galloglass now took turns to carry their lord on their shoulders to evade the relentless hunters who sniffed the scent of the kill. Eleanor sought to negotiate for terms, but Ormond would not agree to anything less than Desmond’s unconditional surrender. Ormond had also joined the ever-increasing pack who clamoured for the anticipated spoils. Claiming all the Desmond estate, on the grounds that his mother was the sole heir of the eleventh Earl of Desmond, his enemies sought to discredit him at court. ‘The Lord Generall’, it was said, ‘. . . sometime useth speech of a title he hath to all Desmond’s lands and seemeth to think he hath well deserved the same, though he had no title thereunto.’⁵⁷

The extent of the despair and the hopeless sense of isolation of the Earl of Desmond was revealed in his unprecedented appeal for help to his bitter rival Ormond. Abandoned in the wilderness by his friends, he now turned to his enemy as a last resort:

As I may not condemn myself of disloyalty to her Majesty, [he wrote to Ormond] so cannot I excuse my faults, but must confess that I have incurred her Majestie’s indignation; yet when the cause and means which were found and devised to make me commit folly shall be known to her Highness, I rest in an assured hope that her most gracious Majestie will both think of me as my heart deserveth and also of those that wrung me into undutifulness, as their cunning devise deserveth.58

As Black Tom qualified for the latter category, he refused Desmond’s offer to parley without first receiving his total surrender. In vain Eleanor pleaded Garrett’s abhorrence to be ‘destrainte of libertie, a thing’ which she well knew ‘he can not indure for he acounteth it more greyvous than death’.⁵⁹ But Ormond’s reply was to pursue the campaign with increased ferocity. The tally of ‘traitors put to the sword’⁶⁰ mounted. Captains, galloglass, constables and kern fell at the hands of Ormond’s army. Rumours reached Ormond that Desmond intended to escape by sea to Spain and he tracked him deep inside the palatinate of Kerry. Through Castleisland, Castlemaine and on into Dingle, Ormond’s forces encountered little resistance from a people beaten by war, want and hunger and whose lord, like a wild animal, had been reduced to live in the wastelands of his once vast lordship.

Finally, towards the middle of June 1583, Eleanor came before the Earl of Ormond and submitted unconditionally. Ormond reported to the Queen that the countess ‘put her self holye to your majesties mercye’, and added: ‘This poer lady lamenteth greatlye the follye and lewdness of her husband whome reason could never rule.’⁶¹ While Eleanor might well have lamented, it was, perhaps, not for the reason which Ormond felt obliged to report to Elizabeth, but because she had said her final farewell to Garrett. In the wild wastes of Slieve Logher, where they had taken a last refuge together, they had decided to part. He had become hampered by her presence and needed total freedom of movement if he was to continue to evade his pursuers. At least that was the excuse he chose so that she might be spared the fate that hourly awaited him. She was the mother of his heir, whose future safety would require all her energy and intelligence, if something was to be salvaged from the ruins. Her health was beginning to feel the effects of the long years of hardship. Her durability and resilience could only be marvelled at. She had withstood, without protest, hunger and deprivation. She had shared her husband’s brief glory and long humiliation. More politically able than he, she had never openly criticised his oftentimes inexplicable behaviour and actions; instead she had worked to expose the devious plots of his relatives and Crown officials; and in her dealings with the Crown she had shown no little diplomatic skill. As Garrett watched his countess disappear from view, the fighting spirit must finally have evaporated from his emaciated body. Without her, it would be as much as he could do, to hide from the bloodhounds that were fast following behind him.

The long hunt finally came to an ignoble end within the recesses of Garrett’s treasured palatinate. At the beginning of November 1583 he was run to ground with about twenty of his followers in the wood of Glanageenty in the parish of Ballymacelligot, about eight kilometres east of Tralee. Ironically, in view of what was to occur there, it was the country of the O’Moriartys, among whom Garrett had been fostered as a child. His remaining galloglass captain, Goram MacSweeney, had been captured and executed by Ormond. The Earl of Desmond now lay exhausted, ‘concealed in a hut, in the cavern of a rock’,62 while his followers scoured the barren countryside for sustenance. On the southern shore of Tralee Bay they seized a number of cattle, the property of Maurice O’Moriarty, pillaged his house and assaulted his wife. The O’Moriartys were incensed and sought the assistance of the English garrison at Castlemaine.

Accompanied by six English soldiers, the O’Moriartys tracked the cattle to Glanageenty. They fanned out, and one of them, Owen O’Moriarty, climbed a hill which overlooked the steep glen below. A fire flickered in the distance. As the first light of dawn on 11 November gleamed fitfully through the swirling morning mists, they attacked the camp in the glen. The guards ran for their lives. The attackers entered the cavern, where an old man was asleep on the ground beside the fire, attended by two frightened young boys and a woman. The old man roused himself. A soldier of the garrison, Daniel Kelly, lunged with his sword at the slowly rising figure, almost cutting off his arm, while another hit him a glancing blow to the head. ‘I am the Earl of Desmond,’⁶³ the old man cried out. The attackers were astounded. They had stumbled across the most wanted fugitive in memory. Visions of the bounty offered for his capture, dead or alive, spurred them into action before the earl’s followers could regroup and return. Kelly bound the earl and they tried to drag him through the woods. But Garrett could not walk and the wound in his arm was bleeding profusely. After a hurried conference, Kelly raised his sword a second time and decapitated the earl. With the grisly trophy clutched in his hand, Kelly and the rest hurried back to Castlemaine to claim their reward.

The head of the Earl of Desmond was sent to Kilkenny, from where Ormond forwarded the prize to the Queen.

God of his goodness who be praised for ever hath answered your L. expectations [he wrote to the Privy Council] by cutting of that wicked member whose head I have thought good to send by this bearer to her Matie as a profe of the happie ende of his rebellion.64

Elizabeth eyed the head of the Earl of Desmond in death as coldly as when alive and ordered it to be impaled on London Bridge. Ormond ordered a search for the earl’s body, but loyal Desmond retainers concealed the remains and later interred them in a small chapel at Kilnamanagh near Castleisland. The ‘old’ Earl of Desmond was in fact just fifty-one years of age at the time of his death.

Eleanor received the news of Garrett’s death at Kilkenny where she resided with her daughters under the protection of the Earl of Ormond. Whether she was shown the ghastly trophy as it was prepared for despatch to England is unknown. Perhaps, despite the cruel and often barbaric customs of the time, she was spared the ultimate anguish. The sense of inevitability about the outcome of the long struggle against both time and the Crown, and the future daunting role to salvage something for herself and her family from the wreckage, perhaps helped ease the pain and sense of loss at Garrett’s cruel end. She had done everything in her power to avert the catastrophe. Her wayward husband had become a prisoner of his pride, of his heritage and of the past, with dreadful consequences for himself and his family. As yet Eleanor had only begun to reap the bitter harvest he had sown.

‘And thus’, a contemporary chronicler recorded, ‘a noble race and ancient familie descended from out of the loines of princes is now for treasons and rebellions utterlie extinguished and overthrowne.’⁶⁵ The dead earl had bequeathed a terrible legacy to Munster, to his wife and children, and to his dependent followers. ‘And as for the great companies of souldiers, gallowglasses, kerne and the common people who followed the rebellion,’ the chronicle continues,

the numbers of them are infinite, whose blouds the earth dranke up and whose carcases the foules of the aire and the ravening beasts of the feeld did consume and devoure. After this followed an extreme famine, and such as whom the sword did not destroie, the same did consume and eat out.66

The death of the Earl of Desmond closed the final chapter in the history of medieval Munster. In death Garrett inadvertently attained the greatness and prestige that eluded him during his life. For tradition and literature chose to depict him as one of the great symbolic patriotic figures of history. In a perceptive comment on the process, Seán O’Faolain has written:

Natural tradition, reaching above individual human weakness, translated him into one whose equal was not in nobility, honour and power. It is fantastically untrue, and yet in its truth is the power and poetry of Ireland, and in its untruth her indifference to all her children whom she sacrifices ruthlessly to her needs.⁶⁷

But the facts reveal the personal ambitions and the defects that motivated Desmond in his campaign against the Crown. The absence of any ideological stimulus does not detract from his actions. On the contrary it helps us sympathise and identify with the basic human urge to retain power and patrimony and to survive, an urge that compelled him to strive against the tide of time and give meaning to the tribalistic war-cry of his house, ‘Shanid abú!’