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John Derricke’s Image of Irelande, Sir Henry Sidney, and the massacre at Mullaghmast, 1578

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Vincent P. Carey
Vincent P. Carey*
Affiliation:
Department of History, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
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Extract

One of the bitterest fruits of human conflict is the resort to massacre. From the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, combatants have regularly attempted to defeat their enemies through acts of indiscriminate killing. The history of early modern European colonial expansion is replete with such incidents. The remembering and recounting of them has become the stuff of historical and political controversy. The aim of this article is not to review these painful episodes, but to examine the sixteenth-century context in which these resorts to massacre occurred; to focus on one particular atrocity that achieved some notoriety in Ireland in the early modern period; and to suggest that a now largely forgotten episode, at Mullaghmast in County Kildare in 1578, was part of a pattern of conquest which implicated not only the soldiers and settlers who served in the Gaelic localities, but also the upper echelons of the English administration in Ireland. This pattern was accompanied by an apologetic ideology of civility and savagery best reflected in a central text, John Derricke’s Image of Irelande (1581). Derricke’s Image provides us with sufficient evidence to suggest that indiscriminate slaughter was an accepted tool in the effort to subdue Gaelic Ireland. Indeed, Derricke’s text adds weight to the conclusion that the atrocity at Mullaghmast in 1578 implicates no less a figure than Sir Henry Sidney, the quintessential renaissance English official in Ireland. Mullaghmast is important not only because it demonstrates the officially sanctioned brutality of the conquest, but also because it raises the question of how memory and history are constructed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 123 , May 1999 , pp. 305 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1999

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References

1 Ellis, Steven G., Tudor Ireland: crown, community and the conflict of cultures, 1470–1603 (London, 1985), pp 85–150Google Scholar; Lennon, Colm, Sixteenth-century Ireland: the incomplete conquest (Dublin, 1994), pp 65–113Google Scholar.

2 Submission of O’More, Ruaidhrí Caoch, 13 May 1542, in Kildare Arch. Soc. Jn., vi (1909-11), p. 79Google Scholar; Dunlop, Robert, ‘The plantation of Leix and Offaly’ in E.H.R., vi (1891), pp 61-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Like the rest of Gaelic Ireland, the O’Mores and O’Connors held to a form of communal title for their lands and practised partible inheritance. Succession to leadership within their septs was according to the age-old custom of competition within a four-generational group known as the ‘derbfhine’. For a more extensive account of these issues see Vincent P. Carey, ‘The end of the Gaelic political order: the O’More lordship of Laois, 1536–1603’ in Pádraig Lane (ed.), Laois history and society (forthcoming); idem, ‘Gaelic reaction to plantation: the case of the O’More and O’Connor lordships of Laois and Offaly’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, 1982), pp. 10–48. For a discussion of the formation of this and other colonial schemes up to 1570 see White, D.G., ‘Tudor plantations in Ireland before 1571’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1968)Google Scholar.

4 See Dunlop, ‘Plantation’ and, for more detail, Carey, ‘End of the Gaelic political order’.

5 Ibid.

6 Fiants Ire., Eliz., no. 474, is representative of the majority of these grants.

7 Edwards, David, ‘Beyond reform: martial law and trie Tudor reconquest of Ireland’ in History Ireland, v, no. 2 (1997), pp 16–22Google Scholar; the quote is from p. 18. These ‘entrepreneurial’ tendencies were endorsed as a complement to reform for most of the sixteenth century: see Brady, Ciaran, ‘The captains’ games: army and society in Elizabethan Ireland’ in Bartlett, Thomas and Jeffery, Keith (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp 135-59Google Scholar.

8 Fiants Ire., Eliz., nos 32, 69, 193.

9 Wrothe to Dudley, 23 July 1564 (P.R.O., SP 63/11/37); ‘A declaration made by the earl of Sussex to the lords of the council’, 29 Jan. 1565 (ibid., SP 63/12/19); lord justice [Arnold] and council to earl of Ormond, 7 Aug. 1564 (ibid., SP 63/11/65).

10 Arnold and council to Elizabeth 1, 31 Oct. 1564 (ibid., SP 63/11/97).

11 ‘By what means the countries of Ophaly and Leix may be brought to peace and quiete’, 1559 (ibid., SP 63/1/84).

12 Canny, Nicholas P., The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: a pattern established, 1565–76 (Hassocks, 1976), p. 67Google Scholar.

13 For the failure of these schemes see ibid., ch. 4, esp. pp 120–21.

14 Thomas Churchyarde, Churchyarde’s choise, quoted ibid., p. 122.

15 Quoted in Canny, Elizabethan conquest, p. 127.

16 Brady, Ciaran, ‘Spenser’s Irish crisis: humanism and experience in the 1590s’ in Past & Present, no. 111 (1986), pp 24-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Brady, Ciaran, The chief governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, 1994), p. xiiGoogle Scholar. This interpretation is challenged in Canny, Nicholas, ‘Revising the revisionist’ in I.H.S., xxx, no. 118 (Nov. 1996), pp 242-54Google Scholar.xs

18 ’The Irish in Fitzwilliam’s band of footmen’, 1565 (P.R.O., SP 63/15/4); Sidney to Cecil, 20 Apr. 1566 (ibid., SP 63/17/26); Sidney and council to privy council, 13 Apr. 1566 (ibid., SP 63/17/18); Sidney to Cecil, 18 Nov. 1566 (ibid., SP 63/19/51); Fiants Ire., Eliz., nos 1500, 1510.

19 He had two of these, Laoighseach and Cathaoir MacKedagh O’More, executed (Acts privy council, Ire., 1556–71, p. 241; Sidney to Sir Peter Carew, 28 May 1570 (P.R.O., SP 63/30/52)).

20 He is described as dangerous — with six or seven hundred followers — in February 1571. His previous service to the local English warlord Francis Cosby is noted (Fitzwilliam to Cecil, 5 Feb. 1571 (P.R.O., SP 63/31/8)).

21 Lord Justice Fitzwilliam and council to Elizabeth I, 7 Apr. 1571 (ibid., SP 63/32/2).

22 As evidence of this, O’More asserted that he ‘hath no other assurance of his life but the defence of his self and his [500] men’ (report by the earls of Ormond and Kildare to the lord deputy and privy council, 14 Aug. 1572 (ibid., SP 63/37/25)). For the size of O’More’s following see Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam to Elizabeth I, 4 Jan. 1572 (ibid., SP 63/35/2).

23 Fitzwilliam to Elizabeth 1, 18 Feb. 1573 (ibid., SP 63/39/27), where the deputy writes: ‘Thother consisteth of sondrie circumstances, as it cannot be comitted to writting, but it will admit matters disputable, whereby in sending and resending to and fro, the fit service of this yere wilbe mispent, and the opportunitie lost.’

24 Fitzwilliam to Burghley, Apr. 1573 (ibid., SP 63/40/3), where the deputy sought the authority to regrant all the vacant estates in the colony and the right to settle O’Dempsey in Galin (modern barony of Cullenagh). This strategic though inhospitable location was held by Laoighseach and Cathaoir MacKedagh O’More until 1570, when they were arbitrarily murdered by Sidney. Ciaran Brady mistakenly refers to it as inhabited by O’Connors and suggests that it is located to the west of Offaly (Brady, Chief governors, p. 262).

25 The brutality of the conflict is referred to obliquely in Nicholas White’s condemnation of Cosby’s government in Laois. He informed Burghley that some O’Mores of ‘great lynadge’ were cut down to the ‘terror’ of others (White to Burghley, 17 July 1573 (P.R.O., SP 63/41/80)).

26 Sidney to privy council, 17 Mar. 1577 (Letters and memorials of state … written and collected By Sir Henry Sidney, Sir Philip Sidney and his brother, Sir Robert Sidney, ed. Collins, Arthur (2 vols, London, 1746) (henceforth cited as Sidney letters), i, 164-8)Google Scholar.

27 Sidney to privy council, 15 Dec. 1575 (P.R.O., SP 63/54/17; Sidney letters, i, 81–5).

28 Sidney to Walsingham, 28 Apr. 1576 (P.R.O., SP 63/55/37; Sidney letters, i, 110–11), where he concludes that the cost of the Laois–Offaly experiment was suggestive of the difficulties of colonisation in general: ‘What a deare purchase this is, and hath bene to the crowne; arid, by example of this, you may judge of the rest, that are of this nature.’

29 Derricke, John, The image of Irelande (London, 1581), p. 185Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp 177–80, esp. p. 180.

31 Ibid., pp 181–3.

32 Ibid., pp l83-6, esp. p. l86.

33 Ibid., p. l86.

34 Ibid., p. 187.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., pp 187–8.

37 Ibid., p. 188.

38 Ibid., p. 192.

39 Ibid., p. l93.

40 Ibid., p. 194.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., p. 196.

43 Ibid., p. 199.

44 Ibid., pp 199–200.

45 Ibid., p. 201.

46 lbid., p. 202. For more detail on this dramatic incident see Sidney to privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/57; Sidney letters, i, 229–31). The Annals of Loch Cé add the fact that two of Rory Óg’s children were also killed.

47 Derricke, Image of Irelande, pp 202–4.

48 Ibid., p. 204.

49 Ibid., p. 205.

50 Ibid.

51 Sidney to privy council, 20 Feb. 1578 (P.R.O., SP 63/60/14; Sidney letters, i, 240–44);’ Memorials and notes for Mr Lodovick Briskett for the court’, 14 June 1578 (ibid., pp 261–2).

52 Sidney to privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/57; Sidney letters, i, 229–31).

53 Sidney to privy council, 17 Mar. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/57/39; Sidney letters, i, 164–8); Sidney to Elizabeth I, Aug. 1577 (Sidney letters, i, 205–6); council in Ireland to Elizabeth I, 12 Sept. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/6; Sidney letters, i, 216–18); Sidney to privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/57; Sidney letters, i, 229–31).

54 Sir Henry Sidney, ‘Narrative … to Sir Francis Walsingham’, 1 Mar. 1583 (P.R.O., SP 12/159/1), published as ‘Memoir or narrative addressed to SirWalsingham, Francis, 1583’ in U.J.A., 1st ser., iii (1855), pp 33–44, 85–90, 336–57; v (1857), pp 299–315; viii (1860), pp 179-95Google Scholar.

55 This plot is referred to in Chetile, Henry, Englandes mourning garment (London, 1603)Google Scholar. For government efforts to kill Shane O’Neill see Brady, Ciaran, Shane O’Neill (Dublin, 1996), esp. pp 51-2Google Scholar.

56 Sidney and council to Elizabeth I, 20 Apr. 1578 (P.R.O., SP 63/60/42; Sidney letters, i, 248–51).

57 Sidney and council to privy council, 1 July 1578 (Sidney letters, i, 263).

58 Sir John Harrington to Sir Anthony Standen, 1599, in SirHarrington, John, Nugae antiquae, ed Harrington, Henry (3 vols, London, 1779), ii, 23-4Google Scholar.

59 A.F.M., v, 1694–6; and commentary, pp 1694–8.

60 Derricke, Image of Irelande, p. 213.

61 Sidney to privy council, 17 Mar. 1577 (Sidney letters, i, 167).

62 Commission issued to Francis Cosby 18 Mar. 1577 (Fiants Ire., Eliz., no. 2997).

63 Ibid. (italics added).

64 Sidney to privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/57; Sidney letters, i, 229–31).

65 For ‘stratagems’ and ‘sleights’ see Derricke, Image of Ireland, pp 202, 205.

66 A.L.C., ii, 396–7.

67 This misdating may be attributable to the custom of adding material to the annals at the point where blank spaces were left in the vellum manuscripts at the end of each year by the original scribe. Later events and corrections were often added by subsequent scribes. In this instance the entry on Mullaghmast was ‘transposed’ by William Hennessy, the editor of the printed version, who also added in marginal notes in a different hand. The nineteenth-century editor (1871) took the liberty of rearranging the entries in order to place ‘them in their proper order [sic]’. The original text of the Annals of Loch Cé ended in 1577; the remainder (to 1590) was added by Hennessy from another manuscript in the British Library. See A.L.C., i, pp xxx-lix; ii, 396–7.

68 ’Moris Mc Lasy Mc Conyll, lord of Merggi, as he asserted, and successor of the baron of OMergi, with forty of his followers, after his confederation with Rory O’Moardha, and after a certain promise of protection, was slain at Molaghmast, in the county of Kildare, the place appointed for it, by Master Cosby and Robert Harpoll, having been summoned there treacherously under pretence of performing service.’ Dowling, Thady, ‘Annales Hiberniae’ in Annals of Ireland By Friar John Clyn and Thady Dowling, ed. Butler, Richard (Dublin, 1849), p. 42Google Scholar. ‘Moris Mc Lasy Mc Conyll’ O’More was a member of the Mac Laoighseach sept of the O’Mores, known supporters of Rory Óg. ‘Mortaghe Mc Lyse. Moore and Conell Mc Neale [Mac Lisagh] Moore’, a brother and nephew, are described by Fitzwilliam as two of O’More’s ‘principall and trustiest men’ (P.R.O., SP 63/40/3), while another brother, Niall mac Laoighseach, is described as Rory’s tánaiste by Sidney in June 1578 (‘Memorials and notes for Mr Lodovick Briskett’, 14 June 1578 (Sidney letters, i, 262)).

69 ’Lilium medicinae’ (R.I.A., MS 24 P 14; copied in R.I.A. cat. Ir. MSS, x, 1176–80; edited By Walsh, Paul, ‘Scraps from Irish scribes’ in Catholic Bulletin and Book Review, xx (1930), pp 141-55)Google Scholar.

70 According to Ó Cadhla, Muircheartach mac Laoighseach O’More surrendered his hostages to Sidney in return for this protection, Hartpole then killed them the next day. This act was followed shortly afterwards by the atrocity at Mullaghmast. The quotation is from Walsh, ‘Scraps from Irish scribes’, p. 146.

71 Text and translation, ibid., pp 147–8.

72 Ibid.: ‘agus mna agus macaim agus mindaoine agus daoine oga agus arsaidhi do marbhadh maille ria nach ar thuill a marbhadh do rer bharamhla.’ Ó Cadhla’s dating of this portion of the manuscript on 22 March 1577, and his relation of the death of ‘Mairghred Mhaol’, Rory’s wife, helps us positively fix the date of the massacre in March 1578. Margaret was killed in the cabin assault in October 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/6). Rory Óg escaped from this effort and was still alive in March 1578 when the atrocity was committed. Ó Cadhla clearly states that ‘Rudhraidhi Og o Mordha agus an chuid mhaires da hslichd arna ninnarbadh ag Gallaibh asa nduthaigh agus nach lamhuid a n-aighthi uirre le roinert Gall’ (Rory Óg O’More and all his living kinsmen have been driven from their country by the English and they dare not show their faces there because of the tyranny of the foreigners). Ciaran Brady sees Mullaghmast as a mopping-up operation after the death of Rory Óg, and he identifies the victim as Laoighseach mac Conaill O’More. In fact Dowling, Ó Cadhla and the Annals of Loch Cé all agree that it was Muircheartach [Murrough] mac Laoighseach. His father Laoighseach mac Conaill died in 1537. See Brady, Chief governors, p. 264.

73 Donagan, Barbara, ‘Atrocity, war crime, and treason in the English Civil War’ in A.H.R., xcix (1994), pp 1137-66Google Scholar; quotation on p. 1139.

74 Ibid., pp 1139–10.

75 Ibid., pp 1137–8.

76 ‘Tyrones book of grevances’, 13 Dec. 1597 (Bodl., MS Laud Misc. 612, ff 55–9). I am extremely grateful to Dr Hiram Morgan for this reference and for a copy of this manuscript.

77 Ibid.

78 Sidney may be obliquely referring to the slaughter when in April 1578 he relates: ‘Touchinge the rebell Rorie Oge, and his complices, it is straunge that the prosecucion of hym, having bene so fervent, his escapes so beyonde all opinion, the execution so blouddye, by cuttinge of his company from 500 to 50, which are now his remayne at the uttermost’ (P.R.O., SP 63/60/42; Sidney letters, i, 250). Sidney had to wait until 1 July 1578 to report on the death of Rory Óg on 30 June (Sidney to privy council, 1 July 1578 (P.R.O., SP 63/61/29; Sidney letters, pp 263–5)). Sidney left Ireland in September 1578, having been replaced as lord justice on 27 April by Sir William Drury.

79 Lee, Thomas, ‘A brief declaration of the government of Ireland’ in Desid. cur. Hib., ii, 91Google Scholar.

80 Ibid., p. 92. Dr Hiram Morgan is of the opinion that the atrocity in question is the 1574–5 slaughter of the Clandeboye O’Neills and that the official responsible was Sir William Fitzwilliam, the then governor, as he was also in 1594 (‘the lord deputy for the time being’) when Lee was writing.

81 This material is recorded by John O’Donovan in his notes to the A.F.M. entry on Mullaghmast (see above, n. 59). It is also the basis of ‘Account of the murder of Mullamast’ (R.I.A., MS 12012, ff 1–4).

82 This tale, from a Larry Moore, is reproduced with more local tradition in Fitzgerald, Lord Walter, ‘Mullaghmast: its history and traditions’ in Kildare Arch. Soc. Jn., i (1891-5), pp 379-91, esp. pp 385-7Google Scholar.

83 Beare, Philip O’Sullivan, Historiae Catholicae Iberniae compendium (1621), trans. Byrne, M.J. as Ireland under Elizabeth (Dublin, 1903), pp 6–9, esp. p. 8Google Scholar.

84 Ibid., p. 8.

85 O.S. letters, Kildare, pp 81–2.

86 A good eighteenth-century example is MacGeoghegan, Abbé James, Histoire de l’Irlande (3 vols, Paris, 1758-63; trans. O’Kelly, Patrick, New York, 1868), p. 478Google Scholar. Sullivan, A.M., Atlas and cyclopedia of Ireland and general history (New York, 1905), pp 95-6Google Scholar, is a good nineteenth-century example.

87 O’Connell’s Mullaghmast speeches on 1 October 1843 are reprinted in Kane, Eamon, Daniel O’Connell: rath of Mullaghmast (Castledermot, 1993), pp 58-9Google Scholar.

88 He stood in front of a painting ‘representing a group of wolfhounds, howling over the graves of the martyred dead’ and a motto which read: ‘No more shall Saxon butchery give blood gouts for repast, / The dog is raised and treachery expels from Mullaghmast’ (ibid., pp 38–9).

89 Freeman’s Journal, 2 Oct. 1843; The Nation, 7 Oct. 1843.

90 Fitzgerald, ‘Mullaghmast’, p. 387.

91 ‘Hark! hollow moans arise / Through the black tempestuous skies, / From the lone Rath swell; / For bloody Sydney there / Nightly fills the lurid air / With the unholy pomp and glare / Of the foul, deep hell. / False Sydney! knighthood’s stain, / The trusting brave in vain — / Thy guests — ride o’er the plain / To thy dark cow’rd snare’ (Kane, Daniel O’Connell, pp 74–5).

92 Here I paraphrase Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘Nationalism and historical scholarship in modern Ireland’ in I.H.S., xxvi, no. 104 (Nov. 1989), pp 329-51Google Scholar.

93 Dowling, ‘Annales Hiberniae’, p. 42.

94 Brady, Shane O’Neill, p. 55, where a reputed 4,500 people were killed in the O’Donnell lordship.

95 The government cited a total headcount of 725 by the end of the conflict (council to Elizabeth 1, 12 Sept. 1578 (P.R.O., SP 63/62/8)).

96 Sidney to privy council, 26 Nov. 1577 (P.R.O., SP 63/59/57; Sidney letters, i, 229–31).

97 I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Karl Bottigheimer, Clare Carroll and Bernadette Cunningham, who read various drafts of this article. I am also grateful to Jacquelyn Connelly for her encouragement. I owe a particular debt to Hiram Morgan for inviting me to present an earlier version to the Folger Institute seminar, ‘Text and conquest’, in September 1995, and who also commented on the draft. Any errors are, of course, mine.