Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland: The English Problem From Bale to Shakespeare 9780367257750, 9780429289781

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1 King Johan (1538), King John, and the Henrician Reformation
2 Englishness and Loyalty in Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica (1189) and Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577)
3 Portrait of a Lord Deputy: Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland and on the Page
4 Negotiating Violence and Equity in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book V (1596)
5 “This present quality of war”: Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV (1597–98)
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland: The English Problem from Bale to Shakespeare

Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland: The English Problem from Bale to Shakespeare examines the problems that beset the Tudor administration of Ireland through a range of selected sixteenth-century English narratives. This book is primarily concerned with the period between 1541 and 1603. This bracket provides a framework that charts the constitutional change of the island from lordship to kingdom, to the end of the reconquest in 1603. The impetus that brought Ireland to a “complete” conquest during these years has, quite naturally, led critics to associate England’s reform strategies with Irish Otherness. The preoccupation with this discourse of difference is also perceived as the “Irish Problem,” a blanket term broadly used to describe just about every aspect of Irishness that was perceived to be incompatible with the English imperialist ideologies. The term stresses everything that is “wrong” with the Irish nation – Ireland was a problem to be resolved. Dissent and Authority takes a different approach to the “Irish Problem.” Instead of rehashing the English government’s complaints about the recalcitrant Irish and the long struggle to impose royal authority in Ireland. This book posits that the “Irish Problem” was very much shaped and developed by a larger “English Problem”: namely, dissent within the English government. The discussions here focus on the ways in which English writers articulated their knowledge of and anxieties about the “English Problem” in sixteenth-­ century literary and historical narratives. This book reappraises the limitations of the “Irish Problem” and posits that the English government’s struggle with dissent, suspicion, and distrust within its own ranks was as detrimental to the conquest as the “Irish Problem,” if not more so. Dr. Jane Yeang Chui Wong is Assistant Professor of English at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She received her Ph.D. from University of Alberta, Canada. Her primary research area is in early modern literature and culture. More specifically, she is interested in the representations of Ireland in the early modern period and colonial administration between the 1534 and 1603. Her recent publications can be found in Theatre Research International, Sexuality and Culture, Critical Survey, and The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare.

Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

45 Jonson, the Poetomachia, and the Reformation of Renaissance Satire Purging Satire Jay Simons 46 Fortification and Its Discontents from Shakespeare to Milton Trouble in the Walled City Adam F. McKeown 47 Mythologies of Internal Exile in Elizabethan Verse Six Studies A.D. Cousins 48 Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature Edited by Sophie Chiari 49 The Early Modern Grotesque English Sources and Documents 1500–1700 Liam Semler 50 Intricate Movements Experimental Thinking and Human Analogies in Sidney and Spenser Bradley Davin Tuggle 51 Milton and the New Scientific Age Poetry, Science, Fiction Catherine G. Martin 52 Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland The English Problem from Bale to Shakespeare Jane Yeang Chui Wong For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com

Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland The English Problem from Bale to Shakespeare Jane Yeang Chui Wong

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Jane Yeang Chui Wong to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-25775-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28978-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

vii ix

Prologue 1 1 King Johan (1538), King John, and the Henrician Reformation 25 2 Englishness and Loyalty in Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica (1189) and Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577) 61 3 Portrait of a Lord Deputy: Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland and on the Page 92 4 Negotiating Violence and Equity in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book V (1596) 120 5 “This present quality of war”: Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV (1597–98) 152 Epilogue 181 Bibliography Index

191 215

List of Illustrations

P.1 Thomas Cockson, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, mounted on a horse (ca. 1599–1600). © The Trustees of the British Museum 20 P.2 Theodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, Part VIII (1599). Gualtherus Ralegh Amicitiam Contrahit Cum Rege Arromaia (Walter Ralegh in the New World). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University 22 3.1 John Derrick, Image of Irelande (1581), De.3.76. Turlough Lynagh O’Neale and the other kerne kneel to Sidney in submission. Special Collections, University of Edinburgh Main Library 117 5.1 The answers of the Earl of Tyrone to the articles prescribed unto him by the Lord Lieutenant-General and his assistants, the Lord Bishop of Meath and Sir Ge[o]ffrey Fenton (1597). The National Archives, Ref. SP 63/201 (268) 161–62

Acknowledgments

Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland: The English Problem from Bale to Shakespeare is a belated book in some ways, belated because the ideas that it explores build on an already immensely impressive body of literary analyses on the representation of Ireland in early modern literature; my first debt is to this group of writers, literary scholars, and historians. I could not have written this book without years of reading about the “Irish Problem,” which eventually became an “English Problem” in my interpretation. I am grateful to have developed this idea in the company of the learned and generous early modern literary scholars at the University of Alberta, where I first received critical but generous feedback on the feasibility of this project. Rick Bowers, Garrett Epp, Jonathan Hart, and David Gay were superb in pointing out some of the gaps in the work, and with their guidance, I patched them up as best I could. At that early stage, I was spoiled for choice with the extraordinary range of early modern holdings at Rutherford Library. In Ireland, I was well looked after, particularly at the Boole Library at University College Cork. There, I was privileged to have met John Barry, who shared his translation of Richard Stanihurst’s De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis with me even before it was published; this gentle and affectionate classicist is proof that automated translation programs will never make the cut, ever. I received generous support at Nanyang Technological University when I traveled to conferences and archives. On campus, I relied on Vincent Wong at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library; a writer could not have asked for a more resourceful and patient librarian. Hong Yuchen, Adlina Binte Ashar, and Long Chao are exemplary research assistants; their youthful scholarly instincts remind me that nothing is ever too belated. Special thanks also to Michelle Salyga and Bryony Reece at Routledge; their support and patience made all the difference to this book, especially when I was in the later stages of revising the chapters. Patrick Gray is the brilliant editor who worked on an earlier draft of Chapter 5, which was published as a special issue on Shakespeare and War; I would like to thank Critical Survey for permission to reprint the essay.

x Acknowledgments My greatest debt is owed to David Baker and Daniel Woolf. I found my way into literary scholarship because of the former, and ascertained my interest in early modern history because of the latter. This book could not ­ odern Ireland have been written without David, whose work on early m forms the contours of Dissent and Authority and whose long friendship has provided necessary sustenance to this project and much else. I could not have been completed this book without the unconditional support and encouragement of Daniel Woolf, whose commitment to historical research continues to serve as a model of scholarly excellence to literary historians. His work has played an important part in the way I think about continuities between early modern history and literature, past and present: for this, I am glad, and for his conviction that I can complete this project, and for his friendship, I am forever grateful. The strengths of this book are theirs, and the flaws are solely mine.

Prologue

Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland from Bale to Shakespeare explores the implications of dissent and the contention of authority within the English government at a time when the relationship between England and Ireland was fraught with suspicion, anxiety, distrust, and ambivalence. The earliest instances of these sentiments were sketched out in Gerald of Wales’ “ethonography” of Ireland in Topographical Hibernica (1187) and, later, in Expugnatio Hiberinca (1189), a narrative history of Henry II’s conquest of Ireland in 1169. For better or worse, these two works formed the historical imagination of Ireland in medieval and early modern Europe.1 The popularity and prominence of ­Gerald’s writings in early modern England come as no surprise. Henry  II’s invasion legitimized sixteenth-century efforts to reconquer Ireland. To further support the colonial agenda, Gerald’s Irish prejudice was repeatedly and conveniently appropriated to disparage Irish Otherness. This emphasis on this discourse situates I­ reland as a site of difference and resistance, and as an island from which the English ­nation – as the definitive center of British nationalism—looked to as an experiment-in-progress for imperial expansion. But as a critical framework, this approach falls short of addressing the struggles of colonial administration that was, in and of itself, another site of resistance and dissent. In short, it has left a “blind spot” in the way we study the difficulties that the English government faced in its attempt to address the

1 Gerald’s accounts of Ireland were circulated well before the sixteenth century, mostly in Italy. Petrarch loaned his copy of Topographia to Giovanni Boccaccio when he was preparing De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fl ­ uminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris (1363); Pope Pius  II used it in his De Europa (ca. 1458). More on these writers, among other, can be found in Eric Hayward, “Humanism’s Priorities and Empire’s Prerogatives: Polydore Vergil’s Description of Ireland,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C 109C (2009), see esp. 199, 204. For views of Ireland in Italy, see Eric Hayward, “Is Ireland Worth Bothering About? Classical Perceptions of Ireland Revisited in Renaissance Italy,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2.4 (1996).

2 Prologue “Irish problem”: by looking outwards, from imperial center to colonial outpost, we overlook struggle within England as she attempts to reconquer and govern Ireland. The premise of this book takes issue with the limitations of the conceptualization and interpretation of the “Irish Problem,” a blanket term broadly used to describe just about every aspect of Irishness perceived to be incompatible and at odds with English ideology; the term stresses everything that is “wrong” with the Irish nation – Ireland is the problem. Here, I propose a shift in perspective: if English representations of Ireland were problematic and contentious, so too, were English representations of Englishmen and their monarchs. Dissent and Authority is interested in the “English Problem,” which it broadly defines as the representation of dissent within the English government. More specifically, the discussions in this book focus on the ways in which early modern English writers articulated their knowledge of and anxieties about the “English Problem,” how their works reflect on and expose the government’s struggle with dissent and authority within its own ranks, and how this struggle influenced and shaped reform policies and ideologies in Tudor Ireland. My interest in the “English Problem” follows the contours of a varied set of presuppositions in the study of early modern Ireland. Few would argue that the general preoccupation with issues of nationhood and identity can be traced back to the “New British History” movement, and J. G. A. Pocock’s “British History: A Plea for a New Subject” (1975). In this seminal essay, Pocock calls for a more pluralistic approach to the study of British history, which “denotes the historiography of no single nation but of a problematic and uncompleted experiment in the creation and interaction of several nations.”2 He further extends this reach from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to include the Atlantic Archipelago – parts of North America, Australia, and New Zealand.3 Pocock’s commentaries on the relationship between English national identity and ­British identities are, especially within the Irish context, also speak to the work of David Quinn. Quinn’s interest in Ireland as a kind of “training ground” for colonization in the New World was especially influential in the 1970s and 1980s and is still important to our understanding of English imperial expansion in the early modern period.4 2 J. G. A. Pocock, “British History: A Plea for a New Subject,” The Journal of Modern History 47.4 (1975), 318. 3 J. G. A. Pocock, “The Limits and Divisions of British History,” American Historical Review 87.2 (1982). 4 David Quinn, “Ireland and Sixteenth-Century European Expansion,” Historical Studies 1 (1958); The Elizabethans and the Irish (New York: Cornell University Press, 1966). Also see Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established 1565–76 (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1976), and Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World, 1560–1800 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair, eds.,

Prologue  3 The potency of the Pocockian moment – if it can be boiled down to that  – was not lost on literary historians. Five years after Richard ­Helgerson’s Forms of Nationhood (1992), David J. Baker wrote ­Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, and the Question of Britain around Pocock’s “plea.” Baker’s question about British history is a question of Ireland; it is about the difficulty of trying to locate and problematize emerging notions of national consciousness that are bound up with English hegemony: it is no more possible to construct a thoroughgoing British literary criticism out of the archive of English literature than it is to construct a thoroughgoing British historiography out of the archive of the English political culture (in fact, they are often much the same archive). But it is possible… to scrutinize the specific textual means by which these archives were assembled and to get a sense of what was left in and what was left out and of the oscillating relation between them.”5 Baker’s desire to write the plurality back into British history through the literary route, firmly grounded in historical contexts, opens up avenues of discussions that are sometimes referred to as the “archipelagaic turn” in literary historical inquiry.6 Studies of early modern representations of Ireland can account for a large portion of this corpus, where Spenser and Shakespeare traditionally take center stage.7 Some critics associate the Spenser-and-Ireland The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and A ­ merica 1480–1650 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), and Anthony Pagden and Nicholas Canny, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800 ­(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). 5 David J. Baker, Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Question of Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). On dating the emergence of a national consciousness, see Leach Greenfield’s Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (­Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1992); Claire McEachern’s The Poetics of English Nationhood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Krishnan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (­Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Niav Gallagher, “The Emergence of National Identity Among the Religious in Britain and Ireland in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in The English Isles: The Cultural Transmission and Political Conflict in Britain and Ireland, 1100–1500, edited by S. Duffy and S. Foran (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), and William Turner, “Rhetoric of Exile and English National Identity,” Reformation 12.2 (2014). 6 David Coleman, “Introduction: Regional Religions and Archipelagic Aesthetics,” in Region, Religion and English Renaissance Literature, edited by D. Coleman (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 4. 7 Willy Maley gives us a glimpse of this thriving field of research in his “British Ill Done: Recent Work on Shakespeare and British, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities,” Literature Compass 3.3 (2006). On Ireland, see Andrew Hadfield and

4 Prologue “trend” with Stephen Greenblatt’s “Spenser and the Destruction of the Bower of Bliss,” yet others have been drawn into the conversation through Edward Said’s oft-quoted remark that “literary historians who study… Spenser, for example, do not connect his bloodthirsty plans for Ireland, where he imagined a British army virtually exterminating the native inhabitants, with his poetic achievement or with the history of British rule over Ireland, which continues today.”8 W. B. Yeats’s uneasy assessment of this bloodthirstiness is even more thought provoking; Ireland’s most distinguished poet is somewhat more ambivalent about Spenser’s cruel proscriptions in A View of the Present State of Ireland (ca. 1598).9 Andrew Hadfield’s magisterial biography on Spenser, the most comprehensive to date, leaves no doubt about Ireland’s influence on Spenser’s writings.10 Arguably, A View made The Faerie Queene Irish. Shakespeare has never been to Ireland, but the Irish allusions in his plays are plentiful; Gary Taylor immortalizes the ill-fated Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, as the Elizabethan Henry V.11 And then, of course,

John McVeagh, eds., Strangers to that Land: British Perceptions of Ireland from the Reformation to the Famine (Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1994); David J. Baker, Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, and the Question of ­Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Christopher Highley, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Richard McCabe, Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Stephen O’Neill, Staging Ireland: Representations in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007). For more recent studies, see Willy Maley and Rory Loughnane, eds., Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderers (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), and Willy Maley and Philip Schwyzer, eds., Shakespeare and Wales: From the Marches to the Assembly (New York; London, Routledge, 2016). 8 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (­Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), 184; Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), 7. 9 William Butler Yeats, The Cutting of an Agate (London: Macmillan, 1919): 190–91, 202. Also see Jane Grogan, “After the Mutabilitie Cantos: Yeats and Heaney Reading Spenser,” in Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos, edited by Jane Grogan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). 10 Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 11 Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, eds., The Oxford Complete Shakespeare: The Complete Works (First Edition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 260. Richard Dutton begs to differ; he argues that the “general” in the fifth chorus of Henry V is in fact a reference to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who replaced Essex as lord deputy and brought the Nine Years’ War to an end in 1603. See Richard Dutton, “‘Methinks the Truth Should Live from Age to Age’: The Dating and Contexts of Henry V,” Huntington Library Quarterly 68 (2005). On Essex as an icon of the Elizabethan era, see Paul Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (­C ambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins, eds., Essex: The ­ anchester University Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier (Manchester: M Press, 2016).

Prologue  5 there is Captain MacMorris. For scholars like Stephen O’Neill, MacMorris is the early modern stock Irishman: Indeed, the contours of the scholarly debate about early modern Ireland seem to be crystallized in [MacMorris] in Henry V: [MacMorris’s] questions about nationality in formation overlap with the concerns of literary scholars and also historians of the period about English identity in flux and/or an emergent Britishness, while his simultaneous instancing of a stage Irish type and its partial challenging speaks to those critics interested in colonial stereotyping and the imperial unconscious of culture.12 O’Neill’s observation of MacMorris’ predicament echoes a longstanding concern among early modern scholars. In literary studies, Ireland is often treated as the exemplar par excellence for discussions of early modern forms of Britishness. There is a paradox here: in the very act of uncovering England through examining Ireland, critics run the risk of repeating the original colonial manoeuvre whereby early modern English officials used Ireland as a way of speaking freely about England.13 By engaging in interdisciplinary conversations between literary scholars and historians, the essays in Baker and Maley’s British Identities and English Renaissance Literature go some way in trying to rectify this problem; the editors acknowledge their engagement with Pocock’s “plea” as “[s]omewhere between an unexamined Anglocentrism and an equally uninterrogated Anglophobia, [Pocock] implied, lay as yet unconsidered historical complexities, contradictions, and crossovers.”14 Anglocentrism becomes a profanity. How, then, do we redress this issue? Jane Ohlmeyer proposes two ways to approach this problem: one is to “chart how the nature of ‘Englishness’ changed over time,” and the other way is to pay more attention to Irish writers.15 The first, it seems, has been addressed to some degree, though there is something to be said for the forward-­ looking predilection for this idea. In the general scheme of things, medieval political exigencies seem to be all but invisible in the literary historian’s preoccupation with early modern nationhood and identity

12 Stephen O’Neill, “Beyond MacMorris: Shakespeare, Ireland and Critical Contexts,” in Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderers, edited by Willy Maley and Rory Loughnane (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2013), 247. 13 David J. Baker and Willy Maley, “Introduction: An Uncertain Union,” in British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, edited by David Baker and Willy ­M aley (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3. 14 Ibid., 1–2. 15 Jane Ohlmeyer, “Literature and the new British and Irish Histories,” in British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, edited by David Baker and Willy Maley (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 246, 249.

6 Prologue in Ireland.16 Ohlmeyer’s suggestion regarding Irish writing is, however, more difficult to address. The push for a comparative approach poses a real challenge for scholars of British literature and history who are, after all, people who read and write in English. This being said, there are some concerted efforts to examine representations of Ireland from an Irish lens, but they are so few that it is uncertain as to whether or not they can “change” the way we study early modern Ireland. Of these, the most notable are Patricia Palmer and Richard McCabe. “The Elizabethan texts,” Palmer argues, buzz with reports of battlecries, oaths, insults, parleys, submissions, defiances, deceptions, rumours, curses. Yet, at the heart of these reports from a noisy island, there is a paradox: the language that made most of the noise is almost never heard. English texts use their linguistic monopoly to construct the illusion of a monophone island; ‘voices off’ are kept there. It is necessary to realize just how overwhelmingly Irish-speaking the island was on the eve of the Elizabethan conquest in order to appreciate the remarkable bravura with which the illusion is sustained—and the force of the ideological imperatives to which it answers.17 McCabe does just that in Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference. He traces the fault lines of Anglocentrism in Spenser’s works and Spenser’s misrepresentations in the transnational dialogue – or, really, a composite of monologues conceived as a dialogue. What is at issue here is the language of representation; Palmer’s and McCabe’s arguments and goals are not the same, but their general agendas are similar: they want to retrieve the “lost” voices of early modern Ireland in British literature.18 So, where does that leave most of us, who are not Gaelic readers or writers? The lack of access to Gaelic resources and languages, for Baker, 16 Robert Rees Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Linda E. Mitchell, “Gender(ed) Identities?: Anglo-Norman Settlement, Irish-ness, and The Statutes of Kilkenny of 1367,” Historical Reflections 37.2 (2011), John Gillingham, Conquests, Catastrophe and Recovery: Britain and Ireland 1066–1485 (London: Vintage, 2014), “Normanizing the English Invaders of Ireland,” in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, edited by Huw Pryce and John Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), and The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2000). 17 Patricia Palmer, Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature and Elizabethan Imperial Expansion (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 40–41. Also see Palmer’s The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 18 McCabe, Richard. Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Prologue  7 is one of the reasons why British criticism on early modern Ireland has reached an impasse: “Good work is still being done, here and there, but the energy has moved elsewhere. In large part, this is simply because the possibilities of this approach have been exhausted, or perhaps it’s better to say that its organizing insights are no longer novel.”19 There is little doubt that these language barriers have resulted in a “conceptual stopping place” for literary historians.20 To this, I would like to add that if indeed the study of early modern Ireland has reached an impasse, it is due in part to a longstanding predisposition that frames early modern Ireland within the confines of Pocock’s “plea”. The relentless predilection to “retrieve” lost Irish voices and to question English (mis)representations of those voices have, in turn, undermined the prospect of finding any promise in attending to English voices. The overarching problem here is paradoxical: by pluralizing Britishness, and even Irishness, we inevitably end up with a brand of monolithic Englishness that assumes that English authorities were united in their views about Irish conquest when this is hardly the case. Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland responds to this problem. More particularly, it focuses on explicating dissenting voices within the English community, and among colonial administrators in Ireland and their counterparts in England. In so doing, I attempt to piece together a composite narrative of the ways in which English voices perceived ideas of faith, loyalty, and authority, and how these discordant voices influenced the making and unmaking of political realities that were often imagined but not explicitly visible in English literary and historical narratives. This book does not seek to address the (mis)representations of early modern Ireland but to analyze the articulation of English dissent and the contestation of authority in the development of early modern Irish reconquest. The development of Tudor colonial government before the ecclesiastical reforms that led to the 1536 reformation parliament provides an important framework for the discussion of dissent and authority in early modern Ireland. The narrative of Tudor Ireland reaches back to Henry VII’s lordship of the island and his relationship with the most important Anglo-­I rish magnate of his reign, Gerald Fitzgerald, the eighth earl of Kildare. In spite of multiple intermittent interruptions, the Kildare ascendancy lasted into the reign of Henry VIII, when it was permanently dissolved in wake of the 1534 rebellion. 21 The collapse 19 David J. Baker, “Britain Redux,” Spenser Studies 29.1 (2014): 21–36. 20 Ibid., 27. 21 For a comprehensive overview of Kildare’s role in Ireland, see Steven Ellis, “Tudor Policy and the Kildare Ascendancy in the Lordship of Ireland, 1496–1534,” Irish Historical Studies 20.79 (1977), and his “Henry VII and Ireland 1491–1496,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, edited by James Lydon (Dublin: Irish

8 Prologue of the Kildare ascendancy was keenly felt in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion; Thomas Cromwell received reports that “the people of the Pale ‘covet more to see a Geraldine reign and triumph than to see God come amongst them.’”22 Kildare’s prominence can be attributed to the government’s lack of an active reform program that later placed the governance of Ireland under the direct control of the Crown. For decades, English monarchs agreed that it was more politically and economically expedient to draw on the military and financial resources of the earl than to fund the maintenance of the lordship from the English exchequer. The oft-quoted story of Kildare’s meeting with Henry VII also underscores the king’s favor of his Anglo-Irish deputy. Summoned to the English court to answer for his burning of a cathedral in Cashel in his pursuit of the Bishop of Meath, Kildare responded that he set fire to the cathedral because he thought the bishop was in it. Appearing before the king and Kildare, the bishop complained of the earl’s unrestrained tyranny: “all Ireland cannot rule him [Kildare],” but he must have been disappointed that what followed was neither reprimand nor punishment: “‘No?’ said the King, ‘then he is meet to rule all Ireland, seeing Ireland cannot rule him.’”23 Henceforth, Kildare was sent back to Ireland with great gifts and made Earl Deputy of Ireland for life. Modern historians have commented on this exchange and pointed out an underlying reciprocity between king and that they both shared “a sense of black humour”; the king is said to have taken some delight by setting the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel, to work in the royal kitchen, where he was made to serve his former Irish supporters when they were invited to dine at court. 24 The arrangements between Henry VII and Kildare, later vehemently condemned by English reformers as “bastard feudalism,” remained more or less unchanged for many years, but they gradually became strained with the transition of kingship in 1509. In the early years of Henry VIII’s reign, the status quo in Ireland was maintained. Academic Press, 1981), Colm Lennon, “The Making of the Geraldines: The Kildare Fitzgeralds and their Early Historians,” and Mary Ann Lyons, “The Kildare Ascendancy,” both in Aspects of Irish Aristocratic Life, edited by Patrick J. Cosgrove, Karol Mullaney-Dignam, and Terence Dooley (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2014). A more condensed version can be found in S. J. Connolly’s Contested Island: Ireland 1460 –1630 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 22 James Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003 [originally published in 1972]), 213. 23 J. S. Brewer and William Bullen, eds., Calendar of Carew Manuscripts: Book of Howth, The Conquest of Ireland (London: Longman & Co. and Trubner & Co., 1871), 180. Hereafter cited as Carew MSS. 24 Thomas Bartlett, Ireland: A History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 74.

Prologue  9 Royal attitude toward Irish matters – if it can even be described as “policy” – was reactive and somewhat haphazard in character, especially in comparison with the more systematic forms of reform in the Elizabethan years. David Quinn divides the government’s management of Irish matters into two phases; the first dates from 1496 to 1518, and the second to the period after Kildare’s death (in 1513), when Gerald Fitzgerald, the ninth earl of Kildare, inherited the earldom. Aside from being summoned to court in 1515 to resolve inheritance issues and to address William Darcy’s (under-treasurer) charges of his “swamping” of Gaelic practices and customs in Anglo-Irish areas, the ninth earl did not face major interferences from the Crown until about 1518. 25 From the summer of 1518 onward, Henry VIII began to take more interest in Ireland, in part because of the intensifying conflict between Kildare and Piers Butler, eighth earl of Ormond later first earl of Ossory, and a fresh series of complaints lodged against Kildare by Ormond, possibly including the king’s suspicion of the Fitzgerald Desmonds’ foreign intrigue. In early 1519, Kildare was summoned to court in a memorandum from the king: “Commission to appoint a new deputy, he [Kildare] being summoned to the King’s presence on the affairs of Ireland.”26 Edmund Campion’s A Historie of Ireland (1571) presents a sympathetic, dramatized account of Kildare’s interrogation. Campion’s description of the scene suggests that Kildare is a victim of a Wolsey-Ormond conspiracy. Outraged at the accusations directed at him, Kildare lashes at Wolsey: It is good reason (quoth the Earle) that your Grace beare the mouth of this chamber. But my Lord, those mouthes that put this tale into your mouth, are very vvide mouths, such indeed as have gaped long for my vvreck, & novv at length for vvant of better stuff, are fain to fill their mouth vvith smoak […] But goe to, suppose hee [Desmond] never bee had, what is Kildare to blame for it, more then my good brother of Ossory, notwithstanding his high promises, having also the Kings power, is glad to take egges for his money, and bring him in at leisure. Cannot the Earle of Desmond shift, but I must be of counsell? Cannot hee be hid, is a doughty kinde of accusation, which they urge against me […] See hovv loosely this idle reason

25 David B. Quinn, “Henry VIII and Ireland, 1509–34,” Irish Historical Studies 12.48 (1961), 321. 26 J. S. Brewer, ed., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 3, 1519–1523 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1867), no. 17. Hereafter cited as L. & P. Hen VIII; Quinn, “Henry VIII and Ireland,” 323.

10 Prologue hangeth, Desmond is not taken, vvell, vve are in fault: why? because you are: vvho proves it? no body. What conjectures? so it seemth. To vvhom? to your enemies vvho tolde it them? What other ground? none.27 The authenticity of Campion’s account is less important than the message that he attempts to convey: it underscores two distinct but interconnected types of conflict within the administration of Ireland. In the first instance, it rehashes the ancient Geraldine-Butler rivalry, and in the second instance, the strained relationship between deputy and king underscore the nature of proxy government and the difficulties that came with it, especially when Crown representatives were challenged.28 During his interrogation of Kildare, Wolsey purportedly condemned the earl for behaving more like the “King of Kildare” than the king’s deputy and subject: “you reigne more like then rule the Land: where you are malicious, the truest subjects stand for Irish enemies; hearts and hands, lives and lands are all at your courtesie.”29 Wolsey’s charges against Kildare were taken seriously enough to warrant the replacement of an Anglo-Irish deputy with an English-born officer. The appointment of Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey (later, third Duke of Norfolk), to replace Kildare in 1520 signaled the government’s increasing interest and intervention in Irish affairs. Moreover, Surrey was made lord lieutenant of Ireland in March 1520, a position not granted since 1460.30 Even though Surrey’s brief stint in Ireland (1520–22) was not entirely successful (owing more to the lack of resources than his ability to command),  contemporaries 27 Edmund Campion, A Historie of Ireland (1571) (Dublin: Hibernia Press, 2009), ­166–67. Campion’s account is generally perceived to be pro-Kildare. Historie of ­Ireland was written during his exile in Ireland, where he found protection with the earl and his associates. See Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life (Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015), 81; Colm Lennon, “Edmund Campion’s Histories of Ireland and Reform in Tudor Ireland,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early ­English Jesuits: Essays in Celebration of the First Centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford 1896–1996, edited by Thomas M. McCoog (Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell, 1996). 28 A more detailed discussion of the Geraldine-Butler rivalry is beyond the scope of this study; they include, among other items, land/property disputes and grants/ withdrawals of political offices in the Irish executive. English monarchs in the late medieval and early modern period have often exploited this rivalry, often to their ­ udor rule wore on, the Butlers were generally perceived to be more advantage. As T aligned with Crown policy and thus were also generally considered to be more loyal to the Crown than the Kildare and Desmond Geraldines. See David Edwards, The Ormond ­L ordship in County Kilkenny 1515–1642 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), esp. Chapter 2, “The Ormond Inheritance,” and Chapter 3, “Revival and Rift: The Politics of Coign and Livery, 1515–69.” 29 Campion, 166. 30 On the authority of the lord deputy and lord lieutenant of Ireland, see Chapter 3.

Prologue  11 in Ireland would have recognized his appointment as an unmistakable gesture of the government’s (re)assertion of royal authority.31 If the English government had any Irish policy to speak of in the 1520s and 30s, it was characterized by experimentation and a desire to consolidate royal authority. There was also a keen awareness that a fullscale reconquest was ideal in theory but unrealistic in practice. With few exceptions, Kildare’s deputyship of Ireland remained unchallenged because he governed out of his own pocket and because he understood the delicate political dynamics of the island; his longstanding rapport with and influence over the Anglo-Irish and Irish aristocracies were integral to his ability to govern. Thus, by shifting the burden of local governance from an Anglo-Irish lord like Kildare to English-born governors, the English government also became primarily responsible for cost of keeping Ireland at peace. Later, the financial burden on the government can be attributed in part to the stamping out of “coign and livery” as an integral component of reform. Coign and livery refers to the exactions that the lords imposed on local residents to support military operations. The amounts exacted varied in different parts of the country and were often reported as a form of extortion by English authorities in the sixteenth century.32 This practice was abolished to prevent the lords from keeping their own armies, which could potentially threaten English rule. The maintenance of Ireland, once dependent on the great lords, later became the government’s responsibility. Under the deputyship of Thomas Radcliffe, third earl of Sussex, “cess” was introduced: this was a form of purveyance imposed on the civilians in which victual, accommodation, and transportation were levied for the English army. As a corrective form of purveyance against coign and livery, cess was calculated at a fixed percentage of what was available in any given household. In the later Elizabethan years, the cost of maintaining English garrisons and administration in Ireland saw a dramatic increase in war expenditure; discontent among those who participated in the war efforts was widespread.33 The Nine Years War (1594–1603) was the most expensive war fought in the Elizabethan era, prompting a servant of Essex to remark: “I pray to

31 Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, of the Reigns of Henry VIII., ­E dward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, 1509–1603. Vol. I, 10. I: 1509–1573, edited by Hans Claude Hamilton, vol. 1 (London, England: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1860), 10 March 1520. Hereafter cited as CSPI. 32 For Elizabethan attitudes toward coign and livery, see David Heffernan, “Six tracts on ‘coign and livery’ c.1568–1578,” Analecta Hibernica 45 (2014), 1–33. On ­Sidney’s proposal on cess, see Ciaran Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 33 Charles Greig Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 283.

12 Prologue God we may return conquerors, for sure I am we shall return beggars.”34 Things were not so different in the 1520s. The arrival of Surrey in Ireland was thus more spectacular than practical. Less than six months after his official commission, the new lord lieutenant reported to Wolsey that some of his soldiers, for lack of pay and victuals, conspired to turn to piracy for survival.35 In the same year, Surrey complained bitterly that he simply could not afford to upkeep his lieutenancy and balked at Wolsey’s suggestion that victuals for the soldiers be paid out of their salaries. Surrey refused to maintain the king’s troops, and understandably so, as he remarked, “[These charges] will cost me more than I receive from the King and all the revenues of my lands in ­England.”36 By the end of 1520, Surrey’s exasperation was explicit: “Ireland will not be reduced without compulsion; and if the King do not propose to go through with the conquest of it, [he] will be glad to be exempted from any longer wasting the King's treasure.”37 The early Tudor experiment with reasserting royal authority in Ireland under the auspices of English-born lord deputies was briefly put on the backburner, following Surrey’s and William Skeffington’s (1529–32) recall. Kildare was soon restored again (1524–29; 1532–34). It quickly became apparent that Henry VII’s assessment of the late Kildare was right: no one could govern Ireland but the Kildares. Surrey’s replacement, ­Ormond, also discovered that even he did not have the means to maintain the deputyship (1522–24) without substantial financial support from ­England. Somewhat ironically, the attempt at reconquest was revived again, more systematically, as a result of the Kildare rebellion. The aftermath of the rebellion brought about more direct intervention from the government; the reforms of 1536–1537 essentially changed the political, social, and cultural landscape of the island. The attainders and the dissolution of monasteries, which resulted in the redistribution of land and authority from the Old English to the New English, further heightened tensions between the two groups; assumptions and expectations about English identities and loyalties were contested. Reformation and counter-­ reformation reorganized not one but two nations’ relationship with state and god, men and offices.

34 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 456. 35 L. & P. Hen VIII, Vol. III, Part I: 1519–21, no. 972. 36 Ibid., no. 889. Just about every subsequent chief governor after Surrey expressed frustration about their dwindling financial prospects upon taking on the governorship of Ireland. Sir Henry Sidney attributes his financial and political losses to his deputyship (more details can be found in Chapter 3). Even Charles Blount, Lord Deputy Mountjoy, who finally completed the reconquest of Ireland in 1603, “complained to [­William] Cecil that he was likely to return from Ireland a beggar.” See John ­McGurk, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: The 1590s Crisis (Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester University Press; St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 19. 37 Ibid., no. 1097.

Prologue  13 The 1541 constitutional change of Ireland from lordship to kingdom and the subsequent religious reformation in Ireland triggered a reshuffling and reconfiguration of political loyalties beyond Ireland and England. By cutting Ireland’s ties with Rome, the Catholic church found itself disposed to sanctioning Irish rebellion against England. The excommunication of English monarchs in the Tudor era absolved Irish subjects of acts against their rulers. The Irish aristocracy was careful, though not always successful, in nurturing their existing ties with Rome, France, and Spain, and as the Armada episode demonstrated, Ireland was a door that could open England to foreign invasion. As such, religious reformation in Ireland remained a delicate matter through much of Elizabeth’s reign. To the chagrin of the more zealous reformers, religious reformation was rarely prioritized. Adam Loftus and Thomas Jones’s complaint to Archbishop John Whitgift indicates the queen’s lukewarm approach to religious reformation: “[H]er majesty hath expressly directed them not to stir or meddle in matters of religion… priests had been given their liberty which many had used to encourage rebellion… it would seem her Majesty was prepared to allow constant breaches of the law.”38 In 1591, Sir George Carew warned Lord Deputy William Fitzwilliam that the queen “did not dislike your government, but feared that you were too forward in dealing with matters of religion.”39 Even after the outbreak of the Nine Years War, Elizabeth insisted that her officials in Ireland must refrain from religious persecution. Her cautiousness in this matter was largely associated with fears that the Irish would turn to Spain for help. She was right. James Fitzmaurice’s alliance with Philip II during the Desmond rebellion (1579–83) pushed the faith-and-fatherland agenda to a new level when Hugh O’Neill secured Spanish support in the Nine Years War.40 While the religious reformation was achieved to varying degrees 38 McGurk, The Elizabethan, 16. 39 Carew MSS Vol. 3 58 40 The failure and success of religious reformation in Ireland is covered in B ­ rendan Bradshaw’s seminal work, The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (1974). Bradshaw argues that the destruction of the Catholic clergy and monasteries were made possible because the government was able to negotiate terms that benefited some of the most prominent Catholic gentlemen in the Pale. This motion proves that the men, who initially opposed the bill, objected under the pretense of the loss of faith when, in reality, it was more likely that they did so because of potential financial losses; many of the men had some monetary stakes with the monasteries through services they provided. Though Bradshaw’s argument is widely accepted, a lively debate on this subject can be found in his essay, “Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland” (1978), Nicholas Canny’s “Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: ‘Une question mal posée’ ” (1979), and Karl Bottigheimer’s “The Failure of Reformation in Ireland: ‘Une question bien posée” (1985). Also see John Bale’s attempt to preach and stage his morality plays in Kilkenny; he failed miserably and was attacked and expelled from the town quickly. An overview of the event can be found in Andrew Hadfield and John McVeagh’s Strangers to that Land: British Perceptions of Ireland from the Reformation to the Famine (1994), esp. Chapter 2, “John Bale and the Reformation in Ireland,” pp. 30–35.

14 Prologue of success between the 1540s and 90s, the New English arrivals in Ireland, fiercely Protestant, remained prejudiced against the Old English and their ancient ties to the Roman church, even those who converted were still perceived to be vulnerable to disloyalty. The ideological divide between the Old and New English was already deeply entrenched long before the upheavals of the Henrician reformation, though it developed out of a different type of conflict in twelfth-century Ireland. Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica (1187) is an early example of ethnography, and it was integral in shaping the popular imagination of Ireland in the early modern period. His second major work on Ireland Expugnatio Hibernica (1189) is especially important within the context of this book; it presents an account of the political and cultural implications of the first conquest, and in doing so, it also provides a window into the ways in which England considered its legacy in the reconquest of Ireland. As Richard Stanihurst’s contribution to Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) shows, Gerald’s descriptions of the achievements of the first invaders and their unease with Crown interference set the tone of colonial administration for centuries to come. Stanihurst’s use of Gerald’s twelfth-century narrative in his Irish Chronicle is not merely a retelling of medieval Irish history but an introspective commentary, characterized with a mixture of conviction, contradiction, and ambivalence, about the sixteenth-century reformation of Ireland. In asserting the ancient authority and achievements of the early invaders, the Elizabethan chronicler essentially downplays the interference of the New English and, more indirectly, English ideas on how best to reform Ireland. Stanihurst’s representations of the plight of the Old English community and his ideas of reform echo Gerald’s work. These echoes serve an important purpose: they reassert the achievements of Old English history and, in doing so, question the agenda of the New English order. While Stanihurst does not explicitly criticize the New English government, he uses the Old English legacy to “remind” the newcomers that Ireland would not have been a kingdom of England if not for the ancestors of the early modern Palesmen. Stanihurst uses the ancient achievements of the Old English to push back New English policies that continue to threaten the interests of the Old English community. As Daniel Woolf points out, appeals to the “ancestral past” were commonly used in early modern political and social discourse. They invoke respect for and pride in one’s personal, familial, ancestors were of far less moment than consciousness of a general duty towards the cumulative generations of forebears who were the predecessors of a particular group or community; within this context, appeal to ‘our ancestors’ could provide a forceful argument against innovations in manners or in politics.41 41 Daniel Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500– 1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 83–84.

Prologue  15 It is precisely for this reason that Gerald’s Expugnatio is so important for Stanihurst: his Irish Chronicle in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) is a response to the “innovations” of the New English government. Stanihurst’s dedication to Sir Henry Sidney, two-time lord deputy of Ireland (1565–71 and 1575–78), wishes Sidney well and assures him that he will receive the “sure supporte and peaceable quietness of the true and loyall subiects of [Ireland].”42 Despite Stanihurst’s assertions, the Irish Chronicle was “stayed” upon publication, and the bishop of London was ordered by the Privy Council to report the number of copies that were sold at the end of 1577. The printer was ordered to cease all publication of the book or “answer the contrarie at his uttermost perill.”43 Apparently, the authorities felt “many things [in the Irish Chronicle] are falcelie recited and contrarie to the ancient records of the said realme.”44 The content that must have elicited the government’s wrath is most likely Stanihurst’s sympathetic account of the Kildares and his negative portrayal of John Alen, the archbishop of Dublin.45 The government’s treatment of the chronicle suggests that even staunch supporters of the reform government like Stanihurst (at the time of writing) may not necessarily agree with the government’s interpretation of Irish history. This disagreement between Stanihurst’s interpretation of history  – from the Old English point of view – and the authority’s preferred version of it reveals yet another area of contention and dissent among some of the most powerful royal representatives in Ireland. Stanihurst’s favorable descriptions of Kildare were perceived to be at odds with the English government’s party line, and yet at the same time, the chronicle appears to endorse the same with its dedication to Sidney. Stanihurst’s dedication to Sidney is arguably the most distinctive feature of the chronicle; Sidney’s entanglement with court faction is written into the fabric of the chronicle both implicitly and explicitly. By writing a pro-Kildare history and dedicating the Irish chronicle to Sidney, Stanihurst associates Sidney with Geraldine sympathies and calls attention to the delicate networks of patronage between the Palesmen and their chief governors. With very limited access to the English monarch and vulnerable to attacks from Irish rebels, the Palesmen depended on the chief governor’s patronage to represent their interests in court and defend them from Irish threats. These demands placed the chief governors

42 Ibid., 5 43 Ibid., xvi. 4 4 Ibid. 45 Ibid., xvi–xvii. A compilation of the canceled and condensed materials can be found in the appendices in Liam Miller and Eileen Power’s (eds.) Holinshed’s Irish C ­ hronicle (1577), (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979). See also Cynthia Susan Clegg, “Censorship,” in The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles, edited by Felicity Heal et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

16 Prologue in a different sphere of dissent that was subjected to the complex and ever-chaning alliances in court. In this context, Stanihurst’s dedication to Sidney in effect displaces Sidney’s predecessor and brother-in-law, Thomas Radcliffe, the third earl of Sussex. The disputes between Sidney and Sussex characterized policy-­ making in Ireland and the shift of allegiances between the 1550s and 1570s. Even though both served the government in the same capacity, their relationship became increasingly strained when both became embroiled in the longstanding feud between Thomas Butler, the tenth earl of O ­ rmond, and his rival, Gerald Fitzgerald, the eleventh earl of Kildare. The English government’s reliance on the two most powerful Anglo-Irish overlords – Ormond and Kildare – only added more complication, and even disruption, to the management of the colonial enterprise; their generations-old enmity could not be mitigated even with threats of immense fines and imprisonment.46 The power that each wielded and their success and/or failure in responding to and refuting charges made against each other hinged on their personal relationships with the English chief governors. Of particular interest, at least within the scope of this book, is the ways in which writers understood, interpreted, and represented dissent without discrediting the government or embarrassing the individual parties involved. Sussex’s failure to capture the Ulster rebel, Shane O’Neill, left him utterly humiliated after the Elizabeth’s favorite, Robert Dudley, first earl of Leicester, persuaded O’Neill (with the help of Kildare) to submit to the queen in the English court in 1562. This event generated great interest: Now was Shan O’Neal come out of Ireland, to performe what he had promifsed a yeere before, with a Guard of Ax-bearing ­Galloglasses, bare headed, with curled haire hanging downe, yellow furplifes dyed with Saffron, or mans ftale, long sleeues, fshort coates, and hairy mantles: whom the Englifh people gazed at with no leffe admiration, then now a dayes they doe of China, and America. He being received with all kindneffe, and falling downe at the Queenes feete, confeffed his crime and rebellion with howling, and obtained pardon.47

46 For a detailed history of the Kildare-Butler feud, see David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin; Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 2003). 47 William Camden, Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha. English. 1634 (London: Printed for William Webbe bookseller in Oxford, 1635), 48 (1562); John Patrick Montaño, The Roots of Colonialism in Ireland (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 352.

Prologue  17 William Camden’s account of Shane O’Neill’s submission is often quoted to highlight English views of the Far East and Ireland’s parallels to the popular imagination of the New World and imperial conquest. But the context of how Shane O’Neill reached the English court is even more significant. Onlookers may have been fascinated with the appearance of the Irishmen, but for Sussex and his rivals, another spectacle was playing out simultaneously. O’Neill’s submission, brokered by Sidney, was interpreted by some as a calculated political maneuver aimed at discrediting Sussex; Leicester was bent on “destroying Sussex and replacing him as governor with one of his own protégés.”48 That protégé who replaced him was Henry Sidney. With every change of administration, power dynamics were renegotiated and reestablished. Because of the nature of royal absenteeism, the reconfiguration of power relations in Ireland was intrinsically linked to the contention of authority. After the collapse of the Kildare ascendancy in the 1530s, the central source of royal authority shifted from the Anglo-English sphere to the English viceroyalty. The competing interests of the two groups were often mitigated locally, if satisfactorily, and disputes that implicated powerful figures were sent to the queen for arbitration. Such cases were damaging to the lord deputy’s reputation; they called his ability to govern to question and tested the limits of his authority.49 In his description of Ireland in Britannia (1586), Camden describes the lord deputy’s authority as “really large, ample and Royal… there is certainly no other Vice-roy in Christendom that comes nearer the grandeur and majesty of a king.”50 But in reality, Camden’s interpretation of viceregal authority is somewhat exaggerated. Elizabeth’s parsimonious and cautious attitude toward the “Irish problem” also meant that her lord deputies were frequently aware of and frustrated by the limitations of their authority. In 1584, the queen expressed her displeasure at the Irish Council over Lord Deputy John Perrot’s increased military charges, aimed at curbing the Scottish threat in Ulster; she reminded him that even as lord deputy, Perrot did not have absolute authority to impose such charges. The boundaries of viceregal authority were interpreted differently in 48 Ciaran Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 49 Sidney was sharply reprimanded in one such case when the representatives of the Pale community resisted his proposed “cess” rates – a tax collected to maintain English military presence in Ireland. The men traveled to London to seek an audience with the queen, even after they were advised against doing so. The episode was deeply embarrassing for Sidney. See McGowan-Doyle, Valerie, The Book of Howth: The E ­ lizabethan Re-conquest of Ireland and the Old English (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011). 50 William Camden, Britannia (first English edition 1610), (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1971), 973.

18 Prologue different quarters and under different circumstances. In the case of Perrot, [w]hat followed was the identification, by various members of the Irish council, that Perrot had in general acted on the assumption that the deputy’s authority was in actual fact unlimited by law or any other check, and again the term ‘absolute’ was deployed with an increased level of intent. Adam Loftus, in his position of Irish chancellor, not as archbishop of Dublin, pinpointed something quite extraordinary, that the lord deputy, on the basis of his authority, was willing to override the ordinary courts of justice in Ireland.51 Perrot’s irritation with the queen mounted as his service wore on. It was reported that he referred to her as “a base bastard piss kitchen woman,” and swore that the “fiddling woman… shall not rule me, now she shall not curb me.”52 The lord deputy was ruined at the end of his career and was sentenced to death but abandoned in jail.53 Perrot’s predecessor, Lord Arthur Grey de Wilton, was also well aware of the limitations of the lord deputy’s authority; the queen’s interference with his work in Ireland is famously dramatized in the allegorical figure of Artegall in Spenser’s Faerie Queen, Book V. Even though “[t]he office of Lord Deputy in early modern Ireland was one of the most powerful positions in European politics,” and the “Irish viceroy could dispense justice and patronage in a way no other comparable official on the continent could,” the office, like most prominent positions, promised patronage but also danger.54 The relationship between Elizabeth and her lord deputies was at best functional and at worse hopelessly estranged. At some point or another, all the Tudor governors found themselves mired in debt, charged with corruption and/or abuse of authority, accused of treason/conspiracy, and ended up disgraced or executed at the end of their careers. Essex is a “textbook” case of the “overmighty” subject. 55 When he arrived in Ireland as lord lieutenant, he was quick to exercise his right 51 Mark A. Hutchinson, Calvinism, Reform and the Absolutist State in Elizabethan Ireland (Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2015), 78. 52 Roger Turvey, The Treason and Trial of Sir John Perrot (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005), 114. 53 Hiram Morgan believes that Perrot was a victim of a conspiracy concocted by ­William Fitzwilliam and William Cecil, Lord Burghley. For details of accusations against Perrot, see Hiram Morgan, “The Fall of Sir John Perrot,” in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, edited by John Guy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 54 Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley, “Introduction: Irish Representations and English Alternatives,” in Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534– 1660, edited by Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield, and Willy Maley (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 13. 55 Hiram Morgan, “Overmighty Officers: The Irish Lord Deputyship in the Early Modern British State,” History Ireland 7 (1999).

Prologue  19 to appoint royal officials and grant knighthoods. His expedition to Ireland was highly anticipated (in part because of his previous successful campaign in Cadiz), and it was reported that young lords, nobles, and “the most part of those knights that be his creatures” would follow him; even before Essex’s departure was confirmed, “[f]or eight or ten days the soldiers flocked about him, and every man hoped to be a colonel at least.”56 English authorities were alarmed by Essex’s popularity, and he was perceived to be competing for authority with the queen. Images celebrating Essex’s expedition circulated widely in London. Thomas Cockson’s engraving of Essex in his martial apparel, memorializing his military achievements on the Continent, attested to the earl’s popularity. Even after it was clear that he had failed in Ireland and was placed under house arrest, images of Essex continued to attract attention. In response, the Privy Council prohibited the sale of “anie pictures but of her most excellent Majesty.”57 Essex’s popularity and his seeming disregard of the queen’s authority made him dangerous. The famous anecdote about his return from Ireland against her wishes and his subsequent intrusion into her private chambers, his liberal knighting and granting of offices against the queen’s wishes, and finally, his private parley with Hugh O’Neill led to his fall in 1601. 58 The viceroy’s belief that he could play roi sealed his fate upon his return to England. The nature of viceregal authority is fraught with complications. It represents royal authority, but it also threatens to usurp royal authority. In his Memoir (1583), Henry Sidney recounts an incident when ­Edmund Butler, Ormond’s brother, accused Sidney of harboring thoughts of

56 Walter Bourchier Devereux, ed., Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of ­E ssex, in the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, 1540–1646 (London: J.  Murray, 1853), 7–8. On Essex’s role in the sack of Cadiz, see Paul E. J. Hammer, ­“Myth-making: ­Politics, Propaganda and the Capture of Cadiz in 1596,” The Historical Journal 40.3 (1997). On Essex’s popularity and his liberal granting of knighthoods, see Paul E. J. Hammer, “‘Base Rogues’ and ‘gentlemen of quality’: The Earl of Essex’s Irish knights and Displeasure in 1599,” in Elizabeth I and Ireland, edited by Brendan Kane and Valerie McGowan-Doyle (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 57 Richard C. McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of ­E lizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 98. On ­E ssex’s popularity and Shakespeare’s Richard II, see L. W. Henry, “Contemporary Sources of Essex’s Lieutenancy in Ireland, 1599,” Irish Historical Studies 11.41 (1958), 8–17, and Paul E. Hammer, “Patronage at Court, Faction and the Earl of Essex,” in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last ­Decade, edited by John Guy (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 58 Essex appointed Southampton as General of the Horse during his Irish campaign against the queen’s wishes. Though he initially ignored her displeasure, he was later forced to withdraw the appointment. See Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, The Life of Henry, Third Earl of Southampton (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 163.

20 Prologue

Figure P.1  T homas Cockson, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, mounted on a horse (ca. 1599–1600). © The Trustees of the British Museum. The background features reference to Essex’s military campaigns in Cadiz, the Azores, and his anticipated victory in Ireland.

becoming king of Ireland.59 Essex, too, faced similar allegations: Hugh O’Neill purportedly offered Irish kingship to Essex if he (Essex) was willing to conspire with him to overthrow English rule. Essex’s popularity, woven into Shakespeare’s celebration of the earl as Henry V “from Ireland coming,/ Bringing rebellion broachèd on his sword,” flirts with ideas 59 In referring to Sidney’s narrative, I am indebted to Ciaran Brady’s (ed.) A Viceroy’s Vindication? Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir of Service in Ireland 1556–1578 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002), 66. Hereafter, Memoir will be used in all references to this work unless stated otherwise.

Prologue  21 of treason (Chorus V. 31–32).60 Even across the Atlantic, royal representation was a delicate matter. Theodore de Bry’s engraving of Walter Ralegh’s meeting with the king of Arromaia captures Ralegh in a liminal moment – should he or can he accept tribute from a foreign ruler? As Shannon Miller points out, royal substitution is a necessary process of imperial expansion; Ralegh was acutely aware of how the rhetoric of royal authority operated under such circumstances: To speake more at this time, I feare would be but troublesome: I trust in God, this being true, will suffice, and that he which is King of all Kings and Lord of all Lords, will put it into her heart which is Ladie of Ladies to possesse it, if not, I will judge those men worthy to be kings thereof, that by her grace and leave will undertake it of themselves.61 By giving Elizabeth the first opportunity to claim foreign territory, Ralegh avoids “usurping” the queen. But in Ireland, where the queen’s authority was already firmly established in theory but still contested in practice, the chief governor must tread carefully as his rivals and enemies were to quick to call attention to his faults and more dangerously, they were always ready to question his loyalties. Another aspect of the lord deputy’s authority examined in this book has to do with his attitudes toward the governance of Ireland: it considers how his authority was interpreted in different quarters in the event of a revolt; how violence and mercy was justified, and when or under what conditions he could resort to extra-legal methods in dealing with the rebels. For instance, the use and abuse of martial law raises questions about how justice and punishment figure in the discourse of conquest. Large-scale summary killings ordered by lord deputies and their representatives were normally carried out under martial law. In her recent study on beheadings in early modern Ireland and the ways in which they are aestheticized in English narratives, Patricia Palmer points out that the civilizing mission of conquest “required a legal fiction to denomimate Irish beheadings as uncivilized and English beheadings as legitimate instruments of justice” and “[t]hat fiction was martial law. The preemptive punishment of any suspect ‘by masrshal lawe, as well by death as by losse

60 William Shakespeare, “The History of Henry V” in Histories Vol. 2, edited by John Russell Brown (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). Willy Maley and Chris Butler, “‘Bringing Rebellion Broached on His Sword’: Essex and Ireland,” in Essex: The Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier, edited by Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 61 Walter Raleigh, The Discoverie of Guiana (1596) (London; Paris; New York; ­Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Limited, 1887), 431; quoted in Shannon Miller, Invested with Meaning (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 181.

22 Prologue

Figure P.2  T  heodor de Bry, Grand Voyages, Part VIII (1599). Gualtherus ­Ralegh Amicitiam Contrahit Cum Rege Arromaia (Walter Ralegh in the New World). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

of members, [and] limbs’, redefined atrocity as justice.”62 These observations put the spotlight on the atrocities that were committed in Ireland, but they also assume that the English government, as a collective whole, was in complete accordance with the proposals and implementation of violence when there were, in fact, dissenting voices. And one of those dissenting voices comes from the highest authority of the realm. 62 Palmer, The Severed Head, 23.

Prologue  23 From the early years of her reign, Elizabeth repeatedly asserted the importance of mercy in queenship but the her advisors cautioned that leniency, especially towards the rebels, would be detrimental to the implementation of royal policies and authority. The queen’s translation of Cicero’s Pro ­M arcello, a work that focuses on Caesar’s clemency, suggests that “she rejected the implication that pity was a female quality that male subjects might interpret as weakness. Instead she engaged with an all-male world where Cicero represents clemency as rational, masculine virtue.”63 Even towards the end of the Nine Years War, the queen remained optimistic that mercy and leniency could reform the Irish, “agreeing to spare an Irish rebel leader, she claimed that ‘clemency hath as eminent a place in supreme authority as justice and severity.’”64 Her advisors, however, perceived mercy as detrimental to the conquest. Geoffrey Fenton, Principal Secretary for Ireland, complained to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, that the rebels continued to be recalcitrant because they believed that the queen will not long bear the burden of a resolute and short war, which is an old opinion retained from hand to hand by the traitors of this realm, and gathered chiefly of Her Majesty’s princely custom, to take in offenders by mercy, thinking thereby to bind them faster in duty and obedience afterwards, which rare virtue in Her Majesty hath been always lost upon them. (my emphasis)65 The queen’s ideas of mercy and pity are mediated by the military men on the field. Above all, the honor of her royal dignity is of utmost importance. Some of the most notorious men of war in Ireland, Richard Bingham and Humphrey Gilbert, justified their excessive brutality and treacherous treatment of Irish enemies as a means of upholding royal dignity. When chastised for disobeying instructions and ordered to refrain from unnecessary violence, Bingham insisted that royal prerogative dictated that he must protect the queen’s honor at all cost.66 The question here is not whether or not ­Bingham’s seemingly self-sacrificial language is genuine but how the rhetoric of royal dignity effaces the difference of opinions between monarch and soldier, and how it can also be used to justify insubordination. Bingham was hardly the only individual who exploited this rhetoric as it can and was widely used to justify treachery and corruption.

63 Jane Mueller and Joshua Scodel, eds., Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598 (­Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 6. 64 Ibid., 10. 65 CSPI 1592–96, 457. 66 Rory Rapple, “Taking up Office in Elizabethan Connacht: The Case of Sir Richard Bingham,” English Historical Review 123 (2008).

24 Prologue Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland is interested in exploring the “undertow” of the grand narrative that has, quite naturally, revolved around the English-Irish binary of English conquest and Irish oppression. Yet, such an approach inadvertently downplays the more nuanced complexities that contributed to the political realities in early modern Ireland. The “English Problem,” characterized by faction, distrust, suspicion, and the contention for authority, was prevalent at every level of colonial administration in Tudor Ireland. Consequently, the attempt to forge, assert, and negotiate forms of English identity became increasingly more urgent and more aggressive as the reconquest progressed. My inquiry into this subject considers how dissent among the English monarch, policy administrators, and Crown representatives shaped ideas of authority, governance, and conquest. In the chapters that follow, my discussions examine “key” historical moments that broadly represent the arch of the Elizabethan reconquest of Ireland. These include issues having to do with the development of the Henrician constitutional reform, popular representations of cultural and identity politics in the different phases of the reconquest, the perceptions and limitations of proxy authority, the implications of violence, and the interpretation of royal dignity and justice during the Nine Years War. By examining private, popular, and official representations of dissent and authority, this book explicates the vexed relationships within the E ­ nglish government and considers the ways in which competing interests and divided loyalties are negotiated. These representations – whether they are formally documented in parliament, illegally enforced and acknowledged in secret correspondence, or discreetly encouraged/­criticized in pamphlets, treatises, and literary works – are all actualized with some form of remonstrance within English quarters. Unorthodox as it may seem, the confluence of discord and contention among conflicting spheres of power was, in many ways, as imperative as it was detrimental to England’s reconquest of Ireland.

1 King Johan (1538), King John, and the Henrician Reformation

The story of the great Kildare rebellion (1534–35) is well known and the sense of alarm on both sides of the Irish Sea is immediately relevant to this chapter. Over his two terms as deputy in the 1520s and 30s, Gerald Fitzgerald’s (ninth earl of Kildare) moves were closely scrutinized in Ireland and England. His disputes with the Dublin Council regarding executive appointments and his hostility toward some of the more prominent members of the Pale community warranted royal summons, though Brendan Bradshaw does not rule out the possibility that Kildare was summoned to discuss plans for the implementation of royal policy in in 1534.1 Kildare’s delay in responding to the summons made him appear even more suspicious. When he finally yielded, he convened a series of meetings with his kin and trusted associates before reporting to the council. At one of these meetings, Kildare formally deputized his heir, the young Thomas Fitzgerald, Lord Offaly and later tenth earl of Kildare, to take his place in his father’s absence. It is assumed that Kildare arrived in England in the spring of 1534 and was sent to the Tower by June. 2 Rumors of his death sent panic to Ireland. At a meeting with the council in Dublin on 11 June, Offaly arrived with his military retinue. This event has since been widely sentimentalized: “When [Offaly] had seated himself at the head of the council board… he renounced his allegiance, and declare… ‘I am none of Henry his Deputie; I am his fo. I have more mind to conquer than to governe—to meet him in the field than to serve him in office.’”3 Some of the council members tried to dissuade Offaly, “but the young Lord’s harper, understanding only Irish, and seeing signs of wavering in his bearing, commenced to recite a poem in praise of the deeds of his ancestors, telling him at the same 1 Brendan Bradshaw, “Cromwellian Reform and the Origins of the Kildare Rebellion,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 27 (1977), 78, 81, 80. 2 Ibid., 81, 86. 3 Alfred Webb, ed., A Compendium of Irish Biography: Comprising Sketches of Distinguished Irishmen, and of Eminent Persons Connected with Ireland by Office or by Their Writings (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, 1878), 18.

26  King Johan (1538) and King John time that he lingered there over long.”4 Offaly, more famously known as “Silken Thomas,” then proclaimed: “[I] will choose rather to die with valiantnesse and libertie, than to live under King Henrie in bondage and villanie.”5 The implications that resulted from the development of the rebellion extended beyond Ireland and England with the implementation of the Reformation. News of Kildare’s imprisonment in June 1534 followed closely behind the introduction of the Reformation articles in April and the enforcement of the Oath of Supremacy; Crown authorities were preoccupied with domestic resistance and preparations were being made to fend off potential foreign invasion.6 Ireland had long been perceived to be vulnerable to foreign invasions. While foreign intrigue involving Ireland was not a direct response to the Kildare revolt (Charles V contemplated the possibility of using Ireland as a base to invade England), it certainly contributed to an increased interest in Irish affairs.7 Moreover, the Desmond Fitzgeralds were already in contact with Continental powers in the 1520s in hopes of overthrowing English rule. James Fitzgerald, the tenth earl of Desmond, was known to have proposed an alliance with Francis I in the early 1520s.8 In 1528, the earl courted Charles V for support against Henry VIII, and even though there may have been more Desmond than Kildare agents in the Spanish court, the Kildares also sent their fair share of representatives to Scotland, France, and Rome to lobby Kildare’s cause.9 Charles V’s hostility toward England and “the king’s great matter” very likely elicited his interest in Irish affairs. More notably, Charles was “particularly interested in the relationship between Desmond and Kildare,” and he hoped that “by using the earl’s [Desmond’s] kinsman in Munster as an intermediary he could enlist Kildare’s support against Henry VIII.”10 But Sir John of Desmond (John Fitzgerald, de facto twelfth earl), keen to win Henry’s support and recognition for the contested earldom of Desmond (against James Fitzgerald, de jure twelfth earl) was more 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Bradshaw, “Cromwellian Reform,” 84. The chronology of the unfolding events is important: given the dates, Bradshaw emphasizes that plans for the reformation of Ireland was already underway before Kildare was sent to the Tower. Thus, the revolt should not be narrowly interpreted as the Kildares’ response to the encroachment of royal authority in Ireland but that the revolt interrupted the implementation of the reformation program, 86. 7 Micheál Ó. Siochrú, “Foreign Involvement in the Revolt of Silken Thomas, 1534– 35,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature 96 C. 2 (1996), 54. 8 D. B. Quinn, “The Reemergence of English Policy as a Major Factor in Irish Affairs, 1520–34,” in A New History of Ireland: Volume II, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, edited by Art Cosgrove (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 673–74. 9 Ibid., 678; Siochrú, “Foreign Involvement,” 57. 10 Siochrú, “Foreign Involvement,” 52.

King Johan (1538) and King John  27 cautious.11 Charles V’s understanding of the complex relationships among the different Geraldine branches is less clear. Henry, for instance, enlisted Desmond’s support against the Kildare rebels.12 The king’s letter to Desmond dated 26 April suggests that Desmond probably did not meet Henry’s demands; the king commanded “him either to come to England or send his eldest son James hither to explain his title, and meantime to surrender the earldom, to be held by the Deputy for him who shall appear to have the right.”13 The opposition to the Reformation articles in England, combined with the Kildare revolt and Anglo-Irish intrigue, created a climate of intense anxiety, suspicion, and oppression. Just three days after Desmond was threatened with suspension from his earldom, an unusually detailed description of a conversation in England between two Englishmen, John Hale and Robert Feron, was recorded as evidence of treason and justification for indictment. The men were discussing English politics, when Feron allegedly made remarks about “the King’s evil deeds,” and Hale asserted those comments; he referred to the king as “a robber and pyller of the commonwealth,” and “by his wrongs [we] be oppressed and robbed of our livings as if we were his utter enemies, enemies to Christ, and guilty of his death… [this king] is the most cruellest, capital heretic, defacer, and treader under foot of Christ and of his Church.”14 Given the widespread opposition to the Reformation articles, Hale’s appraisal of Henry VIII would not have been perceived as shocking. What alarmed the authorities was more likely Hale’s observation that Henry’s reformation will incite a rebellion so great it will bring England to her knees: Until the King and the rulers of this realm be plucked by the pates, and brought, as we say, to the pot, shall we never live merrily in England; which I pray God may chance and now shortly to come to pass. Ireland is set against him, which will never shrink in their quarrel, to die in it. And what think ye of Wales? […] [The Welsh] will join and take part with the Irish, and so invade our realm. If they do so, doubt ye not but they shall have aid and strength enough in England; for this is truth, three parts of England is against the King, as he shall find if he need; for of truth they go about to bring this realm into such miserable condition as is France, which the Commons see and perceive well enough a sufficient cause of rebellion and insurrection in this realm.15 11 Anthony M. McCormack, “Internecine Warfare and the Decline of the House of Desmond, c.1510–c.1541,” Irish Historical Studies 30.120 (1997), 499. On 26 April 1535, the king remained skeptical about Sir John’s claim to the Desmond earldom. L. & P. Hen VIII, Vol. VIII: January–July 1535, no. 594. 12 L. & P. Hen VIII, Vol. VIII: January–July 1535, no. 114. 13 Ibid., no. 594. 14 Ibid., no. 609. 15 Ibid.

28  King Johan (1538) and King John Hale’s conviction – “Ireland is set against him [Henry VIII]” – must have been motivated by his awareness of the escalating conflict in I­ reland. Another reference to Ireland can be inferred in Hale’s treasonous comments; Hale curses Henry, “[w]hose death I beseech God may be like to the death of the most wicked John, sometime King of this realm, or ­ udor-protestant rather to be called a great tyrant than a King.”16 In the T tradition, King John is poisoned by a scheming monk; Bale re-enacts this scene in King Johan (1538).17 In the 1520s and 1530s, comparisons of Henry VIII to King John were not uncommon; the two kings stood out among their predecessors and successors as kings who defied papal authority, and both attempted to tighten their grip on the lordship of Ireland with varying success. Carole Levin traces the popularity of the King John narrative to William Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), where Tyndale recounts the unjust treatment that John suffers under the tyranny of the pope. Tyndale describes John’s attempt to punish a clerk for counterfeiting money, and in response, the pope punishes John with the Interdict and sanctions French invasion. Consequently, John is forced to surrender England as a papal fiefdom.18 Among other examples that portray John as a hero king, one can be found in Simon Fish’s A Supplicayon for the Beggars (1529), possibly smuggled from the Low Countries to England by Anne Boleyn. Like Tyndale, Fish depicts John as a victim of the persecuting church: faced with the tyranny of the pope and the threat of French invasion: This good and blessed king of great compassion, more fearing and lamenting the shedding of the blood of his people than the loss of crown and dignity against all right and conscience… O case most horrible that ever so noble a king, realm, and succession should thus be made to stop to such a sort of blood suppers.19 The John-Henry comparisons worked well; Fish’s work was widely circulated before a parliamentary session and later generated a rebuttal from Thomas More in his Supplication of the Souls (1529). More does not build on the King John narrative, but as Levine argues, his response to Fish’s supplicayon “suggests that Fish had succeeded in drawing a

16 Ibid. 17 John Bale, “King Johan,” in The Complete Plays of John Bale, edited by Peter Happé (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), ll. 2020–23. Hereafter cited as King Johan. Also see John Foxe, The First Volume of the Ecclesiasticall History Contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes of Thynges Passed in Euery Kynges Tyme in This Realme (1563), (2nd edition) (London: John Day, 1570), 334. Hereafter cited as Actes and Monumentes. 18 Carole Levin, “A Good Prince: King John and Early Tudor Propaganda,” Sixteenth Century Journal 11.4 (1980), 25. 19 Fish cited in Levine, ibid., 26.

King Johan (1538) and King John  29 parallel between Henry VIII and John, so that to be anti-John was to be disloyal,” and more interestingly, “[t]o draw a parallel between Henry and John, as Fish had done, was all very well so long as one had in mind the right version of John.”20 The “right version” of King John is by definition a Protestant version of King John created by Thomas Cromwell. 21 In his magisterial study of Cromwell, Geoffrey Elton notes that Cromwell’s perception of the martyred archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, is inherently Protestant. In an episode involving a dispute between Becket and the archbishop of York, which then leads to a riot, Cromwell reimagines Becket as a bully who provokes fights with the archbishop’s followers, and who then physically attacks them. This interpretation aligns with the early modern Protestant interpretation of Becket’s death: Henry II did not order the murder of Becket. 22 Cromwell’s reinterpretation and use of history in popular entertainment to support Henry VIII’s cause are well known. When Cromwell’s protégé, Sir Richard Morison, reported that the English king was the subject of mockery in Catholic satires, proposals were prepared to counter them with Protestant plays. This approach was revisited again in Elizabeth’s reign, when Morison asserted: “vernacular plays should be used for the inculcating of Protestant principles in the general population.”23 John Bale is one of many propagandists that Cromwell recruited for this purpose; if there was ever a “right version” of King John, or one that Cromwell would have approved of, it would be Bale’s King ­Johan. It may well have been so if the work is examined strictly within an English context, but this chapter suggests that within an Irish context, Bale’s play is hardly a “right version” of the King John narrative in the years preceding and following the Kildare rebellion. Instead of portraying Henry VIII as a more successful reformer-hero than King John, it underscores the medieval and early modern kings’ struggle to secure Ireland as lordship, and later, as 0 Ibid. 2 21 Levin, “A Good Prince,” 24. 2 2 Geoffrey Elton, Police and Policy: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 257; Levine, 24. 23 Alexandra F. Johnston, “Touring Players in the Early Years of Elizabeth: What Were They Playing?,” Medieval English Theatre 31 (2009), 72. Cromwell’s strategy should not be underestimated; the Records of Early English Drama (REED) notes “at least a 30 per cent increase in the number of documenter troupes” that emerged during Cromwell’s “propaganda campaign to win popular acceptance for the political and religious policies of the Reformation.” See Paul Whitfield White, “Major English Acting Troupes to 1583,” Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016. The success of Cromwell’s campaign is reflected in a French diplomat’s 1539 report, when he commented that there was “not a village feast nor pastime anywhere in which there is not something inserted in derision of the Holy Father.” Quoted in Martin Wiggins, Drama and the Transfer of Power in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 15.

30  King Johan (1538) and King John kingdom. John’s off-stage tyranny highlights Henry’s attitudes toward those who opposed royal supremacy; both are depicted as victims of the church, but they also exploit victimhood to justify tyranny. The complexities having to do with Bale’s religious conversion have been expertly discussed elsewhere, and here, still working with the notion of a “right version” of the King John narrative, I wish to draw attention briefly to his association with Cromwell and the implications of the subsequent 1536 staging of King Johan at Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s residence.24 Documentation of Bale’s run-ins with churchmen is traditionally dated to 1534, when he was appointed prior of a Doncaster friary. Later, he received license to preach in Yorkshire and was involved in a dispute with a Doncaster gray friar, Thomas Kirkby. Though details of the conflict are not extant, it may have been caused by Bale’s virulent anti-papal preaching as a later confrontation with the clergy suggests. After leaving the Carmelite order in 1536, Bale took on a position as stipendiary priest in Suffolk, “where his preaching roused the ire of his congregation” and was arrested and imprisoned in 1537.25 The antiquarian, John Leland, appealed to Cromwell, and Bale was released. Cromwell probably assisted in the release of Bale as a favor to Leland and because Bale’s offense to the Catholic clergymen and congregation would be of service to Cromwell’s reformation agenda: “There is no doubt that when in trouble, such men regarded Cromwell as their best hope.”26 Sure enough Bale came into the employment of Cromwell, touring and promoting Protestant values and royal supremacy in various locations with a troupe known as Lord Cromwell’s Players between 1537 and 1540.27 One of the most notable locations of Bale’s performances is the staging of King Johan at Cranmer’s residence at the end of 1538; the performance elicited a particularly critical conversation about Henry VIII 24 A comprehensive study on Bale’s conversion can be found in Oliver Wort, John Bale and Religious Conversion in Reformation England (London: Routledge, 2016). 25 Wort, 26. 26 Elton, 37; Paul Whitfield White notes that Cromwell employed Bale as a “full-time propagandist” in 1534; see White, “Major English Acting Troupes.” 27 On Bale and Cromwell, see Seymour Baker House, “Cromwell’s Message to the Regulars: The Biblical Trilogy of John Bale, 1537,” Renaissance and Reformation 26.2 (1991); Andrew W. Taylor, “The Reformation of History in John Bale’s Biblical Dramas,” in English Historical Drama, 1500–1600: Forms Outside the Canon, Early Modern Literature in History, edited by Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). On Bale and Henrician propaganda, see David Scott Kastan, “ ‘Holy Wurdes’ and ‘Slypper Wit’: John Bale’s King Johan and the Poetics of Propaganda,” in Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essay on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts, edited by Peter C. Herman (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1994); G. D. George, “John Bale’s Kynge Johan as English Nationalist Propaganda,” Quidditas 24 (2014); Ernst Gerhardt, “John Bale’s Adaptation of Parish- and Civic-­ Drama’s Playing Practices,” Reformation 19.1 (2014), and Tamara Atkin, The Drama of Reform: Theology and Theatricality, 1461–1553 (Turnout: Brepols, 2013), esp. Chapter 2, “Performance and Polemic: John Bale and the Poetics of Propaganda.”

King Johan (1538) and King John  31 that attracted the attention of the authorities. In an oft-cited letter to Cromwell, the archbishop recounts his interrogation of Henry Totehill, who is accused of sedition in his discussion of the play with John Alforde and Thomas Brown. In Cranmer’s account, Brown sympathizes with the character of King Johan in the play; he believes that if the Bishop of Rome reigned any longer, he (the pope) “wold do with our King as he did with King John.” Totehill disagrees and comments that “it was petie and nawghtely don, to put down the Pope and Saincte Thomas; for the Pope was a good man, and saincte Thomas savid many suche as this deponent was from hangyng.”28 Brown rejects Totehill’s criticism and offers his own: [Brown] had harde divers tymes prelates and clearkes say, that King John did loke like one that had run frome brynnyng of a house, butt this deponent knew now that yt was nothing true; for as far as he perceyved, King John was as noble a prince as ever was in England; and thereby we myght perceive that he was the beginner of the puttyng down of the Bisshop of Rome, and thereof we myght be all glad.29 These opposing views of King John are projected onto Henry VIII. The detailed account of the interrogation suggests that the Protestant version of King John was firmly established between 1535 and 1538. Reeling from the aftermath of the Kildare revolt and the Pilgrimage of Grace, the government’s interpretation of English history was especially sensitive in this period. The distinction to be made here is that in the treason charges against John Hale in 1535 (for comments that he made in 1534), there appears to be no particular offense taken at Hale’s comment that John is a “most wicked” king; it is Hale’s condemnation of Henry and anticipation of a great rebellion that are considered treasonous. Whereas in the conversation at Brown’s house, Totehill makes no such references to Henry: the critique of the play is limited only to the pope being “a good man,” which authorities must have interpreted as: King John is a bad king, but more significantly, if King John is a bad king, then Henry VIII must also be a bad king. The portrayal of Bale’s King John as a good king may seem straightforward on the surface, but it is fraught with problems when examined within an Irish context. Despite being credited with one of the most important documents of English history, the Magna Carta, John was also widely reputed, in hindsight, to be one of the worst kings of England.30 Medieval opinions of

28 Thomas Cranmer, The Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, ­edited by J. E. Cox (Cambridge, UK: Parker Society, 1846), 387–88. 29 Ibid. 30 V. H. Galbraith, “Good and Bad Kings in English History,” History 30 (1945): 128– 30; also see Ralph Turner, King John: England’s Evil King? (Stroud, Gloucestershire:

32  King Johan (1538) and King John John were at best mixed, depending on where one looked and when those commentaries were composed.31 What seems consistent, or less challenged in modern assessments of John’s kingship, is his reputation relating to Ireland. As Seán Duffy points out, students and scholars of early English history generally accept John as a good king in Ireland. This idea of John is attributed to the interpretations of some of the most prominent scholars of early Irish history. F. X. Martin’s pronouncement is probably one of the most cited: “John, so often described as the worst of the kings of England, was, paradoxically, the best for Ireland.”32 W. L. Warren observes that by 1212, John was considered to be “the most successful high king Ireland had ever seen” and “in a very real sense the last.”33 These views of King John are largely inherited from Edmund Curtis’s A History of Mediaeval Ireland from 1110 to 1413 (1927): “John dealt with the baronage of Ireland as he dare not deal with those of England, and as the founder here of a central government, and as the repressor of an overgrown feudalism, must be counted as one of the best of the foreign Kings.”34 If, as Duffy notes, “Ireland and John are therefore inseparable,” then it is somewhat puzzling that Bale’s King Johan is never fully examined at length in an Irish context, particularly given the date of its composition – it may well have been composed during the Kildare revolt or shortly after the rebellion was crushed – and Bale’s ties with Ireland after the lordship was made kingdom in 1541.35 In thinking about Bale and Ireland,

History Press, 2009), 9; S. D. Church, King John: England, Magna Carta, and the Making of a Tyrant (London, UK: Pan MacMillan, 2015). 31 See John Gillingham, “Historians Without Hindsight: Coggeshall, Diceto and Howden on the Early Years of John’s Reign,” in King John: New Interpretations, edited by S. D. Church (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003 [originally published in 1999]), 1–26, and Igor Djordjevic, King John (Mis)remembered: The Dunmow Chronicle, the Lord Admiral’s Men, and the Formation of Cultural Memory (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), esp. Chapter 2, “Reclaiming John from the Monks.” 32 F. X. Martin, “John, Lord of Ireland 1185–1216,” in A New History of Ireland, Vol. 2: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, edited by Art Cosgrove (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 [original published in 1987]), 132. Also quoted in Seán Duffy, “John and Ireland: the Origins of England’s Irish Problem,” in King John: New Interpretations, edited by S. D. Church (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003 [originally published in 1999]), 223. 33 W. L. Warren, “King John and Ireland,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, edited by J. F. Lydon (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981), 39. 34 Edmund Curtis, A History of Medieval Ireland from 1110 to 1513 (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1927), 108. 35 General consensus dates the work to the performance at Thomas Cranmner’s house in 1538 but the play was likely written between 1533 and 1536. See Peter Happé, “John Bale and Controversy: Readers and Audiences,” in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature: 1485–1603, edited by Michael Pinbombe and Cathy Shrank (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 145; Katherine Walsh, “Deliberate Provocation of Reforming Zeal? John Bale as First Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory

King Johan (1538) and King John  33 ­scholars often prefer to turn their attention to Bale’s autobiographical account, The Vocacyon of Johan Bale to the Bishoprick of Ossorie in Irelande, written when he served as bishop in the diocese of Ossory from January to September 1553. The Vocacyon broadly covers his efforts to encourage rigorous religious reform in Ireland and the resistance he faced in carrying out this task; his complaints are duly accompanied with the usual derogatory comments about the native Irish. Bale compares himself with the apostle Paul but his evangelistic and apocalyptic views of divine judgment did not go down well with the Irish. The more famous case of the performance of his biblical trilogy at Kilkenny’s Market Cross (1533), where he condemned Catholic liturgical practices, and the corruption and abuse of the clergy in the Irish Church, elicited violent public outrage.36 Before the year was out, his servants were murdered when they went to cut hay on the day of Our Lady’s Nativity, and fearing for his own life, Bale was forced to flee Ireland.37 Bale’s experience with his consecration is of special significance. On the appointed day of his consecration with Hugh Goodarce, later the Bishop of Armagh, Bale demanded that they be consecrated with Protestant church vestments and with the revised 1552 English prayer book (instead of the outdated 1549 version) that was introduced with the Second Act of Uniformity.38 Bale refused to relent even after the dean of Christ Church purportedly advised against doing so to prevent anti-Protestant hostility and also because the Irish parliament did not yet approve the use of the 1552 version. Bale insists: “If Englande and Irelande be be undre one king/ they are both bounde to the obedience of one lawe undre him. And as for us/ we came hither as true subjects

(1552/53–1563),” in Taking Sides?: Colonial and Confessional Mentalités in Early Modern Ireland: Essays in Honour of Karl S. Bottigheimer, edited by Karl S. Bottigheimer and Vincent Carey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), 45; G. D. George, “John Bale’s Kynge Johan as English Nationalist Propaganda,” Quidditas 35 (2014): 180; and Jeffrey Leininger, “The Dating of Bale’s King John: A Reexamination,” Medieval English Theatre 24 (2002): 116–37. 36 For Bale’s experiences in Ireland, see Mark Rankin, “Narrative and the Nature of Reading in John Bale’s Response to a Sixteenth-Century Reader of the Vocacyon of Johan Bale (1553),” Reformation 18.1 (2013), 21–35; Rudolph P. Almasy, “Inspiring Hope: Questions of Purpose and Audience in The Vocacyon of Johan Bale,” Reformation 6.1 (2002), 1–28; Andrew Hadfield, “Translating the Reformation: John Bale’s Irish Vocacyon,” in Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660, edited by Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfied, and Willy Maley (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 43–59. More on Bale’s biblical plays can be found in House, “Cromwell’s Message to the Regulars.” 37 Leslie O. Fairfield, “The Vocacyon of Johan Bale and Early English Autobiography,” Renaissance Quarterly 24.3 (1971), 330. 38 On the doctrinal differences between the editions, see Felicity Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 255–350.

34  King Johan (1538) and King John of his/ sworne to obeye that ordinaunce.”39 In theory, Bale’s view of royal supremacy in Ireland is straightforward, which may explain why Archbishop George Browne and Lord Chancellor Thomas Cusack could not and probably did not want to argue with him. In practice, however, the delay in replacing the outdated prayer book with the 1552 revised version suggests that the reformation of Ireland was developing at a different pace than England, “Edward VI’s government wished for political reasons to disguise its intentions, partly because of the customary timelag between the drafting of the measures in England and their enforcement in Ireland, and partly because of the Dublin administration’s other preoccupations.”40 At issue here is the system of two parliaments and the enforcement not only of the Reformation but also of royal authority in Ireland, particularly in regard to religious offices. The general consensus was that Englishmen were unwilling to take on Irish bishoprics because they were “notoriously poor”; the bad press in England, which often perceived Ireland as a land of barbarity and perpetual rebellion, did not help.41 These conditions and the pressure to appoint Englishmen to Irish bishoprics in hopes of consolidating royal authority in Ireland became increasingly pressing during and after the Kildare rebellion, when Bale may have been working on King Johan. During this time, English authorities were alarmed as reports flowed into England warning of Irish alliances with Spain, France, and Scotland; it was in this climate that the Henry VIII’s advisers urged him to fill Irish offices with English-born men. The recommendation to reorganize Irish affairs was, however, interrupted with the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536.42

39 John Bale, The vocacyon of Ioha[n] Bale to the bishiprick of Ossorie in Irela[n]de his persecucio[n]s in ye same, & finalldelyueraunce, Imprinted in Rome: Before the castell of S. Angell, at ye signe of S. Peter, Sig. Ciii, 1533. 40 Steven G. Ellis, “John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, 1552–3,” Journal of the Butler Society 2 (1984), 285. According to Ellis, the religious, cultural, and political landscape of Ireland (i.e. the lack of a heresy tradition, anticlericalism, mercantile relations, etc.) contributed to the different pace of religious reform. The debate on the development of the Reformation in Ireland and the degree to which it was deemed successful (or not) can be found in Brendan Bradshaw’s “Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland,” The Historical Journal 21.3 (1978), and Nicholas Canny’s “Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: une question mal posée?,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979), 423–50. Also see Henry Jeffries, “Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland,” Irish Historical Studies 40.158 (2016), and James Murray, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 41 Ellis, “John Bale,” 285. 42 William Palmer, The Problem of Ireland in Tudor Foreign Policy 1485–1603 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1994), 48–49.

King Johan (1538) and King John  35

King Johan, Authority, and Ireland An important component of consolidating royal authority in Henrician Ireland lies in establishing control over ecclesiastical affairs. Bale’s use of medieval history in King Johan frames this imperative as a battle between England and the pope, the true church and the antichrist, but his narrative mode highlights rather than erases England’s tenuous control of her ecclesiastical subjects. King Johan outlines John’s strained relationship with the clergy as a battle for authority; it is, on the one hand, an authority that is bent on securing religious and national loyalty, and on the other hand, a political demonstration of royal authority which Rome perceives as a challenge to divine authority. Englande’s petition to King Johan draws immediate attention to the tyranny of the church; the clergy has robbed her of “cattell, howse, and land” and exiled her spouse, God, rendering her a widow (l. 62).43 In accordance with the central tenet of the Reformation, Englande believes John’s authority to be irrefutable, “For be he good or bade, he is of godes apoyntyng, The good for the good, the bade ys for yall doing” (ll. 103–4). When John assures Englande that he will call upon his three estates – clergy, nobility, and commons – to resolve her predicament, Sedicyon, the pope’s “ambassador,” plays the role of Vice and stakes his claim to the first estate declaring the clergy’s universal loyalty to the pope. Just as Englande is adamant that only god can depose the king, Sedicyon insists otherwise: Sedicyon. Nay than, good inowgh! Yowre awtoryte and powre Shall passe as they wyll; they have sawce bothe swet and sowre. King Johan. What mennyst thow by that? Shew me thi intente this howre. Sedicyon. They are Godes vycars: they can both save and lose. King Johan. Ah, thy meenyng ys that they maye a prynce depose. Sedicyon. By rood, they may, and that wyll appere by yow. (ll. 237–42) The prospect of being deposed by bishops and vicars is not entirely persuasive to John, that is, until Sedicyon reminds him of their natural alliance with the pope. Sedicyon warns John that even with his kingly authority, he cannot overcome the authority of the pope, for the vicars and bishops secretly convene in Rome once a year, “And yf ony prynce reform ther ungodly facyons,/ Than two of the monkes must forthe to Rome by and by/ With secret letters to avenge ther injury”; the vicars and bishops cannot be bribed, and thus cannot be controlled” (ll. 247–49). The early exchange between John and Sedicyon implies that John’s kingly authority can be safeguarded only if he is able to exert some form of control over communications between the clergy and the pope, but in 43 John Bale, “King Johan,” in The Complete Plays of John Bale, edited by Peter Happé (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1985). Hereafter cited as King Johan.

36  King Johan (1538) and King John presenting this problem, Bale inevitably also exposes an irony: he portrays the king as a protector figure, and a figure of justice (to widowed Englande), but he is also a tyrant to Clergye, whose protector is the pope. Bale’s dramatization of John’s predicament follows a series of historical developments in Angevin England that repeatedly demonstrate the king’s struggle, and failure, in attempting to contain dissent between king and clergy, and in effect, the clash between England and Rome. While Sedicyon only informs audiences early in the play that Clergye will only recognize the pope as his ruler – Clergye plays this out with a mischievous retort: “By the grace of God the pope shall be my ruler” and immediately retracts his claim with: “Ha! ded I stomble? I sayd my prynce ys my ruler” – it is Clergye who provides the exact cause of his grievance (ll. 512; 514): Clergye. Owre changes are soch that an abbeye turneth to a graunge. We are so handled we have scarce eyther horse or male [….] Yf he contynew we are lyke in a whyle to starve: He demaundeth of us the tenth parte of owre lyvyng. (ll. 580–83) Clergye’s dialogue stems from a general sense of discontent with the king that is also expressed by the king’s barons. Nobylyte is also a victim of the king’s tyranny, and as such, there is some bite to Clergye’s response to Nobylyte – “I mervell ye take his [King Johan’s] parte so ernestlye” – when Nobylyte defends royal authority (l. 590). Clergye’s complaint is a reference to John’s taxation of the Cistercian monks in 1200, when the king reached a settlement with Philip of Augustus that he (John) would be allowed to maintain his rule over the duchies of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine. The conditions of the settlement included John’s agreement to acknowledge and accept Philip’s lordship, and to pay 20,000 marks in exchange of his privileges. To raise funds for payment, John imposed a tax on the Cistercians, who were traditionally exempt from such exactions. In Chronicon Anglicanum, Ralph of Coggeshall, a contemporary chronicler and an abbot of the Cistercian order, reports the king’s response to monks who refused payment: barely containing his fury, John “ordered his sheriffs to persecute the Cistercians by all possible means, and to take no action against those who harmed them,” and according to Ralph, the king was “breathing fire and slaughter against the followers of Christ” by the end of the confrontation.44 4 4 Marc Morris, King John: Treachery and Tyranny in Medieval England: The Road to Magna Carta (New York: Pegasus Books, 2015), 117. Ralph’s assessment of John’s rule is, like his fellow chroniclers, given to church bias and his views of the king are often more reactive rather than objective, and they were quite naturally subject to the political developments during John’s reign. For contrasting views of John’s reign, see John Gillingham, “Historians Without Hindsight: Coggeshall, Diceto and Howden on

King Johan (1538) and King John  37 For King Johan to serve its Protestant agenda, Bale does not and cannot make John’s tyranny explicit – just as Englande has been robbed by Sedicyon, Clergye has been robbed by the king – and yet the more Bale tries to mask the king’s tyranny, the more it stands out in the dialogue between Clergye and Nobylyte. Nobylyte stands firm in defending the king’s right to tax Clergye even mid-way through the play, but the central focus shifts from a discussion about the king’s authority and ­Clergye’s disobedience to Clergye’s disloyalty. Nobylyte justifies the taxation of the clergy as “a mater necessary”; the king needs to raise funds to recover one of the greatest losses in early English history, the loss of Normandy to Philip of Augustus, and “[John’s] lands beyond Orleaunce,” in reference to the loss of Maine and Anjou.45 Even when Clergye outright rejects this explanation, citing his anxiety that once the king thinks he can impose taxes on the clergy for his wars, he [the king] will make a habit of doing so. Nobylyte turns the argument from one about the church’s liberty into one about national loyalty: Nobylyte. He that defendeth yow owght to have parte of yowre goodes. Clergye. He hath the prayers of all them that hathe hoodes. Nobylyte. Why, ys that inowgh to helpe hym in his warre? Clergye. The Churche he may not of lyberte debarred. Nobylyte. Ded not Crist hym selfe paye trybytt unto Cesere? Yf he payd trybute, so owght his holy vycar. (ll. 605–10) If we must to declare a “winner” to this argument, the winner is Clergye: Nobylyte simply gives up when he fails keep up with Clergye’s “learnedness” and is, in turn, accused of heresy. Even so, the nationalistic cause does not exhaust itself because the argument takes place within a framework of conquest, and it conflates medieval and early modern history. Nobylyte assesses John’s kingship and declares that he is the most noble and successful prince in all of Christiandom. When Clergye sarcastically mocks the king’s “success,” Nobylyte insists: “Well, he lost not ther so moche by marcyall chaunce/ But he gate moche more in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales […] Ye dysdayne soche mater as ye know full evydent/ Are not bothe Ireland and Wales to hym obedyent?” (ll. 570–74). Audiences at the performance of King Johan at Archbishop C ­ ranmer’s house in 1538 would have noticed that Bale was exaggerating the the Early Years of John’s Reign,” in King John: New Interpretations, edited by S. D. Church (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 1–26; and D. A. Carpenter’s “Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall’s Account of the Last Years of King Richard and the First Years of King John,” English Historical Review 113.454 (1998), 1210–30. 45 King Johan, l. 596.

38  King Johan (1538) and King John importance of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland and downplaying the loss of John’s French possessions on the early modern stage. The loss of Angevin French possessions during John’s reign, particularly with the fall of Normandy, is considered by most to be one of the most devastating losses in English history and was perceived as an utter humiliation of the 1066 conquest. Historically, English kings from 1066 “considered themselves first and foremost as landowners in Normandy,” and England was of secondary interest; William divided his lands: the heir apparent, Robert, was granted the Duchy of Normandy, and his younger brother, later William II, received England.”46 The obedience of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales could not have redeemed the humiliation of the losses in France. Contemporary chronicle accounts confirm this: Ireland, Scotland and Wales all bowed to his nod—a situation which, as is well known, none of his predecessors had achieved— and he would have thought himself as happy and successful as he could have wished, had he not been despoiled of his continental possessions and suffered the Church’s curse.47 Bale’s habit of mythologizing the past is characteristic of his evangelical views of past and present. Cathy Shrank observes that he “assimilates” history, and in so doing, he erases the tensions between past and present: “Bale’s method of composition is thus inflected both by his antiquarianism and by his religious beliefs, as the study of the old documents is used to bring forth historical ‘truths’ allegedly suppressed whilst those texts were ‘kepte… vndre duste’ in monastic libraries.”48 Bale’s ideas of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland in King Johan’s twelfth-­ century setting are, even on the sixteenth-century stage, quite far off from the “truth”: they are hardly, as Nobylyte would have us believe,

46 Nick Barratt, “Lackland: The Loss of Normandy in 1204,” History Today 54.3 (2004): 32–33. 47 Ibid., 37. 48 Cathy Shrank, “John Bale and Reconfiguring the ‘Medieval’ in Reformation E ­ ngland,” in Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, edited by Gordon ­McMullan, David Matthews, and David Wallace (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 185, 184. This approach to medieval history is characteristic of the post-­reformation era. See D. R. Woolf, Reading History Early Modern ­E ngland (­C ambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); ­G ordon ­MuMullan and David Matthews, eds., Reading the Medieval in Early Modern ­E ngland (­C ambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Felicity Heal, “Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past,” and Paulina Kewes, “History and Its Uses: Introduction,” both in The Uses of History in Early Modern England, edited by Paulina Kewes (San Marino: Huntington ­L ibrary, 2006). On Bale, see note 88 in this chapter.

King Johan (1538) and King John  39 “obedient.”49 As  the first history play of the Tudor era, Bale’s Tudor interpretation of King John set the mould for post-reformation representations of John’s achievements. John Speed’s third History of Great Britaine (1632) “depended upon treating John’s loss of his continental possessions as of little moment. Thus he proclaimed that [King] John’s work in Wales and Ireland was ‘of greater import for England’s peace than all the French titles ever yet have proved.’”50 Given the conditions in Ireland in the mid-1530s, the claims that Bale asserts in King Johan must have struck early modern audiences as an exercise in sixteenth-­ century wish fulfillment. England’s control of Ireland was severely undermined in the wake of the Kildare rebellion as the rebels sought foreign aid from the continent. Even before of the rebellion in 1534, Kildare representatives were well aware of E ­ ngland’s strained ties with Spain, Scotland, and Rome, and the ­Desmonds and Kildares were ready to exploit existing political disputes to their advantage. Those in rebellion made secret overtures to Charles V, hoping to receive military aid from the Spanish king. In a letter to Charles about a month after the revolt, Conor O’Brien, the sonin-law of the earl of Desmond, tells Charles that his ancestry could be traced back to Spain, and that “they have never ceased to oppose the pride of the English, and have never yielded to them.”51 O’Brien further promises to submit to the protection of the Spanish king in addition to providing Spanish forces with a generous supply of armed militia. Even though Desmond’s participation in the rebellion was only limited to the Butler lordship, he joined forces with the O’Briens and demonstrated that he would acknowledge Charles as his overlord if the king supported his cause.52 Kildare’s son, Thomas Fitzgerald (“Silken Thomas”), reached out to Charles in late 1534 by sending Charles Reynolds, his chaplain, to Spain and Scotland on his way to Rome.53

49 See Reginald Francis Treharne, “The Franco-Welsh Treaty of Alliance in 1212,” Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 18.1 (1985); Gideon Brough, “Welsh-French Diplomacy in the Middle Ages,” in The Welsh and the Medieval World: Travel, Migration and Exile, edited by Patricia Skinner (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 2018), 175–214; John Gillingham, “Bureaucracy, the English State and the Crisis of the Angevin Empire,” in Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century, edited by Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 197–220; M. A. Pollock, Scotland, England and France After the Loss of Normandy, 1204–1296 (Woodbridge; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2015). 50 Quoted in Gillingham, “Historians Without Hindsight,” 4, n23. 51 L. & P. Hen VIII, vii, no. 997. 52 Siochrú, “Foreign Involvement,” 55. Desmond’s dealings with Charles were put to an end when he died in December 1534; the earldom was contested between Sir John Desmond, his brother, and James fitz Maurice, his grandson. 53 Ibid., 57.

40  King Johan (1538) and King John The nature of Irish-Scottish intrigue, which extended to Rome, is carefully elaborated in a report from the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, to Charles V. In his report, Chapuys recounts his meeting with James V’s ambassador; Chapuys explains that James and his adherents anticipate “movements in Ireland, which might open the eyes of their men [in Scotland], especially one of their earls, who is one of the nearest to Ireland, and one of the most warlike lords in Scotland, having under him at all times Wild Scots who are friends of the said Irish,” but Chapuys could not be certain if James was in direct contact with the rebels.54 In Rome, Reynolds petitioned to the new pope, Paul III, with a 1216 agreement between King John and Pope Innocent III, which established the king’s acceptance of papal authority and his lordship of Ireland as a papal fief.55 At the same meeting, Reynolds also requested papal dispensation to absolve Thomas Fitzgerald’s excommunication; the young earl was excommunicated for his involvement in the murder of Archbishop and Lord Chancellor John Alen, whom Reynolds describes as “a supporter of the schismatical English king.”56 The case of Alen’s death also appears in Chapuys’s report to Charles V. Chapuys describes Alen’s attempt to cross the Irish Sea to England but was forced to return because of unfavorable winds. While seeking refuge from a fortress, Alen “expected to be in security, but he and all his company fell into the hands of Kildare’s son and his adherents, and to avoid trouble and expense he was put to death, with all his company, except two persons, who are thought to be the wealthiest of that country, and who paid a ransom.”57 News of Alen’s death was likely delivered to the English court by J. Rawson, Prior of Kilmainham.

54 L. & P. Hen VIII, vii, no. 1057. 55 Siochrú, “Foreign Involement,” 58. The status of Ireland as twelfth-century lordship and papal fief is closely associated with the bull Laudabiliter (1155), which sanctioned Henry II’s conquest of Ireland. The historical events that led to Pope Adrian III’s granting of Laudabiliter are most prominently described in Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica (1189). See Giraldus Cambrensis, The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis: Containing the Topography of Ireland, and the History of the Conquest of Ireland, the Itinerary Through Wales, and the Description of Wales (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 260–62. On the controversy surrounding the authenticity and content of the bull, see Anne Duggan, “The Making of a Myth: Giraldus Cambrensis, Laudabiliter, and Henry II’s Lordship of Ireland,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3rd series, 4 (2007); Mark Haren, “Laudibiliter: Text and Context,” in Charters and Charter Scholarship in Britain and Ireland, edited by Marie Thérèse Flanagan and Judith A. Green (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); M. P. Sheehy, “The Bull Laudabiliter: A Problem in Medieval Diplomatique and History,” Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 29 (1960–61), and ­Nicholas Vincent, “Angevin Ireland,” in The Cambridge History of Ireland: Vol. I, edited by Brendan Smith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 185–221, esp. “Laudabiliter and the Conquest of Ireland,” 189–98. 56 Siochrú, “Foreign Involvement,” 58. 57 L. & P. Hen VIII, vii, no. 1057.

King Johan (1538) and King John  41 When Cromwell received the news, he “utter[ed] a thousand reproaches, charging him [Rawson] with treason for leaving Ireland at a time when the Irish ought to be maintained in loyalty and obedience to the King, and moreover, when his departure might give rise to many surmises and scandals.” 58 Greatly angered, Cromwell had Rawson arrested. On the Spanish front, Chapuys was optimistic about the revolt’s gathering force, as more rebels join Kildare’s 20,000-strong army, and “more come to him every day, and that even from Wales and Scotland.”59 In Rome, Kildare’s agents successfully made their case to the pope. Dr. Oritz, the Spanish ambassador at the Curia, reported Paul III’s positive responses to Kildare’s men. An absolution was granted to lift the young Fitzgerald’s excommunication: “the pope expressed pleasure at what has been said, [and] excused his delay in the past from his anxiety to see whether the [English] king would acknowledge his error and as to the future would do his duty.”60 Alen’s death calls attention to the role of the secular and non-secular clergy in England; the highly politicized archbishoprics were negotiated and granted through complex networks of patronage between king and pope. Kildare’s personal chaplain found a sympathetic audience in Rome because of his office and because the Irish clergy faithfully maintained “their long tradition of direct communication with Rome, [and they] were remarkably loyal to the papacy.”61 Alen’s rise to the archbishopric and chancellorship began with his commissary-generalship of the legatine court, when he assisted Wolsey with the suppression of monastic independence; Alen “played a central role in the proceedings by ensuring that Wolsey’s preferred choices as monastic heads were elected, whether through dictate or intrigue; and by conducting the legatine visitations of religious houses, whether they were exempt or non-exempt.”62 In A Supplicayon for the Beggars (1529) Simon Fish singles out Alen’s support of Wolsey’s enterprise as a threat to royal supremacy.63 Alen’s rise to power in Ireland was likely associated with Wolsey’s attempts to encroach on

58 59 60 61 62

Ibid. Ibid. Dr. Oritz quoted in Siochrú, 58. Siochrú, “Foreign Involvement,” 57. James Murray, “John Alen,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. www. oxforddnb.com.ezlibproxy1.ntu.edu.sg/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128. 001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-377?rskey=4Z2AG9&result=1 63 Simon Fish, A Supplicayon for the Beggars (Antwerp: Joannes Grapheus, 1529), 7. Also in Murray, “John Alen.” EBBO. http://eebo.chadwyck.com.ezlibproxy1.ntu. edu.sg/search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgthumbs.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=99845344& F I L E =.. /s e s sion /1548159 012 _17924 & S E A RC H S C R E E N = C I TAT ION S & SEARCHCONFIG=var_spell.cfg&DISPLAY=AUTHOR

42  King Johan (1538) and King John the Kildare and Butler liberties in the late 1520s.64 The control of the bishoprics on both sides of the Irish Sea through Wolsey’s legatine jurisdiction exposes the contesting interests between king and clergy. Writing King Johan shortly after Wolsey’s fall, Bale was bent on refuting the authority of the Catholic clergy; Wolsey’s practice of manipulating the election of bishops is played out in the same patronage network between the monks of Canterbury and Rome in King Johan. Bale develops the corruption of the church by challenging the king’s prerogative to elect and appoint key ecclesiastical candidates, but in the play, John’s treatment of ecclesiastical election is arguably as tyrannical as the pope’s treatment of Englande. The struggle for supreme authority in King Johan revolves around contesting ideas of loyalty, or more specifically, the debt of loyalty owed to the king and/or church and the explicit and implicit reciprocity that it demands. The contestation for the archbishopric of Canterbury in the play is presented as an epic battle for power between king and pope, but this clash raises some questions about the role of ecclesiastical offices that are also inherently secular in character. Archbishoprics in England, unlike the one that Bale took on in Ireland, were highly prized and immensely scarce in the medieval and early modern period. The prestige of the office was matched only by the authority and the economic benefits that came with it. Though the office is ecclesiastical, its fortunes in early England were closely tied to the realm’s secular possessions and subjected to the king’s patronage. Those who held higher ecclesiastical office in mid-eleventh-century Western Europe came into “possession of a vast complex of estates, villages, towns, churches, forests, castles, and lucrative rights and privileges that they administered and from which they derived the income in cash and kind,” and bishops “profited from the wave of building, commerce, and manufacturing.”65 A late twelfth-century account of Henry II’s council at Eynsham, to elect the bishop of Lincoln attests to the value of a bishopric: Many of the dignitaries of that church were also members of the king’s council and household, and were distinguished politicians and scholars and also men of considerable fortune. Most of them felt that no bishopric, however large, was beyond their deserts, since they had managed to acquire wealth in excess of that of the most extensive bishopric. Some of them would certainly not have refused a bishopric if pressed to accept it, either because according to the

64 Steven Ellis, “Thomas Cromwell and Ireland, 1532–1540,” The Historical Journal 23.3 (1980), 502. 65 E. U. Crosby, The King’s Bishop: The Politics of Patronage in England and ­Normandy, 1066–1216 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 2.

King Johan (1538) and King John  43 apostle it was good work, or from motives of secular ambition, because of the distinction and authority it conferred.66 The author’s observation suggests that by the twelfth century, it was commonly acknowledged that the bishop’s office was as political as it was ecclesiastical: the audience and participants in his commentary are dominated by men of power, not men of cloth. To be appointed as a bishop is to become the king’s man, as the phrase Rex episcopatum dedit (The king gave the bishopric) implies.67 Whether or not bishoprics were for kings to give was, however, another question. Before the Reformation, the successful election of a bishop required the support of the church and the patronage of the king, but their competing interests – subjected to the changing tides of political and economic fortunes in the ­Continent  – could seriously undermine each other’s influences in the election. The resistance that resulted from their disputes invariably raised questions about divine authority. Elections in the early medieval period were characterized by the participation of the king, the pope, the clergy, bishops, and the nobility. When the electoral process became more influenced by the Roman model (led by the cardinals) in the twelfth century, Pope Innocent II adjusted it to ensure that other ecclesiastical members would be included as active participants. Local dioceses were also aware of their right to exert pressure on elections: “the cathedral chapter, whether or monks or canons, was clearly recognized as the primary and legitimate body… the papacy had laid out a procedure that would give it an ascendant position,” and as a result, “the king’s role, viewed more and more as one of passive consent, was to be assumed by the pope.”68 This hardly meant that kings were content with “passive consent.” ­A fter all, the archbishops and their bishops were actively engaged in the political and ecclesiastical affairs of the realm both within and beyond England (when they were sent as the king’s legates to foreign and papal councils). The loyalty of the episcopate was integral to the governance of the realm, and the king’s awareness of the dynamics between the church and country was reflected in his increasing desire to “control the prelates.”69 66 Qtd. from The Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, ibid., 20. 67 Ibid., 17. 68 Ibid., 20. For an overview of the dominance and interference of the Church in state affairs, see Kenneth Pennington, Pope and Bishops: The Papal Monarchy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), Brett Edward Whalen, The Medieval Papacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Roger Wickson, Kings and Bishops in Medieval England, 1066–1216 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 69 Ibid., 22. On the bishops’ roles within communities, courts, and church, see Judith A. Green, Forging the Kingdom: Power in English Society, 973–1189 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), esp. Chapter 5, “Archbishops, bishops and

44  King Johan (1538) and King John Furthermore, the political and economic benefits that came with the bishop’s office were gifted through the king’s patronage, and more significantly, the office secured the king’s coffers when exchequer resources were strained: “unlike the descent of lay fiefs which might be divided and go to vassals of unknown loyalty, vacant bishoprics, aside from upkeep needed for the chapter, reverted intact to the king to be handed out again to whomever he chose among his supporters.”70 The “market value” of bishoprics also meant that kings could sell offices when they needed to raise funds; Angevin kings were accustomed to doing so; Walter de Grey, the bishop of Worcester, paid an 10,000 pounds for his promotion to the office of York at the end of King John’s reign.71 John’s father, Henry II, was notorious for asserting his authority over the episcopate: “Churchmen, he insisted, had no property unless the king granted it, nor could they act in any way unless he approved of it. It was he who conferred bishoprics and abbeys on whomever he wished, and it was he who brought priests and clerks to trial in his courts.”72 More famously, Henry asserted his iron grip over ecclesiastical offices in the election to fill the bishopric of Winchester; in his writ to the monks: “‘I order you to hold a free election,’ the king said, ‘but nevertheless forbid you to elect anyone except Richard [of IIchester] my clerk.’”73 The king’s writ is all the more significant after the death of Thomas Becket, when Henry assured the clergy of Canterbury that they would be allowed to have free elections of their bishops.74 Ruling in the shadow of his father’s troubled relationship with the Church, King John, too, refused to yield his right to appoint his candidate, John de Gray, the bishop of Norwich, and later justiciar of Ireland, to the Canterbury archbishopric.75

70 71 72 73 74 75

abbots”; S. T. Ambler, Bishops in the Political Community of England, 1213–1272 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), and Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson, eds., Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011). Ibid., 2. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 23. Richard Huscroft, Ruling England 1042–1217 (2nd edition), (London; New York: Routledge, 2016). Morris, 86. In King Johan, Becket is depicted as an exemplary Christian king. Imperyall Majestye however, condemns their views: “But Thomas Beckett ye exalted without reason/ Because that he dyed for the Churches wanton lyberte,/ That the priestes myght do all kyndes of inyquyte, And be unponnyshed” (ll. 99–100). The memory of Becket casts a long shadow over John’s reign; see Paul Webster, “Crown Versus Church After Becket: King John, St Thomas and the Interdict,” in The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c. 1170–1220, edited by Marie-Pierre Gelin and Paul Webster (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016).

King Johan (1538) and King John  45

The Interdict and the Irish Expedition (1210) For sixteenth-century reformers like Bale, King John’s refusal to yield to the Canterbury election makes him a hero king, but celebrating John’s feat also calls attention to his tumultuous relationship with the nobility and his problems in Ireland. John’s insistence on appointing his preferred candidate to the archbishopric of Canterbury is without a doubt associated with his unsuccessful campaigns aimed at recovering French possessions. In addition to the resistance he faced against the exorbitant tax impositions on the nobility, John was also unable to persuade them to support his cause, many of whom had vested interests in John’s former French dominions. Hubert Walter, then lord chancellor of England and archbishop of Canterbury, was only one among many who stood in John’s way, refusing to support the king’s early plans to invade France.76 The king’s response to Walter’s death in 1205 is reported in medieval chronicles: “By God’s feet! […] Now for the first time I am king and lord of England!”77 It is worth noting that in addition to his estates in England, the archbishop was also granted estates in Ireland at John’s ascension.78 More importantly, his death thus opened an opportunity for John to fill his offices with supporters of his anti-French agenda. The king then appointed John de Gray while the Canterbury monks were petitioning for their own candidate, the sub-prior Reginald, at the Curia. The repercussions of the disputed election are glossed over in King Johan but the result is announced when Usurpid Powre declares that he has made Stephen Langton archbishop of Canterbury, and Langton “hath knowlege that his name ys Sedycyon” (l. 939).79 In John’s time, the pope annulled John de Gray’s appointment after Langton was confirmed as archbishop; John was publicly humiliated and was convinced that Langton’s appointment was part of a Franco-papal conspiracy against ­England.80 Bale puts the long-popularized account of John’s fury into the mouth of Usurpid Powre:

76 In one instance, Roger of Coggeshall recounts Hubert’s intervention on behalf of the Cistercians when the monks were unjustly taxed to raise funds for the payment of 20,000 marks to Philip of Augustus. At the approach of the archbishop, John reportedly snapped at him: “My lord archbishop, I beg you not to enrage me today, since I propose to be bled.” D. A. Carpenter, “Abbot of Coggeshall’s Account of the Last Years of King Richard and the First Years of King John,” English Historical Review 113.454 (1998), 1220. 77 Matthew Paris qtd. in Morris, King John, 85. 78 Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 234. 79 An overview of the development of the election can be found in M. D. Knowles, “The Canterbury Election on 1205–6,” The English Historical Review 53.210 (1938). 80 Roger of Wendover qtd. in Morris, King John, 131.

46  King Johan (1538) and King John [King Johan] for ther rebellyon Exyled them all, and toke ther hole possessyon In to his owne hands, them sendyng over see Ther lyvyngs to seke in extreme poverte. This custum also he hath, as it tolde me: When prelates depart – yea bysshope, abbott, or curate – He entreth theyr lands with owt my lyberte, Takyng the profyghts tyll the nexte be consecrate, Instytute, stallyd, inducte, or intronyzate. And of the pyed monkes he entendeth to take a dyme. All wyll be marryd yf I loke not to yt in tyme. (ll. 951–61) John had declared that he, like his father, would not accept a nation with divided loyalties, and his persecution of the Canterbury monks, which was more aggressive than his attack against the Cistercians (whom he later yielded to) is well documented in contemporary records, no doubt earning him the name of a “bad king” among contemporary clerical chroniclers.81 Following Bale’s lead, John Foxe also uses the phrase “usurped power” to name the pope in Actes and Monumentes.82 In Bale’s play, however, the king’s wrath is unchecked; his punishment of the clergy is complete (he “toke ther hole possessyon” and will continue “Takyng the profyghts” until he gets his archbishop), leaving them in “extreme poverte.” Foxe’s narrative leaves room to recount the unsuccessful negotiation between banished clergy, king, and pope, as the bishops of London, Worcester, Ely, Winchester, and Hereford attempt to persuade the king into accepting Langton’s appointment but with no avail; they receive more threats of violence against the clergy.83 In Bale’s play, John’s treatment of the clergy is only

81 Morris, King John, 136, 139; Bale makes a reference to the partial treatment of the king when Nobility accuses Clergy of slandering the king: You pristes are the cawse that Chronycles doth defame So many prynces, and men of notable name, For yow take upon yow to wryght them evermore, And therefore Kyng Johan ys lyke to rewe yt sore, When ye wryte his tyme, for vexyng of the Clargy. (ll.585–89) For Bale’s attitudes toward the historical chronicles, see Verity’s speech, rousing the antiquarian, John Leland to wake from his slumber, “And wytnesse a trewthe for thyne owne contrayes sake” (84). Much has been written about Bale’s views of medieval history and the strategies he uses to appropriate them to suit the Protestant agenda. See Mark Greengrass and Matthew Phillpott, “John Bale, John Foxe, and the Reformation of the English Past,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archiv for Reformation History 101.1 (2010); Susan Royal, “Historian or Prophet? John Bale’s Perception of the Past,” Studies in Church History 49 (2013). 82 Foxe, Actes and Monumentes, 329. 83 Ibid.

King Johan (1538) and King John  47 matched by Englande’s plight. Just as she accuses Clergye of robbing all her land and property, and these “vyle popych swine hath clene exyled my hosband,” the persecuted monks accuse the king of doing the same (ll. 10). The broader implications of John’s rejection of Langton’s appointment to the archbishopric of Canterbury have to do more with issues of patronage and authority than religious piety: the office is the richest and the most powerful ecclesiastical seat in England. When Langton is received by the pope, the latter instructs the newly appointed archbishop: “And thow, Stevyn Langton, cummaund the bysshoppes all/ So many to curse as are to hym benefycyall,/ Dwkes, erles and lords, whereby they may forsake hym [King John]” (ll. 1062–65). And Nobylyte is immediately absolved of his loyalty to the king (ll. 1183). The archbishop of Canterbury potentially has the power to tilt the balance of authority between king and nobility, and king and church; with the exception of the Carlisle and Durham bishops (under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of York), all English bishops report to the archbishop of Canterbury. John cautions the danger of this type of authority in a reference to the troubles his father faced when the late king, Forty yeres ago for ponyshment of a clarke. No cunsell myght them to reformacyon call, In ther openyon they were so stordy and starke, But ageynst ther prynce to the Pope they dyd so barke, That here in Ynglond, in every cyte and towne Excommunycacyons as thonder boltes cam downe. (ll. 1284–89) John’s resistance is in part justified as a response to the pope’s relentless tyranny against his father, and against him, but it is also largely attributed to his conviction that Langton is an agent of Philip of Augustus (and he is right: the pope orders Philip to invade England). Even so, it is hard to speculate whether his defiance is a result of his conviction that Langton is Philip’s agent, or if he is bent on punishing the church for the public humiliation he is made to suffer: “I am well content to receive the monkes agayne/ Upon amendement; but as for Stevyn Langton, playne/ He shall not cum here, for I know his dysposycyon./ He is moche inclymed to sturdynesse and sedycyon” (ll. 1327). In any case, he will pay any price to displace Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, and he does so at the expense of England (yet another ironic turn to his promise to seek justice on her behalf): the pope declares an Interdict on the realm, which extends into Scotland and Wales. Ireland, however, is not immediately mentioned. It is of some significance when Ireland is mentioned in the context of the Interdict; talk of Irish affairs show up just before the declaration of the Interdict, and it is placed at the crucial intersection between the Interdict and John’s 1210 expedition to Ireland. In response to the king’s persecution of the monks, Sedicyon proposes an Interdict on England.

48  King Johan (1538) and King John The complaints of clerical suppression take a turn to Ireland. Dissymulacyon informs Privat Welth that the king must be stopped before more financial demands are imposed on the clergy: Dissymulacyon. Yt is takyn, ser. The somme ys un-resonnable—, A nynne thowsand marke: to lyve they are not able. His suggestion was to subdew the Yrsh men. Privat Welth. Yea that same peple doth ease the Church, now and then; For that enterpryse they wold be lokyd upon. Usurpid Powre. They gett no mony, but they shall have clene remyssion, For those Yrsh men are ever good to the Church: Whan kygnes dysobeye yt than they begynne to worch (ll. 962–69). This dialogue negates Nobylyte’s earlier defense of the king – “Are not bothe Ireland and Wales to hym obedient?” – as Nobylyte tries to convince Clergye that the loyalties of Ireland and Wales outweigh the loss of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, and more notably, Normandy (l. 574). Some historical context surrounding this period, when Dissymulacyon complains about financial demands on the church to fund the king’s Irish campaign, is helpful here: Langton’s appointment as archbishop of Canterbury was finalized in 1207; King John was excommunicate between 1209 and 1213, and the Interdict lasted from 1208 to 1214. Dissymulacyon’s gripe about the king’s attempt to extract funds from Clergye for his Irish expedition thus pre-dates the Interdict when in reality John did not sail to Ireland until after England, Scotland, and Wales were placed under Interdict. John’s dramatic expedition to Ireland in 1210 is of great interest because of the way in which Bale chronologizes his dramatic narrative – the expedition coincides with the Interdict and both point to John’s problems in Ireland. Usurpid Powre’s comment about the Irish can be bracketed between 1207 (because of Langton’s appointment) and 1210 (when John sailed to Ireland). The goal of the expedition was to resolve dissent among his barons and receive the submission of the Irish kings, thus undercutting Nobylyte’s assertion that Ireland and Wales are obedient is untrue. While John was away in Ireland, a Welsh revolt involving Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of Gwynedd developed from the unrest in Ireland; the barons that John pursued in Ireland – William de Briouze and his son-in-law, Walter de Lacy, both had long histories with and connections to the Welsh Marchers.84 John’s failure to keep his barons’ ambitions in check resulted in a general discontent in Ireland that had been brewing since

84 Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 243. Also see Colin Veach, “King and Magnate in Medieval Ireland: Walter de Lacy, King Richard and King John,” Irish Historical Studies 146 (2010).

King Johan (1538) and King John  49 the turn of the century. John carved up vast areas of land, and gave estates and offices to his barons. During John’s reign, the most important officers in Ireland were dominated by the de Lacys (Dublin and Meath), William Marshal (Leinster), the de Courcys (Ulster), and the de Briouzes (Cork and Limerick).85 But even before John’s first expedition to Ireland as a young prince, the nobility in Ireland was already a cause for concern. Hugh de Lacy’s ambitions became increasingly apparent in the late 1170s. His marriage to the king of Connacht’s daughter compounded matters. The chronicler, William of Newburgh, described Hugh de Lacy as the most powerful English baron in Ireland and added that Hugh was desirous of overthrowing English rule and claiming kingship of Ireland for himself.86 Upon his ascension, John reshuffled the land grants in ­I reland and took an active approach to asserting royal authority, which saw increased military building activities on the island and more distribution of land grants to his new favorites. The king’s interventionist approach provoked the retaliation of the native lords and his barons (some staunch supporters of the late Richard). The changing fortunes of these men and the dissent among them are often attributed to John’s “divide and conquer” strategies.87 Seán Duffy identifies the first years of John’s reign in Ireland as a time of civil war (1200–01) when expansion plans into Connacht were anticipated and the baronial conflict between ­William de Burgh and John de Courcy (with the de Lacys) intensified. The revival of the lordship of Limerick to William de Briouze further complicated these rivalries.88 According to official records, John’s expedition to Ireland was to pursue William de Briouze and Walter de Lacy, and his habit of dividing and conquering was on full display when he attempted to pit the men against each other and the native Irish kings. The Interdict on the realm, it seemed, had little effect on the expedition. John embarked on his Irish expedition with two objectives: the pursuit of William de Briouze and the meeting with the native kings. The first is widely covered by modern historians, but the latter deserves some coverage here.89 Sidney Painter attributes de Briouze’s fall from grace to

85 Colin Veach, “King John and Royal Control in Ireland: Why William de Briouze had to be Destroyed,” English Historical Review 129.540 (2014), 1053. 86 Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 228. On Hugh de Lacy’s career in Ireland, see Daniel Brown, Hugh de Lacy, First Earl of Ulster: Rising and Falling in Angevin Ireland (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2016), and Colin Veach, Lordship in Four Realms: The Lacy Family, 1166–1241 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). 87 Ibid., 236–38, 239, Veach, 1053. 88 Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 239, 240. 89 Veach, “King John and Royal Control in Ireland,” Brock W. Holden, “King John, the Braoses, and the Celtic Fringe, 1207–16,” Albion 33.1 (2001), 1–23; Richard Huscroft, Tales from the Long Twelfth Century: The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2016), esp. Section 8, “The Friend’s Tale: William de Briouze and the Tyranny of King John,” 197–217; and

50  King Johan (1538) and King John John’s increasing distrust of de Brouize’s ambitions in the Welsh March, and later, when he became a major stakeholder in Ireland. W. L. Warren thinks the baronial dissent in Ireland can be traced to the barons’ hopes of recovering their losses in France after the fall of Normandy. John’s official justification for hunting down de Briouze in Ireland was recorded as secundum consuetudinem regni et per legem scaccarii: de Briouze owed that king 5,000 marks for the grant of Limerick.90 This justification was more excuse than reason: the expenditures for the Irish expedition well exceeded that amount.91 Warren proposes a different view; John was aware that the barons were carving up lands in Ireland, which threatened the balance of power between the Anglo-Norman barons and the Irish aristocracy, and in turn, the peace and security of the island.92 More realistically, Brock W. Holden suggests that the destruction of de Briouze also meant that his lands in England, Ireland, Wales, and the Continent would be reverted to Crown custody.93 But John’s attempt to reconcile his barons and reassert his authority seems to fly in the face of his second objective: “the aspect of the visit which most recent accounts tend to stress is that John, in his anxiety to bring certain of his more troublesome barons to heel, showed ‘marked favour’ to the native Irish kings, found, as a result, ‘a general readiness among the Irish to accept him’, and went on to develop ‘close relations with their leaders.’”94 John’s reputation as a bad king of England and a good king of Ireland was thus established. Seán Duffy’s revisionist approach to the general assumptions of John’s “success” with the native lords is crucial in reconstructing (as opposed to rehabilitating) the king’s reputation in Ireland. It also throws some light on Bale’s appraisal of “Yrish” rebels and his assumption of their loyalty to Rome. Drawing from lesser-known Irish and French records, most particularly from a mid-thirteenth-century Norman-French chronicle, the Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, Duffy analyzes what may possibly be the most detailed description of John’s interaction with the native lords in the summer of 1210. The king and his military retinue arrived in Waterford on 20 June 1210, and they proceeded to ­William Marshal’s Kilkenny castle before moving to Dublin,

­ avid Crouch, “Complaint of King John against William de Briouze,” in Magna D Carta and the England of King John, edited by Janet Senderowitz Loengard (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010). 90 Holden, “King John, the Braoses,” 7. 91 Ibid., 9. 92 W. L. Warren, “The Historian as Private Eye, “Historical Studies 9 (1974), 1–18. p. 17. 93 Holden, “King John, the Braoses,” 9. 94 Warren qtd. in Seán Duffy, “King John’s Expedition to Ireland, 1210: The Evidence Reconsidered,” Irish Historical Studies 30.117 (1996), 2.

King Johan (1538) and King John  51 where he greeted a party of Irish lords.95 Roger of Wendover describes John’s arrival in Dublin; aside from the Dublin residents, John was joyfully welcomed by some twenty Irish petty kings, but others who were from the further reaches of the island, “scorned the king’s presence and refused to come.”96 According to Histoire, the king gifted a fine charger to the king of Connacht, Cathal Crobderg Ó Conchobair, one of the most powerful kings on the island. After wrapping up administrative and ceremonial duties in Dublin, John began his pursuit of the de Briouzes and de Lacys at the siege of Carrickfergus (with the assistance of Cathal), where he was joined by another Irish king some distance away from the royal camp; Duffy identifies him as Áed Méith Ó Néill. The author of Histoire describes the negotiations between Áed and the king in detail. Duffy helpfully summarizes the dynamics of the governance of Ireland as an English lordship. In 1207, the king struck a deal with Cathal, who “was given one-third of Connacht to hold by heritable fee, and the other two-thirds in return for the payment of an annual tribute.”97 A deal like this was also made to Donnchad Ó Caiprech Briain in 1210, who was then confirmed with the kingship of Thomond. Áed was offered a slightly different deal: the king was willing to grant him the status of a “client king” for the entire kingdom of Cenél Eógain, that is, he would not have any part of the kingdom by heritable fee. A proposal of this magnitude demanded consultation, and Áed, who seemed inclined to accept the offer, requested for time to discuss the matter with his council.98 John’s negotiations with the two Irish kings started to unravel when Cathal requested to return to Connacht from Carrickfergus; he promised to rejoin the campaign after a fortnight and agreed to bring his son, also named Áed, upon his return. John demanded to keep young Áed as hostage for the Connacht king’s good behavior. After consulting his council, Cathal returned without his son, and an invasion of Connacht was ordered as a result of his refusal to hand over his heir as hostage (though he sent his second son later; this son died in English captivity).99 95 The itinerary of the expedition can be found in Anthony M. Wilson, “King John: His Royal Progress Through Ulster 1210,” Lecale Miscellany 19 (2001). 96 Duffy, “King John’s Expedition,” 10. 97 Ibid., 15. 98 Ibid., 15–18. 99 Ibid., 17. The king’s holding of hostages is not unusual but most prominently demonstrated in his custody of Arthur of Brittany, his nephew and contester to the English throne. Speculations about Arthur’s mysterious disappearance stuck long after John’s death: it is not unlikely that John order the murder of his nephew. More ironically, it was ­William de Briouze who delivered Arthur to John, and when the king demanded to make hostages of de Briouze’s sons, Maud (de Briouze’s wife) refused to hand over their sons to “a man who had murdered his nephew.” The wrath of the king was was apparent, and she was captured with her children during John’s expedition: they were transported to the king in cages and allegedly starved to death in Windsor castle. Ibid., 18.

52  King Johan (1538) and King John The tensions between John and Ó Conchobair were also apparent in the king’s negotiations with Áed Méith Ó Néill. Histoire recounts Áed’s raids on John’s camps and his anger at the king’s greed; John had apparently demanded the contribution of an annual tribute in livestock on top of the usual military obligations owed to him. However, the Annals of Inisfallen states otherwise. As it turns out, Áed’s outrage about the payment of livestock (which he paid later) was more likely provoked by another different demand: “[King John’s] Messengers came to him [Ó Néill] to his house to seek hostages, and he said: ‘Depart, O foreigners, I will give you no hostages at all this time.’”100 It may be somewhat sentimental to assume that the Irish kings’ refusal to yield their sons as a demonstrated act of paternal protection (or because they were aware of John’s reputed cruelty to his hostages). Given the kinship ties that determined succession in medieval Ireland, sending sons away as hostages would have been akin to surrendering kinghsip.101 In spite of John’s run-ins with the Irish kings, extant documents seem to suggest that his Irish expedition was “successful” in that he successfully displayed the grandeur of English prowess, but as Duffy observes, King John left Ireland at war with perhaps the two most powerful Irish kings, Ua Conchobair and Ua Neill […] [The Irish campaign was] intended to produce a settlement between the king of England and his subject-kings of Ireland. But the negotiations collapsed, and John’s elaborate Irish expedition failed to produce such a settlement.102 Though there were signs of John’s reconciliation with the Irish kings and his barons in Ireland in the following years, it is notable that detailed

100 Ibid., 20. 101 English monarchs, especially after Henry VIII, were well aware that Irish structures of succession, often entangled in complex kinship ties, were detrimental to a complete conquest of Ireland. Sir Anthony St Leger’s “surrender and regrant” policies in the early 1540s were meant to rectify this problem (of tanistry) through the symbolic surrendering of Gaelic titles in exchange for English titles and, in theory, demonstrated the Irish acceptance of English rule and protection. It has been argued that the ideas associated with tanistry can be traced to the earlier middle ages but were not practiced until the late middle ages. See Christopher Maginn, “‘Surrender and Regrant’ in the Historiography of Sixteenth-Century Ireland,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38.4 (2007), and Megan McGowan, “Royal Succession in Earlier Medieval Ireland: The Fiction of Tanistry,” Perita 17–18 (2003). On medieval Ireland, see Eoin Mac Neill, “The Irish Law of Dynastic Succession,” Studies 8 (1919), 367–82, 640–53, Gearóid Mac Niocaill, “The ‘Heir Designate’ in Early Medieval Ireland,” Irish Jurist 3.2 (1968); Bart Jaski, Early Irish Kingship and Succession (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), and Immo Warntjes, “Regnal Succession in Early Medieval Ireland,” Journal of Medieval History 30.4 (2004). 102 Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 242.

King Johan (1538) and King John  53 accounts of how/if the Interdict affected the king’s actions in Ireland are scarce.103 John’s negotiations with the Irish kings and his barons appear largely untouched by the Interdict (and his excommunication), though historically, the expropriation of church property may have funded the 1210 Irish campaign. Bale’s view – filtered through the character of Ursupid Powre – that the king is bent on quelling rebellion in Ireland is wellplaced, but the suggestion that the Irish are in alliance with the pope is somewhat misplaced. The Irish strand in the play then shows up again when John surrenders his realm: King Johan. To hym [the pope] I resygne here the septer and the crowne Of Ynglond and Yrelond with the power and renowne, And put me wholly to his mercyfull ordynance. Cardynall Pandulphus. I may say this day the Chyrch hath a full gret chaunce. Thes five dayes I wyll kepe this crowne in myn owne hande In the Popes behalfe upseasyng Ynglond and Yrelond. (ll. 1729–34) The king’s submission of England and Ireland does not, however, suffice as punishment; he is ordered to make substantial financial reparations to church and clergy. John balks at this but has no other option but to yield. It is of some interest that Ireland is included in this dialogue about reparations as it underscores questions about the funding of John’s Irish campaign. C. R. Cheney’s discussion of John’s actions following the Interdict demonstrates quite clearly that the hostility between king and pope was less about Stephen ­L angton’s appointment than about the control and exploitation of church property and offices. Within two weeks of receiving the final threat of the Interdict, which was received on 12 March 1208, the bishoprics of Lincoln and Ely were advised to anticipate the surrender of “all the lands and goods of abbots and priors and all religious clergy of these dioceses who will not celebrate divine service […] In some places the sheriffs, but in many places special custodians, took charge of both the landed property and the moveables of the clergy [and to] hold these possessions in the king’s name and give the owners a mere ­subsistence-allowance.”104 103 The scarcity of correspondence from Rome may explain why more analyses of Ireland during the Interdict years and how it affected Anglo-Irish relationships are not widely available. P. J. Dunning’s brief catalogue shows that there are only 44 letters from this period, and the ones that pertain to the Interdict only included the correspondence between Innocent III and the king of Connacht, advising the Irish to be loyal and obedient to King John. Needless to say, these instructions were sent when John and the pope were in the final stages of reaching an agreement in 1213. See P. J. Dunning, “The Letters of Pope Innocent III to Ireland,” Studies in Church History 1 (1964). 104 Monastic chroniclers confirmed that this tyranny extended to the rest of England. C. R. Cheney, “King John’s Reaction to the Interdict on England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 31 (1949), 130.

54  King Johan (1538) and King John An estimate of the revenues extracted is reflected in the 1214 reparation bill: the king was made to pay 100,000 marks for damages caused during his anti-papal rampage.105 The early stages of John’s exactions on the clergy and his exploitation of church possessions must have funded his expensive Irish campaign to some degree. Bale’s references to the Irish rebellion and the Interdict reparations corroborate with the traditional King John story, but the narrative development of the king’s oppressive actions against the church and his final submission to the pope downplay his tyranny, thereby erasing his accountability during the Interdict years. John’s tyranny is not entirely absent in the play, but is simply negated by the Vice characters: because his oppression is perceived as tyranny by Sedicyon and Dissymulacyon, the moral Christian audience member or reader must therefore reject the judgments made by the villainous characters and render their comments slanderous. This interpretation supports Dermot Cavanagh’s discussion of the double role of Sedicyon as dangerous but also paradoxically righteous. In his study of anti-reformist sentiments in the early years of the Reformation, Cavanagh observes a “taxonomy of sedition” in King ­Johan; the Vice characters produce “a language of insinuation, hostile to reform and disdainful toward the sanctity of the King; it exploits or invents apparent symptoms of government hypocrisy and despotism,” and more significantly, “it is sympathetic to Catholicism, to rebellion and, in tone, is precisely akin to Bale’s Vice: mischievously creative, sardonic, and derisive toward constituted authority.”106 Furthermore, the negation of the Vices’ complaints functions as a device that emphasizes John’s victimhood: Cardynall Pandulphus. Ere I ­releace yow of the interdyctyon heare, In the which yowr realme continued hath thys seven yeare, Ye shall make Julyane your syster-in-lawe, thys bande, To gyve her the thirde part of Englande and of Irelande. King Johan. All the worlde knoweth, sir, I owe hir no suche dewtye. Cardynall Pandulphus. Ye shall gyve it to hir; there is no remedye. Wyll ye styll withstande our Holy Fathers precepte? Sedition. In peyne of dampnacyon hys commanundement must be kepte. King Johan. Oh, ye undo me, consyderynge my paymentes. (ll. 1941–49) The pope’s tyranny appears to be on full display here – he punishes John, even after the king has agreed to make reparations – but there

105 Ibid., 129. 106 Dermot Cavanagh, “The Paradox of Sedition in John Bale’s King Johan,” English Literary Renaissance 31.2 (2001), 179.

King Johan (1538) and King John  55 is some righteousness to his demand that John relinquishes a third of ­England and Ireland to Berengaria of Navarre, the widow of his brother, Richard I. While little is known about Richard’s queen, she is reputed to have traveled with her husband during the later years of the Crusades, and is believed to have been a model of religious piety. After Richard’s death, Berengaria was entitled to a widow’s pension from the newly-crowned John: the latter did not make any such payments to her, which resulted in the pope’s intervention.107 The problem with Bale’s portrayal of king and pope lies in the gap between pronouncements and actions. The Vice characters are consistently depicted as villainous throughout the play: they accuse and are accused of maligning the king, and their actions align with their complaints. John, on the other hand, is not entirely consistent. He does not seem to have anticipated the repercussions of the Interdict and perceives the punishment, when meted, to be unjust and cruel. More conveniently, John forgets that he, too, has an equally oppressive streak. In his earlier exchange with Englande, he vows to support her cause with a great council comprising of nobility, clergy, lawyers, and judges. John assures Englande: “Yf they helpe the not, my selfe wyll take yt in honed/ And sett such a waye as shall be to thi conforte” (ll. 149–50). But when angered, John turns into a ruthless tyrant; he promises Sedicyon that he will “dystroye” all the monasteries if the bishops and monks insist on bringing their grievances to the pope, and when Clergye tells him that his list of accusations against the church would leave him without one (l. 259), John retorts: Yes, I wold have a churche, not of dysgysyd shavelynges, But if faythfull hartes and charytable doynges; For whan Christes chyrch was in her hyeste glory She knew neyther thes sects nor ther ipocrysy. (ll. 429–32) John’s failed reformation is Henry VIII’s successful reformation.108 But more to the point, the king’s dramatized threats and actions have no place in the play. The confiscation of church property and the persecution of the

107 See John Gillingham, “Richard I and Berengaria of Navarre,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 53 (1980). Bale’s reference to Berengaria as “Julyane” is somewhat obscure. Peter Happé attributes Bale’s source to the Brut; King Johan, “Notes to King Johan,” 132. 108 The Interpretour declares that although it is regrettable that the “noble kynge ­Johan” could not withstand the tyranny of the Roman church, which he compares to the Egyptian’s oppression of the Israelites, “our late kynge Henrye/ Clerely brought us in to the lande of mylke and honye […] Restorynge agayne to a Christen lybertie/ Hys lande and people, lyke a most vyctoryouse kynge,” (ll. 1107–17).

56  King Johan (1538) and King John clergy take place off stage, and we only hear about the king’s oppression in the speeches of the Vices – “Bothe chyrchys and abbeys he oppressyth more and more,/ And take of the clergye—yt is onreasonable to tell” which Bale renders as lies and slander throughout the play (ll. 659–60). From the good Christian point of view, the Vices’ complaints of oppression negate the king’s tyranny and promote his character as a victim figure. This type of anti-papal rhetoric was integral to promoting the reformation agenda when the King Johan was written and performed. In the context of the Irish reformation, the suppression of the Roman church is more cautiously implemented, but Henry VIII’s attitudes toward church and clergy are strikingly similar to John’s even though he was not drastically more successful in the initial stages of implementing ecclesiastical reforms.

The Henrician Parliament (1536–37) Bale’s dramatization of John’s dispute with the pope and the implications of the Interdict in King Johan call attention to the development and implementation of the Irish reformation in that it was, like the King John narrative, an ecclesiastical dispute. In fact, it was more an ecclesiastical reform than a political one: the struggle was less about persuading Ireland to accept royal supremacy than it was about cutting Ireland’s ties with Rome. Alarmed by the extent to which the Desmonds, and more immediately, the Kildares were received in Rome, and by extension, Spain and France, Crown authorities believed that a reconquest of Ireland could only be achieved if the king took full control over the island. Early preparations for reform were mostly reactive, and they were made in response to the Kildare rebellion. By about August 1534, Cromwell already made plans to convene Irish parliament in 1535: “Proposed bills were to deal with the question of recognizing the royal right of conquest as a basis for resuming all lands as an alternative to a less drastic plan of reformation”; by the spring of 1535, Cromwell was “considering the drastic proposal of declaring the king’s conquest by statute, inferring that by equity all spiritual and temporal lands should revert to him.”109 When the members of the Dublin Council warned that mass confiscation could compound the rebellion, the proposal was briefly retracted. This, however, did not mean that the king’s subjects in Ireland objected to the reformation program: they were keen on establishing more direct ties with the English government and hoped to secure more protection and benefits from the Crown. As such, the first session of parliament in May 1536 saw little opposition to the bill of royal supremacy: the supremacy legislation passed with negligible dissent among the lower

109 R. Dudley Edwards, “The Irish Reformation Parliament of Henry VIII, 1536–7,” Historical Studies 6 (1968), 61.

King Johan (1538) and King John  57 clergy. One of the bills that was not passed as legislative reforms concerning the suppression of monastic property is echoed in Bale’s perception of the clergy: “yf ony prynce reform ether ungodly facyons, / Than ii of the monkes must for the to Rome by and by/ with secrett letters to avenge ther injury (ll. 247–49). To cement the establishment of Henry as head of the Irish church, the king must invalidate ecclesiastical dispensations from Rome; the lower clergy proctors rejected this transference of privilege from church to king but to no avail.110 In this sense, Henry preempted and consequently blocked all attempts to seek recourse from Rome. The reformation legislation was geared toward ecclesiastical reform, but ecclesiastical reform was also intrinsically tied to the more practical aspects of secular interests. While the supremacy act was passed largely unchallenged in the first session, opposition against the reformation bills became more vocal in the second parliamentary session in July 1536 as the Commons expressed their hostility for the monasteries bill, which aimed to extract a twentieth of annual personal income tax and the submission of a customs levy to the exchequer.111 The agenda of this bill was perceived as a threat to the colonists: [T]he professional class in the colony saw the measure as a threat to their lucrative monastic stewardships, a consideration that prompted opposition also to the suppression of the monasteries in northern England. Resentment against what was regarded as victimization was intensified in the colony as a result of royal patronage passing increasingly from the older colonists to a new coterie of English-born officials The colonists had reason to fear that the new arrivals would be the chief beneficiaries in a re- distribution of monastic property and that this in turn would jeopardize profitable leases of monastic property held by longer established colonists.112 The colonists’ fears, as the next chapter shows, were justifiable. This seemingly new predicament was not entirely novel. In Angevin Ireland, King John’s charges against John de Courcy and Walter de Lacy for destroying his lands in Ireland prompted him to investigate the cause of their rebellion. It was reported that the rebels were not targeting the king; “the targets of their assaults were really the henchmen of John whose successes at land-grabbing in the south-west of Ireland were beginning to challenge 110 Brendan Bradshaw, “The Opposition to the Ecclesiastical Legislation in the Irish Reformation Parliament,” Irish Historical Studies 16.63 (1969), 292–93. A complete study of this topic can be found in his The Dissolution of the Religious Orders in Ireland Under Henry VIII. London (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974). 111 Bradshaw, “Opposition,” 295. 112 Ibid., 295.

58  King Johan (1538) and King John the old ascendancy.”113 This was not lost on lord deputy William Skeffington, who wrote to Cromwell when plans were still being made to hold parliament, expressing his support of interventionist methods of reform: “It should not be forgotten that Ireland was once more in the position in which it had been at the first conquest, and therefore England can decide how far to show mercy.”114 Henry was indeed forced to “show mercy” or risk a defeat in the Irish parliament, but unlike John’s final surrender to the church, royal threat worked hand in hand with his act of yielding to the Commons. The rejection of the monasteries bill associated with the income tax and levy prompted Henry to intervene, but the Commons refused to yield even after receiving a letter of appeal from the king. To make matters worse, their opposition influenced the spiritual orders, who supported the rejection of the bill, and “for the first time the spirituality had shown an audacious independence stimulated by Henry’s difficulties over the pilgrimage of grace.”115 In addition to cutting the pope’s authority from the king’s subjects, the king’s control over ecclesiastical offices, under these circumstances, meant that his agenda would, ideally, be promoted in parliament. These orders included a list of individuals with ecclesiastical offices; in the House of Lords, they were represented by bishops, abbots, and priors, and in the convocation house, they included the proctors.116 The impasse prompted to king to yield, and his response suggests that while he was hesitant to loosen his grip on the Commons, he asserted his demands on the clergy. The customs levy was dropped but the twentieth tax was maintained, and interestingly, the revised tax proposal would be imposed exclusively on the clergy. The Commons’ support of applying to the twentieth to the clergy suggests that they had little to no interest in ecclesiastical issues as long as their “vested interests were safeguarded.”117 After the fourth session, the spiritual lords, who previously stood firm on opposing the monasteries bill, finally yielded when ­Henry’s commissioners sat at the next session. The king sent them to “warn the members that if they failed to satisfy the king, he would so look upon them with his royal eye, that their ingratitude therein would be little to their comfort.”118 A threat as such, in the aftermath of the Kildare rebellion, struck fear into the spiritual lords: if they refused to yield, they could be perceived as Kildare supporters. Yield they did, but they also betrayed their clerical colleagues and expelled the only remaining

113 Duffy, “John and Ireland,” 237. 114 Edwards, “The Irish Reformation,” 63. 115 Edwards, “The Irish Reformation,” 74. 116 Ibid., note 1. 117 Bradshaw, “Opposition,” 298. 118 Edwards, “The Irish Reformation,” 75.

King Johan (1538) and King John  59 voices of opposition: the proctors. From the perspectives of the non-­ reformist clergy members, which in the end were the only group of men who remain resolute in their faith and loyalty to the church, the government’s manipulation of the reformation parliament of 1536–37 is perhaps not unlike John’s persecution of the medieval monks. Within a strictly English context, King Johan suppresses the tensions between the king, his nobility, and the Commons The historical, pre-­reformation John struggled to assert his authority throughout his reign. The loss of his French dominions, particularly Normandy, was a disgrace to the crown, and while he could still be credited with bringing some form of early governance to Ireland, his work there did little to redeem losses in France. That Bale was, in a minor key, pre-occupied with this could not have been a surprise; the Kildare rebellion must have been a sort of wake-up call for the Crown. Then, the reconquest of Ireland was not an immediate priority until the revolt grew of control and attracted international attention from Continental powers. In this sense, Bale’s portrayal of papal supremacy aligns with Irish attempts to seek support from Rome and Spain. Cutting Irish ties with Rome was one way of preventing foreign intrigue, which could ultimately threaten the security of England in the event of another revolt. In Bale’s play, John’s defiance against the appointment of Stephen Langton as the archbishop of Canterbury demonstrates just how important it is to retain complete control over ecclesiastical offices. The fact that he fails to do so does not altogether render him a victim, especially when King Johan is so sub-consciously aware of his oppression against the clergy. Just as Bale praises John for taking a stand, albeit an unsuccessful and expensive stand, he celebrates the “obedience” of Ireland when Ireland was in turmoil. The silencing of these dissenting voices, including those in the Kildare revolt, plays out in the suppression of the church in King Johan. The Vice characters are lumped together without distinct voices; Langton is also Sedicyon, and so too, we find Dissymulacyon as Ramundus and Simon of Swinsett, Usurpid Powre as Pope, and Privat Welth as Cardynall Pandulphus. The church’s lack of a distinct voice in the play is, of course, intentional and it serves the Protestant agenda of King Johan, so that when the Vices celebrate Becket’s legacy, they invariably recall Becket’s famous remark: “If a bishop is afraid [to speak against the king] … he is finished.”119 The opposition at the Irish parliament in 1536–37 would have been a great disappointment to Becket not simply because the spiritual lords were silenced by Henry’s threats but because they “betrayed” the proctors; 119 Qtd. in Crosby, 24. Becket’s remark is a quote from the matryr of Carthage, C ­ yprian; the comment was made in a letter he wrote to Roger Worcester.

60  King Johan (1538) and King John refusing to be silenced, they were simply thrown out of the proceedings. Bale may have set out to portray King John as a victim, and Henry VIII as a victorious victim, but his interpretation of victimhood at the hands of the Roman church hardly masks the tyranny on which it operates, in England and Ireland. Henry, after all, was bent on repairing “the error of kings Henry II and John, who by deceit, being in difficulties, had made this realm and Ireland tributary.”120 This reconquest tested the loyalty of his English and Anglo-Irish subjects for many years to follow as assumptions and expectations of loyalty continued to be challenged and contested in the Elizabethan era.

120 Qtd. in W. E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327–1534 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of American Publications, 1939), 73, and Colin Veach, “Henry II and the Ideological Foundations of Angevin Rule in ­I reland,” Irish Historical Studies 42.161 (2018), 1–25.

2 Englishness and Loyalty in Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica (1189) and Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577) The relevance of Gerald of Wales’ (Giraldus Cambrensis) Topographia ­Hibernica (1187) and Expugnatio Hibernica (1189) to ­R ichard ­Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) does not lie simply in Stanihurst’s the recycling of Gerald’s works but in its appeal to ­sixteenth-century chroniclers. Topographia and Expugnatio were ­written a little more than a decade after the first English invasion of Ireland (1169), but they were not available in English until the sixteenth century. Prior to the sixteenth century, Gerald’s Irish writings were circulated mostly in Italy. Petrarch loaned his copy of Topographia to Giovanni Boccaccio when he was preparing De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris (1363); Pope Pius II used it in De Europa (ca. 1458); it was also used in the writings of Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503), and the Borgia pope, Alexander VI.1 Later, Paolo Giovio relied on Gerald’s writings in his Descriptio Britanniae, Scotiae, Hyberniae et Orchadum (1548); Abraham Ortelius incorporated ­G erald’s geographical description to supplement his maps in Theatrum orbis terrarium (1573); Polydore Vergil used them in Anglica historia (1534), and they were incorporated into the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577 and 1587). Gerald’s Irish narratives were not published in their entirety and were typically excerpted or abridged in other works. Despite their anachronistic depictions of the Irish, Topographia and Expugnatio were especially suitable for English chroniclers who wanted to promote and justify the reconquest of Ireland in the late 1500s. Gerald recorded the struggles that the invaders (and the Crown) faced

1 On the excerpts selected by these writers, see Eric Haywood, “Humanism’s Priorities and Empire’s Prerogatives: Polydore Vergil’s Description of Ireland,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaelogy, Culture, History 109C (2009), 204, 199, Haywood, “Is Ireland Worth Bothering About? Classical Perceptions of Ireland Revisited in Renaissance Italy,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2.4 (1996), and Clare Caroll, Circe’s Cup: Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001).

62  Englishness and Loyalty in the invasion of Ireland. ­Sixteenth-century chroniclers addressed the same issue, albeit in a different era and context. Traditionally, these imperial narratives are more preoccupied with the conflict between English ­colonizers and Irish natives than with the complex relationship between monarchs and colonial administrators; after all, the disagreements between monarchs and colonial officials do not generally bear the violent marks of ­v ictory and defeat that feature so prominently in the battles between invaders and natives. To neglect the tensions within the government—that is, between English subjects and their monarchs—is to overlook the most pressing problem that the government faced in Elizabethan Ireland: the difficulty of establishing English law and royal authority beyond areas that were under English jurisdiction. To examine the implications of these tensions and their impact on assumptions of English identities in Ireland, this chapter begins with a study of Gerald’s Expugnatio as it traces the hierarchy of authority and the re-distribution of that authority after the first invasion. In doing so, it considers how cultural and identity markers are contested within the broader structure of colonial government in Elizabethan works. Gerald’s Expugnatio and Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) address the challenges of establishing a centralized governing body in Ireland, and they associate the difficulties of doing so to the clash of ideologies among English subjects. For instance, the “New Departure,” which ­Nicholas Canny describes as a new phase of government characterized by military rule, created a whole new range of conflict between the Old and New English. As such, the Expugnatio forms an important part of Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle; Stanihurst turns to Expugnatio to assert the historical credibility and superiority of the early conquerors in order to support their contemporary successors. Stanihurst’s defense of a rapidly declining Old English ascendancy, which advocates reform strategies that prioritize moderation over violence, suggests that one of the most significant difficulties in establishing an effective colonial government can be traced to the opposing ideologies of the Old English and the newcomers. The formation of a “fragmented” English identity can be linked to the contestation of distinct cultural markers and competing ideas of reform that influenced perceptions of loyalty. Chaplain to Henry II, and later tutor to Prince John, Gerald’s Expugnatio provides readers with a first hand account of the foundation of colonial Ireland and Henry II’s role in the development of the lordship. The Old English Palesmen of S­ tanihurst’s Ireland trace their ancestry to the early invaders, and to understand their sense of English identity and their feelings toward Crown authority, we must first address the political structures that shaped their attitudes and definitions of loyalty and identity in the twelfth-century conquest of Ireland.

Englishness and Loyalty  63

Expugnatio Hibernica Gerald of Wales descended from one of the most prominent marcher families in Wales since 1066 but his long-privileged status was already in decline by the time he wrote Expugnatio. 2 The relationship between the marcher lords who settled in South Wales and Henry II was strained, and the development of Ireland as a colonial outpost was historically tied to the king’s relationship with his Welsh marchers and the native Welsh princes. During Henry’s reign, there was an implicit understanding that the Crown would not interfere in the politics of Wales and that the ties between the two nations were to be maintained through co-­operation between the Welsh princes, the marcher lords, and the king himself. The main concern of the Welsh princes was the marchers’ actions, particularly their expansionist ambitions, which sometimes breached the lines of territorial demarcation. To redress these threats, the Welsh princes depended on the king’s intervention – Henry must control his barons or risk revolt. The tensions in this triangulation ­illustrate the fine balance of administering and governing a region where competing interests were rife, and the relationship between royal authority and its local representatives was often fraught with political conflict. The king’s delayed interventions were interpreted as signs of his shifting alliances and biases which in turn motivated the Welsh marcher lords to turn their attention to Ireland, where they hoped to expand their landholdings without the king’s interference. The narrative in Expugnatio hinges on the king’s authority over his marchers, but it is also carefully organized to illustrate the limitations of royal authority as it repeatedly emphasizes the marchers’ role in the conquest. Gerald begins with the dramatic account of Dermot MacMurrough’s (Prince of Leinster) rape and abduction of Tiernan ­O’Rourke’s (Prince of Meath) wife in his absence. This episode (which, according to Gerald, was encouraged by Tiernan’s wife who harbored a secret affection for Dermot) follows with Tiernan’s attack on Dermot, 2 This family is a prominent one by all standards in twelfth-century Wales. Gerald’s great-grandfather, Walter, led the Norman army in Wales when he fought alongside ­William the Conqueror. After the Norman victory, Gerald was awarded vast lands and made constable of Windsor Castle. Walter’s son, Gerald of Windsor, was also a leading military figure who participated in the invasion of Wales and later took charge of Pembroke castle. William’s victory essentially opened the doors to Wales: his barons quickly appropriated established lordships independently. It was within a context not dissimilar to this that Gerald of Windsor married the famous Nesta, a Welsh princess (daughter to Rhys Ap Tewdwr – ancestor of the Tudors, and one time mistress to Henry I, with whom she bore several children). Nesta bore four children with Gerald of Windsor: William Fitzgerald (heir and lord of Carew), Maurice Fitzgerald, David Fitzgerald (bishop of St. David’s), and a daughter, Angharad Fitzgerald (Gerald of Wales’ mother). Angharad was married to William de Barri, the Cambro-Norman responsible for invading and establishing the Kingdom of Desmond.

64  Englishness and Loyalty eventually driving the latter out of Leinster and into exile. 3 Gerald does not go on to make moral judgments of this dispute; Dermot is simply portrayed as an inexperienced leader who oppresses his subjects, and Tiernan is cruel for leaving little breathing space for his enemy. The relentless cruelties inflicted on both sides soon find a mediating source when Dermot, bent on returning to Ireland to recover his patrimony, sails to Aquitaine to seek aid from Henry II in 1166.4 Gerald tells readers that Dermot is well-received in Henry’s court, and even though Henry is reluctant to implicate himself with Irish squabbles, the king strikes a deal with Dermot. The agreement between Dermot and Henry II establishes the early political ties that eventually transforms Ireland into an English lordship. Expugnatio maps out the stages of conquest carefully. Even with Gerald’s digressions and moral commentaries, he emphasizes the Dermot-­Henry agreement and its role in the development of the conquest: Henry, king of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to all his liegemen, English, Normans, Welsh, and Scots, and to all other nations subject to his dominion, Sendeth, greeting, Whensoever these our letters shall come into you, know ye that we have received Dermitius, prince of Leinster, into our grace and favour,—Wherefore, whosoever within the bounds of our territories shall be willing to give him aid, as our vassal and liegeman, in recovering his territories, let him be assured of our favour and licence on that behalf.5 3 During his campaigns in Wales and Ireland in the 1160s, Henry II successfully extracted submissions from leading native princes; however, he had little interest in Ireland, and was only drawn into playing an initially indirect role in the feud between the Irish princes of Leinster (Dermont MacMurrough) and Meath (­Tiernan ­O’Rourke). Angered, the latter sought the aid of the prince of Connacht (Rory O’Connor), who was also recognized as the high king of Ireland. The origin of this conflict disappears entirely after the first mention of Dermot’s rape of Tiernan’s wife, and the quarrel of the Irish princes is centered instead on Dermot and Tiernan. Gerald’s opening is strikingly close to Homer’s Iliad, which opens with the Agamemnon’s robbing, first, of Chryseis and then of Achilles’ Briseis; yet the abduction of these women, as with Paris’ stealing of Helen, figures only as pretexts to more significant events that unfold later. The editor of Expugnatio mentions another Homeric influence that shows up in Book I, Chapter II, where Dermot’s return to Ireland is likened to Odysseus’ return to Ithaca (187n1). 4 R. R. Davies has noted that even though Henry did not take an interest in Ireland, he was “well aware of the opportunities and challenges presented by the outer zones of the British Isles.” Davies, The First English Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 73. 5 Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis Containing the Topography of Ireland, and the History of the Conquest of Ireland, Translated by Thomas Dorester, the Itinerary Through Wales, and the Description of

Englishness and Loyalty  65 According to Expugnatio, this license is issued after the king receives Dermot’s “bond of allegiance and oath of fealty.”6 What is more interesting is how the letter, which Gerald perceives as little more than a gift from the king, morphs into an object and symbol of royal authority in Ireland, and how it shapes and influences early forms of colonial governance in Ireland. Dermot puts Henry’s license to good use and it is especially notable that Dermot is less successful in England than in Wales. Gerald’s contemporaries have also made similar observations. A comparison of Expugnatio and the contemporaneous Anglo-Norman verse chronicle, The Song of Dermot and the Earl, provides an overview of how Dermot utilizes Henry’s letter. Gerald describes Dermot’s stay in Bristol, where he desperately tries to recruit soldiers for his war against Rory. There, Dermot reads Henry’s letter in public and “made liberal offers of pay and lands to many persons, but in vain,” until he finally finds an ally in Richard de Clare (more commonly known as Strongbow), son of the disgraced earl of Pembroke.7 Gerald is vague in describing Dermot’s scramble to recruit supporters; the anonymous author of The Song of Dermot (ca. early 13th century) is more helpful: But the king of England For Dermot, according to the lay Did nothing in truth Beyond the promise, as people say. When King Dermot saw That he could get no aid From King Henry as he had promised him, He would not stay there any longer. King Dermot then, you must know, Goes everywhere seeking aid: Aid everywhere he seeks In Wales and in England […]

(ll. 312–23)8

After Dermot’s encounter with Strongbow, he visits the Welsh king and secures the release of Robert Fitzgerald, whom he believes will help him win the war against Tiernan. After negotiations are completed, Wales, Translated by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, edited by Thomas Wright (New York: AMS Press, 1986), 185–86. Hereafter cited as Expugnatio. 6 Ibid., 185. 7 Ibid., 186. 8 Unless otherwise stated, all references to this text are from The Song of Dermot and The Earl: From the Carew Manuscript No. 596 in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth Palace, edited and translated by Goddard Henry Orpen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892).

66  Englishness and Loyalty Then King Dermot returns, To St. Davids as soon as he could. To Ireland then he crossed With as many men as he had. But Dermot, the noble king, Did not bring with his warriors Any Englishmen on this occasion, According to the account of my informant […] King Dermot then sent word By letter and by messenger He sent over Morice Regan, His own interpreter To Wales this man crossed over— * * * * * The letters of King Dermot Which the king sent in all directions. To earls, barons, knights, Squires, serjeants, common soldiers, Horse-men and foot, In all directions the king sent word: (ll. 400–407; 420–30)9 The author of The Song of Dermot could be Welsh given the emphasis that he places on Wales, and a few possibilities can be derived from the poem, most notably, Dermot’s recruits comprise almost entirely of ­Henry’s displaced Cambro-Norman marchers. Both Expugnatio and The Song of Dermot describe Henry’s letter to Dermot as disingenuous: “[The letter did] nothing in truth/ Beyond the promise, as people say” (ll. 314–15). Both sources indicate that Dermot is unsuccessful in recruiting soldiers (that is what the letter promises); The Song of Dermot even goes so far as to note that it is a well-known fact that Dermot struggled to find supporters (“King Dermot then, you must know”) (my emphasis) even though he campaigned publicly and vigorously for his cause” (l. 320). Dermot returns to Ireland without any help from Henry: “[Dermot] Did not bring with his warriors/ Any Englishmen on this occasion” (ll. 405– 6). Instead, Dermot decides to recruit from Wales, and he is far more successful there. Under these circumstances, the first stage of the invasion is a distinctly C ­ ambro-Norman enterprise. The conquest did not begin with royal forces but with the ­Cambro-Norman ­marchers – they, not the king’s royal forces, were the first invaders to arrive in Ireland. Gerald’s emphasis of the marchers’ role in the conquest of Ireland calls attention to king’s attitude toward them: the marchers risk their lives

9 The asterisks indicate lost fragments.

Englishness and Loyalty  67 to invade Ireland, making it a lordship of England, but in return, their efforts are unappreciated and they are abused. The pride of Expugnatio lies in Gerald’s conviction that the marchers are ultimately responsible for bringing Ireland under English control; Henry ought to recognize this, but he does not (or refuses to do so). Maurice Fitzgerald’s speech at the siege of Dublin in Expugnatio describes the tensions between the marchers and the king. On the verge of defeat in Dublin, and frustrated with the lack of Crown support, he one of the most oft-quoted speeches in Expugnatio: What then do we look for? Is it succor from our own country that we expect? Nay, such is our lot, that what the Irish are to the English, we too, being now considered Irish, are the same. The one island does not hold us in greater detestation than the other. Away then with hesitation and cowardice, and let us boldly attack the enemy, which our short stock of provisions yet supplies us with sufficient strength.10 In this account, it is important to keep in mind that the marchers are operating independently; their invasion of Ireland is a private enterprise and it is not a royal expedition. Literary analyses of sixteenth-century Anglo-Irish conflict almost always take this passage out of its historical context. Modern interpretations prefer to read Fitzgerald’s speech as a symptom of the “liminal” identity of the Old English, and understandably so, since Fitzgerald is also a “hybrid” figure. His lament, “what the Irish are to the English, we too, being now Irish, are the same” is loaded with cultural and identity implications: “Those who went to Ireland may have been polyglot, but they were the people of the king of England, and some ingredients of an English political-legal identity were present in the lordship from the start.”11 The subtext of Fitzgerald’s speech can also 10 Expugnatio, 223. 11 Davies, The First English Empire, 85. Huw Pryce and John Gillingham have problematized historians’ representations of the political identity of the first invaders of Ireland. Pryce, for instance, notes that “we might hesitate to call the invaders from the late 1160s onwards ‘Normans,’ preferring to revert to the terminology of the contemporary sources that refer to them as ‘English.’” “The Normans in Welsh History,” Anglo-Norman Studies 30. Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2007 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press 2008), 2–3. John Gillingham argues along the same lines, and comments that modern historians refer to the invaders as “Normans, or Anglo-Normans or Cambro-Normans, apparently indifferent to the fact that in the works they are studying the invaders were called English.” “Normanizing the English Invaders of Ireland,” in Power Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, edited by Huw Pryce and John Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 89 (my emphasis). An in-depth discussion of Anglo-Irish identities in the early modern period can be found in Joseph Leerssen’s Mere Irish & Fíor-Gael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development, and Literary Expression Prior to

68  Englishness and Loyalty read like this: the marchers are as negligible to the king as the Irish. Fitzgerald’s sentiments echo the Cambro-Norman marchers’ predicament only years before the invasion of Ireland, where the same group of marchers saw themselves as subjects “betrayed” after Henry II abandoned his former commitment to their interests. In Expugnatio, the king orders his nobles to return at once or forfeit lands and risk banishment. His command asserts his authority in Ireland, but the group of Cambro-Normans who are obliged to yield to the king’s demands receive no help from him in their time of need. The estrangement between Crown and subjects in this period foregrounds the competing interests of both parties, and the fault lines created by the estrangement have an impact on ideas of early colonial governance. In the early years of the conquest, there was no firm concept of colonial policy or a clear sense of colonial governance. The marcher lords who survived the invasion were the default caretakers of the island; they immediately identified themselves as the “rightful” governors of Ireland. In Expugnatio, the submissions of the Irish chieftains and Henry’s distribution of land to the marchers indicate the success of the conquest. But beyond these royal gestures, conquest left few traces of a functional colonial government: Henry came, Henry saw, and then Henry left as soon as the lands were parceled out and offices were granted. There were no formal plans to implement or construct English law or institutions in Ireland at this early stage of the conquest. Legal writs were issued piecemeal and began in earnest only after Henry’s death. Ireland was placed wholly in the hands of the marcher lords after Henry’s departure and it was not until after his death that new tensions within the government arose again. Even then, there was little direct intervention from Henry’s successors. Royal authority was generally involved in the selection of new governors to replace old ones. It was often during these decision-making episodes that brought attention back to the tensions between governance by Crown and governance by marcher lords. Strongbow’s death set a new precedent on how governors were to be appointed and it exposed a “fragmented” government where marchers and Crown representatives from England clashed over the struggle for authority. After the royal commissioner sent news of Strongbow’s death to Henry, the king appointed William FitzAldelm as governor of Leinster and leader of the marcher lords – he would be the king’s representative. FitzAldelm’s behavior on arrival and the marcher lords’ responses exemplify some of the problems in Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle. FitzAldelm was not one of the original group of invaders; his first visit to Ireland was with the king, and even though he had no part in the first the Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1986).

Englishness and Loyalty  69 invasions, he was also granted lands and made governor. Gerald uses a couplet to describe FitzAldelm’s personality: “Beneath the outward guise of gentle bearing,/ Consealed the fox’s hateful guile within.”12 Expugnatio explains that FitzAldem is introduced in Dublin to take over Strongbow’s role; he is warmly welcomed and greeted by Raymond le Gros (Fitzgerald), who fought valiantly alongside Strongbow and his comrades in arms, all clad in full armor.13 FitzAldelm looks on and says to his friends beside him: “I will speedily put an end to all this bravery; those shields shall be scattered.”14 The new governor’s remark immediately distinguishes a division between FitzAldelm, as Crown representatives and the first invaders of Ireland who, according to Gerald, have always been exploited and under-appreciated: “this seems to have been the fate of the whole of this race.”15 The “race” that Gerald refers to men of Cambro-Norman stock. ­Gerald’s response to what he perceives to be injustice is unambiguous: In all services of war they were highly valued; always in the van, they were eminent for their valour and daring in every noble enterprise: but, as soon as the occasion for their services had ended, they were neglected and treated with the utmost contempt […] Who first penetrated into the heart of the enemy’s country? The Geraldines. Who have kept it in submission? The Geraldines. Who strike most terror into the enemy? The Geraldines. Against whom are the shafts of malice chiefly directed? The Geraldines. Oh, that they had found a prince who could have justly appreciated their distinguished worth! How tranquil, how peaceful would have been the state of Ireland under their administration!16 Aside from lamenting the plight of his family, Gerald’s criticism is particularly noteworthy.17 His perception that the Geraldines were “neglected and treated with the utmost contempt,” publicly announces the discontent of the marchers, and more explicitly, the nature of the English government: it is fragmented; king and marchers are on different sides of the battle. The early form of colonial government in 12 Expugnatio, 277. 13 Gerald devotes a whole chapter to Fitzgerald’s victory, won against all odds, against the men of Waterford at Dundunolf in Chapter XIII, pp. 206–9. 14 Ibid., 274. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. (my emphasis). 17 For Gerald’s ancestry, see Huw Pryce, “Giraldus and the Geraldines,” in The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland: The Making of a Myth, edited by Peter Crooks and Seán Duffy (Dublin: Four Courts, 2016), 53–68, and Colin Veach, “The Geraldines and the Conquest of Ireland,” in the same collection, pp. 69–92.

70  Englishness and Loyalty Gerald’s Ireland reflects these sentiments, especially after Henry II’s death. These tensions are further exacerbated when Prince John’s retinue indiscriminately disregards the sacrifices and contributions of the marcher lords. The marcher lords regard this behavior with contempt, as would their descendants many generations later in early modern Ireland. Gerald, however, would not have been able to predict that the government of the lordship of Ireland would become a Geraldine monopoly centuries later.

The Intervening Years The hostility between marcher lords in Ireland and Crown representatives from England that began with Henry II’s reign reshaped the political landscape of Ireland in relation to English governance. After Henry II’s departure from Ireland, the governance of the lordship was largely left in the hands of the first wave of invaders and those who were granted lands and offices when they arrived with the king’s fleet in 1171. Gerald’s Expugnatio celebrates the achievements of the first invaders but is far less optimistic about the government of the lordship and the tensions between the king’s representatives and the native community. He recounts Prince John’s first visit to express some of these concerns. When John and his entourage arrive in Ireland, they are welcomed by a party of prominent chieftains. John responds to their greeting with derision; he pulls them by the beards and mocks their foreign dress and manners.18 Gerald posits that the link between native chieftains and Crown representatives is forged with marchers’ first-hand knowledge of Ireland’s complex political networks. Newcomers do not have the knowledge or experience of the early invaders: “Thus was the land misgoverned, and affairs ill-administered, until the king, discarding the newcomers, as totally incapable, if not cowardly, and resolving to employ men who from the first had acquired experience in the conquest of the island.”19 Gerald’s observations underscore two important ideas that will later dominate discussions of the governance of early modern Ireland: (1) the relationship between the Irish and Crown representatives is a delicate one, and the re-distribution of authority and lands will alter the political landscape of Ireland, and (2) for practical reasons, the governing of Ireland should be undertaken by “old hands”. Following the twelfth-century invasion, the descendants of the first invaders secured and defended the English Pale. Even though they were described as having a “march deposition” and their actions were perceived to be “more grievous to the king’s liege people… than the wars with the king’s enemies,” negative English attitude toward this Old English 18 Ibid., 315. 19 Ibid., 318.

Englishness and Loyalty  71 community was not widespread or serious enough to discredit their loyalty; they continued to hold key positions as governors and administrators to the king’s council in Dublin. 20 Henry VII, for instance, entrusted Gerald Fitzgerald, the eighth earl of Kildare, with the governing of Ireland. His military prowess and dominance were widely recognized and his influence amongst the natives and Old English was important in maintaining peace among feuding Anglo-Irish and the native chieftains. He was generously rewarded by the Crown with confiscated lands, which allowed him to expand already large landholdings into South Leinster. As discussed in Chapter 1, the earls of Kildare continued to govern Ireland until 1534, when the ninth earl’s conflict with the earl of Ormond and Crown authorities put an end to the Kildare ascendancy. With the fall of Kildare in the sixteenth century, the Old English community then relied on the English-born lord deputies’ retinue to defend the Pale from Irish raids. The security of the Pale was of utmost importance to the Palesmen, and their relationship with the government was often subject to their expectations of Crown protection. When the modest English army had to accompany the lord deputy elsewhere in Ireland, the Palesmen were left to their own devices. Infuriated, the Palesmen repeatedly reminded the king, much to his irritation, of his obligation to protect his subjects in the Pale. Cromwell responded to the complaints with his campaign to consolidate royal authority in the 1530s: “Anglo-Irish counselors were encouraged to offer advice on the general reform of the island. New appointments were made to key administrative offices, and preparations were made to overhaul the business procedures of the central departments of government.”21 Initially, these were considered to be favorable developments to the Palesmen, but when many of the new appointments were made to Cromwell’s men, who were ordered to deliver frequent reports to the king’s chief minister, the Old English discovered that their former autonomy and authority were compromised. By bringing the Dublin administration under direct Crown control, Cromwell paved the way for the parliament of 1536–37, and later, the 1541 parliament, which formalized the constitutional status of Ireland from lordship to kingdom. For the first time since the twelfth-century invasion, Old English officers in Dublin were placed under the direct surveillance of England. This also meant that their offices were also up for grabs. The constitutional change after 1541 put new pressure on the Old ­English-dominated Dublin government. While the Palesmen welcomed 20 Christopher Maginn, “English Marcher Lineages in South Dublin in the Late Middle Ages,” Irish Historical Studies 34.134 (2004), 131. 21 Ciaran Brady, “Court, Castle and Country: The Framework of Government in Tudor Ireland,” in Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society 1534–1641, edited by Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie (Suffolk: Irish Academic Press, 1986), 26–27.

72  Englishness and Loyalty the constitutional change and they expressed loyalty to the Crown, they did not feel the same way about the dynamics of their new relationship with Whitehall. Unfamiliar and insensitive to the delicate political power balance in ­I reland, new administrators from England arrived with ideas of managing Ireland that interfered with the efficiency of the Dublin administrators. These conditions drew a dividing line between the Palesmen and the New English. The natives, too, isolated the new administrators, viewing the newcomers with suspicion and boycotting them. 22 The plight of the Old English can best be described in these terms: they were pressured to take sides with the newcomers, whose meager knowledge of governing Ireland threatened to undo what they had so far achieve; if the Palesmen refused to do so and insisted on doing things the old way, their loyalties became questionable in the eyes of the newcomers. The Edwardian reformation of the 1550s further alienated the traditionally Catholic Old English community. Edward VI’s reform policies were far more radical than his father’s: he advocated the expropriation of the Irish, alienated the Old English, and displaced more Anglo-Irish administrators. Edward outlawed mass and enforced the use of the new 1552 Book of Common Prayer, and the implementation of these injunctions provoked considerable outrage among governors, archbishops, the Palesmen, and the natives. 23 Many of these measures, especially his religious policies, were reversed after Mary’s ascension in 1553. Another reversal came with Elizabeth’s reign, which introduced with more systematic and aggressive reforms that continued to marginalize the Old English administrators. The renewed interest in Ireland after Mary’s reign is undoubted: “The average number of active council members rose from eleven or twelve under Mary Tudor to twenty-two under Elizabeth,” and in addition to the old council, “these now included the archbishop of Dublin and the bishop of Meath, as well as senior military commanders.”24 In London and Dublin, the voices of the Old English community also became less important. The Palesmen’s long service and loyalty to the Crown were disregarded as the New Englishmen arrived in Ireland with prejudices against the Old English community. In some cases, the new arrivals did not care to distinguish between the Old English from the natives. New English presence in Ireland grew rapidly alongside the plantation schemes in the 1580s and 90s. The growing military 2 Ibid., 37. 2 23 On the differences between the first and second book, see John Thomas Ball’s The Reform Church of Ireland: 1537–1886 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1886), 37–39. The conflict between administrative and ecclesiastical officials can be found in Brendan Bradshaw’s “The Edwardian Reformation in Ireland,” Archivum Hibernicum 34 (1976). 24 S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 127.

Englishness and Loyalty  73 population also reflected a more systematic and interventionist approach toward those who did not yield to the demands of the Crown. Brendan Bradshaw notes that the “potency” of this “new departure in destabilizing the Irish polity” cannot be underestimated. As increasing numbers of soldiers, administrators, and planters arrived Ireland to seek their fortunes, they essentially “challenged the dominance of the existing elites – colonial (Old English) and native (Gaelic) alike – and then ousted them altogether.”25 As a result, “[t]he anglicisation of Crown government in Ireland then and the challenge it presented to the old order constitutes the first of the flashpoints engendered in Anglo-­ Irish relations by the Tudor revolution.”26 The subordination of the Old ­English order which began in earnest in Henry VIII’s reign could not be reversed especially with the increasingly aggressive reform policies that were introduced in Elizabeth’s reign. When Stanihurst wrote his Irish Chronicle, he was already mourning the decline of the Old English ascendancy. Nonetheless, the narrative also foregrounds the problems that the Elizabethan government faced in its efforts to consolidate royal authority in Ireland.

Stanihurst’s “Description of Ireland” and the Old English Community Richard Stanihurst’s contribution to the Irish section of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) gives us a glimpse of an early modern Ireland divided between the English monarch and Irish rebels, and between Englishmen of Irish birth (the Old English) and English-born men who came to overrule them. If we agree with Louis Mink “that historical truth is relative to the point of view of the historian together, perhaps with his primary audience,” and that “each generation gives itself its own reason for rewriting its own history,” then Stanihurst’s work can be interpreted as a narrative of his community. Stanihurst is the eldest son of a prominent Pale family with a long history of service to the Crown, and his “notion of a ‘state’ may have been nothing more than his awareness of the traditions and aspirations of the community in which he lived during his childhood and young adulthood.”27 In his Irish Chronicle, Stanihurst defends the Palesmen but he also criticizes them. More to the point, he works out a scheme in his “Description of Ireland” in which he describes their alienation from Elizabethan administrators alongside a change in reform policies that has transformed Ireland into a military state. For Stanihurst, the decline of

2 5 Brendan Bradshaw, “Edwardian Reformation in Ireland, 1547–52,” Archivium ­H ibernicum 34 (1976), 94. 26 Ibid., 94. 27 Colm Lennon, Richard Stanihurst the Dubliner 1547–1618, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981), 81.

74  Englishness and Loyalty the Old English ascendancy essentially marks an end to conciliatory reform. His use of Gerald’s Expugnatio as a source is well known. What is less examined is how he uses Gerald’s defense of the marcher lords to stress the legacy of their achievements. In comparison to the New English, the descendants of the marchers are more familiar with and sensitive to local political exigencies. In the Irish Chronicle, the English government seems to perceive the Old English as negligible in matters having to do with the government of Ireland. The Palesmen have remained loyal to the Crown, they understand the precariousness of their predicament, and they have also adapted accordingly, but even so, [b]y the mid 1570s… [the prejudices against them] were clear; but instead of denouncing the Crown, the Palesmen regrouped as ­‘commonwealth-men’, defenders of ‘Ireland as a commonwealth separate from that of England but enjoying the same monarch’[…] They do not seem to have objected to the extension of English influence over Ireland as a whole, or to the presence of an English lord deputy and a large number of English officials. But they insisted upon a guiding role for what they took to be ignorant, maladroit, and frequently excessive method of interloping Englishmen. 28 These “commonwealth men” see their traditional roles as English keepers to Ireland, whose experience in war and administration came from a long line of ancestors dating back to the first invasion. Yet, the New English often regard them with suspicion and contempt. In light of these conditions, Stanihurst’s “Description” may appear to endorse Elizabethan policies that seek to discredit the old order, which he makes especially apparent when he criticizes Old English “degeneration”. But on closer examination, his representations of the Pale and the natives produce a narrative that calls for a return to older forms of government that will allow the Old English and the natives to co-exist, even within a segregated society. The new government is written out of this narrative. Far from promoting the prevailing ideological machinery that advocates reform through military force, Stanihurst tries to restore the declining influence of the Old English and is more inclined to conciliatory approaches to reforming the Irish as he writes against the backdrop of Expugnatio and addresses the concerns of his time. Stanihurst uses a rhetorical strategy that condemns the degeneration of English culture within the Old English community to align their interests with the New 28 Karl S. Bottigheimer, “Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Westward Enterprise, 1536–1660,” in The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America 1480, edited by K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979).

Englishness and Loyalty  75 English. After he reassures and reinforces the Old English commitment to the New English cause, he expresses hope that moderate educational reforms can potentially bridge the gaps between the Old and New ­English, and the English and natives. In Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle, the division of Ireland is a division of land, people, and cultures. The opening section of Stanihurst’s “Description” sets the tone for much of the chronicle in calling attention to the notion that Ireland is a land divided. Early comments about the geography of Ireland, as with much of the information on medieval Ireland, are taken from Gerald’s Topographia. Stanihurst builds on ­G erald’s works; his updated descriptions of Ireland inform readers about the development of the island since the first conquest, but more importantly, it presents the history (and the future) of Ireland through the eyes of a Palesman. The land which he inhabits, like Gerald’s Ireland, is divided into four regions: Leinster (east), Connaught (west), Ulster (north), and Munster (south). Dublin, the heart of the Pale, is in Leinster; ­Stanihurst reminds readers that this region is much like a separate part of Ireland: There is an other diuision of Irelande, into the English pale and Irishry […] in aucient tyme [the Pale] stretched from Doondalke to Catherlagh or Kilkeny. But now, what for the slackness of marchoures, and the encrochyng of the Irish enemy, the scope of the English pale is greatly empayred, and is cramperned and coucht into an odde corner of the country named Fingall, with a parcel of the king his land. 29 For Stanihurst, Ireland is a land divided and a people divided and each division is distinct. This division draws the Pale closer to London and further away from the “wild Irish”: “By reaffirming the ‘mere’ Englishness of the Pale’s inhabitants, by representing Dublin as ‘the Irish or young London,’ Stanihurst asserts the cultural purity of Dublin’s English inhabitants.”30 Stanihurst faults the hostile Irish and the marchers for the decay of the Pale, and there is no significant mention of marchers after collapse of the Kildare ascendancy. After 1541, the English government became actively and directly responsible for security of the Pale, but instead of focusing on the weaknesses of the colonial government, Stanihurst chooses to consider the significance of the Pale and how it came to be after the first invasion of 29 Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577), edited by Liam Miller and Eileen Power (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979), 13. Hereafter cited as Irish Chronicle (1577). 30 Christopher Ivic, “Incorporating Ireland: Cultural Conflict in Holinshed’s Irish Chronicles,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29.3 (1999), 478.

76  Englishness and Loyalty Ireland. Stanihurst’s view of the Pale in the 1570s reflects an aspect of the Old English mindset that has not changed much since Gerald’s time: the defense of the Pale ought to be a priority for the Crown, and the area can only be secure if there are powerful marcher lords who are dedicated to defending its borders. James Muldoon describes this attitude as a type of “siege mentality.”31 This “siege mentality” developed out of the first invasion, when the marcher lords found themselves in a unique position of being neither particularly inclined to serve the interests of the Crown, nor the natives. Instead, the marcher lords created their own distinct society. Later, as Ciaran Brady argues, this “siege mentality” led the marchers to adopt Dublin as the seat of English government largely in terms of protecting the Palesmen’s self-interests: the Palesmen continued to regard their administration in Dublin less as the royal instrument for the rule of the whole island, than as the seat of their own local government… they looked to its courts as means of processing their own affairs, settling their internal differences, and defending their own interests rather than as channels for the implementation of royal policy.32 Brady’s comment stresses a very important quality that characterized the Old English community but this distinct quality would also render it vulnerable in the face of Elizabethan reforms: historical legacy—of the first conquest—is important to the Palesmen, and this view is incompatible with the ideologies of the New Englishmen. The clash of ideology between the New English and the Old English is especially apparent in their attitudes toward interventionist reform programs and the enforcement of royal authority beyond areas already under English jurisdiction. From the New English perspective, the Palesmen’s lack of enthusiasm (only in comparison with New English aggression) for ­island-wide reform was interpreted as disloyalty to the Crown. For centuries, the Pale was protected as if it were the last bastion of English power in Ireland, but by the mid-sixteenth century, it served as the seat of English royal authority only through the lord deputy’s office, and the lord deputies were from England. The English government’s plans to reform all of Ireland placed the Palesmen at a disadvantage; what was once an internal government that attended only to matters within the jurisdiction of the Pale was transformed into a colonial government that was responsible for the reformation of the entire island. The repercussions of this new approach were immediately felt. Resources that were once dedicated to the management and protection of the Pale had to be 31 James Muldoon, Identity on the Medieval Irish Frontier: Degenerate Englishmen, Wild Irishmen, Middle Nations (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 107. 32 Brady, “Court, Castle and Country,” 36–37.

Englishness and Loyalty  77 extended to the rest of the country, leaving the region vulnerable to attacks and raids. The priorities of the Elizabethan government were not compatible with the Old English community. For this reason, the New English aimed to extend English rule throughout the whole country while the Old English often felt that they were ­exploited – through taxation and other impositions – for reform policies that compromised their interests. Old English resistance was perceived as disloyalty. Stanihurst traces the ideological divide between the Old English and New English to the medieval marchers, and he blames them for the ­much-contracted size of the Pale. He explains that the boundaries of the Pale have shrunk over time because of the encroaching Irish, and the “slackness of marchoures” is to be blamed. The marchers’ slackness, however, has nothing to do with their military might or lack thereof, but rather their inability to segregate themselves from the natives. He claims that in the old days, the Old English were unquestionably unwavering in maintaining English culture and habits. However, things have changed since then: But when their posteritie became not all together so wary in keeping, as their auncestors were valiant in conquering, and the Irish language was free dennized in the English pale: this canker tooke such deepe roote, as the body that before was whole and sounde, was by little and little festered, and in maner wholy putrified.33 Stanihurst uses the metaphor of the diseased body to assert the threat of cultural degeneration. Interaction with the Irish is the cause of this condition: “the very English of birth, conuersant with the sauage sort of that people become degenerate, & as though they had tasted of Circe’s poisoned cup, are quite altered.”34 In this narrative, Stanihurst’s views are in line with the New English. But despite acknowledging the degeneration of the Old English, he reminds readers that Dublin, the stronghold of the Old English community is not in antiquitie inferior to any citie in Irelande, so in pleasaunt situation, in gorgeous buildings, in multitude of people, in martial chiualrie, in obedience and loyaltie… in maners and ciulitie, it is superior to all other Cyties and townes in that realme. And therefore it is commonly called the Irishe or yong London.”35 Here, Stanihurst suggests that even though the Old Englishmen have adopted Irish customs and language, they are not necessarily disloyal to the Crown. As such, his ideas of degeneration deviate from the New English. 33 Irish Chronicle (1577), 14. 34 Ibid., 115. 35 Ibid., 39.

78  Englishness and Loyalty In the era of the New English, the Old English lacked cultural markers that make them “English” at a time when these markers were used as a yardstick to measure loyalty to the Crown. The New English believed that Old English interaction with the Irish made them more susceptible to empathizing with the Irish rebels. Stanihurst depicts the Old English community of his day as degenerated, and he blames them for their slackness which in turn contributed to the shrinking landholdings of the Pale in the 1570s. Nevertheless, he views their ancestors as exemplary colonizers. In his description of “The ciuilitie of Ireland in auncient tyme,” he notes: “[A]s long as these empaled dwellers did sunder themselves, as wel in land as in language, from the Irishe: rudeness was day by day in the country supplanted, ciuilitie engrafted, good lawes established, loyaltie obserued, rebellion suppressed.”36 Unlike the New Englishmen who considers degeneracy as a permanent marker of suspicion and disloyalty, Stanihurst asserts that the process of degeneration can be reversed through re-segregation. Since the New English associates “gaelicisation” with defiance against the English monarch, Stanihurst must “erase” the degeneration from the Pale to emphasize Old English loyalty. To do so, he must undo Gerald’s description of the intercultural interactions: However, the pest of treachery has here [Ireland] grown to such a height—it has so taken root, and long abuse has so succeeded in turning it into a second nature–habits are so formed by mutual intercourse, as he who handles pitch cannot escape its stains– that the evil has acquired great force […]. This, I say, “evil communications corrupt good manners;” and even strangers who land here from other countries become generally imbued with this national crime, which seems to be innate and very contagious.37 Stanihurst then turns to portray the Palesmen as subjects with the appropriate cultural markers. His representation of the Palesmen and of Dublin as the seat of colonial government, attempts to negate the anxieties of degeneration and, in turn, eliminate the fear of “contamination”. Before Stanihurst describes the Irish, he informs readers that his observations of the natives do not apply to everyone in Ireland: [R]eader, do not impute any barbarous custome that shall be here layde downe, to the citizens, townesmen, and the inhabitants of the English pale, in that they differ little or nothyng form the auncient

36 Ibid., 14. 37 Gerald of Wales, “Topographia Hibernica” in The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis: Containing the Topography of Ireland, and the History of the Conquest of Ireland, the Itinerary Through Wales, and the Description of Wales (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 137–38.

Englishness and Loyalty  79 customes and dispositions of their progenitors, the English and Walshmen, beyng therefore as mortally behated of the Irish as those that are borne in England.38 In pointing out that the Palemen’s views of the Irish are similar to New English views, Stanihurst attempts to convince readers that the Old English and New English ought to be considered as a united political unit. This argument was not especially persuasive to colonial administrators. Lord Chancellor William Gerrard, who remarked, “All English, and the most part with delight, even in Dublin, speak Irish, and greatly are spotted in manners, habit, and conditions with Irish stains,” was only one among many of his colleagues who continued, for many decades, to be deeply suspicious of the Old English.39 The consequences of alienating the Old English was worrying; there was an underlying awareness that they could facilitate and/or obstruct reform, and much depended on their perceptions of whether the government was protecting or threatening their interests. In marginalizing the Old English, the government was potentially encouraging “the growth of an articulate opposition movement which cut across traditional factional politics, undermined respect for the viceroyalty, and threatened to unite Gaelic and Old English opinion against Tudor rule,” and by the late 1570s, “traditional consensus politics were near collapse and a political climate was emerging which was conducive to the spread of novel ideological forms of opposition.”40 The ability to contribute to policy-making is the ability to shape the colonial governance in Ireland. Interventionist approaches may have worked to the advantage of the Crown but they generally did not do so for the Old English community, since they drained what limited resources left from the administration of the Pale, and led to the arrival of more New Englishmen, many of whom held firm to their prejudices against the Old English. Under these circumstances, Stanihurst attempts to persuade readers that the Old English and New English share a similar abhorrence of Irishness: this, if nothing else, is their shared sense of Englishness. Even so, Stanihurst’s narrative does not seek to discredit the New Englishmen in relation to colonial government in Ireland, but it calls to mind the old order, when experienced Palesmen worked with their English governors and his council on reform policies.

Reforming the Irish The Palesmen’s anxieties about Elizabethan reform policies can be traced to the change of reform policies during the transition period from 38 Irish Chronicle (1577), 112. 39 CSPI, 1574–85, Vol. 2, 130. 4 0 Steven Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures 1470 –1603 (New York: Longman, 1985), 228.

80  Englishness and Loyalty Henry VIII’s to Elizabeth’s reign. Sir Anthony St Leger is an important figure in this context. With several brief interruptions, he served three terms as lord deputy during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary. His legacy to early modern Ireland was the Surrender and Regrant program.41 Early forms of this program, which began in the 1530s, were formalized after Ireland became an English kingdom. St Leger’s policy was groundbreaking in that it was the first reform program that sought to bring the Irish chieftains under Crown control in a systematic manner: Irish chieftains were persuaded to (symbolically) surrender their lands to the Crown, which were regranted to them intact under certain conditions. They were required to hold those lands as freehold from the king, swear loyalty to the English Crown, and conform to English customs and laws. The conciliatory nature of this policy invited criticism from St Leger’s rivals, who promoted more aggressive methods of reform, but it was regarded to be immensely successful by many others and he was able to bring some of the most influential Irish chieftains to submission.42 This “rehabilitation” of former Irish rebels created a more systematic method of consolidating royal authority, and this lord deputy was viewed favorably by both the native population and the English government. Stanihurst describes him as “a wise and wary Gentleman, a valiant seruitor in warre, and a good Iusticer in peace, properly learned, a good maker in the Englishe, hauing grauitie so enterlaced with pleasantnesse as with an exceeding good grace he would attaine the one without pouting dumpishnesse, and exercise the other without loathfull lightnesse,” and despite the Palesmen’s complaints St Leger’s tax impositions on the Pale, they generally felt that “[h]is gouerment had beene of the Countrey very well liked.”43 41 For representations of St Leger’s policy, see Christopher Maginn “ ‘Surrender and Regrant’ in the Historiography of Sixteenth-century Ireland,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 38.4 (2007). 42 The success of the Surrender and Regrant program is debatable particularly when we consider the prominence of the Irish chieftains who submitted and the value of their landholdings. The earldom of Tyrone, whose leaders remain threatening to the Crown throughout the Tudor period, was created under St Leger with the submission of Conn O’Neill in 1541. See G. A. Hayes-McCoy, “The Royal Supremacy and Ecclesiastical Revolution, 1534–47,” in Vol. 3 of A New History of Ireland, edited by T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, and F. J. Byrne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 49–50. However, Nicholas Canny reminds us that St Leger’s program was only met with “limited success” in the lordships of Clanricard and Thomond. See Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established, 1565–1576 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976), 34. 43 Irish Chronicle (1577), 310. Stanihurst does not elaborate on the Surrender and Regrant policy, and in closing his section on St Leger, he mentions charges of simony made against him. A more detailed study of the charges made against him can be found in Christopher Maginn’s “A Window on Mid-Tudor ­I reland: The ‘Matters’ against Lord Deputy St. Leger, 1547–48,” Historical Research 78.202 (2005). St Leger’s conciliatory methods also made him suspicious in the eyes of his critics.

Englishness and Loyalty  81 The conciliatory reform policies that characterized St Leger’s administration took a different turn when Thomas Radcliffe, earl of Sussex, was appointed lord deputy in 1556. Sussex’s reform program was aggressive and it was reliant on active military presence in Ireland. The construction of garrisons and forts, populated with English military men (first initiated by lord deputy Edward Bellingham in the late 1540s) was adopted with renewed enthusiasm during Sussex’s administration.44 He was notorious for granting offices to his friends and family members from England, and it was rumored that he was determined to remove all Anglo-Irishmen from positions of power.45 Sussex’s corruption and abuse of power did not go unnoticed. When the plantations in Laois and Offaly were approved in the 1560 parliament, the Old English had great hopes that the newly restored Kildare would be placed in charge of the project, and more immediately, in the distribution of land. As the Palesmen traditionally depended on the Anglo-Irish lords for the protection of the Pale, they were deeply disappointed to discover that Sussex included his brother, Henry Radcliffe, in the distribution process: “Indeed, by 1563 the spoils of those two counties [Laios and Offaly] had been divided among 88 individuals ‘half of whom had connections with the army and 29 of whom were native Irish, thus leaving only 15 Anglo-Irish who benefited’.”46 The results of the land distribution suggests that the English government wanted to oust the Anglo-Irish from landholding positions, which would in turn affect their ability to participate in parliament and thus deprive them of the ability to contribute to policy-making. The shifting policies between St Leger and Sussex are important and relevant to Stanihurst’s views of reform; because Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle ends with the administration of St Leger in 1554, there is no indication of how Henry Sidney figures in this historical narrative. More importantly, the Irish Chronicle is dedicated to Sidney. As with all histories, Stanihurst hopes that Sidney find wisdom and counsel in his work. He tells Sidney that the Irish Chronicle will put corrupt officials to shame, and “vright gouernors to their eternall fame.” In fact, Stanihurst’s goal, in hoping that Sidney will lend an ear to his views about

4 4 The two areas that were primarily placed under these conditions were the plantations in Offaly (Philipstown) and Laois (Maryborough). Both regions came under Crown control during Mary’s reign, when Bellingham served a short one-year term as lord deputy. 45 Sussex’s favoritism and his prejudice against the Old English provoked widespread criticism in the Pale; an unnamed source was said to have complained of Ireland’s revenue going into “the bagges of some as the arle of Sussex, Sir Harry Radcliffe, his brother, Stanley the marshal, Sir William Fitzwilliam, Wingfield, Cowlie, Stafford, Cosby, and an infinite number of such cormorants that gaping for private gayne have from naked persons enriched themselves to great wealthe and substance.” Canny, Elizabethan Conquest, 36. 46 Bottigheimer, “Kingdom and Colony,” 49.

82  Englishness and Loyalty Ireland, is explicitly stated. He does not allow Sidney to forget his obligations to the people of Ireland, that is, the Old English: For as it is no small commendacion for one to beare the dooings of so many, so it breedeth great admiration generally to haue all those qualities in one man herboured, for which particularly diuers are eternized […]. Vpon which grounde the learned haue, not without cause adiuged an hystorie to be the Marrowe of reason, the creame of experience, the sappe of wysedome, the pith of iudgement, the library of knowledge, the kernell of pollicie, the vnfoldresse of treacherie… And that our Irishe hystorie being diligently heeded, yeeldeth al these commodities, I trust the indifferent reader, vpon the vntwyning thereof, will not denie.47 Others, Stanihurst claims, may turn away from reading this history of Ireland because of a weak stomach or because they cannot “digest the grose draffe of so base a countrey,” but he has no doubt that Sidney is not one of them. The dedication is undated, though Sidney served as lord deputy for two terms, between 1565 and 1571 (with a brief interruption), and between 1575 and 1578. It is more likely that Stanihurst wrote his dedication during Sidney’s second term; he point out that the lord deputy “is thoroughly aquaynted with the woorthiness of the Island,” perhaps from his first term.48 If this is so, Stanihurst may be making the final appeal to Sidney to reverse the more aggressive reform programs to “set things right” before his tenure comes to an end. If this is the case, Stanihurst must also understand that Sidney’s approach to reform can only be conciliatory to a limited degree, and that his policies were essentially subject to demands of political expediency. Even though the lord deputy was considered to be conciliatory by some of his rivals, he too, expressed prejudices against the Old English and, like his predecessor, he saw them as “gaelicized” Englishmen.49 Sidney also adopted Sussex’s broader model for reform with some adaptations, and he was equally committed to extend and impose English law and royal authority beyond the Pale. His proposed financial exactions from the Palesmen to finance his reform program resulted in widespread discontent and they exacerbated his increasingly strained relationship with the queen and her advisors.50 47 Irish Chronicle (1577), 9. 48 My speculation does not rule out the possibility that the dedication could have been written much earlier, during Sidney’s first term in office. His former acquaintance with Ireland could also come from his office as Vice-Treasurer and Lord Justice to Ireland in the decade preceding his deputyship. In this case, Stanihurst could well be appealing to Sidney to bring an end to Sussex’s unpopular reform programs. 49 Bottigheimer, “Kingdom and Colony,” 50. 50 See footnote 46 in “Prologue”.

Englishness and Loyalty  83 In addition to appealing to Sidney in his dedication, Stanihurst’s representation of the Irish can also be interpreted as an appeal for more moderate forms of reform. Even though the Irish Chronicle uses Gerald’s Topographia to describe Ireland and the Irish, Stanihurst does not depict the natives with the same repulsiveness as his twelfth-century source. In fact, his accounts are much closer to Edmund Campion’s A Historie of Ireland (1571), written when Campion was in exile in Ireland. While in Ireland, Campion lived with the Stanihurst family and later received aid from the Gerald Fitzgerald, eleventh earl of Kildare, and Sidney when he fled to Douai in 1571. 51 The debt that Stanihurst owes Campion, his tutor and mentor, is noted in his dedicatory epistle, where he informs readers that his history of Ireland is an expansion on Campion’s Historie of Ireland. Stanihurst’s descriptions of the Irish are not nearly as extensive as Gerald’s, and Stanihurst is especially restrained in judging their dispositions and customs. The “wild Irish” or “mere Irish” are “religious, franke, amorous, irefull, sufferable of infinte paynes, very glorious, many socerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with wars, great almesgiuers, passing in hospitality”; clerks and laymen who receive good breeding and are reformed are “such myrrors of hlynes and austeritie that no other nations retain but a shadow of deuotion in comparison of them.”52 The practice of fosterage is mentioned, as in Topographia, but Stanihurst does not support Gerald’s condemnation of the Irish. Stanihurst’s representation of Irish fosterage is depicted as nurturing: “They loue theyr foster children, and bequeath to them a childes portion wherby they nourish sure friendship, so beneficiall euery way that, commonly, 500 cowes and better are giuen in reward to win a noble mans child to foster; they loue & trust theyr foster brethren more then their owne.”53 From Stanihurst’s perspective, not everyone can win the fosterage of a nobleman’s child, and when it is won, the trust between parent and fosterer is sealed in the promise to care for the foster child; parents take more care in looking after their foster children than their own

51 Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle was scrutinized by the authorities and one of reasons behind the partial censorship of the work is traditionally attributed to his ties with the Kildares (he was employed as Garret Fitzgerald’s tutor). The censors purportedly felt that his narrative was sympathetic to the Kildare faction. See the introduction to Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577), edited by Liam Miller and Eileen Power. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979. Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, esp. 138–69, and Daniel Woolf and Jane Wong Yeang Chui, “English Historical Writing and Holinshed’s Chronicles” in The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, edited by R. Malcolm Smuts, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 52 Irish Chronicle (1577),112–13. 53 Ibid., 113.

84  Englishness and Loyalty offspring. But Stanihurst, like Gerald, also denounces the Irish practice of not swaddling their newborns; Irish infants are simply “folded vppe starke naked in a blanket till they can go.”54 Stanihurst’s representations of the Irish can begin to explain his seemingly contradicting views on the Old English interaction with the natives. Scholars like Richard McCabe have asked how we can reconcile Stanihurst’s proclamation that Ireland is his “native country” with his criticism of Irish customs and habits. 55 Attempts to reconcile two views must draw a distinction between Stanihurst’s assessment of the natives and his ideas of how to reform the Irish. In his interaction model, the Irish “gaelicise” their English superiors, which Stanihurst and the New English find objectionable, even dangerous. Stanihurst’s idea of cultural segregation is grounded in what he believes to be the best way to reform the Irish. He believes that the English should not be in contact with the Irish lest they become gaelicized but that the English should interact with the Irish to anglicize them. To anglicize the Irish is to have them speak the language of the colonizer. For Stanihurst, language is essential to reform. He commends the ancient Old English population in Fingal and Wexford for their strong adherence to English customs, especially their commitment to using only the English language in the midst of Irish speakers. However, the Pale of his day had declined and decayed after a long period of intermixing between the Old English and the natives. The problem of degeneration originates in the acquisition of the enemy’s language: Neighbourhoode bredde acquaintance, acquaintance wafted in the Irish tongue, the Irish hooked with it attyre, attyre haled rudenes, rudenesse engendred ignorance, ignoraunce brought contempt of lawes, the contempt of lawes bred rebellion, rebellion raked thereto warres, and so consequently the vtter decay and desolation of that worthy countrey.56 The Irish language is described as a threat to the English state but it is also a sign of failed conquest. Stanihurst uses classical precedence to demonstrate the absurdity of role-reversal, and notes that Marcus Cicero, who observed the Romans adopting Greek fashions and customs, “not so much respecting the neateness of the language, as the naughty fruit it brough wyth it, sayde, that his countreymen, the Romaynes,

54 Ibid. 55 Richard A. McCabe, “Making history: Holinshed’s Irish Chronicles, 1577 and 1587,” in British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, edited by David J. Baker and Willy Maley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55. 56 Irish Chronicle (1577), 16.

Englishness and Loyalty  85 resembled the bond slaues of Siria.”57 In colonial narratives, the resistance to learning the colonizer’s language is not simply interpreted as a resistance to cultural assimilation but as a rejection of a new foreign identity imposed as the new national identity. As John Davies notes in his Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued (1612), language is no less important than law when it comes to erasing the Irish past. He is hopeful that with a complete conquest, the Irish will “for the most part send their children to schools, especially to learn the English language: so as, we may conceive an hope that the next generation will in tongue and heart, and every way else, become English, so there will be no difference or distinction but the Irish Sea betwixt us.”58 The policies implemented to outlaw the use of the Irish language suggests the gaelicization of the English and not the anglicization of the Irish.59 We need only turn to Stanihurst to understand his exasperation at the Irish resistance to the English language: “why the Englishe pale is more giuen to learne the Irishe, then the Irishman is willing to learne Englishe? We must embrace their language, and they detest oures”; the last O’Neill (Shane), he claims, refused to speak in English because he could not bear to “wryeth his mouth in clattering Englishe.”60 More notably, Hugh O’Neill surrendered in English after his defeat at Kinsale in 1603; in doing so, he was not merely defeated as a military commander—his identity as an Irishman is subordinated. Language reform through statutes and punishment had very limited success and reform through education was also considered to be a plausible method of getting the Irish to adopt the language of their colonizers. In 1536, Henry VIII issued a letter to the inhabitants of Galway that everyone should “put forth your childe to scole, to lerne to speke Englyshe, and that you fayll nott to fulfill theys oure commaundementys, as you tendre oure favor, and woll avoyde our indygnacion and highe displeasure.”61 Reform through persuasion and education was not popular with the New English. However, in Stanihurst’s day, it was still considered to be feasible by the Old English. In Sidney’s 1569 parliament, James Stanihurst, Richard’s father and speaker of the Irish 57 Ibid., 17. 58 John Davies, A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued and Brought Under Obedience of the Crown of England Until the Beginning of His Majesty’s Happy Reign (1612), edited by James P. Myers Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 217. 59 Tony Crowley, “Whose Language Is It Anyway?,” in The Contest of Language, edited by Martin Bloomer (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 169. 60 Irish Chronicle (1577), 17. 61 State Papers Published under the Authority of his Majesty’s Commission: King Henry the Eighth, 1830–1852, Vol. 2: Part III: Correspondence between the Governments of England and Ireland, 1515–1538, His Majesty’s Commission for State Papers, 1834, SP 1515-38/309, 309.

86  Englishness and Loyalty House of Commons and recorder of Dublin, advocated the building of a university in Ireland (with Sidney’s support) and grammar schools in every diocese, hoping that they would create an environment that would influence “owre unquiett neighbores woulde find such swetnes in the taste therof as it should be a readie waye to reclaime them.”62 Campion wrote the first English history of the island in which the natives are described as “sharpe witted, lovers of learning, capable of any studie whereunto they bende themselves, constant in travaile, aventurous, intractable, kynde hearted, secreate in displeasure.”63 In discussing the relationship between the Irish and Old English, he notes, “Suche a force hathe education to make or marre.”64 Stanihurst’s education in Kilkenny and his humanist training from Kilkenny to Oxford play an important role in his vision of Irish reform. During the 1540s, a municipal school functioned in Dublin for a brief period, but attempts to set up a school in Kilkenny through government support were unsuccessful. There was, however, a functioning grammar school in Limerick. This school came under the patronage of the earl of Desmond and was managed by Richard Creagh, the archbishop of Armagh, who later clashed with English authorities for his counter-­reformist views.65 The Kilkenny school that Stanihurst attended was founded before 1539 by Piers Butler, earl of Ossory and Ormond, and his wife, Margaret Fitzgerald. The master of this school was Peter White, an Old English teacher from a prominent family in Waterford and an MA graduate of Oriel College, Oxford. According to Colm Lennon, the curriculum at the school, like the one in Limerick, “concentrated heavily on philology and grammar, reflecting the humanistic concerns of its master.”66 White’s influence on Stanihurst is made explicitly apparent in his chronicle; writing as a graduate of Oxford and a tutor himself (to Kildare’s children), Stanihurst introduces his teacher as a schoolmaster who has greatly furthered “the whole weale publike of Ireland”: This gentlemans methode in trayning vp youth was rare and sinuler, framyng the education according to the scholers vaine […] he had 62 Irish Chronicle (1577),144. 63 Edmund Campion, Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland, edited by A. R. Vossen (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp. N. V., 1963), 19. 64 Ibid., 19–20. 65 Peter White’s curriculum is discussed in more detail in Colm Lennon’s “Pedagogy and Reform” (2007). An overview of Creagh’s clash with the authorities can be found in Colm Lennon, “Primate Richard Creagh and the beginnings of the Irish ­Counter-Reformation,” Archivium Hibernicum 51 (1997). 66 Colm Lennon, “Pedagogy and Reform: The influence of Peter White on Irish Scholarship in the Renaissance,” in Ireland in the Renaissance c. 1540–1660, edited by Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 46.

Englishness and Loyalty  87 so good successe in the realme of Ireland that was no Grammer schoole so good, in Englande, I am well assured, no better […] And certes, I acknowledge myselfe so much bound and beholding to him and his, as for his sake I reuerence the meanest stone cemented in the walles of that famous schoole.67 That Stanihurst reveres his teacher is unquestionable. But Stanihurst’s claim that there is no grammar school in England that surpasses the quality of teaching and education of the Kilkenny grammar school is striking for several reasons: unlike the New English, he does not perceive Ireland, in particular the Pale, as a place that is cut off from the civility that is England. In fact, the Old English (that is, Peter White and the students at his school) created an education system superior to the schools in England. Furthermore, the two grammar schools in Limerick and Kilkenny operated independently from government schemes. Though both schools were attended by children of the Pale elite and not by the natives, it is important to note that they were set up under the patronage of the ruling Old English families with little to no support from the English government. The call to develop schools and universities in Ireland was occasionally raised during Henry VIII’s and Elizabeth’s reign. Until the charter of 1592, earlier proposals to set up education centers were never fully developed; this failure is in part attributed to frequent revolts and political upheavals that plague the country, but on another level, it also suggests a lack of commitment and/or reluctance of the government to establish a functional education system for the Old English community, much less for the natives.68 The value that Stanihurst placed on education and its long-term effects and potential to—in the words of his teacher—“make or marre” a person is important when we consider Stanihurst’s views on reforming the natives. Unlike the New English of Sussex’s administration who saw the “wild Irish” as a people who could only be reformed through brute force and punishment, Stanihurst recognizes that the Irish are not devoid of learning and they can be educated. He notes that even though they do not speak it well, they have a knowledge of Latin. Latin was used amongst the learned in Ireland, and it was widely andå increasingly used especially 7 Irish Chronicle (1577), 59–60 (my emphasis). 6 68 Since the fifteenth century, Old English students who wanted to pursue an education in Oxford or Cambridge had to prove undoubted loyalty to the English Crown before they could be considered for admission. After the reformation, Oxford and ­Cambridge were no longer options for the Catholic Old English students; many chose to attend universities on the continent where they were less likely to be persecuted for their religious inclinations. The letters patent for Trinity College was issued in 1592, and under Elizabeth’s instructions, the university was to provide a Protestant education for students.

88  Englishness and Loyalty in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, when church and trade linked Ireland to the Continent: “[By] the later part of the sixteenth century Latin was the second language of the educated in Ireland, and the normal medium used by the Irish chiefs in communication with the English and other foreigners.”69 Around 1600, “it has been stated that the Irish emerge from the accounts of travellers as being among the best in Europe for their proficiency in Latin.”70 Irish schoolchildren were taught the learned language of the Europeans in schools, and despite their lack of proficiency, they were schooled for “16 or 20 yeres, connyng by rote the Aphorismes of Hypocrates, and the ciuill institutes, with a few other paringes of those faculties,” and the students “groouel vpon couches of straw, their bookes at their noses, themselues lye flate prostrate, & so they chaunt out with a lowd voyce their lessons by peecemeale, repeating two or three wordes 30 or 40 tymes together.”71 The Irish schools appear to have been less sophisticated than their English counterparts, both in their curriculum and classroom environment, but Stanihurst does not consider these shortfalls as signs of barbarity and incivility. Instead, there is a sense of admiration that the Irish are able to establish systematic learning practices, and they revered learning and knowledge. True to his humanist education, Stanihurst argues that under the right conditions, the Irish have the capacity to learn and, through learning, reform. For Stanihurst, the perceived flaws of Irish education are not associated with Irish customs and language, but rather with their lack of resources. His zealous response to a pamphlet written by an Alan Cope (a pseudonym for Nicholas Harpsfield) suggests that the Irish can be reformed through education and persuasion. Cope’s pamphlet is preoccupied with the wonders of Ireland, particularly, the well-known story that St. Patrick banished all venomous creatures from Ireland, but in an attack on the Irish, Cope notes: “And therevppon it is reported perchase by some men, that there is nothing venomous or poysoned in Ireland, but the men and women, which is taken to haue bene spoken by most men for their brutish and saluadge manners.”72 Stanihurst simply dismisses the story as an invention, but he takes offense at Cope’s deprecation of the Irish: Cope should not make such harsh judgments of a people he has never met. Stanihurst defends the Irish and compares them to the more sophisticated Germans: “I could neuer espy, nor probably haue I hearde it reported, no, not of the merre sauage Irish, such quaffling, such swilling, such bowling, such gulling… such vomiting as I haue seen some 69 Diamaid Ó Catháin, “Some Reflexes of Latin Learning and of the Renaissance,” in Making Ireland Roman: Irish Neo-Latin and the Republic of Letters, edited by Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (Cork: Cork University Press, 2009), 18. 70 Ibid., 18. 71 Irish Chronicle (1577), 114. 72 Ibid., 27.

Englishness and Loyalty  89 Germaines doe,” and that if Cope “cast his eye homeward, he shall finde as filthy puddle in his owne countrey as in other realms.”73 The crux of Stanihurst’s refutation of Cope’s commentary of the state of Ireland lies in his description of the Irish as a people who are not as privileged as those who live in more developed countries like Germany. Stanihurst traces this lack to the flaws of English reform programs, particularly the government’s assumptions that reform can only be achieved through brute force: So it fareth with the rude inhabitantes of Irelande they lacke Vniversities, they want instructors, they are destitute of teachers, they are without preachers, they are reuoyde of all such necessaries as appertayne to the trayning vp of youth, and nothwithstandyng all these wantesm if any would be so frowardly set as to require them to vse such ciulitie as other regions that are sufficiently furnished with the lyke helpes, he might be accounted as vnreasonable as he that would force a cripple that lacketh both his legs to runne, or one to pipe or whistle a galliard that wanteth hys vpper lippe.74 Stanihurst’s criticism of Cope is telling but also problematic in s­ everal ways. Harpsfield was a Catholic Englishman who fled to Belgium during Edward VI’s reign. His homeland was E ­ ngland. Stanihurst’s comparison of Germany with Ireland is meant to emphasize Ireland as a primitive land, but as having inhabitants more laudable than the those in Germany. When he tells Cope to look “homeward” to first judge the “filthy puddle” in his own country, he appears to be telling Cope to look to Germany, but in fact Cope’s “filthy puddle” is England! Stanihurst rejects Cope’s attack on Ireland, and in this defense, he implicitly criticizes the impatient and violent reformist policies that were applied to Ireland since Sussex’s administration. He uses the analogy of forcing a cripple to walk to describe the impossibility of forcing the Irish to reform overnight. For Stanihurst, ­patience and education are integral to successful reform. The Irish may have barbarous  customs and habits, but as he also observes, in describing their wit and their schools, the Irish have the capacity to learn and this alone promises the possibility of successful reform. Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle is also a history of the displaced and dispossessed. His writing responds to the impending demise of the Old English ascendancy. Kildare’s restoration failed to revive Old English dominance in the face of Sussex’s administration, and two years after the publication of the inaugural edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, the

73 Ibid., 28. 74 Ibid., 29.

90  Englishness and Loyalty Munster lordship of Desmond collapsed and the confiscation of Desmond lands brought about yet another opportunity to appropriate Old English and native lands. The Ormonds remained prominent, but they also had their fair share of troubles with the queen and her governors in the 1580s and 1590s. The decline of the Old English community also saw an end to more conciliatory approaches toward the Irish. The Old English were less inclined to support interventionist methods in reforming Ireland and preferred more persuasive methods not because they were sympathetic to the Irish plight, but because aggressive reform programs threatened their economic interests; the arrival of more New Englishmen could potentially “weaken the Old English claim to be the sole upholders of English civil standards in Ireland.”75 Taking into account the tensions between the Old and New English and their views on authority and reform, Henry Sidney becomes an immensely difficult figure to read within the context of Stanihurst’s work. It is very likely that Stanihurst is appealing to the lord deputy to protect the interest of the Old English community and to some degree, the welfare of the natives. There is some St Leger in Sidney; when Englishmen were chosen to preach in Ireland, Sidney pointed out to the queen that “in the ‘heathennish’ parts ‘where the English Tounge is not understood, it is more necessarie, that soche be chosen, as can speak Irishe.”76 Sidney’s rivals often criticized him for being too liberal with the Irish, and yet his ambition to reform Ireland became a point of contention with the Pale community. Angered with his proposals to reform tax impositions, the Palesmen went straight to the queen to complain about the oppression they were forced to endure under his administration. Whose interest was Sidney protecting? In A Historie of Ireland Campion describes Sidney as a man “surelie muche loved of them from his first office of Treasorer” and that was “in consultations very temperate.”77 Sussex is also praised as a formidable soldier and military commander, but his personality is a stark contrast to Sidney; Sussex is a man “meter to rule than to be ruled” – the tyranny of Sussex’s rule in England is unmistakable in Campion’s account. Even though Stanihurst was writing later than Campion and uses Campion’s work as one of his source texts, he ends his chronicle with the end of St Leger’s term as lord deputy: there is no discussion of Sussex or Sidney. Why would Stanihurst dedicate his work to Sidney and yet not record his deeds, even in passing, especially since he is at pains to acknowledge his debt to Campion in the same dedication? I suggest that 75 Nicholas Canny, Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World 1560–1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 4. 76 Patricia Palmer, Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 128. 77 Campion, Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland, 151.

Englishness and Loyalty  91 Stanihurst’s Irish Chronicle was possibly written to Sidney to restore Ireland to the way it existed in St Leger’s time; St Leger is the last governor whose fame is celebrated in the chronicle. By stopping at St Leger’s tenure, Stanihurst essentially writes the military government of Sussex out of the history of Ireland, leaving it to be remade by Sidney, who is still in the running to become one of the “vpright gouernours to their eternall fame extolled.”78 And as we will see in the next chapter, Sidney would indeed be raised to such a level in the next edition of Holinshed’s Chronicle (1587), and ironically, in the hands of John Hooker, Sidney would also be dangerously depicted as the overmighty subject whose authority in Ireland threatened to undermine that of his queen.

78 Irish Chronicle (1577), 9.

3 Portrait of a Lord Deputy Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland and on the Page

Most commentaries about Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577) don’t mention that Richard Stanihurst’s homage to Sir Henry Sidney is somewhat of an embarrassment; by 1577, Sidney was already falling out of favor with the Pale community. During his second term as lord deputy, Sidney proposed to raise cess (a tax to defray the cost of supporting a permanent military presence in Ireland) at notably higher rates. Stanihurst’s flattering descriptions of Sidney in the Irish Chronicle downplay the strained relationship between the lord deputy and the Pale community: Crisis was reached in the late autumn of 1577, when the Palesmen refused either to yield another cess or to consider an offer of composition, but demanded to be allowed to send agents to present their case at court. As winter approached, however, the Palesmen dug in: in a number of meetings held with the governor they remained fixed in their determination to resist greater burden on later generations. Sidney they alleged had no legal justification for the action he sought to undertake and they would not be offered, however, to find an alternative means of easing the government’s supply difficulties.1 The resistance of the Palesmen proved to be a formidable force. Unable to reach a compromise, they sent a delegation to the English court (without license to travel) to oppose Sidney’s tax reforms. This show of retaliation was detrimental to the lord deputy’s reputation. Sidney’s inability to resolve the dispute with the Palesmen did not garner him any sympathy even among his supporters in England, and his failure to defuse dissent amongst the Palesmen was especially humiliating. What began as a disagreement between the lord deputy and the Pale community quickly escalted into a confrontation between the queen and her subjects. By insisting that Sidney’s cess was unconstitutional, the Palesmen challenged 1 Ciaran Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 148. For a comprehensive overview of Sidney’s reform plans and their results, see esp. pp. 113–59.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  93 royal prerogative to impose taxes without parliamentary arbitration.2 Needless to say, this did not go down well with Elizabeth. The leader of the Pale delegation was locked up, and Sidney was disgraced in 1577, when Stanihurst celebrated his governorship in the Irish Chronicle. The strained relationship among the lord deputy, the Palesmen, and the queen is of the first order of interest in this chapter. The 1577 debacle signals a breakdown of royal authority, and even as English authorities scrambled to contain threats of rebellion in Ireland, they had to attend to defiant Palesmen bent on exposing Sidney’s abuse of authority. This lord deputy is nothing like the one in early modern popular imagination.3 William Camden’s comparison of the lord deputy’s authority to “the grandeur and majesty of a king” is compromised here: as proxy to the queen, the lord deputy derives his authority to rule from her, but her wishes are often influenced by courtiers around her. In other words, though the lord deputy commanded the highest office in Ireland, his authority was frequently undermined by those he ruled over, and this was especially so when they had access to the queen. As Richard Cox observes, “however these good Services were relished in Ireland, where the Fruits of them were felt and perceived, yet in England they [the lord deputies] were so little regarded, that no mention was made of them in any of the Publick Dispatches; but on the contrary, the Publick Letters to the Deputy, were full of Reprimands and sharp Reflections…”4 Sidney’s struggle with asserting his authority and justifying his reformation schemes is not particularly unique – his predecessors and successors faced similar problems – but his self-representation of his governorship reveals the volatile relationships he had with the English court, the Irish administration, the queen, and her subjects in Ireland. The underlying problems of royal absenteeism are all the more pronounced in instances when the lord deputy’s authority is perceived as tyranny. Camden’s and Stanihurst’s ideas of the Irish chief governor may misrepresent the authority of the lord deputy, but their perceptions of his position are not altogether “inaccurate” – they are merely outdated. They overestimate the authority of the early modern chief governor and underestimate the impact of court factions on Irish affairs. Sidney’s Memoir and his long-standing clash with the equally powerful Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, and John Hooker’s (alias Vowell) representations of the

2 An account of this event compiled by Christopher St Lawrence (Laurence), seventh Baron of Howth can be found in the Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts. Also see Valerie McGowan-Doyle, The Book of Howth: The Elizabethan Re-conquest of ­Ireland and the Old English (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2011). 3 William Camden, Britannia (1695) (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1971), 973. 4 Sir Richard Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, or, The History of Ireland from the Conquest Thereof by the English to the Present Time (London: H. Clark for Joseph Watts, 1689), 326.

94  Portrait of a Lord Deputy lord deputy’s viceregal authority alongside the queen’s royal authority in ­Holinshed’s Chronicle (1587) delineate the lord deputy’s estrangement from the English court. More immediately, they reveal the practical limitations of his authority in early modern Ireland.5

Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir Sidney’s Memoir is by far the most detailed and complete account of a lord deputy’s experience in Ireland. Even though Sidney presents his narrative as a spontaneous and seemingly hasty response to his plight in 1583; careful editing can be found in all three extant drafts of the work, and the incompletion of the latest draft suggests that Sidney may have had plans to complete his “autobiography.”6 Addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s principal secretary, the epistolary nature of Sidney’s latest draft is notable in that earlier drafts did not indicate and/or identify Walsingham as a potential reader. It is impossible to tell whether or not the narrative was originally written to Walsingham without knowing Sidney’s writing practices, and it is quite plausible that he may have preferred to include the addressee’s details closer to the draft’s completion. That a draft was indeed meant for Walsingham is of great significance. Sidney’s relationship with Walsingham and his desire to convey his grievances to the latter suggest an overwhelming sense of exasperation and helplessness. In his opening address, Sidney raises “the matter of marriage” between Philip Sidney and Frances, Walsingham’s daughter; he expresses “joy in the alliance with all my heart” in spite of Elizabeth’s displeasure at being informed of the arrangement only after it was made.7 Alan Stewart speculates that Walsingham anticipated the marriage more so than the Sidneys because of Frances’s involvement in a “clandestine” marriage contract at age thirteen or fourteen to a John Wickerson (whom Walsingham locked up in the debtor’s prison of ­Marshalsea). Sidney’s hesitance in committing to the marriage could be attributed to his financial deterioration.8 Sidney’s address to Walsingham brings together their political and personal relationship in the same thread, and whether or not Walsingham is sympathetic to Sidney’s plight is perhaps of less importance than S­ idney’s assumption that Walsingham is obliged, if not professionally, then

5 In referring to Sidney’s narrative, I have relied on Ciaran Brady’s edited version of the text entitled A Viceroy’s Vindication? Sir Henry Sidney’s Memoir of Service in Ireland 1556–1578 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002). Hereafter, Memoir will be used in all references to this work. 6 Ibid., 1. 7 Ibid., 43. 8 Alan Stewart, Philip Sidney: A Double Life (New York: Thomas Dunne Books; St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 248–49.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  95 personally, to present his case to the queen. After all, his financial state is implicated in the marriage of their children. Sidney’s financial straits are described in Memoir, and they are extensively traced to the Elizabeth’s judgment and treatment of Irish affairs. Her “interference” forms two strands of thought in Sidney’s narrative; the first is an account of the insurmountable difficulties he faced in Ireland (and his achievements in spite of these difficulties), and the second is his disappointment of not being justly rewarded or recognized for his efforts and sacrifices. The composition of Memoir is very likely motivated by Sidney’s financial troubles in the years preceding 1583. By then, he was already laden in debt and disappointed that he could not obtain favor from the queen. He “find[s] there is no hope of relief of her Majesty for my decayed estate in her Highness service,” and he has managed to survive only “by sale of part of that which is left to ransom me out of the servitude I live in for my debts.”9 Sidney states forthrightly his reasons for writing the memoir. Since he is unable to gain the queen’s favor, he feels compelled to “play a little boldly in person of mine own herald,” and in doing so, relate his experiences in Ireland to his reader.10 A reader’s interpretation of the memoir, however, may not be as straightforward; as Ciaran Brady observes, Sidney was unlikely to have secured financial reward from the queen in this manner: “his adopted strategy was strangely self-defeating; for defiance, as everyone knew, had never been a fruitful means of exciting gratitude in Elizabeth.”11 While Brady quite rightly observes that Sidney’s approach could backfire, it is equally likely that Sidney must have also known that he was taking a gamble. His persistence in writing a “defiant” account of his experiences in Ireland attests to the immense frustration he must have felt even as it registers a sense of resignation. Under such circumstances, it becomes even more important for him to play his own herald. At first glance, Sidney’s Memoir appears to be a catalogue of his achievements in Ireland, but this catalogue functions only as a frame for the overwhelming difficulties he faced and overcame as lord deputy in Ireland. This rhetorical structure characterizes the entire document – his achievements are constructed as being all the more extraordinary in light of the sacrifices and injustices he suffered: Three times her Majesty hath sent me her Deputy into Ireland, and in every of the three times I sustained a great and a violent rebellion, every one of which I subdued, and (with honorable peace) left the country in quiet. I returned from each of those three Deputations three thousand pounds worse than I went.12 9 Memoir, 43. 10 Ibid., 44. 11 Ibid., 6. 12 Ibid., 44.

96  Portrait of a Lord Deputy Monetary losses are briefly noted throughout the memoir, but he stresses the humiliation he suffered as the great lord deputy, whose imagined authority is comparable to the “grandeur and majesty of a king.” His viceregal authority is consistently subverted as he gets caught in the conflict between the two most prominent Anglo-Irish families in Ireland. In the aftermath of the Battle of Affane (1565) between Gerald ­Fitzgerald, 15th earl of Desmond and Thomas Butler, tenth earl of ­Ormond, the former’s imprisonment in London left a power vacuum that was quickly filled by the self-proclaimed rebel leader, James ­Fitzmaurice. The first Desmond rebellion (1569–73) peaked with the participation of Ormond’s brothers, most notably, Sir Edmund Butler. Sidney’s feud with the Ormonds, partly fueled by the realignment of alliances between the English government and the great Anglo-Irish families, plays a significant role in his memoir. The long-standing enmity between the earls of Desmond and Ormond was a perennial problem for the English government; their relentless attacks on each other threatened what little stability English authorities were able to enforce in Ireland. In the decade prior to the rebellion, Desmond was defeated in just about every single case he brought to the queen and her council for adjudication. In favoring Ormond over Desmond, Sidney’s brother-in-law and predecessor, Thomas Radcliffe, third earl of Sussex, was partially responsible for Desmond’s dwindling status in the English court, but Sussex’s recall to England in 1564 temporarily improved Desmond’s plight. The two earls were punished and made to keep their peace with a bond of £20,000, but Desmond was held entirely responsible for the conflict: “Even more damaging for Desmond were the political consequences of Affane. His prestige in Munster plummeted, his reputation at court as an incorrigible was confirmed, and Arnold’s ability to rehabilitate him evaporated.”13 Sussex and Sidney acted as advisors in the matter; the former took Ormond’s side and the latter appealed on behalf of Desmond. In favoring Desmond over Ormond, Sidney picked his battles even before he was formally appointed lord deputy. Sidney’s Memoir is obsessed with Ormond. Sidney’s self-representation of his authority in Ireland is, to a large degree, defined by his relationship with Ormond and, to a lesser degree, by his relationship with the earl’s rebellious brothers. The context of the rebellion and Sidney’s management of the events is important in understanding his perceptions of the limitations of viceregal authority. As the Battle of Affane demonstrated, the lord deputy’s relationships with the Anglo-Irish aristocracy had a direct impact on the political alliances in Ireland. These relationships form important patronage networks in Ireland and England. From S­ idney’s point of view, the hierarchical nature of patronage is undermined when his authority 13 Anthony M. McCormack, The Earldom of Desmond 1463–1583: The Decline and Crisis of a Feudal Lordship (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), 100.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  97 is compromised and he attributes this problem to Ormond’s relationship with Elizabeth. Sidney’s and Ormond’s long history with the queen can be traced back to her childhood days. Sidney grew up in the company of Edward VI and was a close friend and confidante to the king.14 His place in the English court was also established through his marriage to Mary Dudley, which brought him into Robert Dudley’s (later first earl of Leicester) circle. Sidney’s early ties to Ireland can be traced to his sister’s (Frances Sidney) marriage to Sussex; his earliest official involvement with Irish affairs began when he traveled with Sussex as treasurer to Ireland in 1556.15 In addition to his Irish work, his service in France and Spain drew him closer to some of the most powerful men in Elizabethan England, Walsingham and William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Even so, he was only one among many in court with close connections to the queen and her principal advisors. As a distant cousin of Elizabeth, Ormond also had a place in Edward VI’s household; the young princess grew fond of Ormond and confided in him when they were youths. Elizabeth’s fondness for Ormond lasted into adulthood and even the queen’s favorite, Leicester, perceived Ormond as a threat and grew cautious and resentful of his presence in court (this development can be verified in the reports of the French and Spanish ambassadors).16 In Ireland, Ormond’s rival, the earl of Desmond, never had the advantage of growing up in the English court; his father rejected Edward VI’s offer to have his son sent to court in 1547, depriving Desmond of the “opportunity to forge strong ties with the Dudley faction, and perhaps even to develop a close personal relationship with the young Princess Elizabeth, the type of relationship that Ormond was able to exploit in subsequent years.”17 Ormond was a one of a kind figure at the English court at a time when Anglo-Irishmen were commonly depicted in an unflattering light. He had good looks and charm, his patronage networks in Ireland and England were extensive, and more dangerously, he was confident and aware of his hold over the queen: “Like other favorites such as Leicester and Hatton, he knew how to influence Elizabeth—or how, as he once said, to put ideas ‘into the queen’s head.’”18 It was in this context that Sidney had to contend with Ormond, as the latter: “time and again stamped his mark on Anglo-Irish politics, sometimes dominating affairs, crushing the ability of successive chief governors of Ireland to conduct policy as they would have wished.”19 Ormond’s interference with Irish affairs 14 Memoir, 106. 15 Stewart, Philip Sidney, 19. 16 David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of the Butler Family (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), 89. Elizabeth ­Jenkins, Elizabeth and Leicester (London: V. Gollancz, 1961), 135. 17 Anthony M. McCormack, Earldom of Desmond, 89. 18 Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 99. 19 Ibid., 98.

98  Portrait of a Lord Deputy from the English court proved detrimental to Sidney’s lord deputyship. Accordingly, the earl is cast as an antagonist in Sidney’s Memoir. Sidney’s Memoir attributes the difficulties of reforming Ireland to Ormond, and more troublingly, the lord deputy feels that his viceregal authority is repeatedly challenged and contested in the English court because of Ormond’s influence on Elizabeth. For instance, Sidney ­describes the consequences of Ormond’s actions during his (Sidney’s) pursuit of Shane O’Neill in Ulster. Following the orders of his commission, Sidney focuses all his energies on tracking O’Neill through some of the most treacherous terrain in Ireland. At one juncture, he successfully catches up with the rebel and disrupts O’Neill’s Christmas celebrations; here, Sidney stresses his unconditional service to the Crown: “how pleasant a life it is that time of the year, with hunger, and after sore travail to harbor long and cold nights in cabins made of boughs, and covered with grass, I leave to your indifferent judgment.”20 The shift that follows this remark illustrates Sidney’s discontent; deprived of feasting and celebrating Christmas, his campaign against O’Neill is interrupted by ­Ormond. Right after Sidney narrates his optimism in capturing O’Neill, he laments: “But Sir—Diabolus nunquam dormit [The devil never sleeps], for now the Earl of Ormond applied the Queen with such complaints against me and Sir Warham St Leger, whom I placed with others in commission in Munster.”21 In response to the earl’s complaints, “her Majesty wrote so oft and earnestly to me by the procurement of the Earl of Ormond, touching hurts done to him and his by the Earl of Desmond,” and as a result, “I was forced to leave my northern actions against O’Neill, and address me southward against Desmond, which prolonged the life and wars of O’Neill, greatly to the queen’s charge.”22 In alluding to Ormond as the “devil” and in making this reference while pursuing O’Neill, Sidney associates one with the other; both O’Neill and Ormond subvert his authority and, in turn, royal authority in Ireland. Throughout his career as lord deputy, Sidney had to contend with Ormond’s influence over Elizabeth. During his first term as lord deputy, Sidney proposed the establishment of presidential councils as a way to extend royal authority and English common law in Ireland. Like the Northern Council in England, the presidential councils in Ireland were designed to suppress strife and revolt at the provincial level. Presidents received the support of a small military retinue and other minor officials. Just as the lord deputy is a representative of the Crown, the provincial president serves as the representative of the lord deputy. The two presidential councils established in the late 1560s were in Connacht (in the west), over the earldoms of Clanricard and Thomond, and Munster (in 0 Memoir, 49. 2 21 Ibid.; Brady’s translation. 22 Ibid.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  99 the south), over the lordships of Ormond and Desmond. Because of the nature of the Desmond-Ormond feud, the position of the president of Munster was fiercely contested as the fates of the two earls rested in the hands of their president’s support; a pro-Ormond president, combined with Ormond’s influence in the English court, would no doubt signal the impending collapse of the Desmond lordship. As lord deputy, Sidney was responsible for appointing provincial presidents. Memoir describes the difficulties of making these appointments, and how they are often thwarted by Ormond. These instances again suggest that the lord deputy’s authority to appoint principal officials is, in practice, not solely his. As Sidney points out in his narrative, Ormond’s interference in the matter defeats the purpose of establishing the presidential council. The presidential council in Munster delegates the president to attend to provincial matters in the lord deputy’s absence. Under such circumstances, O ­ rmond’s complaints should be directed to the president of Munster, Sir Warham St Leger, while Sidney is in Ulster, but the earl refuses to do so and demands Sidney’s immediate attention. It is not difficult to explain ­Ormond’s hostility toward St  Leger. As son to the famous Anthony St Leger, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary’s lord deputy, Sir Warham was perceived to be predisposed to Geraldine sympathies. Furthermore, many Anglo-Irish lords perceived the English presidential council as yet another scheme that limited their authority and influence over their autonomous lordships and palatinate rights.23 Needless to say, Ormond could not tolerate the prospect of a pro-­Fitzgerald, pro-Sidney candidate as president of Munster. In Memoir, Sidney recounts his appointment of St Leger as president of Munster, but this authority is efficiently and effectively negated when he receives news from Elizabeth demanding the withdrawal of the appointment. Sidney defends his decision: “For Sir Warham St Leger I do know him for a worthy honest gentleman, and one that would not blemish his credit for either of both the earls [Desmond and Ormond].”24 Sidney insists that St Leger is the most suitable candidate but the queen disagrees; she prefers one of Ormond’s recommendation: “[Robert] Cusake I deemed to be more affected to Desmond than Ormond, [w]hile I knew, and all others that knew him thought him to be affectiously devoted to Ormond, as one born his follower, and yet both honest.”25 Sidney explains to his reader that his reluctance to withdraw St Leger’s appointment resulted in a sharp response from the queen, who reprimanded him for being biased against Ormond. In a letter to Sidney dated 16 ­January 1567, she agreed to the establishment of a presidential 23 Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established, 1565–1576 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1976), 49. 24 Memoir, 52. 25 Ibid.

100  Portrait of a Lord Deputy council in ­Munster, but rejected the appointment of St Leger, “not for any other lacke in him; but only for that we shall not thinke that he can be so indifferent in the cases betwixt the two earles of Ormond and Desmond, as wer meete for one that shuld hold that place.”26 The queen insisted that St Leger cannot be suitable president because he “might beare with [Desmond’s] disordres, or gyve him cause to be bolde to offend, upon presumption of frendshippe in him that shude governe over him.”27 Sidney’s irritation at Ormond’s complaints in Memoir can be traced to two factors: one is tied to the other and they emphasize the difficult and delicate nature of his office. The first has to do with the more immediate priority of capturing O’Neill. In Memoir, Sidney finds himself constantly having to explain why he has not yet captured O’Neill in his reports to the council in England; at the same time, his pursuit of the rebel is interrupted by Ormond’s complaints against him. Sidney notes that he is obliged to accede to Elizabeth’s requests that he attend to Ormond even as he pursues O’Neill. In responding to the queen’s demands, Sidney is forced to abandon his campaign against the  Irish rebel: to ignore Ormond’s complaints is to provoke the wrath of the queen. Secondly, Sidney is aggrieved that he is unjustly accused and reprimanded for scheming against Ormond. Sidney’s concerns are not unfounded; in another letter, the queen expressed that she and her council “did mislyke in deede to see you so addicted to the favour of thearle of Desmond,” as she was convinced that “the Earle of Desmond was notorious both in England and Irland by manifest circumstances.”28 The queen’s accusation against ­Sidney’s judgment must have been particularly stinging when she remarked: “you do the Earle [of Ormond] wrong to wryte that he perswadid us therto [reject St Leger’s appointment].”29 Sidney’s memoir records the degree to which Ormond undermined his authority. To appease the queen and her favorite courtier, the lord deputy was forced into withdrawing St Leger’s appointment after it was confirmed, and the position remained vacant until the appointment of John Perrot in 1568 (though he did not arrive until 1571). Elizabeth’s letters to Sidney confirm his views of Ormond’s dangerous influence on the queen; her prejudice against Desmond further interfered with Sidney’s duties in the lead-up to the first Desmond rebellion. The Sidney Papers indicate that soon after Sidney reluctantly arrested Desmond for forfeiting his promise of compensating the damages incurred on Ormond’s lands and making peace with the earl, Ormond again 26 Henry Sidney, Sidney State Papers, 1565–70, edited by Tomás Ó Laidhin (Dublin: Stationery Office for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1962), 50. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 67. 29 Ibid.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  101 complained to the queen that Desmond’s brother and second in command, Sir John Desmond (at the time placed in charge of the Desmond lordship while his brother was detained), was again causing trouble on Ormond’s lands. In addition, Ormond insisted that his brother, Piers Butler, was wrongfully arrested under Sidney’s orders. In the same letter, the queen expressed her displeasure at Sidney’s arraignment of Piers Butler while Desmond and his followers committed “greater offences”; furthermore, Sir John is not suitable to be appointed “principall commissioner for government of the contrey whilest his brother the earle is in prison for so great offences.”30 In Memoir, Sidney recalls his reluctant arrest of Sir John, whom he firmly believes to be a loyal subject:31 I was eftsoons charged with partiality between the earls, and in especial for what I did not apprehend them sooner than I did. For the younger brother I had no warrant, nor (in truth) saw no cause, but much to the contrary; and for the other I was driven to prove that I had apprehended him and committed prisoner in Kilmallock… forty-eight days before the letter was written at St James for to apprehend him. Thus have you (my dear sir) some declaration of my painful travail, good event, and victory in this my first deputation; but of reward I can say no more but as he did who said—foris triumph at domi plero [Triumph abroad but ridicule at home].32 Sidney’s narrative holds Ormond entirely responsible for this debacle, and he believes that the earl “ceased not to persecute me with unjust and untrue informations, alleging that his people could have no justice, but were still oppressed by Sir John of Desmond and the Desmonians.”33 Sidney’s descriptions of Ormond’s complaints in the Memoir are especially telling: they register anger at Ormond and frustration with the ­ nglish queen, but they also emphasize Sidney’s estrangement from the E court. The lord deputy finds himself caught between what he believes to be just, and what he must accept as royal authority; royal authority in Memoir is subject to the corrupting force that is ­Ormond  – ­Ormond’s wishes translate into the queen’s wishes. In acting according to the queen’s wishes he must essentially issue orders that are illegal: he overrides the process of indicting the Desmonds without warrant or legal justification. This action negates the most important aim of Sidney’s reform program: to extend English common law, order, and justice in Ireland. In this instance, Sidney orders the arrests before the men are even formally indicted, and the Desmonds are not given any opportunities 0 Sidney, Sidney State Papers, 67. 3 31 Memoir, 52. 32 Ibid., 59; Brady’s translation. 33 Ibid., 57.

102  Portrait of a Lord Deputy to refute the charges made against them. In Sidney’s memoir, the Ormonds are antagonists, and the Desmonds are victims. Sidney further supports this view when he describes Sir Edmund Butler’s refusal to follow orders. When asked to assist Sidney in his campaign against James Fitzmaurice, Sir ­Edmund answers with “scornful letters as frivolous and foolish speeches, that he was able to do none, alleging that I had made him to ride up and down the country like a priest.”34 Sir Edmund makes no pretense of his defiance against the lord deputy’s authority, or more to the point, English authority, in his plunder of Laois, where he and his men kill “most specially all Englishmen… stripped out of their English garments,” and then used their corpses “as marks for his kernes to throw their darts at.”35 Sidney also reports his destruction in Carlow and his attacks on the Kavanaghs as he (Sir ­Edmund) punishes and kills those who refuse to support his cause. That Sidney draws attention to Sir Edmund’s rampage and but remains completely silent regarding the cause of the upheaval is especially striking; Sir Edmund targeted specific areas in response to what he believes to be Sidney’s tyranny and the queen’s privileging of her New English administrators over the Anglo-Irish leaders. But more significantly, Sir ­Edmund was reacting to the illegal appropriation of his lands which Sidney sanctioned. Sidney’s Memoir does not acknowledge his use of extra-­ legal methods to support Sir Peter Carew’s questionable ancient rights to County Idrone that effectively dispossessed Sir Edmund of his lands. This was one of the reasons that provoked the rebellion. Willy ­Maley discusses the implications of Sidney’s seemingly selective memory and argues that “the amnesia of empire” is characteristic of colonial discourse, and that ambiguities and contradictions are necessary in creating narratives that justify the conflict between colonizers and the natives: “Forgetfulness is enfeebling, which is why it proves to be bad for the ­English and good for the Irish. In a colonial nation, where competing settler societies are vying for power alongside a native population, losing one’s memory can be as vital as keeping it.”36 To stress his success in quelling the rebellion, Sidney must omit his role in the provocation of the rebellion. The strength of Sidney’s “appeal” rests on the queen’s ­under-appreciation for his service in Ireland. Instead of receiving recognition and reward, Sidney finds himself repeatedly humiliated through the limitations placed on his authority. The persuasiveness of Sidney’s appeal in Memoir lies with the Ormonds’ roles as antagonists in his narrative. Sir Edmund’s defiance, 4 Ibid., 62. 3 35 Ibid., 62. 36 Willy Maley, “‘The Name of the Country I have Forgotten’: Remembering and Dismembering in Sir Henry Sidney’s Irish Memoir (1583),” in Ireland in the Renaissance, edited by Thomas Herron and David Potterton (Dublin; Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 2007), 55.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  103 for instance, is attributed to Elizabeth’s leniency toward the Ormonds. Even after Sir Edmund is imprisoned, he is given “too much liberty, wearing no irons, nor locked up in any chamber, but had leave to use the walk on the wall, only guarded with two of my men.”37 Sidney’s account of the rebellion, the arrest of Sir Edmund, the queen’s letters of pardon in Ormond’s hands, and the escape of Sir Edmund all single out Ormond as the undoing of Ireland. Because Sidney cannot outright blame Elizabeth in Memoir, Ormond stands in place as his target. Nowhere in the narrative does Sidney indicate that the queen exhibits bad judgment for favoring Ormond over her lord deputy; this silence reinforces the doctrine that the queen can do no wrong and that corrupt counselors are to be blamed for her bad judgment. The distrust (created by Ormond) between queen and lord deputy subverts Sidney’s authority, and in turn, his ability to carry out his duties. This is suggested in Sidney’s cynical and ambivalent attitude in recalling Sir Edmund’s escape from prison. While Sidney regrets this incident, he is also relieved that the prisoner, though seriously injured, survives: But good Sir, what case had I been in, if he had broken his neck or otherwise killed himself in that mad and desperate adventure? I think I should hardly have made my friends to have believed otherwise than I had done, or caused it to be done, and that the cord hung there but for a colour. He has since told me, and said it likewise to others, that it was written to him often out of England, and told him in the castle, that undoubtedly I would kill him.38 The apparent grandeur associated with the position of lord deputy dissipates when we consider this account alongside the popular image of the lord deputy. Sidney’s gradual isolation in court is manifest in the palpable lack of support for his authority in Ireland. His conviction that everyone will hold him responsible for the “murder” of Sir Edmund if he dies while trying to escape is not unwarranted. The years that preceded the rebellion may well justify his complaints: when Sidney indicted and charged Sir Edmund for robbery and extortion in 1566 and temporarily imprisoned him, the lord deputy received word from Burghley warning him to drop the case before the queen could intervene. This downturn at court was later exacerbated when Leicester “betrayed” him; as Leicester and Ormond settled their differences, Leicester “told Ormond much of what he knew about Sir Henry’s plans to damage him.”39 Sidney’s narrative also expresses his self-consciousness in the English court. He believes 37 Memoir, 77. 38 Ibid. 39 Edwards, Ormond Lordship, 190.

104  Portrait of a Lord Deputy that he is alienated even by lesser courtiers who, he thinks, are concerned that their association with him would bring trouble upon themselves: “Divers of the principal gentlemen would in the night, and as it were disguised, come to me protesting they durst not in the day time be seen to do so, for fear of the Earl of Ormond.”40 The lord deputy’s grandeur cannot compete with the privilege of the queen’s favorite courtier. In the closing section of Memoir, Sidney projects a self-image in stark contrast with the popular image of the lord deputy. Writing in 1583 at age fifty-four, he knows (as he states in his introduction) that his appeals to Elizabeth for some form of financial recompense are utterly exhausted. He describes himself as “toothless and trembling, being five thousand pounds in debt,” and in spite of his good services to the queen, “I cannot obtain to have in fee farm £100 a year, already in my own possession, paying the rent Dura est condition servorum [Hard is the servants’ lot].”41 Sidney’s presentation of himself as the “meanest and poorest man that ever occupied this my place [at Penshurst]” suggests that popular perceptions of the lord deputy are exaggerated, at least from his point of view. The queen’s final rejection of Sidney was made explicit in 1582, when Burghley and Walsingham considered the possibility of making Sidney lord deputy for a third term, and he expressed interest at the prospect of accepting the position, but he also made it clear that he would only consider doing so with the “unequivocal recognition by the Queen of the value of his past services” through the granting of “a peerage and a grant of land; he also preferred to have the title of Lieutenant rather than Deputy.”42 These terms were outright rejected by the queen. It is difficult to speculate if Sidney saw his demand for the title of lord lieutenant as a symbol of appreciation from the queen or if he truly believed that as lord lieutenant, he would be able to counter Ormond’s schemes against him, but it is plausible that he may have felt that the title would alleviate the tensions between Crown and governor in the contestation of authority in Ireland.43 The queen may have rejected Sidney’s requests and refused to

0 Sidney, Memoir, 100. 4 41 Ibid., 103. 42 Malcolm William Wallace, The Life of Sir Philip Sidney (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 281. 43 The earliest royal representatives of the king were sent to Ireland under the orders of Henry II; their authority was limited and they were sometimes known as the King’s Justiciar. This title was used until the reign of Richard II, when it was substituted with the King’s Lieutenant. Titles before this period were often vague and general if any formal title was given at all. Traditionally, the highest appointment of the chief governor of Ireland is that of the King’s Lieutenant. This title is traditionally, before the Tudor era, given to someone of royal blood, normally related to the King. After the fifteenth century, the office can also be given to highly regarded English nobles. The King’s Lieutenant’s powers and authority exceeded those of the justiciars. For early usage of these titles, see H. G Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Administration of

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  105 recognize his accomplishments, but as a last comfort for Sidney sympathizers, the “toothless and trembling” lord deputy is immortalized as a symbol of English ascendancy and imperial conquest in the second edition of Holinshed’s Irish ­Chronicle (1587).

John Hooker’s The Svpplie of the Irish Chronicle (1587) If Sidney’s Memoir is a representation of the lord deputy’s office in ­I reland, then John Hooker’s contribution to Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), The Svpplie of the Irish Chronicle, can be read as a misrepresentation of that office.44 Hooker portrays Sidney in a way that the lord deputy does not quite imagine himself in his memoir: he is neither “trembling and toothless” nor deprived of royal favor, or of public popularity. Hooker’s Irish Chronicle depicts Sidney as an all-powerful figure whose image is more along the lines of Camden’s viceroy. The 1587 Irish Chronicle advocates military reform and imperial expansion as part of its larger narrative, and Hooker’s views of the Old English echo prevailing New English thought: the Old English are disloyal, if not more so, than the Irish, and they have degenerated to a point of no return. Furthermore, Hooker’s chronicle is an overt expression of state hegemony at work; it asserts a singular, unequivocal brand of royal authority in Ireland. Nevertheless, tensions between Elizabeth and her governors are not entirely omitted in the chronicle. In light of Sidney’s Memoir, Hooker’s chronicle exposes the problematic nature of a proxy government: the queen’s authority is invested in her lord deputy, and yet, that representation becomes potentially dangerous when it bears too close a resemblance to the queen’s royal person. In the Irish Chronicle, Sidney’s glorified actions threaten to blur the demarcation between viceregal authority and royal authority. Furthermore, Hooker’s representation of Sidney is generated by a historical imagination that envisions the Irish conquest as a precursor to English imperial expansion in the New World. The chronicle’s lengthy dedication to Sir Walter Ralegh, its emphasis on the absolute acceptance of English authority through Sidney’s grandeur, and more importantly, its concerted attempt to suppress the

Ireland 1172–1377 (Dublin: Stationery Office for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1963), and Herbert Wood’s “The Office of Chief Governor of Ireland, 1172–1509,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 36 (1921–24), 206–38. In 1599, Robert Devereux, the second earl of Essex, was appointed Lord Lieutenant. For a brief discussion of the implications of Essex’s appointment as lord lieutenant, see Epilogue. 4 4 Raphael Holinshed, The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles Comprising the Description and Historie of England, the Description and Historie of Ireland, the Description and Historie of Scotland (1587). EEBO: Early English Books Online (STC / 271:01). Hereafter cited as Irish Chronicle (1587).

106  Portrait of a Lord Deputy estrangement between queen and deputy all indicate that the chronicle is first and foremost preoccupied with imperial conquest. Ralegh is an especially suitable dedicatee for Hooker’s narrative. Hooker’s simultaneous anticipation of “the thing to come” and celebration of “the things past” are embodied in the figure of Ralegh.45 Hooker pays special attention to Ralegh’s ties with the westward passage enterprise in the 1580s; “the thing to come” anticipates the complete conquest of Ireland, which is mapped onto aspirations to conquer the New World. Ralegh was also one of the most influential colonizers in Ireland after he received land that was confiscated after the second Desmond rebellion (1579–83), where he acted as captain to Lord Grey’s forces in 1580. In this sense, Ralegh’s accomplishments in the New World and Ireland epitomize Hooker’s idealization of what it means to conquer, dispossess, and colonize. In dedicating the Irish Chronicle to Ralegh, Hooker draws parallels between conquest and colonization in Ireland and the New World.46 This connection conflates the English government in London and the colonial government in Ireland as one united political unit. In Hooker’s Irish Chronicle, Sidney stands well above other governors as the most prominent figure in the history of early modern Ireland. Nowhere else in Holinshed’s Chronicles do we find such extensive coverage of a single governor. Even Anthony St Leger, who served three terms in ­I reland – his appointments spanned 16 years (1540–56) over three reigns – does not receive as much attention as Sidney. St Leger favored conciliatory policies; with varying success, he persuaded the Irish chieftains, who traditionally dealt with Anglo-Irish governors, to co-operate with the colonial government after the fall of Kildare. For this reason, St Leger is not an ideal model of the lord deputy in Hooker’s Irish Chronicles. Hooker advocates conquest and military intervention, not conciliation. Following this line of thought, Hooker’s logical choice should have been Sussex, who served with brief interruptions between 1556 and 1564; Sussex employed interventionist policies and believed that ­military force was the only way to conquer Ireland. But Sussex is also not a suitable candidate for Hooker’s ideal figure of royal authority: “[Sussex] did verie great good seruice against the Irishrie… but yet before he could or did bring the same to perfection, he was reuoked into

45 Irish Chronicle (1587), Sig Aiir. 46 A general overview on sixteenth-century comparisons between Ireland and the New World can be found in Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established 1465–76 (Hassocks: The Harvester Press, 1976), David Quinn, Ireland and America: Their Early Associations, 1500–1640 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny, and P. E. H. Hair, ed., The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America 1480– 1650 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979).

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  107 ­ rnold England, and left the land in a verie broken state.”47 Nicholas A was appointed lord justice after Sussex’s recall, and Sidney was appointed lord deputy in 1565. Hooker takes great pains to establish Sidney as the ideal figure of royal authority in England. Sidney’s credentials make him an especially suitable governor; he had been second-in-command to Sussex when he served as treasurer and was appointed lord justice several times before he was lord deputy. In terms of his experience and knowledge of the island and its peoples, “he excelled anie others in those daies, the more apt and fit was he to haue the gouernement of [the Irish].”48 Similar general comments are typical of the descriptive passages that precede the introduction of new governors in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587). Sidney, however, is an exception in this case. After his appointment is confirmed, Hooker enumerates “[t]he said foure articles” that are included in Sidney’s commission. These include the queen’s instructions on the management of religious, economic, administrative, and military matters. The specific and detailed manner in which these clauses are described is highly unusual in comparison with the vague and general descriptions of other lord deputy appointments. In Hooker’s Irish Chronicles, the details of the clauses are inserted into the historical narrative to resemble an appendix of a government document. For readers, this insertion appears to assert Sidney’s authority in all matters that are important to the Crown. The hierarchy of authority is notable in Hooker’s narrative; he begins with describing Sidney as a servant to the queen and her council but later progresses to a lord deputy whose power and authority appear boundless. In the opening sections of the Irish Chronicles, Hooker includes Sidney’s instructions from the queen and her council: “the lord deputie should vse [his councilors’] their aduises, assistance, and counsels in all matters of treatie and consultation, concerning the state of [­I reland],” and he does not allow readers to forget the source of this power: “[The Irish councilors] considering the place and authoritie wherevnto hir maiestie had called the said sir Henrie Sidneie, to hold hir place in that realme: they should yield that obedience and reuerence vnto him.”49 Hooker makes a simple but important assertion here: the lord deputy is a substitute for an absent queen in Ireland. Inadvertently, Hooker calls attention to the problem of delegated authority in this here. From the outset, Hooker’s description does not seem problematic, especially since chief governors were normally given “full power to supervise all ministers or officers in Ireland, to remove those who are useless and

47 Irish Chronicle (1587), 110. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid.

108  Portrait of a Lord Deputy to put others who are useful and suitable in their places—excepting our Chancellor and Treasurer [in Ireland].”50 The lord deputy is depicted as the government in Ireland with little to no indication of the limitations of his authority the making of his council. In reality, Sidney was restrained from reshuffling some members of his council when he attempted to remove nearly all of Sussex’s from their offices. The queen could dispatch orders for adjustments that she thought were necessary and she did: among the small number of positions not restaffed with new men were those who were formerly ­associated with Sussex’s circle.51 Such interferences from the queen undercut the lord deputy’s executive powers to create his own council: [Sidney’s] replacement of Sussex’s men in Dungarvan and Leighlin were overturned; his decision to appoint Bagenal as marshal was hotly disputed… In the church his recommendations of Terence Danyell for the see of Armagh and Hugh Brady for the see of Dublin were ignored, and in the army even innocuous attempts to fill vacancies were greeted with suspicion and deferred. Sidney showed some sympathy for Arnold’s difficulties and he was accused of conspiring against Sussex; he praised Kildare and Cusacke for their efforts on his behalf, and he was rebuked for being ‘guided in the government by councilors of Irish birth.’52 In practice, the relationship between the lord deputy and his councilors in the Irish Chronicles is more idealized than actualized. Charles Blount, Lord Deputy Mountjoy, who finally brought an end to the Nine Years’ War, frequently complained to Robert Cecil that his efforts to pursue Hugh O’Neill were constantly disrupted and delayed as a result of the councilor’s hostility against his authority: “if I were aided by a council of Solomons, I think this Kingdom and this army, as they are now, would afford them matter enough to try their wits.”53 Mountjoy added that his “fellow councilors, most of them do only lie at defense to save themselves harmless, some of them to entrap me, but none of them from whom I receive any matter of assistance.”54 Even the most popular lord deputy was not spared from the complaints of uncooperative council members. In one instance, Hooker recounts their anger at Sidney, who “did all things by his owne mind without the aduise of others,

50 Edmund Curtis and R. B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents, 1172–1922 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968), 71. 51 Brady, Chief Governors, 116. 52 Ibid., 121. 53 F. M. Jones, Mountjoy, 1563–1606: The Last Elizabethan Deputy (Dublin and ­L ondon: Clonmore and Reynolds, 1958), 70. 54 Ibid., 70–89.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  109 contrarie to the course of other deputies before him.”55 But the Hooker defends Sidney; he criticizes the councilors for spreading “vntruths,” but more-to-the-point, Sidney remains the image of perfection, as one who effectively performs his duties, and he does so single-handedly. In a description of an urgent council meeting called to address the “lamentable and dolefull… state and kingdome [of Ireland],” Hooker notes: [­Sidney’s councilors] cause so much was the weaker, as that such as were the chiefest of the councell, then ioined to assist him in councell and seruice, were for the most part spent and decaied men; and the lord deputie himself friuen to deuise, to inuent, to dispose, and in the end to execute all himself. (my emphasis)56 Hooker’s interpretation and representation of Sidney as the all-mighty, all authoritative, and ideal lord deputy are derived from views that were prevalent when he was preparing the chronicle in the 1580s; during this time, Sidney had already fallen out of favor in court (as his Memoir describes), but there was a push to bring him back as lord deputy for another term. The “rehabilitation” of Sidney’s image in Hooker’s chronicle is likely to have originated from the crisis of the second Desmond rebellion, and later, Lord Grey’s defeat at the Battle of Glenmalure in Wicklow. By 1581, criticism of Grey’s governance in Ireland rife, and rumors of his recall were widely circulated. In a letter to Walsingham dated 5 November in the same year, Geoffrey Fenton, Principal Secretary of State in Ireland, told Walsingham that Grey was not suitable as lord deputy in times of crisis because of Grey’s lack of Irish experience; he recommended Sidney’s return: “Sir Henry Sydney is mighty and popular with all sorts and in all parts of Ireland. He is reverenced as a patron that would deliver the country.”57 Anxieties about Grey’s performance in Ireland led to a new campaign to appoint Sidney as lord deputy for a third term, and Hooker contributed to these efforts by framing Sidney as the “savior” of Ireland. Even though Grey was praised by some in the aftermath of the siege at Smerwick (“[his] great courage after our loss, could not have been bettered by Hercules”), Captain Nicholas Malby echoed Fenton’s view that Grey was no Sidney: “If Sir Henry Sydney can but sit in his chair, he will do more good than others with all their limbs.”58 Malby was clearly a Sidney supporter and was one among many others who advocated for Sidney’s reappointment. By singling out Sidney as a “gold 55 Irish Chronicle (1587), 147. 56 Ibid., 114. 57 CSPI, 1509–1603, Vol. 2: 1574–1585, edited by Hans Claude Hamilton (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867), 327. 58 Ibid., 369.

110  Portrait of a Lord Deputy standard,” Sidney supporters questioned the competence of “all others” (that is, all other lord deputies). Fenton and Malby’s expectations of Sidney matches up with Hooker’s portrayal of the lord deputy. Hooker, too, supports Sidney when he defends the lord deputy’s policies in the 1569 parliament against overwhelming opposition. Hooker urges the opposing parties to consider Sidney’s “endlesse turmoiles and troubles in ciuill matters and priuat sutes for your quietnesse,” and for this, “he hath deserued more than well at our hands: yet as the vnthankfull Israelites against … you haue and doo most vngratfullie requite and recompense this your noble gouernor: against whom and his dooings you doo kicke and spurne what in you lieth.”59 The biblical allusion emphasizes God’s will that Ireland will be conquered and marks Sidney as the chosen one—he will achieve the reconquest of Ireland. By drawing parallels between the leadership of Moses and Sidney, Hooker’s narrative redresses Sidney’s complaint in his Memoir that his service to the Crown is under-appreciated. Sidney’s resentment in 1583 is all the more poignant because he, too, felt that he fulfilled the role of Moses to the Israelites when he finally departed Ireland in 1578. Hooker reports Sidney’s farewell speech, in which Sidney recites a line from Psalm 114: “In exutu Istael de Aegypto, & domus Iacob de populo barbaro.”60 Hooker’s account of Sidney’s farewell speech makes the allusion explicit in noting that Sidney, thereby to the troublesome state of Moses in the land of Aegypt, and of his departure from out of the same: who notwithstanding he had in great wisedome, care, and policie gouerned the stifnecked people of Israell, had done many miracles and woonderous works to their comfort, had deliuered them from manie great perils and dangers, had preserued and also kept them in peace and safetie, had in the end through the mightie hand of God brought them out of the hands of Pharao, and from out of the land of Aegypt, and had giuen them the sight of the land of promise…61 No other governor of Ireland in Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle is compared to a biblical figure. These allusions speak to the nature of Hooker’s imperial narrative. Hooker’s biblical allusions achieve two goals in his imperial narrative: it emphasizes England’s civilizing mission in relation to God’s will, and more interestingly, it erases dissent and conflict within the English 59 Irish Chronicle (1587), 121. 60 Ibid., 150. When Israel came out of Egypt, Jacob from a people of foreign tongue. The remaining lines from the first stanza reads: Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion. 61 Ibid.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  111 government. The difference between Sidney’s Memoir and Hooker’s Irish Chronicle lies in the different ways in which the two authors attribute blame (in relation to the governance of Ireland). In his Memoir, Sidney blames Ormond for his deteriorating status in court: influenced by the manipulative Ormond, the queen turns her back on her loyal lord deputy and diminishes his achievements and sacrifices in Ireland. In recalling his final term as lord deputy, Sidney “cursed, hated and detested” another term in Ireland, but he went anyways for the sake of his queen: “[I] confess with supposition that I could do that which had not been done before, and in great hope hit where others had missed; and eftsoons the third time I took upon me that thankless charge.”62 In his narrative, ungratefulness is attributed to the queen. For Sidney, the queen’s cruelty toward him is placed squarely on the shoulders of Ormond, not the Irish. As Brady observes, the lord deputy was not given to the kind of derogatory views of the Irish as an intractable and irreconcilable people that were typical in the late Elizabethan period. Sidney speaks highly of the Irish lords who cooperated with Crown authorities and punished those who revolted. It is consistent through Memoir that the wars in Ireland are not against the general Irishry as such but against the rebels; furthermore, the rebels’ defects are not traced to their lack of English cultural markers but to their particular personalities.63 There is no indication anywhere in Memoir of Sidney’s disdain for the Irish as a people. Hooker, on the other hand, attributes blame to the Irish—the reconquest is prolonged because of their recalcitrant nature. He condemns their resistance to reform and compares their ungratefulness to the malice of the Lacedaemonians to Lycurgus, their lawgiver: “[The Irish] offering vnto [Sidney] the like reward as Licurgus receiued of the most vnthankfull Lacedemonians, who when he had recouered that sauage nation to a ciuill life, and a politike gouernement… recompense euill intreated him in verie bad speachesm and strake out one of his eies.”64 Like the Lacedaemonians, the Irish “would not onlie haue bereft his lordship of both his eies, but also done him a further inconuenience (if success had happened) according to their malice.”65 In an earlier section entitled “The nature of the Irishmen,” Hooker reminds readers that sixteenth-­ century Irishmen have not changed since the twelfth century. Using the Desmond rebellion as an example to support his claims, he notes: “And here may you see the nature and disposition of this wicked, effrenated, barbarous, and vnfaithfull nation, who (as Cambrensis writeth of them) they are a wicked and peruerse generation.”66 This twelfth-­century 62 Memoir, 81. 63 Ibid., 15. 64 Irish Chronicle (1587), 150. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 133.

112  Portrait of a Lord Deputy t­ ypology of the Irish so entrenched in early modern narratives of Ireland is revived and appropriated: the Irish are always plotting mischiefs, they love bloodshed and cruelty, they are prone to murders and robberies, and they are trucebreakers, traitors, and liars. And they cannot help being so, he writes, simply because they are Irish. If they are treated with kindness and generosity, “they will surelie skip out; and as the dog to his vomit, and the sow to the durt & puddle they will returne to their old and former insolencie, rebellion, and disobedience.”67 Hooker’s narrative believes that these behaviors can only be rectified with “continuall feare,” and he insists that “[such is the hardnesse of their hearts, that with the rod it must be chastised and subdued.”68 By associating Sidney’s troubles with the Irish rebels Hooker displaces the tensions between queen and lord deputy and replaces them with the larger agenda of justifying English conquest in Ireland. Sidney’s Memoir argues how Ireland should not be governed (i.e. taking counsel from flatterers), while Hooker argues for how it should be governed. Hooker conflates queen and lord deputy as a single source of royal authority; imperial conquest demands this. Yet, when the Irish Chronicles asserts the lord deputy’s presence and authority above and beyond that which the queen has delegated to him, Hooker treads on dangerous grounds. In the later sections of the chronicle, Sidney is welcomed into Irish towns with receptions that bear a striking resemblance to the queen’s pageants and progresses in England. Here, the lines that separate viceregal authority from royal authority start to blur. Scholars of medieval and early modern pageantry have commented on the highly ritualized aspects of royal pageants and how they reflect popular ideas of kingship.69 In spite of being discouraged from going on expensive royal progresses, Elizabeth visited over 400 individual and civic hosts during her 44-year reign.70 Through direct contact with subjects who did not have access to her, the queen’s progresses enabled her to “consolidate her image and popularity, to strengthen royal authority in towns, to display herself and her court in public ceremonies.”71 This pageantry thus “contributed to and constituted the government of ­Elizabeth.”72 Sidney’s progresses in Ireland followed the ceremonial patterns of the royal progress in England. The queen’s progress usually begins with a meeting 7 Ibid. 6 68 Ibid. 69 See David Bergeron’s English Civic Pageantry, 1558–1642 (1971) and his Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theatre (1985); Sydney Anglo’s Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Modern Tudor Policy (1969), and Roy Strong’s The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (1977). 70 Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (­A mherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 1. 71 Ibid., 34. 72 Ibid.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  113 between the queen and her host(s) at the latter’s estate, or in the case of a civic progress, the mayor must arrange to meet the queen at the boundary of his township. This meeting is followed by the “surrender” of authority with the exchange of a symbolic item, such as the keys to the town. After this ceremony, the queen typically gives “a speech or drama of welcome,” then proceeds to the rest of the celebration with gifts and feasts.73 Hooker’s description of Sidney’s first arrival in Ireland follows the pattern of the royal progress. After receiving his instructions in England, Sidney sails to Dublin where he is welcomed with great joy by “the whole counsell, the maior and his brethren of that citie. And the people in great troops came and saluted him, clapping and shooting with all the ioie that they could deuise.”74 This description of the audience’s response is not unlike William Harrison’s description of Elizabeth’s coronation in ­London: “At hir entering the citie, she was of the people receiued maruellous intierlie, as appeared by the assemblies, praiers, wishes, welcommings, cries, tender words, and all other signes which argued a wonderfull earnest love of most obedient subiects towards their souereigne.”75 Sidney’s reception is, however, not complete until the following Sunday, when the “sword of state” is surrendered to him. Delegated and placed in the hands of the chief governor of Ireland, the sword symbolizes royal authority and English justice. When this part of the ceremony has concluded Sidney “made a most pithie, wise, and eloquent oration….”76 Hooker reports Sidney’s oration, like the queen’s, at length, and in doing so, he draws parallels between the two. The detail in which Sidney’s speech is described is not afforded to any other chief governors of Ireland in the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles. Hooker emphasizes the highlights of Sidney’s speech. Nearly all the items he enumerates from the speech pertain to the queen’s wishes for the welfare of her subjects in Ireland, and they also formally acknowledge the authority of the lord deputy, in the name of the queen. The speech includes multiple references to “hir maiestie”; Sidney tells his audience that “hir maiestie” could have “made better choise of manie others” to “hold hir place in this realme,” but she chooses Sidney among many other competent candidates: “hir pleasure was now to cast thie heauie charge and burden vpon him.”77 While there is no ambiguity

73 Felicity Heal, “Giving and Receiving on Royal Progress,” in The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I, edited by Jayne Elizabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 49. 74 Irish Chronicle (1587), 111. 75 Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587), Vol. 4, edited by Henry Ellis (AMS Press 1965; Reprint London: J. Johnson, 1807), 159. 76 Irish Chronicle (1587), 111. 77 Ibid.

114  Portrait of a Lord Deputy about who ultimately is the source of royal authority, Sidney’s repeated attempts to acknowledge royal authority paradoxically undermine it at the same time: the queen is repeatedly mentioned, and yet she is conspicuously absent. In her absence, the recognition and celebration of royal authority (manifest in the progress of the lord deputy) are directed at Sidney. The response of Sidney’s audience upon the completion of his oration mirrors the responses of the queen’s subjects who fill the streets for a glimpse of their monarch at her progresses; after Sidney addresses the audience, “the common people in euerie street and corner meeting him, and with great acclamations and ioie did congratulat vnto his lordship his coming among them in that office.”78 Hooker’s implicit comparisons of the queen and the lord deputy’s authority and their popularity become more provocative as the chronicle develops. The receptions arranged for Sidney are described with some more detail. Sidney’s arrival at different townships witnesses celebrations and pageantry that are not enjoyed by former lord deputies. It is quite likely that Sidney requested or orchestrated these events himself. If so, this makes him seem all the more dangerous to the queen as he replicates rather than represent her authority and grandeur in her absence.79 The chronicle recounts two events during Sidney’s last term in office that are particularly noteworthy. The first is his arrival at Waterford, where he is similarly greeted by the city’s officials and the people, after which an oration of congratulatory [is] made vnto him in the Latine toong by a young scholar clad in white attire, verie well and eloquentlie pronounced. Great triumphs were made, both vpon the land and vpon the water; with all such shewes and tokens of ioie and gladness, as could be deuised.80 The treatment that Sidney receives is fit for a monarch; the Latin oratory and the entertainment on land and sea are reminiscent of royal progresses. A second celebration awaits him at his arrival at Cork, where “the lord deputie was receiued in the best manner the citizens could, with all humblenesse, and with all such triumphs and other shewes

78 Ibid. 79 Modern historians have noted Sidney’s vanity above all other lord deputies in ­I reland. See Hiram Morgan, “‘Overmighty Officers’: the Irish Lord Deputy in the Early ­Modern British State,” “Overmighty Officers: the Irish Lord Deputyship in the Early Modern British State,” History Ireland 7.4 (1991), and John Bradley, “Sir Henry Sidney’s Bridge at Athlone, 1566–67,” in Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660, edited by Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007). A discussion of the implications of representing royal absenteesism can be found in Willy Maley, Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (London: Palgrave Macmillan,1997), esp. pp. 99–117. 80 Irish Chronicle (1587), 138.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  115 and tokens of good will and dutifulnesse as they could giue, without grudging or complaining either of the townsmen or of the soldiers.”81 In  ­foregrounding the grandeur of the lord deputy and describing the lavish receptions arranged for Sidney, surely at great inconvenience and expense in a land embroiled in rebellion, Hooker’s representation of Sidney complements the vision of imperial conquest in the Irish Chronicles. Sidney plays the part of conqueror, and he is perceived as the longawaited “saviour” of sorts. Just as the queen’s progresses brought her “face to face with petitioners who voiced grievances to their sovereign” and allowed local officials to ask her “for help in strengthening the civic economy, especially the harbors, markets, and industries, as well as in adjudicating local disputes,” the lord deputy promises his hosts and visitors similar opportunities during his progresses.82 Yet, in celebrating the lord deputy’s authority in Ireland, Hooker treads a fine line in implicitly drawing attention to competing forms of royal authority. The textual presence of “hir maiestie,” so explicit earlier in Hooker’s narrative, gradually disappears, and Sidney’s forbidding ­presence – marked by his ­progresses – becomes increasingly prominent. Ceremonies that celebrate Sidney’s presence in Ireland as if he were king also become successively more provocative in the Irish Chronicle as Hooker transfers the royal image, befitting only the queen, onto Sidney. Heading his first Irish parliament, Sidney appears to have complete authority over law-making, and he is embodied as the figure of absolute justice. Hooker’s presence at Sidney’s first parliament as a member of the House of Commons afforded him a set of notes on the procedure of parliamentary proceedings, which further contributes to his systematic construction of Sidney as the figure of supreme authority in Ireland. In the midst of ­Sidney’s encounters with rebels, Hooker provides readers with a 12-page description of what to expect in an Irish parliament.83 Hooker’s insertion 81 Ibid., 140. William Leahy cautions readers to be aware of the dynamics and organization involved in these spectacles and notes that audience members who throng the streets include, in the cases of the queen’s progresses, members of the London Guilds (who contributed to the events). These people were in fact ordered to be present at the progress: “their failure to do so would have consequences: ‘Not failing hereof, as you will answere the contraire at your perill’” (65). But the presence of an audience does not necessarily reflect support for the queen. Contemporary evidence records an instance of this when Elizabeth gave her famous speech at Tilbury to spur her troops against the Spanish Armada; many of the soldier who attended the speech sold their weapons and supplies right after they disbanded (79). William Leahy, “‘Thy hunger-starved men’: Shakespeare’s Henry Plays and the Contemporary Lot of the Common Soldier,” Paregon 20.2 (2003). 82 Cole, The Portable Queen, 3. 83 Irish Chronicle (1587), 121–29. Hooker was one of the members of the House of Commons in Sidney’s first parliament. In defending Sidney, Hooker was reported to have openly compared Queen Mary and Philip to Pharoah (implicitly alluding to Sidney as Moses), and he offended the Irish representatives when he referred to them as “kerns.” Sir Edward Butler’s outrage at Hooker’s condescending remark confirms

116  Portrait of a Lord Deputy of the articles of parliamentary procedures resembles his earlier enumeration of the articles in Sidney’s commission – both function as official endorsement of royal authority. The articles on parliamentary procedures detail official guidelines that govern parliamentary sessions, but they complement the significance of Sidney’s role in Irish parliamentary matters; the lord deputy is heralded as the first chief governor to order all parliamentary proceedings from his administration forth to be printed in accordance to English practices.84 Hooker’s description of Sidney’s presence and appearance at parliament further confirms the immense grandeur of his authority: the lord deputie, representing hir maiesties person, was conducted and attended in most honorable manner vnto Christes church… where he sat vunder the cloth of estate, being appareled in the princelie robes of crimson veluet doubled or lined with ermin […] And here you must note, that what the kings and queens of England do in their persons in England, the same is done in Ireland by the lord deputie, and who in the like parlement robes and vnder the like cloth of estate representeth hir maiestie there in all things.85 The danger of Hooker’s commentary on Sidney’s appearance at parliament lies in its interpretation of the lord deputy’s authority. He is right in pointing out to readers that the lord deputy is an extension and a representation of the queen’s authority, but that authority does not include the right to imitate his monarch’s royal image; Sidney’s progresses and his practices at parliament verge on usurping royal authority. Hooker’s description of Sidney’s image reflects John Derrick’s The Image of Irelande (1581), a work dedicated to Philip Sidney that celebrates his father’s success in capturing Rory Óg O’More and bringing Turlough Luineach O’Neill to submission. In the foreground of a woodcut from Derrick’s text, Sidney “sittes in honours seate, most comely the tensions between the English administrators and the Anglo-Irish community: “Butler, in a choler also said that if these words had been spoken in any other place than in this house, there be a great many here that they would rather have died than to have suffered it” (qtd. in Treadwell 69). This 1569 parliament was especially difficult for Sidney as he faced strong opposition in the upper house, from ­Palesmen and ­A nglo-Irish lords alike, and was also accused of manipulating the lower house by allowing members who were non-residents partake in the sessions. To make matters worse, he was also under a great deal of pressure from England. Elizabeth was reluctant to grant Sidney’s request to hold parliament in the first place but was persuaded into doing only because he promised that it would last no more than six weeks. Because of the unprecedented opposition he faced, parliament dragged on for eight sittings over two years. The best source of details to the 1569 parliament can be found in Victor Treadwell, “The Irish Parliament of 1569–71,” The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C. 65 (1966/67). 84 Irish Chronicle (1587), 121. 85 Ibid., 119, 121.

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  117

Figure 3.1  John Derrick, Image of Irelande (1581), De.3.76. Turlough Lynagh O’Neale and the other kerne kneel to Sidney in submission. Special Collections, University of Edinburgh Main Library.

to  be  seene,  / As worthy for to represent the person of a Queene,” as he formally receives O’Neill’s submission.86 Derrick acknowledges the queen’s authority over her lord deputy but like Hooker’s chronicle, the queen’s authority is abstract and is made concrete only through the person of the lord deputy – the queen is only textually present. In the woodcut, Sidney presents himself in the fashion of a king, seated under an ornate tent and surrounded by his knights. Images like this may have prompted historians like Hiram Morgan to take a skeptical view of Sidney’s self-representation: “[The] elaboration of ceremonial was meant to honor the monarch in the person of her viceregal proxy but one must wonder at Sidney’s role and purpose.”87 These images, imposed on the queen’s officers, were commonly perceived to be dangerous in England. The dangers of delegated royal authority should not be underestimated. In the queen’s absence, Sidney is endowed with all the authority he needs to raise armies and form alliances to his advantage. Governors who were thought to be the most popular in England were also considered to be the most dangerous to England. Sidney was well aware of this. In Memoir, Sidney reports: “[Edmund Butler] would say that the cause of his stir was, 86 John Derrick, The Image of Irelande (1581), edited by F. J. Sypher (Delmar, New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1998), 144. 87 Morgan, “Overmighty Officers,” 19.

118  Portrait of a Lord Deputy that the Earl of Leicester, enemy to his brother [the earl of Ormond] and his house, should marry the queen, and be king of England, and that I should be king of Ireland.”88 Similar complaints were not always dismissed as mere discontent. When they become a cause for concern, the limitations of representation are tested. Anne Castenien has argued that the sections on Leicester’s receptions in the Low Countries were censored in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) for this reason. English authorities may have ordered the cuts to avoid calling unnecessary attention to the earl’s extravagance and grandeur in the Netherlands. It is also notable that Latin poems that celebrated Sidney were also censored, and news of Philip Sidney’s death was shortened. 89 These examples further suggest the provocative nature of Hooker’s Irish Chronicles, especially when the queen was already wary of Sidney’s popularity in Ireland. She voiced her concerns “that Leicester might through Sidney extend his clientage networks far into Ireland, the queen moved to curb the deputy’s powers of patronage.”90 Hooker’s representation of Sidney plays down the tensions between lord deputy and queen, and there is a sense that the authority delegated to Sidney is taken for granted as a wholesale transference of royal authority from the queen in England to her lord deputy in Ireland. This affirms Sir Edmund’s accusation to some degree. Elizabeth’s anxieties about her governor’s usurpation of her royal image in Ireland are erased as royal authority is re-inscribed into the lord deputy’s achievements. Sidney’s representation of his experiences in Ireland and Hooker’s representation of Sidney’s authority underscore the uneasy relationship between Crown and colonial government; they also point to the problems of a proxy government that simultaneously impose and undermine royal authority. These problems were widely recognized, as Fynes Moryson, secretary to lord deputy, Charles Blount, eighth baron of Mountjoy, remarks: “it may prove dangerous to give a great man the absolute command of a kingdom for many years the more so because without the monarch’s presence a barbarous nation like the Irish were apt to worship the god they had before them.”91 Hooker’s portrayal of Sidney can be read as an analogue to Derrick’s woodcut: Hooker depicts Sidney as the supreme source of royal authority in Ireland through his achievements, and Derrick glorifies the lord deputy’s authority to grant pardons in a ceremonial style that befits a monarch.92 Sidney 88 Sidney, Memoir, 66. 89 Anne Castenien, “Censorship and Historiography in Elizabethan England: The Expurgation of Holinshed’s Chronicles,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Press, 1970), 271–72, and Nicholas Popper, “European Historiography in English Political Culture,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, edited by Malcolm Smuts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 229. 90 Brady, The Chief Governors, 122. 91 Fynes Moryson, qtd. in Morgan, “Overmighty Officers,” 17. 92 In the sixteenth century, the act of granting pardons was prerogative of the English monarch: “The statues of 1536 and 1543 that extended royal jurisdiction into Wales

Portrait of a Lord Deputy  119 may dismiss Sir Edmund’s accusations – that the lord deputy was plotting to be king of Ireland – as absurd and inconsequential, but the lord deputy was nonetheless aware of the potential dangers of such accusations. In response to the pageant-like reception at Waterford, he notes in his report to England: “I was in such honourable manner received and entertained, as might better have been thought worthy gracious acceptation, if it had been done to your most Princely Majesty, then to be looked for of so mean a subject as I am.”93 Sidney then defuses “the danger of appearing to Elizabeth as having been seduced by the sheer grandeur of his own authority.”94 The tensions between queen and lord deputy that are so apparent in Sidney’s Memoir are suppressed in Hooker’s Irish Chronicles because they are incompatible with the chronicle’s imperialist agenda. Hooker’s decision to have queen and lord deputy working together in perfect unity may also have been a response crafted to downplay rumors of Sidney as a threatening, overmighty subject. The lord deputy’s response to these rumors can be found in an early draft of Holinshed’s Chronicles, “… for the more they contended to suppresse him, the more (like the camomill being foiled and trodden) his vertues rose up and appeared, and their malice was both unfolded and controlled.”95 The Irish Chronicle portrays Sidney’s conduct as an assertion, not defiance, of royal authority; in Memoir, the queen’s presence is perceived as a source of unwelcome interference. The two works expose the fault lines of colonial governance in Ireland. As the pursuit for a complete conquest of Ireland intensified, questions about how to govern and reform Ireland under such divisive conditions began to appear more in literary works and historical treatises. As the following chapter shows, the queen’s concerns about her image, and all the qualities associated with what she considers to be ideal queenship, will clash with the practical realities of revolt and resistance in the last decade of her reign. and the liberties explicitly arrogated the power to pardon to the king,” and “both justice and mercy became essential attributes of the king alone, no longer shared with any privileged subjects.” See K. J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13. Ireland stands out as a unique case in this period as the authority to pardon is a standard in the chief governors’ commissions. Ciaran Brady points out that it is precisely because of this – the viceroy’s ability and authority to use, and even abuse, royal prerogative in Ireland – that makes his power comparable to the queen’s. See Ciaran Brady, “Court, Castle and Country: The Framework of Government in Tudor Ireland.” In Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society 1534–1641, edited by Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie (Suffolk: Irish Academic Press, 1986), 22–29, 41. 93 Michael Brennan, The Sidneys of Penshurst and the Monarchy, 1500–1700 (­Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006), 45. 94 Ibid. 95 Qtd. in Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 149. Cyndia Susan Clegg, The Peaceable and Prosperous Regiment of Blessed Queene Elisabeth: A Facsimile from Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 2005), 543.

4 Negotiating Violence and Equity in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book V (1596)

The rebellion that Lord Deputy Henry Sidney crushed in 1569 presents an overview of the state of affairs in Ireland in the latter half of the sixteenth century. For the first time in Irish history, the Butlers and Fitzgeralds joined forces to overthrow English rule in the first Desmond rebellion. Historians have observed that the unprecedented brutality of the English forces; even the Norman invasion “did not see such atrocities— systematic execution of non-combatants by martial law.”1 The violence inflicted on the Irish—rebels and civilians—is immortalized in Thomas Churchyard’s A Generall Rehearsall of Warres (1579): His maner was that the heddes of all those (of what sort soeuer thei were) whiche were killed in the daie, should bee cutte of from their bodies, and brought to the place where he incamped at night: and should there bee laied on the ground, by eche side of the waie leadyng into his owne Tente: so that none could come into his Tente for any cause, but commonly he muste passe through a lane of heddes, whiche he vsed ad terrorem, the dedde feelyng nothyng the more paines thereby: and yet did it bryng greate terrour to the people, when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freendes, lye on the grounde before their faces, as thei came to speake with the saied Collonell. Whiche course of gouernemente maie by some bee thought to cruell, in excuse whereof it is to bee aunswered.2 As the English-appointed General of Connacht during the rebellion, Gilbert’s cruel ritual aimed to strike fear into the hearts of the Irish, but more importantly, it reflected the English government’s attitude toward notions of submission and mercy in the reformation of Ireland. Churchyard, a soldier himself, subscribed to Gilbert’s approach to the Irish “knewe his 1 Nicholas Canny, “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 30 (1973), 583. 2 Thomas Churchyard, A Generall Rehearsall of Warres, Called Churchyardes Choise Wherein Is Fiue Hundred Seuerall Seruices of Land and Sea as Seiges, Battailes, Skirmiches, and Encounters (1579), sig. Q3v.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  121 [Gilbert’s] determination to be suche, as that if thei once refused mercie beyng offered, and yeelded not presently thei muste resolue theim selues to dye, manne, woman, and childe: if thei could not for euer withstande hym, by meanes whereof these commodities ensued.”3 To those who favored violence over persuasion, or sword over word, Gilbert’s treatment of the rebels demonstrated that “the Princes mercie [is] so sacred a thyng, as that it ought to bee taken when it is offered, and not to be had when it is asked.”4 In the aftermath of the rebellion, the Irish believed that the English queen, who had promised to protect them as she would her English subjects, was bent on destroying the Irish race. These sentiments were reaffirmed in the second Desmond rebellion, when Lord Deputy ­A rthur Grey de reenacted the violence that made Gilbert a notorious figure of brutality. Like Churchyard, proponents who justified the actions of Gilbert and Grey believed “the sword” to be more effective in reforming Ireland than “the word”; the Irish, they insisted, would never yield to persuasion. Edmund Spenser is frequently identified as a supporter of such policies in A View of the Present State of Ireland (ca. 1596). In this work, two interlocutors, Eudoxus and Irenius discuss solutions to the “Irish problem” in a Ciceronian dialogue, concluding that brute force is necessary to achieve the reconquest of Ireland. The Faerie Queene Book V, “The Legend of Justice,” is also considered to be of special interest to historians and literary scholars for the same reason. As an allegory (and apology) for Lord Grey, Book V suggests violence as a necessary means to achieve and maintain justice. What is less examined is how this book problematizes the implementation of justice and mercy in ways that allow/disallow both to exist simultaneously. Here, Edward Said’s remark immediately comes to mind: “[L]iterary historians who study the great ­sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser, for example, do not connect his bloodthirsty plans for Ireland, where he imagined a British army virtually exterminating the native inhabitants, with his poetic achievement or with the history of British rule over Ireland, which continues today.”5 This chapter takes a step back from stereotyping Spenser as one of many in the Elizabethan court who favored violence over persuasion. The violence that Spenser advocates in A View provides a rather one-dimensional view of his stance on Irish reformation; however, his ideas on this matter appear more nuanced in “The Legend of Justice,” where his convictions on implementing justice through violence are tested and dismantled. The following discussion does not seek to redress the “detestable” policies that Spenser promotes but calls attention to the ways in which he

3 Ibid., 73. 4 Ibid. 5 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), 7.

122  Negotiating Violence and Equity allegorizes the implementation of justice (through violence) and mercy.6 Broadly, the implementation of justice in this chapter will be limited to the English government’s attempts to extend royal authority in Ireland, and more specifically, its efforts to suppress and remove rebellious subjects, and to impose English views of civility and law in I­ reland. These ideas do not place Spenser’s poetry and political views at odds but instead, they present a narrative that exposes Spenser’s uneasiness and ambivalence with the justification of violent reform. Book V envisions a perfect justice that is absolute and rigid, but the characters’ perceptions of justice and mercy consistently disrupt that vision. On the surface, Artegall and Talus’s actions appear to support the use of violence to justify the implementation of justice, but upon closer examination, their competing ideas of justice and mercy, in relation to Astraea and Gloriana, allegorize the prevailing ambivalent attitudes toward the reformation of Ireland. These ideas also question whether English justice should be imposed through brute force or more conciliatory methods.

The Faerie Queene, Book V The implementation of justice through violence and the acknowledgment of the virtues of mercy are fully developed in Book V in a way that is delimited by the Ciceronian dialogue in A View. If we juxtapose these two texts in hopes of forming a more nuanced interpretation of the nature of Spenser’s “solution” for Ireland, we must first acknowledge that both works address similar problems from two differing viewpoints. A View was also written as a treatise for an English audience that has never been to Ireland, even as it addresses the English court and colonial government. The form of the treatise is distinctly political. Sixteenthand seventeenth-century writers often used the Ciceronian dialogue to explicate political problems. The classical tradition encouraged writers to articulate their views systematically through what David Armitage terms “deliberative,” “forensic,” and “epideictic” categories, each having to do with the deliberation of the political, judicial, and demonstrative aspects of government problems, respectively.7 Although Spenser uses all three categories to express his opinions in A View, his work is

6 C. S. Lewis is one of the earliest modern critics to condemn Book V: “Spenser was the instrument of a detestable policy in Ireland, and in his fifth book the wickedness he shared begins to corrupt his imagination.” Allegory of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 349. For contrasting views, see Sheila T. Cavanagh’s “‘Such was Irena’s Countenance’: Ireland in Spenser’s Prose and Poetry,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 28 (1986), and Bruce Avery, “Mapping the Irish Other: Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland,” English Literary History 57.2 (1990). 7 Alan Orr, “Inventing the British Republic: Richard Beacon’s Solon His Follie (1594) and the Rhetoric of Civilization,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38.4 (2008), 985.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  123 unlike other dialogue-based treatises of the period. Richard Beacon’s Solon His Follie (1594) is another dialogue-based treatise that attempts to solve Irish problems but is dressed up as a historical allegory. Beacon uses the conquered island of Salamina as an allegory of Ireland, and her conqueror (Athens), to analyze the difficulties of establishing an effective judicial system for a newly colonized land.8 Beacon’s work is less riddled with contradictions and ambiguities than Spenser’s in part because Eudoxus’s lengthy digressions to Irenius’s questions are structured in a way that can render the latter’s redundant or even irrelevant; the aim of A View is less to persuade than to instruct and inform. As such, there is little room for Spenser to consider the implications of his convictions. There is more room for introspection in Book V of The Faerie Queene. To read Book V in an Irish context is to negotiate a space between allegorical narrative and the more immediate exigencies of contemporary policy-making, to weigh art alongside resolution. Deborah L. Madsen’s observation of the allegory underscores the difficulty of trying to reach a meaningful understanding when an allegorical work like The Faerie Queene is studied alongside A View. Because an allegory has a “twofold” function, “it is simultaneously an interpretation and a metacritical statement that regulates interpretation. So in allegory, two kinds of truths can co-exist at the same time: truth as meaning of the narrative and truth as the interpretation of a prior text.”9 From this standpoint, the alternatives to “truth(s)” can make allegories more critical than historical treatises. It is the “metacritical statement” that is significant here because it bridges the two different genres and allows readers to imagine Book V and A View not as commentaries that reassert each other’s claims but rather as an intertextual dialogue that draw out the strengths and weaknesses of the author’s ideological stance. In Book V, the authority of justice is implemented through brute force, and justice restores order and fairness to a savage land brimming with villains and rebels who obstruct Artegall’s path to rescue Irena (Ireland). Yet, Spenser’s characters also raise questions about whether this approach is tenable through the expectations that Spenser sets up to Artegall, Talus, Britomart, and Mercilla, and how each character undercut ideas of justice as absolute, fair, and rigid. Book V presents justice as rigid and absolute, and as the representation of justice, Artegall is developed with a set of preconceived qualities in relation to his role as the knight of justice. His name evokes a list of such expectations. A. C. Hamilton notes, “Arth-egall” can be read as “equal 8 For a detailed discussion on Beacon’s political theory in this work, see D. Alan Orr’s “Inventing the British Republic: Richard Beacon’s Solon His Follie (1564) and the Rhetoric of Civilization” (2007). 9 Deborah L. Madsen, Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 95.

124  Negotiating Violence and Equity or peer to Arthur” (and in Book III is revealed, as the son of Gorlois, to be Arthur’s half-brother), and “egal” suggests fairness and righteousness in judgment.10 Aside from this association with the mythical Arthur, literary critics have also identified Artegall as Lord Grey in part because Astraea has charged him with the mission to rescue “Eirena” (a variation of the Gaelic name of Ireland, “Éire”) from her oppressors” (1.4.1–9).11 Astraea’s relationship with Artegall is fraught with problems from the outset. Astraea is depicted as a mythical figure that represents perfection; disillusioned, she chooses to abandon earth and ascend to the heavens after the world falls into “all filth and foule iniquitie” (1.5.7). But she leaves a deputy in her place; Astraea adopts the infant Artegall to take on this role: There she him taught to weigh both right and wrong In equall ballance with due recompence, And equitie to measure out along, According to the line of conscience, When so it needs with rigour to dispence. Of all the which, for want there of mankind, She caused him to make experience Vpon wyld beasts, which she in woods did find, With wrongfull powre oppressing others of their kind. (1.7.1–9) Astraea’s teachings are preoccupied with the scales of justice and the implementation of just reward and punishment but her ideas of “equall ballance” and “line of conscience” are abstract. From the standpoint of Astraea, these views of justice are an extension of the perfection she represents. Because the mortal world does not live up to her ideals, she decides to leave, and before departing, she chooses Artegall as her viceroy: he is her instrument of perfect justice. His training in the woods with wild beasts reflects the wilderness that Lord Grey had to face in Ireland, but however “uncivilized” they may be, men are not beasts. Because of this, Artegall is in reality ill-trained, and it soon becomes apparent that Astraea’s ideas of justice, however perfect from an immortal point of view, fall short when put into practice. Artegall’s quest begins successfully enough and his encounters with Spenser’s villainous characters depict Astraea’s vision of righteousness, 10 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, edited by A. C. Hamilton, et al. (Pearson Education Canada, 2006), 510. 11 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book Five, edited by Abraham Stoll (Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006). All quotations from the Faerie Queene Book V are taken from this edition unless otherwise noted. All citations follow this order: Canto, stanza, and line numbers.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  125 but her abstract ideas of justice are made concrete by Artegall’s approach to justice and punishment. When he meets Dony, Florimell’s dwarf, he is told that Florimell is prevented from crossing a bridge because of the tyrannical bridgekeeper’s antics. The bridgekeeper, Pollente, “Over his Bridge, albee he rich or poore/ But he him makes his passage-penny pay:/ Else he doth hold him backe or beat away” (2.6.3–5). This exploitation of the people is not unlike the well-known practice of coign and livery among the Irish chieftains. When traveling, freeholders were compelled to provide food for their chieftain’s horses (coign) and gallowglasses (livery) and these impositions varied widely. The Elizabethan government was especially critical of coign and livery and attempted to stamp out the practice entirely for decades in hopes of preventing the chieftains from raising armies that could threaten English order. From the English perspective, however, efforts to outlaw coign and livery were promoted as a move to protect the queen’s poor Irish subjects. Pollente’s defeat can be read as a self-fulfilling triumph over the tyranny of coign and livery, but for Artegall, who has cut off Pollente’s head, the punishment is not yet complete. Pollente’s death is not sufficient; Artegall’s actions after the execution expose his attitude toward justice and punishment: [Pollente’s] corps was carried downe along the Lee, Whose waters with his filthy bloud it stayned: But his blasphemous head, that all might see, He pitcht upon a pole on high ordained; Where many years it afterwards remained, To be a mirrour to all mighty men, In whose right hands great power is contained, That none of them the feeble overren, But always doe their power within just compasse pen.

(2.19.1–9)12

The public exhibition of the heads of rebels in Ireland was a display of royal authority. In “Some days two heads and some days four,” David Edwards observes this as a common practice in warfare, but it is notable that it intensified drastically after the 1540s with the emergence of a larger military presence in Ireland. What is more central to his essay is the development of a practice in which English officials announced and offered large sums of money to anyone who could obtain the head of a rebel leader; the more sought after the rebel, the more “head money” there was for those bold

12 The Variorum associates this river with the Irish river Lee, where Sir John of Desmond was defeated in the Desmond rebellion and his corpse hung above the river.

126  Negotiating Violence and Equity enough to take on the task.13 The spectacle of the rebels’ heads conveyed a clear message: mercy would not be shown to those who defied English law and English definitions of justice and there would be no tolerance for resistance against royal authority. Artegall’s execution of Pollente sends the same message. His insistence on carrying out this act suggests that he is not merely there to punish (for he has already done so by killing Pollente) or to provide assistance to those who are oppressed by Pollente’s tyranny, but to assert the power of royal authority. The act is a stamp of Astraea’s authority and superiority and it is through this act that Artegall demonstrates his interpretation of Astraea’s abstract notions of what justice means. Artegall’s extreme measures are to some degree reflected in Talus, his iron page. Talus, we are told, is a gift from Astraea and his job is “Alwayes, to execute her steadfast doome” (1.12.3). He is characterized as “immoveable, resistlesse, without end./ Who in his hand an yron flale did hould, / With which he thresht out falsehood, and did truth unfould” (1.12.7–9). The separation of deception and truth is depicted in an imagery that requires force, but more interestingly, Talus is an iron man and does not respond to persuasion. When he pursues Pollente’s daughter and she tries to bribe him into sparing her: […] Thence he her drew By the faire lockes, and fowly did array, Withouten pitty of her goodly hew, That Artegall him selfe her seemeless plight did rew. Yet for no pitty would he change the course Of Justice, which in Talus hand did lye… (2.25.6–9; 2.26.1–2) Talus’s unresponsiveness is considered to be a virtue; the villains in The Faerie Queene are known for their ability to deceive the knights into potentially dangerous traps that distract them from completing their tasks; shapeshifters, like Malengin, also pose a danger to Artegall as they appear submissive but they are disloyal, deceptive, and dangerous. In the second edition of Holinshed’s Irish Chronicles, John Hooker attributes the chaos in Ireland to the intrinsic “nature” of the Irish; when defeated, they are quick to submit and make promises of obedience; when they are not watched, they “cast from themselues the obedience and dutifulness

13 David Edwards, “Some Days Two Heads and Some Days Four,” History Ireland 17 2009), 19. Patricia Palmer has also written a book that examines the relationship between state power and violence, language and representation in the reconquest of Ireland in The Severed Head and Grafted Tongue: Literature, Translation and Violence in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See esp. Chapter 2, “The Romance of the Severed Head: Sir John Harrington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso,” pp. 36–65.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  127 of true subiects.”14 Talus would have been perceived as an ideal reformer precisely because he cannot be moved, and thus immune to manipulation and deception. Furthermore, the flail that Talus carries is associated with a ferocity that suits him; the weapon is associated with the war god, Mars. The flail does not only represent “the emblem of Mars but also the club which Hercules carries and the scourge which is the terrible instrument of Jove and God’s vengeful law”; while Hercules’s club is “an instrument for preserving law and right,” “flail carriers… were simply fearful, indiscriminately destructive giants… [Talus’s] flail is not a mere weapon for war and destruction, but an instrument of justice.”15 Artegall and Talus’s brand of justice is not only characterized with brutality and mercilessness but their summary killings of Pollente and his daughter are carried out so swiftly that there is no interrogation or negotiation, recalling the use and abuse of martial law in Ireland. Among other references, the summary killings allude to the Smerwick Massacre during the second Desmond rebellion when Lord Grey was accused of breaking faith with the rebels after apparently promising them safe return to their camps for the night (hence the term “Grey’s faith”). Conflicting accounts from English, Irish, and Spanish reports suggest that Grey may have been impatient with the rebels’ negotiation, and unwilling to prolong with negotiations, he ordered the slaughter of rebel captives and civilians alike, which included women and children.16 Such massacres were not uncommon. Richard Harpole and Francis Cosby’s massacre at Mullaghmast in 1577 was apparently sanctioned by Henry Sidney.17 The summary killings in the late 1500s also correlated with the increased use of martial law. The authorization and commission of martial law in Ireland were especially troubling in

14 Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1577), edited by Liam Miller and Eileen Power (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979), 369. 15 Jane Apteker, Icons of Justice: Iconography & Thematic Imagery in Book V of The Faerie Queene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 47. 16 For a selected compilation contemporary accounts of Grey’s actions at Smerwick, see A. O’Rahilly’s The Massacre at Smerwick, 1580 (Dublin: Cork University Press, Dublin, 1938). Catherine Canino has argued that contrary to popular views, Grey was in fact praised, not condemned, for his ruthlessness at Smerwick. See Catherine G. Canino, “Reconstructing Lord Grey’s Reputation: A New View of the View,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998). Also see H. S. V. Jones’s Spenser’s Defense of Lord Grey (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1919) for Spenser’s role in popularizing views of Grey as a “bloody” man. 17 The Annals of Ireland reported this tragic event and noted that the Irish were gathered under the pretense of military service but were shockingly murdered. Vincent Carey persuasively argues that John Derrick’s Image of Irelande justified and celebrated the massacre in the imagined speech that is given by Rory Oge O’More’s decapitated head in the last section of the work. See Vincent Carey, “John Derricke’s ‘Image of Irelande,’ Sir Henry Sidney, and the Massacre at Mullaghmast,” Irish Historical Studies 31.123 (1999).

128  Negotiating Violence and Equity the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign. Ironically, even as martial law was perceived as a way to maintain order and justice, it was also prone to abuse as it vindicated perpetrators of injustice. As it developed in England during the Northern Rebellion, martial law was used as a form of equitable justice. Then, martial law was utilized as a peacekeeping and pre-emptive measure to prevent the spread of dissension against the government. In early modern Ireland, martial law was widely used in Ireland under Sussex’s administration in the 1550s. As efforts to reconquer Ireland escalated, so did the use of martial law, which essentially transformed Ireland into a terror state: “Powers of ­pre-emptive martial law enabled commissioners to initiate war and to put entire villages to the sword with relative impunity.”18 Large-scale summary killings ordered by Sidney, Gilbert, and Grey (among others) were normally carried out under martial law, as it was frequently commissioned countrywide by the 1560s. The atrocities spiralled out of control quickly under martial law as lord deputies could not exert complete control over their men. The hostile relationship between Lord Deputy John Perrot and Sir Richard Bingham (nicknamed the “Flail of Connacht”), whom ­Christopher Highley associates with Talus, is an example.19 Even as Perrot tried to contain the revolt of the Mayo clansmen in 1586, explicitly asking Bingham to give protection to the rebels, Bingham flouted orders and killed several imminent Irish chieftains under his commission of martial law. Like Gilbert, he believed that protecting the rebels was “less disgraceful in relation to himself than to the honor of the Crown.”20 Despite his strained relationship with Perrot, Bingham was not without supporters. For instance, one of his captains, John Merbury, felt that the use of indiscriminate violence was entirely acceptable, considering “the multitude of the rest that in good policies and in the use of many old commonwealths the lives of so few have been thought well given for the preservation of so many.”21 similar sentiments dominated much of early modern writings on Ireland and that the preoccupation with justifying reform by violence “is one measure of the popularity these views enjoyed even among the less well-educated of the New English.”22 There was no shortage of reformers who insisted that martial law must be executed without mercy for it to be effective. 18 David Edwards, “Beyond Reform: Martial Law & the Tudor Reconquest of Ireland,” History Ireland 5.1 (1997), 18. 19 Christopher Highley, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 120. 20 Rory Rapple, “Taking up office in Elizabethan Connacht: The Case of Sir Richard Bingham,” English Historical Review 123 (2008), 291. 21 Qrd. in Nicholas Canny, “Edmund Spenser and the Development of an Anglo-Irish Identity,” The Yearbook of English Studies 13, Colonial and Imperial Themes Special Number (1983), 9. 22 Ibid., 8–9.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  129 Bingham’s brutality toward the rebels and innocent bystanders in Connacht was similar to Lord Grey’s treatment of the Irish at Smerwick. Under martial law, English officers and their men were generally not held accountable for the violence they inflicted, and inevitably, the abuse of authority was rampant: “[Grey] by his own admission he executed nearly 1,500 ‘chief men and gentlemen’ by martial law, ‘not accounting those of meaner sort… and killing of churls, which were innumerable’.” He even executed people in areas not in revolt. When he started executing Palesmen, including officials, for alleged conspiracy, he had to be recalled.23 The prevalence of these incidents under martial law sent only one message to the Irish: far from keeping her promise to protect her Irish subjects, the English queen appeared to be bent on wiping out the Irish from Ireland altogether. Even when she tried to restrain her military officers, “Elizabeth was made aware that her personal reputation as the upholder of justice had been impugned by the blood-thirsty behavior of her officials; far from being worshipped as Astraea, in many parts of Ireland she was castigated as a tyrant.”24 Talus’s qualities allude to the dominant views of martial law and the ways in which the government supported and rationalized summary executions. The egalitarian giant episode in Canto I allegorizes circumstances where martial law is and ought to be enforced: when one does not agree with the ideas of the reigning authority, and when the disagreement is sufficient for one to be rendered an enemy, status quo is threatened. In this episode, the giant is not specifically responsible for any misdeeds. He has not abducted any damsels or threatened the welfare of any Faerie knights; he simply does not agree with Artegall’s view of justice and prefers a different way of measuring justice and equity: He sayd that he would all the earth uptake, And all the sea, devided each from either: So would he of the fire one ballaunce make, And one of th’ayre, without wind, or wether: And all that did within them all containe; Of all whose weight, he would not misse a fether. And looke what surplus did each remaine, He would to his owne part restore the same againe. (2.31.1–9)

23 Hiram Morgan, “Never Any Realm Worse Governed,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004), 301. 24 David Edwards, “Ideology and Experience: Spenser’s View and Martial Law in Ireland,” in Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641, edited by Hiram Morgan (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999), 140.

130  Negotiating Violence and Equity Artegall is angry at the giant simply because the latter subverts the existing structures of justice and equity (2.35.1–9). For this, Artegall challenges the giant: For take thy ballaunce, if thou be so wise, And weigh the winde, that vnder heauen doth blow; Or weigh the light, that in the East doth rise; Or weigh the thought, that from mans mind doth flow. But if the weight of these thou canst not show, Weigh but one word which from thy lips doth fall. For how canst thou those greater secrets know, That doest not know the least thing of them all? Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small. (2.43.1–9) The giant is finally frustrated because Artegall challenges him to weigh words, rights and wrongs, and two wrongs on the scale which he perceives to be justice. The scales, as Elizabeth Fowler observes, is an inadequate symbol for what Artegall is trying to convey here: is “merely a metaphor for right and wrong, and the objectivity of justice, conveyed by the precise machinery of the scales, is an illusion.”25 Moreover, Fowler asserts that even though Artegall “conveys a praiseworthy ethical proposition (one must arrive at interpretive and moral judgments through thinking and listening rather than by accepting cultural icons at face value),” his “definition of what a judge does and as a theory of equity, it is woefully corrupt.”26 Fowler’s interpretation is further confirmed in light of the giant’s response to Artegall, and later, Talus’s treatment of the giant. Frustrated that Artegall has turned his definition of fairness with concrete (objects) into something that is abstract (words), the quantitative into the qualitative, the giant then throws out Artegall’s argument. Talus responds to the giant’s dismissal of Artegall’s views by throwing the giant over the cliff. In doing so, Talus demonstrates the tyranny of reason: He shouldered him from off the higher ground, And down the rock him throwing, in the sea him dround […] So downe the cliffe the wretched Gyant tumbled; His battred balances in peeces lay,

25 Elizabeth Fowler, “The Failure of Moral Philosophy in the Work of Edmund Spenser,” Representations 51 (1995), 63. 26 Ibid., 64.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  131 His timbered bones all broken rudely rumbled, So was the high aspiring with huge ruine humbled. (2.49.8–9; 2.50.6–9) The giant is destroyed because his ideological views are not compatible with Artegall’s. The giant’s fate illustrates the abuse of authority and alludes to accusations of Grey’s execution of those who were suspected of but not proven to have conspired with the Irish rebels. Talus’s treatment of the egalitarian giant also raises questions in the poem about the tyrannical nature of how justice is defined and how it can be mediated. The troubling aspects of what constitutes justice have been discussed in depth by Annabel Patterson’s fine essay, “The Egalitarian Giant: Representations of Justice in History/ Literature.”27 Literary scholars have traced Artegall’s ideas of justice to the theories of Cicero, Plato, Jean Bodin, and most notably to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in relation to Spenser’s use of “equity” and “conscience”. Artegall is […] taught [by Astraea] to weigh both right and wrong In equall ballance with due recompence, And equitie to measure out along, According to the line of conscience… (1.7.1–4) “Equity” and “conscience” are terms traditionally used in the Court of Chancery; they can, under special circumstances, depart from the strict adherence to custom, statute, and prescription in common law courts: [The] Chancellor did not have any clearly defined jurisdiction, but dispensed an extraordinary justice remedying the defects of the common law on grounds of conscience and natural justice, a function for which he was well qualified, as he was commonly an ecclesiastic, well versed in both the civil and canon law. He was, indeed, sometimes called the ‘Keeper of the King’s Conscience’. 28 Spenser’s use of “equity” and “conscience” to some degree overlaps with the more technical use of the terms used to negotiate disputes in the

27 Annabel Patterson, “The Egalitarian Giant: Representations of Justice in History/ Literature,” Journal of British Studies 31 (1992), 97–132. 28 Philip Pettit, Equity and the Law of Trusts (11th edition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.

132  Negotiating Violence and Equity Court of Chancery. 29 Nonetheless, Spenser associates equity with justice when he depicts Isis as Britomart enters her temple in Canto VII: he describes Osyris as the “iustest” and “truest” man alive, and his wife Isis as “A Goddesse of great powre and souerainty/ And in her person cunningly did shade/ That part of Iustice, which is Equity (7.3.2–4). 30 ­Spenser’s understanding of “equity” is more directly influenced by ­A ristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: When the law speaks universally, then, and a case arises on it which is not covered by the universal statement, then it is right, where the legislator fails us and has erred by over-simplicity, to correct the omission—to say what the legislator himself would have said had he been present, and would have put into his law if he had known. Hence the equitable is just, and better than one kind of justice—not better than absolute justice but better than the error that arises from the absoluteness of the statement. And this is the nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective owing to its universality. In fact this is the reason why all things are not determined by law, viz. that about some things it is impossible to lay down a law so that a decree is needed (my emphasis).31 The extra-legal nature of equity in Nicomachean Ethics suggests that questions of interpretation and authority are entangled in determining the extent to which equity is applicable. The English jurist, John Selden, is right when he quipped about the slippery nature of equity: Equity is a Roguish thing, for Law we have a measure, know what to trust to, Equity is according to the Conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. ’Tis all one as if they should make the Standard for the measure, we call [a Foot] a Chancellor’s Foot, what an uncertain Measure would this be? One Chancellor has a long Foot, another a short Foot, a Third an indifferent Foot: ’Tis the same thing in the Chancellor’s Conscience.32 29 Also see Andrew J. Majeske’s Equity in English Renaissance Literature: Thomas More and Edmund Spenser (New York; London: Routledge, 2006). 30 René Graziani deciphers Britomart’s bizarre dream in the temple of Isis and uses the crocodile, who rescues and then attacks Britomart, as a means to discuss the function of equity as a mediator for excess. Graziani argues that “Britomart’s union with a severity restrained by clemency then produces a righteous strength sufficient to confound all enemies,” and that her “initiation into the new principle of equity is necessary for Artegall’s completeness, and is a prerequisite to his being introduced later to Mercilla.” See René Graziani, “Elizabeth at Isis Church,” PMLA 79.4 (1964), 376. 31 Aristotle, “Ethica Nicomachea,” in Introduction to Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library, 1947), 421. 32 John Selden, Table Talk (1689) (London: William Pickering, 1847), 64.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  133 Essentially, equity can be applied where “universal statement” fails to provide answers or solutions to any given problem. In the absence of Astraea, Artegall and Talus assume the authority to make decisions that they imagine she might make, and it is Talus’s actions that show how equity operates in Book V. In allowing authority to function outside of universal law in unusual circumstances, Aristotle allows room for the self-same authority to mediate the rigidity of the law. Spenser’s interpretation is thus quite different from another early modern writer, Christopher St German. Andrew Zurcher’s astute observation of St German’s De Fundamentis Legum Anglie et De Conscientia (“On the Bases of the Laws of England, and Of Conscience”) (ca. 1523–32) consider how “equity” and “conscience” can be traced to Seneca’s concept of clemential “as dispensations from severe, even equitable justice.”33 For St German, “equytye is a ryghtwysenes that consideryth all the peryculer cyrcumstances of the dede the which also is temperyd with the swetnes of mercye,” and he stresses that “equytie is ordeyned that is to say to temper and myttygate the rygoure of the law.”34 In this light, Talus’s response to the giant’s debate with Artegall illustrates Spenser’s views of Ireland: equity is not presented as a means to mediate the rigor of the law but rather to justify the need for such rigor. There is no room for competing claims of justice just as, in the reformation of Ireland, there are no alternatives to the use of violence, and this is especially the case when mercy and pity are perceived as threats to justice. To her critics, Elizabeth’s tendency to pity (as opposed to mercy) was considered to be detrimental to the reconquest of Ireland, and her status as a female monarch was especially worrisome to those with hardline policies for Irish reformation. These anxieties are allegorized in Artegall’s encounter with Radigund: this episode condemns notions of clemency, and more particularly, pity. Spenser’s stance on clemency and pity is laid out in the early cantos: Artegall and Talus show neither clemency nor pity in their actions. Astraea’s gift of Talus to Artegall becomes apparent when he battles with Radigund; after disarming her and unveiling Radigund: At sight thereof his cruell minded hart Empierced was with pittifull regard, That his sharpe sword he threw from him apart, 33 Andrew Zurcher, Spenser’s Legal Language: Law and Poetry in Early M ­ odern ­England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 133. Also see Dennis R. Klinck, Conscience, Equity and the Court of Chancery in Early Modern England (­Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), esp. Chapter 3, “The Early Sixteenth Century and Christopher St. German,” 41–72. 34 Ibid.

134  Negotiating Violence and Equity Cursing his hand that had that visafe mard: No hand so cruell, nor no hart so hard, But ruth of beautie will it mollfie. (5.13.1–6) Unlike Talus, who is “[u]nmov’d with priers, or piteous thought,/ that [Munera] ment him to corrupt with goodly meede,” Artegall is too weak to resist the beauty of Radigund; he is defeated and held captive by her followers (2.23.2–3). Spenser sets Talus up as the idealized vision of what justice ought to look like very early on in Book V in Talus’s pursuit of Munera. When Artegall sees Munera defeated, Spenser’s narrator tells readers: “Yet for no pitty would he change the course/ Of Justice, which in Talus hand did lye;/ Who rudely hayld her forth without remorse” (2.26.1–3). Talus is the perfect and absolute embodiment of justice that keeps Artegall in check. Because Talus is made of iron, he does not, or rather, cannot respond to his foes’ human qualities, whether they plead for mercy, offer bribes, or are revealed to be beautiful female warriors in disguise. Talus epitomizes Spenser’s perfect justice; he is dependably infallible and rigid under all conditions. To further emphasize Artegall’s fallibility, Spenser presents Artegall’s mortal weakness as secondary to his wish to show mercy, which proves even more dangerous. Artegall’s inclination to show mercy to Radigund is his downfall, and this is especially appropriate since pity in early modern discourse is often considered to be a distinctly feminine quality (or in this case, flaw). He is forced to abandon his arms, put on women’s clothes, and do women’s chores. This punishment is the ultimate humiliation for a martial man: So hard it is to be a womans slave. Yet he [Artegall] tooke in his owne selfes despight, And thereto did himself right well behave, Her to obay, sith he his faith had plight, Her vassal to become, if she him wonne in fight. (5.23.5–9) The commentary on Radigund, an Amazonian queen, alludes to England’s queen. Throughout the poem, Artegall is in Astraea’s service; likewise, the chief governors of Ireland were in the queen’s service. The gender markers are unmistakable. Artegall is defeated because he shows mercy and as a consequence, his martial prowess and masculinity are stripped from him.35 Instead 35 There remains some contradiction in the way Spenser associates mercy and pity with Artegall’s plight. Artegall is defeated and captured by Radigund because he is too prone to mercy and pity: this seems to suggest that if one is not rigorous in imposing justice, one is condemned to failure and punishment. Yet, as Brian Lockey has pointed

Negotiating Violence and Equity  135 of making fighters and protectors of her male prisoners, Radigund sets them to woman’s tasks; here, the narrator cannot help but criticize female rule: Such is the crueltie of womenkynd, When they haue shaken off the shamefast band, With which wise Nature did them strongly bynd, T’obay the heasts of mans well ruling hand, That then all rule and reason they withstand, To purchase a licentious libertie. But vertuous women wisely vnderstand, That they were borne to base humilitie, Vnlesse the heauens them lift to lawfull soueraintie. (5.25.1–9) In this passage, women are placed in an inferior sphere as a distraction and obstruction to men’s work. However, the last line indicates that not all women are the same, since gender roles do not apply to monarchs (“lawful soueraintie”). This is further reasserted when Britomart, clad in armor, rescues Artegall from Radigund’s camp; in both episodes, gender roles are inverted. Elizabeth framed herself in a similar manner in her famous Tilbury speech (1588). Her proclamation—that she has the body of a woman but “the heart and stomach of a king”—erases gender expectations but at the same it also reasserts them. More interestingly, it creates a new gender(less) criteria for monarchs: they are not bound to gender norms—they transcend those limitations. 36 While this

out, Artegall is saved by Britomart, who “embodies the form of equity, the corrective of an overly rigorous interpretation of the law, that is largely missing in Artegall’s early applications of justice.” See Brian Lockey, “‘Equitie to Measure’: The Perils of Imperial Imitation in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10.1 (2010), 56. 36 The queen’s anxieties of how her subjects perceive the authority and abilities of a female monarch have generated much discussion. Studies on this topic focus on her repeated attempts to remind not only the martial men but also her parliament that her female body does not undermine her princely (male) authority: A female head to a male body politic poses the problem of monstrosity Knox trumpeted so impoliticly months before Elizabeth ascended the throne, and she was continually forced to remind her Parliaments, in exactly those terms, of her authority: ‘I will deal therein for your safety, and offer it to you as your Prince and head without request; for it is monstrous that the feet should direct the head. (Quilligan 170) Spenser’s representation of female rule is troubling in that their authority constantly shifts and is never stable for any extended period of time. The instability no doubt reflects some of the more ambiguous aspects of the female ruler, especially during times of crisis. See Maureen Quilligan, “The Comedy of Female Authority in The Faerie

136  Negotiating Violence and Equity erases some of the gender tensions in female rule, it can also be perceived as threatening within the context of the Irish reconquest: “Like English authority, the female’s place in colonial space has yet to be established […] Elizabeth, unlike the chaste and martial Britomart, fails to ‘move’ in a decisive manner, thereby ceding the majority of the land to the Irish.”37 If Spenser is trying to downplay his criticism that women are cruel and prone to pity and mercy, his narrator succeeds only for a brief moment: Mercilla’s attitude toward Duessa throws up the same gender critique. The conflict between justice and mercy is expounded in Canto X, but the narrator’s attempt to depict the two as incompatible falters, suggesting Spenser’s uneasy that justice must be perfect and rigid. Nonetheless, his narrator acknowledges that justice is intrinsically rigid: Some Clarkes doe doubt in their deuicefull art, Whether this heauenly thing, whereof I treat, To weeten Mercie, be of Justice part, Or drawne forth from her by diuine extreate. This well I wote, that sure she is as great, And meriteth to haue as high a place, Sith in th’Almighties euerlasting seat She first was bred, and borne of heauenly race; From thence pour’d down on men, by influence of grace. (10.1.1–9) In terms of reformation, the narrator continues with this line of thought, and believes “it is greater prayse to save, then spill,/ And better to reforme then cut off the ill” (10.2.8–9). Even so, he insists that justice is “that Vertue… of so great might,/ Which from just verdict Queene.” English Literary Renaissance 17 (1987); Susanne Woods, “Spenser and the Problem of Woman’s Rule,” Huntington Library Quarterly 48 (1985); Josephine A. Roberts, “Radigund Revisited: Perspectives on Women Rulers in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania,” in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, edited by Naomi J. Miller and Gary Walker (Amherst: University Press, 1990); Mary R. Bowman, “‘She There as Princess Rained’: Spenser’s Figure of Elizabeth,” Renaissance Quarterly 43.3 (1990); Julia M. Walker, Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), and Donald Stump, “A Slow Return to Eden: Spenser on Women’s Rule,” English Literary Renaissance 29.3 (1999). 37 Bruce McCleod, The Geography of Empire in English Literature, 1580–1745 (­Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 55.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  137 will for nothing start,/ Oft spilles the principall, to save the part” (10.2.1–4). These lines sit uncomfortably alongside ideas of mercy; there is ambiguity about which stance the narrator is taking, especially since he has consistently advocated rigidity in the pursuit of justice. Mercilla is at the center of this problem; when Artegall meets Mercilla for the first time after saving her maid, Samient, from the evil Souldan and his wife, Adicia, Spenser’s narrator heaps praise on the fairy queen: Her name Mercilla most men vse to call; That is a mayden Queene of high renowne, For her great bounty knowen over all, And soveraine grace, with which her royall crowne She doth support, and strongly beateth downe The malice of her foes, which her envy, And at her happinesse do fret and frowne: Yet she her selfe the more doth magnify, And even to her foes her mercies multiply. (8.17.1–9) The foes, whom Mercilla “strongly beateth down,” also receive her mercy. Artegall’s failure to “beateth down” on Radigund (and the humiliation that he suffers as a result of his inclination to mercy) and Talus’s immunity to his enemies’ pleas demonstrate that Mercilla’s form of justice is not compatible with the one that the narrator appears to advocate. Mercilla’s attitude toward the judgment of Duessa, long associated with the incarnation of Mary Queen of Scots, further emphasizes the implications of mercy when Spenser turns to Mercilla’s grace: “Those Nations farre thy justice doe adore:/ But thine owne people do thy mercy prayse much more” (10.3.8–9). Her subjects’ admiration for her mercy, however, has limitations: Against Duessa, damned by them all; But by her tempred without griefe or gall, Till strong constraint did her thereto enforce. And yet even then ruing her willful fall, With more then needful natural remorse, And yielding the last honour to her wretched corse. (10.4.4–9) Abraham Stoll notes that “strong constraint” refers to the execution of Mary, but Richard Rambuss proposes a more nuanced reading; it can also be interpreted as the pressure Elizabeth faced when

138  Negotiating Violence and Equity her advisors recommended Mary’s sentencing.38 This line of interpretation draws parallels between Artegall and Mercilla, who, unlike ­Talus and the queen’s wise advisors, are prone to “feminine vacillations towards leniency.”39 Artegall’s moment of weakness only implicates himself (and Britomart), but Mercilla’s reluctance to implement justice threatens the welfare of her whole kingdom. The heightened sense of the limitations of what constitutes royal virtue in times of crisis echoes Elizabeth’s reluctance to declare war on Ireland and her concerns of excessive bloodshed that may result from war. In 1595, Sir Robert Cecil noted to Sir John Dowdall that “Her Majesty is not alienated from mercy if honour and security it may be effected. Her Majesty is displeased to find the terms war and peace both in the Deputy’s writings and [John] Norreys’s instead of rebellion.”40 The distinction between war and rebellion implicitly allowed the queen to exercise mercy as she saw fit. War implied that she was fighting enemies and there was little justification for showing mercy to foreign enemies of England; suppressing rebellion asserted her sovereignty over Ireland and the rebels were essentially unruly subjects, not enemies. She remained adamant about this approach even as late as preparations were being made for the earl of Essex to lead the English army against the rebels in 1599, when she was reported to have i­nsisted that “the very name of conquest in this case seemeth so absurd to us as we cannot imagine upon what ground it could enter into any man’s conceit that our actions, tending only to reduce a number of unnatural and barbarous rebels and to root out the capital head of the most notorious traitors, should need any such title of conquest.”41 Spenser’s representation of justice as rigid and ruthless in Book V is at odds with mercy, which interestingly does not show up at all as a dedicated book of virtue in The Faerie Queene even though he notes in his Letter to Ralegh that “[i]n Faery Queene I meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery land.”42 Spenser’s downplaying of mercy as a virtue is significant: Elizabeth presented

38 On the fictive elements of Duessa’s trial, see Diane Parkin-Speer’s “Allegorical Legal Trials in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene” (1992). On King James VI’s attempts to have the book banned in 1596 because of Spenser’s depiction of Mary, see Richard ­McCabe’s “The Masks of Duessa: Spenser, Mary Queen of Scots, and James VI.” English Literary Renaissance 17. 2 (1987), and Cyndia Susan Clegg’s “Justice and Press Censorship in Book V of Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene.’” Studies in Philology 95. 3 (1998). 39 Richard Rambuss, Spenser’s Secret Career (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 108. 40 CSPI, Vol. 5: 1592–1596, 426. 41 K. J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 196. 42 Faerie Queene, Book V, 179.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  139 herself as a merciful monarch at her ascension and was perceived as such by many throughout her reign. Mercy was long considered as a necessary quality and virtue for all wise monarchs. Of the five swords used at English coronations, Curtana, or the Sword of Mercy (also known as the Edward the Confessor’s sword), features a broken blade, which suggests that restraint was expected of the reigning monarch.43 That the sword takes its place among the swords of State, Justice, Justice to Spirituality, and Justice to Temporality indicates that perfect justice must be tempered with mercy. In addition to classical influences, there is little doubt that Elizabeth’s views of the role that mercy plays in the government of a nation were heavily influenced by Continental humanist theories. In England, Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Boke Named the Governor (1531) hails mercy as the most important and essential of all royal virtues: Mercy is and hath bene ever of suche estimation with mankynde, that not onely reason persuadeth, but also experience proveth, that in whome mercy lacketh, and is not founden, in hym all other vertues be drowned, and lose their juste commendation. The vice called crueltie, whiche is contrary to Mercy, is by good reason mooste odious of all other vyces, in as moche as lyke a poyson or contynuall pestylence, it distroyeth the generation of manne. Also lykewise as norishyng meates and drinkes in a sycke bodye, doo lose their bountie and augmente the malady, semblably dyvers virtues in a person cruel and malicious, be not onely obfuscate or hyd, but do minister occasion and assistence to crueltie.44 Elyot’s perception of cruelty as “a poyson or contynuall pestylence, it distroyeth the generation of manne” was considered to be impractical for the reconquest of Ireland. But even after the Nine Years War began, Elizabeth tried to protect her image as a merciful and protective monarch to her Irish subjects in the face of widespread criticism.45 43 William Jones, Crowns and Coronations: A History of Regalia (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968), 74. 4 4 Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Governor, (EEBO: Early English Books Online), sig. Q2v. 45 Just one year into the war, Sir John Dowdall complained to Burghley that the queen’s mercy only fueled more courage in the rebels but more importantly, that the government was criticized either ways: Who is it of them [the Irish rebels] but hath felt of Her Majesty’s mercy, and a great many that have been rewarded by her bounty for small deserts or none, if they be governed by a mild hand and accounted of, and so rewarded, they swell in pride and say that the Governor standeth in doubt of feareth of them; but if he be severe with justice in one hand and the sword in the other to use it according to equity, they say he is a tyrant, and desire to have such a one removed, being most meet to govern this nation. (CSPI, Vol. 5: 1592–96, 457)

140  Negotiating Violence and Equity Geoffrey Fenton complained that the queen confused mercy and pity; mercy is associated with reason and pity with emotion.46 If justice and mercy are at odds in Artegall’s quest to rescue Irena, then pity, as an emotional extension of mercy, is perceived as a threat in in Canto XI. Arthur and Artegall are depicted as heroes who right injustice, but it is through pity, not mercy, that they are given opportunities to display their knightly virtues. Canto XI is the longest canto in Book V; in 58 stanzas, Arthur and Artegall simultaneously rescue supplicants to Mercilla. The two events in this Canto – the rescue of Belgae from Geryoneo and Flourdelis from Grantorto (who is also holding Irena captive) – appear to complement each other; Arthur and Artegall are both successful in defeating the foes of the oppressed characters and restoring justice. In reality, Artegall falls short of Arthur’s achievements in the larger turnout of events. Geryoneo’s oppression of Belgae has long been read as an allegory of the Spanish oppression of the Dutch in the Low Countries. Arthur’s defeat of Geryoneo is nothing less than a restoration of justice and peace to an entire nation (with the help of the most well-known knight in English history). He successfully restores the island to Belgae, but just as he prepares to leave her after slaying Geryoneo, she pleads: […] Ah Sir, but mote ye please, Sith ye thus farre have tendred my poore case, As from my chiefest foe me to release, Tha your victorious arme will not yet cease, Till ye have rooted all the relickes out Of that vilde race, and stablished my peace. (11.18.2–7) Belgae’s references to relics, altars, and sacrifices recall the ­Catholic affiliation of her oppressors. Arthur’s response to Belgae is not mercy but pity; she is not asking him to spare her but to save her. He destroys the church and the monster, freeing Belgae and her children of the Catholic monster. Arthur’s achievement is significant especially in relation to the difficulties of implementing religious reformation in Ireland. Even after consistent attempts, through the Acts of Supremacy in Henry VIII and Elizabeth’s reign, the imposition of the Book of Common Prayer in Latin, English, and Irish, and the enforcement of heavy fines and punishment on those who failed to adhere to the Church of England, religious reformation in Ireland had very limited success.47 46 CSPI 1592-96/457, and Kesselring, Mercy and Authority, 20. 47 J. A. Watt’s The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (1970) remains the most definitive study on the development of Catholicism in early Ireland. It provides a comprehensive study on the evolution of the church after Henry II’s arrival in the twelfth century. Alan Ford’s and John McCafferty’s eds., The Origins of Sectarianism

Negotiating Violence and Equity  141 After Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570, Irish rebels turned to the faith-and-fatherland agenda to form wider and more powerful alliances within and beyond Ireland with Catholic nations. Despite the strong Protestant background of the ruling New English in Ireland, the queen was hesitant to implement religious programs that could provoke the Catholic community to seek aid from Spain and Rome against English forces. She warned Crown authorities in Ireland to refrain from persecuting Catholics for the sake of religion and without outward show of disobedience of the law.48 ­Despite the ­anti-Catholic sentiments in The Faerie Queene, Spenser’s A View argues that religious reformation is secondary to military conquest in Ireland: Irenius, an allegorical figure for the New English colonist, absolves the ecclesiastical authorities for failing to reform the Irish.49 This failure is attributed to the inconvenience of the time and troublous occasions, wherewith that wretched realme hath continually beene turmoyled; for instruction in religion needeth quiet times, and ere we seeke to settle a sound discipline in the clergy, we must purchase peace unto the laity, for it is ill time to preach among swords, and most hard or rather impossible it is to settle a good opinion in the minds of men for matters of religion doubtfull, which have doubtlesse an evil opinion of us. For ere a new be brought in, the old must be removed.50 The tensions that arise from different priorities are common in the letters of complaint from religious leaders accusing the lord deputies of

in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) traces the relations between the two churches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and provides a more in-depth discussions, policy-making, and the social implications of religious reformation. Also see Ford’s “Dependent or Independent? The Church of Ireland and Its Colonial Context, 1536–1649” (1995). Cross-border implications of the reformation can be found in Elizabethanne Boran’s and Crawford Gribben’s eds., Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700 (Aldershow, Hants, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2006). Focus on the Pale community and the Dublin council can be found in James Murray’s Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590 (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 48 Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 64. 49 There is an immense amount of scholarship on Spenser and religion; a more recent re-assessment of this subject can be found in Anne Lake Prescott’s “Complicating the Allegory: Spenser and Religion in Recent Scholarship,” Renaissance and Reformation 25. 4 (2001), and Andrew Hadfield’s aptly entitled “Spenser and Religion—Yet Again,” Studies in English Literature 51.1 (2011). 50 Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, edited by Willy Maley and Andrew Hadfield (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 84. Hereafter cited as A View.

142  Negotiating Violence and Equity not making religious reformation a priority. The lord deputies argued, like Spenser’s Irenius, that there was simply no way to instigate religious reform as the task of quelling the seemingly endless rebellions was more pressing.51 The question of whether religious reformation was more important than military conquest (and vice versa) persisted throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Under these conditions, Spenser’s depiction of Arthur’s encounter with Belgae can be read as an allegory that embodies a self-fulfilling prophecy in which military conquest and religious reformation in Ireland are both successfully achieved. The limitations of this ambitious achievement is written into Irena’s fate, which is intrinsically entangled with Artegall’s actions. If Spenser’s narrator in Book V equates mercy with reason and pity with emotion, then the narrator suspends these assumptions for Artegall: it is through his pity for Belgae that he is able to right the injustices that have been imposed on her (and her sons). Alongside the perfect pity and justice that Arthur embodies, Artegall falls short. The unfavorable contrast further emphasizes Artegall’s inability to uphold or represent the rigid and perfect notions of justice and mercy established in Book V. Unlike Arthur who immediately attends to Belgae’s pleas for justice, Artegall only remembers his task to save Irena when Irena’s attendant, Sir Sergis, reminds him: ‘And now he [Grantorto] hath to her prefixt a day, By which if that no champion doe appeare, Which will her cause in battailous array Against him justifie, and prove her cleare Of all those crimes, that he gainst her doth reare She death shall by.’ Those tidings sad Did much abash Sir Artegall to heare, And grived sore, that through his fault she had Fallen into that Tyrants hand and usage bad. (11.40.1–9) Embarrassed by his delay, Artegall assures the attendant: But witnesse unto me, ye heavens that know How cleare I am from blame of this upbraide:

51 The enmity between Lord Deputy Leonard Grey and the first Archbishop of Dublin, George Browne, illustrates this clash. The conflict between the two was well-known in their time and each accused the other for plotting schemes that would ruin their careers in Ireland. See James Murray’s “Ecclesiastical Justice and the Enforcement of the Reformation: The Case of Archbishop Browne and the Clergy of Dublin,” in As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation, edited by Alan Ford, James McGuire, and Kenneth Milne (Dublin: Liliput Press, 1995).

Negotiating Violence and Equity  143 For ye into like thraldome me did throw, And kept from complishing the faith, which I did owe. (11.41.6–9). Artegall’s contradiction, of first admitting his tardiness and then shifting the blame to the heavens, seems to “reflect Artegall’s ambivalent guilt about his encounter with Radigund, which delayed him, as well as Spenser’s ambivalence toward the vacillations of English policy in Ireland.”52 But the Radigund episode is only one of many that delays Artegall. As an allegorical figure for Lord Grey, Artegall speaks to Irena’s attendant in ways that recall the conditions that Lord Grey faced in Ireland. It was common for lord deputies to be accused of neglecting their duties (of protecting the queen’s subjects), especially when they had to attend to matters beyond the Pale, leaving the Palesmen vulnerable to raids by Irish rebels. The protection of the Pale is considered to be of utmost importance to the English government. Henry Sidney is said to have warned Grey upon assuming his appointment in Ireland that “special care should be taken to ensure the safety of this English part, ‘for a cottage burnte there will be made more here than a towne burnte in Mounster’.”53 Complaints from the Pale were plentiful and frequently reached the queen and her ministers in England, forcing the lord deputies to explain why the Pale was left unprotected. But more significantly, they also affected the governing of Ireland beyond the Pale; responses to the complaints often meant deferring or re-strategizing plans to contain upheavals elsewhere. The lord deputy was placed in a difficult position that exposed him to a constant stream of critique: if he remained to protect the Pale, he risked the spread of rebellion elsewhere, and if he attended to the threat of rebellion beyond the Pale, he was blamed for the damages inflicted there in his absence.54 Artegall’s delay and the repeated events that distract him from rescuing Irena underscore the difficulties that lord deputies faced. Artegall

52 Abraham Stoll, ed., The Faerie Queene, Book Five (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 157, note 2. 53 Pauline Henley, Spenser in Ireland (Dublin; Cork: Cork University Press, 1928), 31. 54 Frederick M. Jones’s Mountjoy, 1563–1606: The Last Elizabethan Deputy provides a helpful overview of the conflict between the Palesmen and Lord Deputy Mountjoy during the most crucial period of the war (1600–03). Mountjoy repeatedly complained about the lack of support from the Pale. He was also immensely frustrated that the Palesmen were disrupting his campaign with petty concerns and complaints to the queen while he was in the midst of a war. In his complaints, he gave the impression that the Palesmen did not consider the war as their war against the Irish rebels, but rather, they saw themselves as victims caught in the crossfire between the English and the Irish. See F. M. Jones, Mountjoy, 1563–1606: The Last Elizabethan Deputy (Dublin and London: Clonmore & Reynolds, 1958).

144  Negotiating Violence and Equity is expected to attend to a constant and endless flow of complaints even when he cannot do so. He promises Sir Sergis that he will reach Irena within the grace period (of ten days) that Grantorto has given to challenge him. But in the same scene, Artegall stops, out of pity, to save a nameless maid who, “Crying, and holding up her wretched hands/ [,] To him for aide, who long in vaine their [a rude crowd] rage withstands” (11.44.8–9). After this, he saves Sir Burbon, whose faithless lady, Flourdelis, has left him because she is enticed by Grantorto’s gifts. When Artegall finally finds her and reunites the two, Flourdelis refuses to leave with Burbon but he takes her away by force: […] Burbon straight dismounting from his steed, Unto her ran with greedie great desire, And catching her fast by her ragged weed, Would have embraced her with hart entire. But she backstarting with disdainefull yre, Bad him avaunt, ne would unto his lore Allured be, for prayer nor for meed. Whom when those knights so forward and forlore Beheld, they her rebuked and upbrayded sore. (11.61.1–9) Artegall’s experience in the second half of Canto XI appears all the more awkward and clumsy after Arthur defeats Geryoneo and successfully rescues and restores Belgae’s rights. Justice is well served in this episode; his pity for Belgae is virtuous, and his achievements are celebrated accordingly when he is Crowned with girlonds of immortall baies, And all the vulgar did about them throng To see the man, whose everlasting praise They all were bound to all posterities to raise. (11.34.6–9) Artegall’s achievements appear insignificant next to Arthur’s for a number of reasons. He apologizes to Sir Sergis for his delay to support Irena but then wastes more time attending to the pleas of the nameless maid and Sir Burbon. Neither thanks him for his help and no one celebrates his actions. In fact, the help that he extends to Burbon hardly calls for thanks or celebration from both parties: Burbon regains what is rightfully from his; both part unhappily, raising questions about who, if anybody, Artegall has actually helped. And all the while, Irena is kept waiting. While Arthur’s inclination to pity is perceived as virtuous, Artegall’s pity distracts him from rescuing Irena. Artegall’s achievements are anti-­climactic at best. The closing scene in Canto XI further stress the

Negotiating Violence and Equity  145 stark  difference between Arthur and Artegall’s quest. No celebrations await Artegall and Talus: Nathlesse the yron man did still pursew That raskall many with unpittied spoyle, Ne ceased not, till all their scattred crew Into the sea he drove quite from that soyle, The which they troubled had with great turmoyle. But Artegall seeing his cruell deed, Commaunded him from slaughter to recoyle, And to his voyage gan againe proceed: For that the terme approaching fast, required speed. (11.65.1–9) For the first time, master and page are depicted in opposition. Talus’s unflinching ruthlessness clashes with Artegall’s pity for the rude peasants (“scattered crew”). In restraining what he perceives to be cruelty, Artegall shows himself to be unfit to enact the rigid and unmoving justice that Astraea idealizes. Also notable is the depiction of the chain of authority in this passage. The iron page is unfeeling and as such, he is an ideal representation of a rigid justice, but his ruthlessness also renders him incapable of judging since he cannot recognize what equity is. Artegall then is and is not a better judge than Talus: if equity allows a judge to make distinctions and exceptions in cases of injustice, then he must also be able to identify, acknowledge, and moderate the rigidity of the law. Artegall has the potential to be able to do so, but Spenser’s narrator repeatedly reminds readers that Artegall cannot distinguish mercy from pity. Artegall’s flaws undercut Spenser’s own notions of rigid justice; they emphasize that there are no conclusive ways to best imagine and achieve justice that is fair, merciful, and righteous. The chain of events that lead to and take place after Artegall’s defeat of Grantorto best illustrates the underlying ambivalence toward perceptions of how best to achieve justice. As Artegall and Talus approach the location for the appointed tournament, they meet Grantorto’s subjects; Talus immediately turns to destruction, and “Artegall him seeing so to rage,/ Willd him to stay, and signe of truce did make” (12.8.1–2). Since his encounter with Radigund, Artegall has been consistently inclined to pity and is also increasingly reluctant to resort to unnecessary violence. However, these seeming weaknesses are wiped out after he kills Grantorto and restores Irena to her castle: During which time, that he did there remaine, His studie was Justice how to deale, And day and night employ’d his busie paine How to reforme that raggled common-weale: And that same yron man which could reveale

146  Negotiating Violence and Equity All hidden crimes, through all that realme he sent, To search out those, that usd to rob and steale, Or did rebell against lawful government; On whom he did inflict most grevious punishment. (12.26.1–9) After repeated instructions to stay Talus from excessive brutality, Artegall suddenly reverts to his violent ways. The sudden turn from restraining Talus to giving him orders to seek out those who “rob and steale,” and to “inflict most grevious punishment” on the oppressors reconnects Artegall with his earlier victory against Grantorto. Carried away with his success and pride, Artegall’s propensity to pity, mercy, and more importantly, his potential to be able to judge with equity is entirely negated in this one passage. He becomes Talus. The bloodshed that could result from Artegall’s transformation at the end of Book V is avoided when he is recalled to Gloriana’s court. For Andrew Hadfield, this move recalls the detrimental consequences of being merciful. The incident “links the demand for the execution of Mary to an effective policy in Ireland, representing the monarch as weak and feeble on each occasion, first in trying to prevent Mary’s execution, and second in leaving Ireland exposed by recalling the successful hard-line Lord Deputy before his work is finished.”55 The disruption of Artegall’s quest is frequently read as Spenser’s defense of Lord Grey and it raises questions about competing claims of authority as to who gets to decide what justice entails, whether brute force is the way to reform Ireland, and if so, how then to proceed?: But ere he could reforme it thoroughly, He through occasion called was away, To Faerie Court, that of necessity His course of Justice he was forst to stay, And Talus to revoke from the right way, In which he was that Realme for to redress. But envies cloud still dimmeth vertues ray. So having freed Irena from distresse, He tooke his leave of her, there left in heavinesse. (12.27.1–9) There is no ambiguity about the interruption of Artegall’s work, but the issue of who determines what justice is and how it should be implemented

55 Andrew Hadfield, “English Colonialism and National Identity in Early Modern ­I reland,” Eire-Ireland 28.1 (1993), 195.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  147 is less clear. The ideas behind Artegall’s “most grevious punishment” are expressed in Grey’s complaint when he was recalled from Ireland: But when before one halfe yeare fully expired your Majesty grieved with the warre by reason of the charge, beganne to thinck the tyme long, and to esteeme of no service, bycause all was not doen at once… and settled in the conceipt fell to temporizing and pardoning them, whome your warre had now brought to that exigent, as by thende of this winter of necessitie they must have famished, fought, or yielded to your mercye; here, with humbleness and all submission I speake it, was the overthrow of the service, and making vayne of all former cose and travayle.56 Grey complained that halting the scorched earth policy, aimed at starving the Irish to death, would disrupt the efficiency of the English reformation in Ireland. He implemented a policy that was formerly used by his predecessors. Famine was sometimes considered to be the most efficient and economical way to force the Irish rebels into submission. Grey’s scorched earth policy is also reminiscent of Talus’s brand of justice: no distinctions are made between Irish rebels and innocent Irish bystanders. Just as the absence of equity and mercy under these circumstances destroys the image of the English queen as a protector of her people, so too does Artegall’s aspirations to reform Irena’s island threaten to taint Gloriana’s reputation. Artegall is essentially a viceroy and he is subordinate to Astraea and Gloriana, but in his enthusiasm to reform Irena’s island, Astraea and Gloriana’s authority over him is subverted. He no longer represents their justice but rather “[h]is course of Justice,” which he was “forst to stay.” To begin with, he was never asked to reform the island: Wherefore the Lady, which Eirena hight, Did to the Faery Queene her way addresse, To whom complaining her afflicted plight, She her besought of gratious redresse. That soveraine Queene, that mightie Emperesse, Whose glorie is to aide all suppliants pore, And weake Princes to be Patronesse, Chose Artegall to right her to restore; For that to her he seem’d best skild in righteous lore. (1.4.1–9)

56 Richard A. McCabe, Spenser’s Monstrous Regiment: Elizabethan Ireland and the Poetics of Difference (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 89.

148  Negotiating Violence and Equity Artegall’s commission is only to free Irena and restore her to her rightful place. There are no instructions that Artegall should remain after he has done so. Thus, in recalling Artegall, Gloriana places equity back into the narrative, and in turn restores the queen’s image as a merciful monarch. Royal authority is stabilized here, and mercy and equity prove superior to blind and rigid justice. Artegall’s plight at the end of Book V reinforces the thesis of this chapter, that Spenser’s ideas of an absolute and rigid justice are essentially untenable. Gloriana’s recall of Artegall may have spared Irena’s foes, but we do not know the consequences of his withdrawal. This implicit pardon results in another injustice; it exposes Artegall to the Blatant Beast, and the hags, Envy and Detractor, each representing aspects of scandal, slander, and rumor, which Spenser attributes to the fall of Lord Grey in A View: like complaint was made against him, that he was a bloodie man, and regarded not the life of her [Majesty’s] subjects no more than dogges, but had wasted and consumed all, so as now she had nothing almost left, but to raigne in their ashes; eare was soon lent thereunto, and all suddenly turned topside-turvy; the noble Lord eftsoones was blamed; the wretched people pittied; and new counsels plotted, in which it was concluded that a general pardon should be sent over to all that would accept of it, upon which all former purposes were blancked, the Governour at a bay, and not only all that great and long charge which shee had before beene at quite lost and cancelled, but also that hope of good which was even at the doore put back, and cleane frustrated.57 When these comments are applied to the end of Canto XII, Gloriana’s implicit mercy can be interpreted as a form of injustice to Artegall; Spenser’s narrator evokes an image of an ungrateful nation and an unappreciative queen, but it is also important to keep in mind that Grey, like so many of his predecessors and successors, repeatedly requested to be recalled from Ireland. A distinction must be made between requests for recall and orders for recall. When a lord deputy is recalled (without a request on his part), his return is typically perceived to be disgraceful. After his recall, Grey’s rivals were quick to rehash their complaints against and speculations of the reasons behind his recall were rife: “A curious slander leveled against Grey soon after his service in Ireland (and little remarked by critics) explicitly mocks Grey for having followed the planter party into Ireland 57 A View, 103.

Negotiating Violence and Equity  149 and done their dirty work for them there.”58 Spenser allegorizes these accusations as attacks from Envy and Detraction: Then th’other comming neare, gan him revile, And fouly rayle, with all she could invent; Saying, that he had with unmaly guile, And foule abusion both his honour blent, And that bright sword, the sword of Justice lent Had stayned with reprochfull crueltie, In guiltlesse blood of many an innocent: As for Grandtorto, him with treacherie And traynes having surpriz’d, he fouly did to die. (12.40.1–9) Spenser’s narrator tries to portray Artegall as a victim of injustice in this passage, but he also unintentionally draws attention to the knight’s failure. In Canto I, when Astraea gives Artegall his sword, Chrysaor, the narrator’s description of the sword is especially significant: For of most perfect metal it was made, Tempred with Adamant amongst the same, And garnish all with gold upon the blade In goodly wise, whereof it took his name, And was of no lesse virtue, then of fame. For there no substance was so firme and hard, But it would pierce or cleave, where so it came; Ne any armour could his dint out ward, But wheresoever it did light, it throughly shard. (1.10.1–9) The terms “perfect,” “adamant,” “firme and hard,” and “thoroughly shard” describe how perfect justice ought to be achieved. But more troubling are Astraea’s instructions that Artegall must also judge with equity and conscience; he must ‘[w]hen so it needs with rigour to dispence” punishment” (1.7.5). The description of the sword at the end of Book V – “And that bright sword, the sword of Justice lent/ Had stayned with reprochfull crueltie,/ In guiltlesse blood of many an innocent” – ­suggests that Artegall has failed his mission: he pitied and showed mercy when he should not have done so and was brutal and ruthless when he ought to have shown compassion (5.12.40). A final example of this can

58 Thomas Herron, Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reform (­A ldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 192.

150  Negotiating Violence and Equity be found in the closing stanza, when the Blatant Beast sets his hags on Artegall and Talus tries to protect his master. Talus could have succeeded If her [the Blatant Beast] Sir Artegall had not preserved, And him forbidden, who his heast observed. So much the more at him did she scold, And stones did cast, yet he for nought would swerve From his right course, but still the way did hold To Faery Court, where what him fell shall else be told (12.43.4–9) This final restraint allows the Blatant Beast to escape, and he continues to plague the characters in Book VI. The most pressing problem with Book V is its inability to uphold its title: the “Legend of Justice” undercuts all notions of justice as stable, fair, and unquestionable. The humiliation of Spenser’s knight of justice at the end of the book signifies his failure at trying to come to grips with a workable idea of justice that has room for rigor and mercy. What Artegall does not understand is that justice and mercy cannot be implemented by him alone, and that they are both linked to complex factors that may not be compatible with the rigors of law: mercy and justice may not adhere to the needs of both conqueror and the conquered. 59 Ideally, the application of law and justice should be rigid and unbending, like Artegall’s sword, so that all who are subjected to the laws are treated with equal fairness but Spenser seems to suggest that this notion may not be sustainable in the reformation Ireland. In A View, Irenius claims that

59 In A View, Irenius comments that unlike the Norman conquest of Britain, English laws cannot simply be imposed on Ireland: for they [the Irish] were otherwise affected, and yet doe so remaine, so as the same lawes (me seems) can ill fit with their disposition, or worke that reformation that is wished. For lawes ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people, to whom they are meant, and not to be imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right, for then (as I said) in stead of good they may worke ill, and pervert iustice to extreame injustice. (20) For a discussion of Irenius’s comment and its limitations in the conquest of Ireland, see David J. Baker’s “‘Some Quirk, Some Subtle Evasion’: Legal Subversion in Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland” (1986). An in-depth discussion on this topic can also be found in Bradin Cormack’s A Power to do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law, 1509–1625 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. his chapter entitled “Inconveniencing the Irish: Custom, Allegory, and the Common Law in Spenser’s Ireland,” 133–76. For a general discussion of the debates on common law in the early modern period, see J. G. A. Pocock’s The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in Seventeenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967).

Negotiating Violence and Equity  151 unlike the Norman conqueror, who could transfer his laws to England because he was “also present in person to overlooke the Magistrates, and to overawe these subjects with the terror of his sword [of justice] and countenance of his Majesty,” the English could not simply transfer their laws to Ireland.60 This is because the Irish were otherwise affected, yet doe so remaine, so as the same lawes (me seems) can ill fit with their disposition, or worke that reformation that is wished. For lawes ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people, to whom they are meant, and not to be imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right, for then (as I said) in stead of a good they may worke ill, and pervert justice to extreame injustice.61 The reform that Spenser advocates in A View are brutal, but they are also informed by his imagination of the implementation of justice in Book V. Artegall’s trials suggest that justice (in the context of conquest) is dependent on a whole array of conditions that cannot be controlled, and that this reality is daunting and threatening to the colonial enterprise. Calidore’s lack of interest in hunting down the Blatant Beast in Book VI and his attraction to a pastoral life over a martial one is an experiment that imagines what it would be like if the beast is left to destroy civility.62 Book V and VI prompt readers to consider not only the difficulty of implementing justice but also the urgency of reform. By the end of Book V, Artegall’s realization that one can never discount arbitrariness in the natural order of things has started to lay the foundations of sustainable reform. The untimely ending of his quest leaves Calidore with no opportunity to complete his quest: can there be courtesy without justice? The imposition of justice became increasingly urgent as the Nine Years War wore on. The Artegalls and Calidores of the English state were ­ ngland constantly made to rethink what they understood as justice as E drew itself into one of the most unpopular and expensive ­English wars in the early modern period.

60 A View, 20. 61 A View, 20. 62 For a discussion on the Blatant Beast’s behavior, see Kenneth Gross, “Reflections on the Blatant Beast,” Spenser Studies 13 (1999), and Thomas Herron, Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reform (Aldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), esp. pp. 185–224.

5 “This present quality of war” Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV (1597–98)1

Elizabeth’s attitude toward the Irish conflict wavered between the sword and the word in the early 1590s, but the decision to embark on a military campaign to achieve the complete reconquest of Ireland was triggered by the escalating violence in Ulster. The joint uprising of the two most prominent Irish Northern chieftains, Hugh O’Donnell and Hugh O’Neill, eventually set England on a course of war. The magnitude of the Ulster rebellion was unlike any others in her reign. The charismatic O’Neill formed the Irish confederacy with the support of dissenting native chieftains and Anglo-Irish leaders. Pushing the ­faith-and-fatherland agenda, he promised to expel the Protestant English from the island and restore Catholicism in the country. O’Neill’s confederacy was all the more threatening for English authorities because he had also secured support from Spain and Rome. The combination of a pan-Celtic and Spanish-Roman alliance with the rebel forces drove England into a war that dragged on for almost a decade. By the turn of the century, the possibility of governing Ireland through assimilation, education, and mercy was entirely abandoned. Elizabeth gave strict instructions to Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond and the queen’s acting lieutenant-general to negotiate with the rebels only if they agreed to submit with “bended knees, and harts humbled, not as if one Prince did treate with another upon tearmes of honour or advantage, in using words of Peace or war, but of Rebellion in them and mercy in us” lest the queen “appeare to the World that in such sort we will give way to any of their pride, wee will cast of ether sense or feeling of Pitty or Compassion.”2 Ormond was to let the rebels know that the queen would, “upon what pruce soever [,] prosecute them to the last hower” should they refuse to yield to her authority. In truth, the queen’s demand – that the rebels

1 An earlier version of this chapter was previously published as Jane Yeang Chui Wong, “John of Lancaster’s Negotiation with the Rebels in 2 Henry IV: Fifteenth-Century Northern England as Sixteenth-Century Ireland,” in Critical Survey 30.1 (2018). 2 Ibid.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  153 must beg for mercy – was not entirely realistic; Irish forces were often more successful in the field than the English, at least until 1601. The defeat of English officers and their soldiers was repeatedly reported in the correspondence from Ireland. Elizabeth and her advisors’ responses to these documents frequently expressed frustration and exasperation at the lack of success on the part of the English army, especially since she felt that the war was draining the royal coffers to the verge of bankruptcy. 3 The more practical concerns of the Nine Years War (1594–1603)—the corruption and mismanagement of the war within the government—are largely neglected in studies that discuss the representations of English anxieties on the early modern stage. Literary critics have long taken an interest in the presence of Ireland in Shakespeare’s history plays. Christopher Highley’s Shakespeare, Spenser and the Crisis in I­ reland (1997) examines an emerging discourse on Ireland that serves as a subtext in Shakespeare’s works; his study is concerned with the subject as “a problematic element in the imaginative formation of a national and poetic English self.”4 The essays in Mark Thorton Burnett and Romana Wray’s Shakespeare and Ireland (1997) deal with issues of geography and border tensions, problems of defining colonial cultures, and the implications of editing and performing those representations. 5 Stephen O’Neill’s Staging Ireland (2007) is concerned with the place of Ireland in Renaissance drama in relation to nationhood, exile, and national identities. The underlying themes in these works seek to tease out the nuances and ambiguities that have come to define the A ­ nglo-Irish conflict. The references to Ireland in Shakespeare’s works are at the center of these discussions, with Richard II (1595–96) and Henry V (1599) at the very forefront. The former is of some interest to the subject in question in this chapter. The first performance of Richard II in 1595 coincided with England’s mounting war efforts in Ireland, and the first print edition of the play appeared in the same year that a truce was declared between England and Ireland in 1597. Beyond the play, the war was temporarily halted because of overwhelming losses on the English side. In Richard II, the king suffers even heavier losses – he loses his crown and, later, his life – a heavy price for Irish conquest. Richard’s 1394 expedition to Ireland is

3 Military expenditures in Ireland rose drastically from the 1590s onwards. By 1601, the government spent £415,000 on the war in Ireland. The total cost of war expenditure was estimated at nearly £2 million. See Charles Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 283. 4 Christopher Highley, Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), i. 5 Mark Thorton Burnett and Ramona Wray, eds., Shakespeare and Ireland: History, Politics, Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

154  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV generally considered as one of the more significant achievements of his reign, yet, Ireland does not actually materialize in the play: Ireland is a ghost country; it is talked about but never seen. The king repeatedly declares that he “will make for Ireland,” but (1) we never hear of him in Ireland, (2) there are no characters from Ireland (i.e. messengers, soldiers, rebels), and (3) Richard obsessively registers his intentions to go to there, but there no indication of his being in or, for that matter, returning from Ireland (I.iv. 52).6 Richard’s plans to sail for Ireland is, more tellingly, emphasized in his repeated references to raising funds (forcibly and illegally) for his Irish campaign (I.iv. 42–52). The “absence” of Ireland in Shakespeare’s plays has been a subject of particular interest to literary critics. For Andrew Hadfield, references to Ireland (direct and allegorical) are plentiful. However, they loom ominously in the background – as a threat to the troubled regime in the Henry  VI plays through York’s rebellion – or as forms of comic otherness that reassert Irish stereotypes, when characters like Frank Ford cynically comments on the danger of trusting an Irishman in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597). Hadfield believes that “Shakespeare’s avoidance of direct treatment of Irish issues is more likely to be explained by reference to the restrictions that were placed on the stage representation of English history after June 1599.”7 The Bishops’ Ban of 1599 was in part provoked by the earl of Essex’s much anticipated, and later, much lamented campaign in Ireland. The Nine Years War so unpopular among the people that the government felt threatened enough to impose restrictions on the circulation and open discussions of the war. In Francis Cordale’s 1599 letter to Humphrey Galdelli, then in Venice, Cordale notes: “I can send no news of the Irish wars, all advertisements thence being prohibited, and such news as comes to Council carefully concealed. I fear our part has had little success, lost many captains and whole companies, and has little hopes of prevailing.”8 Attempts to contain the spread of bad news from Ireland indicate the growing anxieties of the Elizabethan government: the loss of this war could potentially result in the loss of England. The anxieties about the Irish crisis in the late 1590s also echo some of the preoccupations with Ireland in the early phase of the war. Critics like Andrew Murphy, Garret Sullivan, and Michael Neill have commented on Richard’s expedition to an off-stage Ireland as an uneasy

6 William Shakespeare, Richard the Second in Histories: Volume 2, edited by Kenneth Muir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). Unless otherwise stated, all references to Richard II are taken from this edition. 7 Andrew Hadfield, “‘Hitherto She ne’re Could Fancy Him’,” 48. 8 Janet Clare, “Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority”: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press; St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 116.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  155 way of negotiating colonial space and limiting cultural threats. Stephen O’Neill’s observation speak to these interpretations, and he highlights England’s ambivalent attitude toward Ireland: “Simultaneously invisible and also in view, marginal but also symbolically central, Ireland occupies a curious position in Richard II… the text’s double take registers conflicting Elizabethan desires towards Ireland: on the one hand, the desire to engage with and reform it; on the other, the desire to occlude it.”9 This chapter examines one such occlusion in 2 Henry IV (1597–8). Given our long-standing interest in resolving the ethical problems in the Henriad, it comes as a surprise that one of the most glaring instances of ethical violation has not yet been fully addressed at length: the negotiation scene in 2 Henry IV between the Northern rebels and the king’s representatives, Westmoreland and Prince John of Lancaster. At the meeting between the two parties, Westmoreland assures the Archbishop of York that the king has attended to the rebels’ grievances and will reconcile with them. The rebel leaders welcome this, but right after Lancaster promises safe passage to the rebel forces, an unexpected turn follows: WESTMORELAND:  Good tidings, My Lord Hastings, for the which I do arrest thee, traitor, of high treason. And you, Lord Archbishop, and you, Lord Mowbray, Of capital treason I arrest you both.

(IV.ii. 106–109)10

This scene is even more troubling than Henry V’s slaughter of the French prisoners in Harfleur (Henry V, IV.vi. 33–38).11 In 2 Henry IV, Lancaster and Westmoreland expressly violate a promise given to the Northern rebels, and more importantly, there is absolutely no way to justify this act of betrayal: there is no provocation and no cause for

9 Stephen O’Neill, Staging Ireland: Representations in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 104. 10 William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two in Histories: Volume 2, edited by Norman N. Holland (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). Unless otherwise stated, all references to 2 Henry IV are taken from this edition. 11 Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry V in Histories Vol. 2, edited by John Russell Brown (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). Unless otherwise stated, all references to Henry V are taken from this edition. Also see Conal Condren, “Understanding Shakespeare’s Perfect Prince: Henry V, the Ethics of Office and the French Prisoners,” in The Shakespeare International Yearbook 9, edited by Graham ­Bradshaw, T. G. Bishop and Laurence Wright (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2009); Theodor Meron, Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. 132–49, and John Sutherland and Cedric Watts, Henry V, War Criminal? And Other Shakespeare Puzzles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

156  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV suspicion anywhere in the preceding scenes that point to the possibility of treachery on the part of the rebels. Lancaster’s treatment of the rebels is important in that it sets up a whole new interpretive framework that encourages us to reimagine the patriotic narrative of the Henriad and to view them less as binary modes of containment and subversion and more as an immensely delicate system of exchanges between king and subjects that question perceptions and assumptions of just rule. The significance of the subject’s duty to his sovereign is a central theme in the Henriad but there has been little discussion of the sovereign’s duty to his subjects that extends beyond Williams’s debate with the king in Henry V. Here, I wish to explore how notions of truth and trust in 2 Henry IV function in negotiations of power relations in the event of civil unrest, when loyalties are dangerously strained and the pressure to assert royal authority and the king’s honor is intensified. Lancaster’s dealings with the Northern rebels demonstrate that the rebel’s relationship with the king is forged through Crown representatives and not the monarch: the king is absent, and as such, the bonds of trust between king and subjects are “mediated” at best. While mediated truth(s) and trust do not justify Lancaster’s treachery, they can provide reasonable speculation as to why such decisions are made. To understand Lancaster’s attitude toward the rebels, we must take into account what types of “truth(s)” are prioritized in truce negotiations, and how they influence perceptions of trust in the play. These themes can be carefully explicated alongside historical developments similar to those featured in 2 Henry IV. More specifically, I refer to a 1597 ceasefire document from the Nine Years War (1594–1603) in Ireland that sheds light on the ways in which the monarch’s relationship with her rebel subjects is predisposed to the volatile ideas and expectations of truth, trust, and truce. Even though the document predates Shakespeare’s fifteenth-century context in 2 Henry IV, its contents provide a rare glimpse of the developments that govern negotiations between rebels and Crown representatives. The unique administrative features of fifteenth-century Northern ­E ngland and the sixteenth-century similarities to those structures of governance in Ireland also give us a sense of the types of problems that were inherent in the monarch’s relationship with his/her subjects at the margins of the English kingdom.

Medieval Northern England and Tudor Ireland A brief overview of Northern England in the fifteenth century is helpful in sketching out some of the underlying political imperatives that inform ideas of trust among monarch, Crown representatives, and the

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  157 ruling aristocracy. Then, the government’s administrative reach into areas more than 300 miles from London was limited. Even in the early Tudor era, the king’s writ did not run in half the counties; the “internal order” in the North was largely reliant on the marcher lords.12 This long-distance mode of governance was characterized by feudal loyalties and obligations, and it was the most economical and efficient way to extend royal authority into the Northern counties. The provincial lords were often men from powerful marcher families who maintained private armies; threats from the Scottish border and rebellion within the region were quickly quelled when they occurred: “In this highly regional land, with its turbulent marcher society, ties of kinship remained strong, and real power rested with a powerful territorial nobility who organized the rule and defense of their compact lordships through a numerous and warlike tenantry.”13 The tight kinship ties among the marcher lords also meant that if and when they collectively decided to revolt, they would form a truly formidable force: the threat of revolt and the central government’s anxieties about containing the spread of rebellion cannot be understated. These fears are characteristic of rulership by proxy. As the royal representative of the king and governor of his tenants, the great lord must win the trust of the king’s common subjects to maintain peace. With trust came loyalty—­competing loyalties. The Northern English chronicler John Hardyng, who fought alongside the Percies in Shrewsbury, remarked, “for trust it true there is no lorde in Englande that may defende you agayn Scotlande so well as he [Hotspur], for they haue the hertes of the people by the North, and euer had: and doute it not, the North parte bee your trewe liegemen.”14 Hardyn’s observation is in itself problematic: it asserts the Percies’ hold over the king’s Northern subjects, but even as it declares the Northerners’ unwavering loyalty to the Percy family, it subverts this claim in the same breath by asserting Northern loyalties to

12 R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 31. Also see H. C. Darby, “Domesday ­England,” in A New Historical Geography of England before 1600, edited by H. C. Darby (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 41. 13 Steven Ellis, “Civilizing Northumberland: Representations of Englishness in the Tudor State,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12.2 (1999), 105. Details on some of the common traits of the development of marcher culture in Wales, Ireland, and Northern England can be found in Paul Courtney, “The Marcher Lordships: Origins, Descent and Organization,” The Gwent County History 4 (2008); Ralph A. Griffiths, “Lordship and Society in the Fifteenth Century,” The Gwent County History 4 (2008), and Christopher Maginn, “English Marcher Lineages in South Dublin in the Late Middle Ages,” Irish Historical Studies 34.134 (2004). 14 John Hardyng, The Chronicle of John Hardyng, edited by Henry Ellis (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1812), 380.

158  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV the king. The clash of loyalties has serious implications: “Those who are said to have shouted ‘Henry Percy Kyng’ at Shrewsbury (John ­Hardyng among them?) were unable to resolve their problem by making the royal line and the Percies one and the same.”15 In the following decades, the government acted to circumvent the potentially dangerous rise of the overmighty subject through a series of reform policies that were aimed at decentralizing magnate powers and consolidating royal authority. The model that emerged from the establishment of the Northern Council in 1472 under Yorkist rule set precedence to how the king could extend royal jurisdiction into outlying areas of the English kingdom. A climate of distrust and suspicion grew from the government’s initial “interference” in the North. The political framework in fifteenth-century Northern England is similar to those in sixteenth-century Ireland; the government’s concerns with the proxy governorship of these regions often reveal the delicate and at times antagonistic relationships between monarch and magnates.16 Tudor Ireland, up to 1534, was governed by the great Anglo-­I rish families, most notably by the immensely powerful earls of Kildare. The English subjects within the Pale, whom Richard Stanihurst insists are utterly loyal to the English monarch, are also fiercely loyal to the Kildares: “if the north of England ‘knew no prince but a Percy’, the Palesman ‘covet[ed] more to see a Geraldine to reign and triumph than to see God come amongst them.’”17 Henry VII’s oftquoted comment – “[If no gentleman can rule Kildare] then in good faith shall this earle rule all Ireland” – became problematic for his heirs even after the collapse of the Kildare ascendancy and the practice of appointing only English-born lord deputies put an end to the governorship of the Irish lords.18 The reconquest of Ireland aimed to extend royal authority and English common law to regions beyond those already under English jurisdiction, but to do so, bastard feudalism had to be abolished and local magnate power displaced. The “surrender and regrant” policy proposed by Anthony St Leger in the early

15 Alastair J. MacDonald, “John Hardyng, Northumbrian Identity and the Scots,” in North-East England in the Latter Middle Ages, edited by Christian D. Liddy and Richard H. Britnell (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2005), 42. 16 For a more detailed discussion of some similarities between Ireland and Northern England, see Steven G. Ellis, Defending English Ground: War and Peace in Meath and Northumberland, 1450–1542 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), esp. Chapter 1, “Region and Frontier in the English Sate: The English Far North and the English Pale in Ireland,” pp. 1–14. 17 Steven Ellis. Ireland in the Age of the Tudors 1447–1603: Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (Essex, UK: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1998), 108. 18 Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Ireland and Scotland (1587). Volume VI, Ireland (New York: AMS Press, 1965), 277.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  159 decades of Henry VIII’s reign was the first of many reform policies that aimed to dissolve traditional native loyalties and, in turn, establish English loyalty.19 This initiative styled native lords with ­E nglish titles and provided them protection and support from the English government. They surrendered landholdings to the king, which were then returned to them, whereby they were expected to pay rent, support crown initiatives, abandon Irish customs and habits, and swear allegiance to the king. This transfer of loyalties sought to undermine kinship ties among the Irish chieftains; the political landscape in Ireland changed as loyalties realigned. St Leger’s reform program was, with some limitations, effective in consolidating royal authority among the Irish aristocracy. But as time wore on and political alliances shifted, it could not fend off some of the most turbulent revolts in Ireland later in the sixteenth century; those who instigated and participated in rebellion included Irish chieftains who submitted to the surrender and regrant program. For John Hooker (Vowell), editor of the Holinshed’s Irish Chronicle (1587), this comes as no surprise, for the Irish are “a people constant onlie in inconstancie, [are] firme in wauering and faithful in untruths.”20 Crown representatives in Ireland often complained of the queen’s leniency toward the rebels, and they repeatedly warned her that Ireland could not be completely conquered with her liberal acceptances of submissions from Irish rebels: “Without accepting the English assumption that the Irish were inveterate liars, it is clear that their humble submissions more often derived from pragmatism and fear of coercion than from sincere sorrow.”21 Other reform programs included the establishment of presidential councils in the 1560s, which the Irish lords perceived as an encroachment on their lands and their authority. The characteristics of the Irish presidential councils were not unlike the councils in the marches of Wales and Northern England: “Two regional councils, enjoying approximately the same legal powers and physical strength as those currently in operation in Wales and the marcher lands of the north of England, were… established in Munster and Connaught.”22 The council’s imposition of a Crown-appointed president to micromanage areas that were formerly governed by regional Irish lords, the efforts to colonize and garrison 19 Christopher Maginn, “‘Surrender and Regrant’ in the Historiography of S­ ixteenth-Century Ireland,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38.4 (2007). 20 Holinshed, Chronicles, Volume VI, 181. 21 K. J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 195. 22 Ciaran Brady, The Chief Governors: the Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 73–74.

160  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV areas traditionally marginalized, and the expanding military presence of the English all created a sense a climate of anxiety and suspicion among the native chieftains and ­A nglo-Irish lords. These tensions directly contributed to Hugh O’Neill’s great revolt.

A Rebel’s Cause: The Ceasefire Documents (1597) Hugh O’Neill’s list of grievances in the 1597 ceasefire documents is of particular importance in this chapter. 23 The documents are composed during a ceasefire negotiation at the end of 1597, when Blackwater fort, an important English garrison, fell into the hands of rebel forces. The significance of this loss is reflected in the government’s agreement to consider O’Neill’s submission and demands. On the side of the Irish, O’Neill, as leader of the Irish confederacy, represented and negotiated on the behalf of all his allies, the great Ulster lords. On the side of the English, Crown representatives included the Lord Justices Adam Loftus and Robert Gardiner, and Ormond. There are three main parts to the ceasefire documents. The first has to do with O’Neill’s submission and his promise to be loyal to the queen; the second includes his responses to the conditions of the ceasefire set by Ormond, and the third lists his demands (the restoration of his ancient rights) and a “book of grevances.” The following discussion on trust focuses on this book. 24 If, as Cicero and Renaissance humanist thinkers believe, good faith – to make good of a promise – is the foundation of justice, then O’Neill’s “book of grevances” is the epitome of injustice. Humanist treatises that discuss ideas of good faith and its use (or abuse) as a political instrument in Renaissance Europe are largely consistent in pointing out how the bonds of trust between kings and subjects are imperative in maintaining political and social order. Machiavelli’s chapter on “How rulers should keep their promises,” or rather how they are not obligated to do so, is unique only in that it breaks away from a long line of writers who condemn bad faith. Even so, these writers are also aware that monarchs invariably break promises: “There is no fellowship inviolate/ No faith is kept, when kingship is concerned.”25 Early modern writers 23 Hiram Morgan, “The 1597 Ceasefire Documents,” Dúiche Néill: Journal of the O’Neill Country Historical Society (1997), 1–21. I am indebted to Morgan’s immensely helpful commentary and transcription of this document. His arrangement of the documents into five “enclosures” provides a comprehensive overview of the negotiation process and development. 24 Morgan, “Ceasefire,” 3. 25 Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officis, trans. Walter Miller (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1913), 27. Also see Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), esp. pp. 3–64.

Figure 5.1  T he answers of the Earl of Tyrone to the articles prescribed unto him by the Lord Lieutenant-General and his assistants, the Lord Bishop of Meath and Sir Ge[o]ffrey Fenton (1597). The National Archives, Ref. SP 63/201 (268).

162  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV

Figure 5.1  (Continued).

like Thomas Elyot and Lodowick Bryskett stress that kings and governors, above others, are bound to their promises: “there is nothing more fitting for a King then truth and veritie… as he should neuer haue one thing in his mouth and another in his heart”; a deceitful man is

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  163 a traitor. 26 In O’Neill’s document, the queen’s representatives behave more like traitors than advocates of the queen’s honor – they cannot be trusted to behave honorably. Hiram Morgan’s description of the exchange between O’Neill and the negotiators sets the tone for much of the exchange between rebel and negotiators: The preliminary meeting on 8 December was only agreed after Black Tom had given his word assuring the safety of O’Neill and his party. Even then O’Neill at first stood off from Ormond and only after further encouragement did he dismount and come forward in person to speak to Ormond across a small river. O’Neill immediately complained about Marshal Sir Henry Bagenal and other enemies who had sought his life […] The negotiators tried their best to assuage these fears but O’Neill refused to be convinced. 27 In the ceasefire documents, the negotiators dismiss O’Neill’s fears as unfounded and they suggest that his purported knowledge of murder plots against him is “conjured up by the priests to make him and others distrust the Queen’s government.”28 Even in the midst of negotiating the terms for truce, there is also a call to recall truths, and in the case of the negotiators, to dispel “truths” that may impede the development of the negotiation. The development of the negotiation thus hinges on establishing a mutually agreeable idea of what truth(s) entails. The negotiators tell O’Neill that he is being overly paranoid and that his anxieties are founded in mere rumors, implying that the great earl cannot differentiate between fact and fiction in a crisis. The deep distrust between rebel-subject and the monarch is, however, not just subject to competing truths but also the ability to tabulate truthful events and to gauge difficulty of transmitting their implications directly to the queen. O’Neill’s submission and his “book of grevances” illustrate that tensions between Crown representatives and the Irish confederacy can be attributed to the breach of trust and the breaking of promises through dissimulation, intentional misrepresentation, and blatant deception. In his letter of submission, O’Neill admits that he has repeatedly broken oaths of loyalty to the Crown. Yet, in this acknowledgment and his reaffirmation of honoring promises, O’Neill defends his seeming disloyalty, and hopes that the queen will prove a fair judge in reconsidering

26 Lodowick Bryskett, A Discourse of Ciuill Life Containing the Ethike Part of Morall Philosophie. Fit for the Instructing of a Gentleman in the Course of a Vertuous Life (London: EEBO: Early English Books Online, 1606), 63. 27 Morgan, “Ceasefire,” 3. 28 Ibid., 8.

164  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV the charges made against him. 29 The negotiators agree to convey his grievances to the queen and assure him that the contents of the document will be “faithfully transcripted to her maiesty” under the condition that it should not contain “frivolous or unnecessary” matters. The commissioners’ agreement to transcribe O’Neill’s complaints “faithfully” suggests that his previous petitions to the queen may have indeed been intercepted or tampered with on different occasions, and that she may be unaware of the deeds of her “badd officers” in Ireland, whose “wrongs and hard dealings that many waies were used to me.”30 O’Neill justifies his refusal to present himself when summoned by ­English authorities for fear of being assassinated, and he substantiates this claim with examples of English treachery when promises of safe passage, whether implied or explicit, are given to the Irish only to be violated when the Irish has honored their end of the bargain. 31 What transpires from O’Neill’s “book of grevances” is the degeneration of trust between Crown and subject, which can be directly traced back to the behavior of the negotiators. It is the nature of delegated ­authority – the proxy ­government  – that shapes the bonds of trust bet­ween the rebel-subject and the monarch. The ethical problems—of honoring promises—in O’Neill’s exchange with the negotiators brings us to the following question in my reading of 2 Henry IV: is Lancaster’s betrayal of the Northern rebels inevitable?

Truth We cannot examine the bonds of trust between monarch and subjects in 2 Henry IV without first considering their antecedents in 1 Henry IV. Critics have often referred to the Induction scene of 2 Henry IV as the “link” to 1 Henry IV. Rumor, personified, is preoccupied with ideas of truth, deception, loyalty, and rebellion that have been building up since Richard II.32 But more urgently, the fluidity and instability of Rumor underscore 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 15, 16. 31 The two instances specifically mentioned in O’Neill’s book of grevances include the entrapment and massacre of innocent Irish citizens at Mullaghmast in 1578, and the siege of Smerwick during the second Desmond rebellion in 1580. Vincent Carey, “John Derricke’s ‘Image of Ireland’, Sir Henry Sidney, and the Massacre at Mullaghmast, 1578,” Irish Historical Studies 31.123 (1999). 32 John Blades notes that Rumor has both thematic and dramatic functions in the play; Rumor “resembles Janus, the Roman god of doorways and beginnings, and although he links both parts of Henry IV, he effectively obstructs the flow between them since he breaks the continuity by standing outside the two plays, mediating the experiences before it has happened.” John Blades, Shakespeare: The Histories (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). In the Induction, “the potential of language for deception is accented, and once more, as in the motifs of counterfeiting and true and false of [Henry IV] Part I, common-sensical notions of an easily distinguished difference between truth and rumour are assumed.” Hugh Grady,

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  165 the deep distrust between the king and his formerly loyal nobles, calling into question the legitimacy of the rebellion: who has betrayed whose loyalty? The rebels’ quarrel with Henry IV is rooted in their assumptions of the king’s duty to them; they expect to be justly rewarded for their service to the king. Hotspur’s refusal to surrender his Scottish prisoners and his demand to ransom his brother-in-law, Mortimer, is a clear indicator of distrust between king and nobles. There are two sets of calculations that are being made here. The first has to do with honor and the conventions of feudal servitude in times of war. Historically, in the period of the Hundred Years War, prisoners taken during wartime “should be handed over to the crown since war was waged on its behalf and soldiers were in its pay. The crown could dispose of them as it wished.”33 However, theoretical treatises did not always conform to these assumptions; in practice, terms of service and payment could vary greatly. What is more pressing in Hotspur’s claim is whether or not a king can take his nobles’ captives, even those who are not of aristocratic stock. This is addressed in Holinshed’s Chronicles: “Shakespeare develops the definition [of Hotspur as an honorable man] from a hint found in Holinshed that the King’s demand is counter to the code of honour.”34 The second set of calculation in Hotspur’s complaint has to do with history and memory, or rather the king’s selective amnesia. After using their resources to overthrow Richard II, the Percies have “for his sake [worn] the destested blot/ Of murderous subornation” and are unjustly abused” (1 Henry IV, I.iii. 160–61). Unwilling to accept this treatment, Hotspur declares it is time for the Percies and their allies to redeem their “banished honors” and restore themselves “into the good thoughts of the world again (I.iii. 179–80). From the Percies’ perspective, the king’s refusal to honor promises made before and after he is crowned is an unambiguous indication that he cannot be trusted. The notion of trust, so prominently featured in the Induction of 2 Henry IV, can be read as an implicit rendering of the king’s reputation. By having personified Rumor open the play, truth, or rather the idea of truth, is immediately undermined. As Rumor speaks, it demands to be heard; Rumour is a provocative figure because he questions truth and presents versions of truths. In the first instance, Rumor describes his witnessing of “King Harry’s victory,” where Prince Hal has defeated Hotspur’s “bold rebellion,” and in the same breath, he sends “noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell / Under the wrath of noble Hotspur’s sword” (Induction 26, 30). In Rumor’s hands, the king can be victorious but the rebel

Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 181. 33 Rémy Ambühl, Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War: Ransom Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 8. 34 Qtd. in Norman Council, When Honour’s at the Stake: Ideas of Honour in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), 42.

166  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV can also be celebrated. Truth and reputation are closely related and this relationship is reflected in the image of Rumor, represented in the image of the emblem, Fama, which embodies the dual nature of both Rumor and Fame/Reputation. Fama appears as an androgynous figure with a trumpet in his hands, and ears are painted on his body.35 Shakespeare creates Rumor from Fama’s qualities. In the opening scene of the play, truth is scrutinized when Lord Bardolph arrives with news of Hotspur’s victory (at Shrewsbury) to Northumberland; the latter is skeptical: “Saw you in the field? Came you from Shrewsbury?” (I.i.  25). The emphasis in this exchange is on seeing and hearing; seeing is deemed more reliable than hearing, but only on Northumberland’s part.36 For Lord Bardolph, hearing is as good as seeing because the news is derived from “A gentleman well bred and of good name” (I.i. 26). Lord Bardolph does not question the truth of the message because he associates truth-telling with the anonymous gentleman’s social status and reputation. Keith M. Bothelo’s study on the gendered nature of rumor in early modern England calls attention to the duality of Fama and the complications inherent in this duality: [Men’s] fame or reputation is derived from other men […] Fame as reputation is one reason that rumor and gossip, wrapped up in issues of male authority, become such potent issues in early modern England… a person’s fame of infamy could certainly travel with increased speed; fame, however could also fall prey to rumor and gossip, which had the potential to alter it in an unauthorized fashion.37 The uncertain nature of rumor and Bardolph’s assumptions of the qualities of “well bred” gentlemen suggest that men’s reputations are no more reliable than rumors. The qualities attributed to a good king, similarly, cannot be taken at face value. To separate truth from falsehood, one must be a good earwitness.38 35 Keith M. Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 4. 36 Bardolph’s inability to “adjudicate” in the opening scene of 2 Henry II is soon remedied with Morton’s arrival, as he reports to Northumberland: I am sorry I should force you to believe That which I would to God I had not seen. But these mine eyes saw him [Percy] in bloody state (I.i. 105–107). In Northumberland’s response to Bardolph, the word “tongue” is mentioned six times; each time in reference to news that may or may not be accurately reported, and other times insisting that the ear, of all parts of the body, is the most unreliable place to find truth. 37 Keith M. Bothelo. 5, 21 Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 21. 38 For Bothelo, earwitnessing in early modern England is a process that requires the “sifting and distilling of information that comes to the ear, […] an active concept that

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  167 The emphasis on the ear as the locale for discernment also has implications beyond that of being a good adjudicator. Renaissance commentaries on the engagement of the auditory senses are influenced by religious admonitions both from the bible and from sermons: the faithful Christian must listen to the word of God. Contemporary writers like Thomas Vicary observes that the ear, located outside the head, is the entryway into the head: “it should keepe the hole that it standeth over, from thinges falling in, that might hinder the hearing.”39 For the religious, “the training of the ears to listen for the truth of God’s Word became an outline for redemption.”40 On the political front, monarchs from antiquity were expected to seek counsel from their advisors; Francis Bacon, among other humanist writers, even described the intimate relationship between sovereignty and counsel as that of a married couple.41 But there is no mention of monarchs as listeners to their subjects should they wish to air their grievances. In fact, it is this “deafness” of the king that drives the Northern rebels in 2 Henry IV to threaten rebellion: ARCHBISHOP:  I have equal balance justly weighed What wrongs our arms may do, what





wrongs we suffer, And find our griefs heavier than our offenses. We see which way the stream of time doth run, And are enforced from our most quiet there By the rough torrent of occasion, And have the summary of all our griefs, When time shall serve, to show in articles; Which long ere this we offered to the King, And might by no suit gain our audience When we are wronged and would unfold our griefs, We are denied access unto his person Even by those men that most have done us wrong. (IV.i. 67–80)

entails engaging the ear in the pursuit of truth and carefully adjudicating ambiguous information.” Ibid., 2. 39 Thomas Vicary, The Anatomie of the Bodie of Man (London, 1548, 1577), 35, quoted in Bothelo, Renaissance, 2. 40 Bothelo, Renaissance, 3. 41 Francis Bacon, The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, edited by Michael ­K iernan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 64. Also see Robert Zaller, The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), esp. 23–30, and John Guy, “The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England,” in Tudor Political Culture, edited by Dale Hoak (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

168  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV The archbishop of York’s complaint— that the rebels have tried but are denied access to the king—is central to his argument. Westmoreland’s defiant response “When ever yet was your appeal / denied? / Wherein have you been gallèd by the King?” can only signal two possibilities: (1) the king is indeed aware of the rebels’ grievances but has decided to turn a deaf ear to them, or (2) Westmoreland is guilty of blocking the rebels’ access to the king (IV.i. 88–90). The difficulty of trying to reach the monarch’s ear was a real concern within the historical context of Northern government, where Crown mediators were often sent to exchange news and negotiate policies and terms of peace on behalf of the king. The Northern rebels’ grievances are similar to O’Neill’s; for the Irish rebel, it is physically impossible to reach the queen’s ear without crossing the Irish Sea. Elizabeth’s representatives were her eyes and ears, and her knowledge of the political developments in Ireland was primarily informed by their reports. In the ceasefire documents, O’Neill describes the rampant corruption of her officers in Ireland and their treachery toward him, “which could not have byne knowne by her highness.”42 To further support his grievances, he claims that he attempted to communicate with the queen before he was proclaimed traitor, but his efforts came to naught because the earl marshal “did intercept the messenger, by the way and stayed his letters.”43 It is important to keep in mind that against the backdrop of more practical military concerns having to do with the logistics of the ceasefire, negotiations that express accusations against and assertions of authority between rebels and negotiators can threaten to derail the aims of the truce agreement. The ceasefire documents are unique in that they record what appears to be a brief yet formal exchange between Crown negotiators and rebels, and more notably, the negotiators’ articulation and interpretation of O’Neill’s complaints of injustice and their lack of authority/refusal to refute his complaints. That which has not been recorded and has survived is of especial interest. Hiram Morgan’s commentary of the documents highlight an important detail on the development of the exchange between the negotiators and O’Neill. The initial requirement for the negotiation demands O’Neill’s submission first, but the rebel leader refused to sign this document; he insisted that it be revised to include details of how he was provoked into rebellion. In doing so, he stressed “the weakness of the state’s position.”44 The intensifying tensions between rebels and Crown negotiators are heightened because in the absence of the queen, her representatives must use their discretion to gauge the progression

42 “Morgan, Ceasefire,” 16. 43 Ibid., 16. 4 4 Ibid., 2.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  169 of the negotiations at the risk of reaching agreements that may tarnish her honor. The 1597 ceasefire negotiation also provides us with some idea of the ways in which Crown representatives must protect the queen’s honor; while extant evidence does not include details on the more explicit nature of the “undocumented” negotiation, it is possible sketch out broader outlines of these details in similar negotiations in 2 Henry IV. For instance, Westmoreland’s immediate dismissal of the archbishop’s assertion that his (the archbishop) quarrel is with the “commonwealth” is similar to Secretary of State Geoffrey Fenton’s comment about O’Neill’s insistence on submitting a petition of demands (on behalf of his confederates) to the queen; the petition was deemed “neither meet for a rebel to prefer to his Prince nor fit for any good servitor to receive.”45 Like Fenton, Westmoreland believes that the archbishop has no right to seek any redress for all those who are unhappy with the king. Mowbray assures Westmoreland that the archibishop has every right to address the king’s injustice (on their behalf), but Westmoreland’s response to the more outspoken Mowbray is troubling: O, my good Lord Mowbray, Construe the times to their necessities, And you shall say indeed, it is the time, And not the King, that doth you injuries. (IV.i. 102–105) Westmoreland’s defense of the king uses political expediency as an excuse to conveniently negate the king’s accountability to the nobles. Moreover, Westmoreland’s assertion that Mowbray has no right to complain of grievances – since Mowbray has already been restored of his signories – further justifies the rebels’ cause. Mowbray quickly reminds Westmoreland that the matter of contention is not the restoration of his ancient rights but the restoration of his late father’s, the Duke of Norfolk’s, honor.46 Westmoreland’s final response to Mowbray shows how history and memory are framed by the king and the king only. By insisting that “The Earl of Hereford was reputed then / In England the most valiant gentleman,” and that the people “Cried hate upon [the Duke of Norfolk],” Westmoreland displaces Mowbray’s accusation of the king’s unjust behavior on time, rather than on the king: “Who knows on whom Fortune would then have /smiled?” (IV.i. 129–130; 135; 131–32).

45 Ibid. 46 Mowbray believes that the Duke of Norfolk was unjustly framed and later died in exile after he was banished by Richard II. See Shakespeare’s Richard II, I.iii. 153–74.

170  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV Westmoreland is an exemplary negotiator: one of the most important tasks of the Crown negotiator is to protect the monarch’s honor. This task is of utmost importance in areas where the governance of a region is characterized by royal absenteeism; the preservation and maintenance of a monarch’s honor rests in the hands of her representatives. Throughout her reign, Elizabeth stressed that all negotiations with Irish rebels must be conducted from a superior position; in their exchange with O’Neill, the negotiators had to maintain the Queen’s honour and their official dignity. They did get a submission of sorts and they did avoid, or at least their communications did not mention, the type of civilities towards the rebel which had landed Commissioners Wallop and Gardiner in the Queen’s bad books in early 1596.47 Taking into consideration the priorities and expectations of the monarch in negotiations with rebels, it is necessary to reconsider Westmoreland’s exchanges with the rebels and how he communicates with them with a rhetorical flourish that focuses on negating the truth value of the rebels’ claims, effectively falsifying their claims and “factualizing” rather than justifying the king’s actions against them. The competing versions of truths that arise from the negotiation inform equally contentious ideas of trust between rebel-subject and king.

Trust Mowbray’s refusal to parley with Westmoreland nearly reaches an impasse, but more pointedly, he is reluctant to prolong the negotiations with Westmoreland as he perceives the king’s offer of giving audience to the rebels’ demands to be an offer that “proceeds from policy, not love” (IV.i. 146). Ideally, Mowbray ought to be the leader of the rebel forces; his astute observation of Westmoreland’s defense of the king exposes the king’s offer as one that is fraught with deception and danger. Westmoreland justifies the king’s refusal to honor his (the king’s) promises an act of political expediency; Mowbray calls this “policy.” For Mowbray, “policy” is potentially treacherous. Westmoreland, like the king, uses so-called “policy” to absolve wrongdoings; to negate promises, and to manipulate truths. By juxtaposing “policy” and “love,” Mowbray associates the former with potential treachery and the latter with good faith. His fellow rebels are less suspicious, and they are content to know that Lancaster has “full commission” to represent his father. Assumptions of representation and authority are contested as Westmoreland plays the

47 Morgan, “Ceasefire,” 4.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  171 role of mediator for Lancaster. The rebels’ discussion of the possible outcome of their petition seems to point to how problems of trust and authority cannot be reconciled where the king’s mouthpiece is anyone but the king. There are two issues to consider here, and both point to the underlying problems of the negotiation. The first has to do with Hastings’s questions about Lancaster’s authority and if the prince, “[i]n ample virtue of his father,” has the authority “[t]o hear and absolutely to determine / Of what conditions we shall stand upon?” (IV.i. 161–63). Westmoreland mocks Hastings for asking such an absurd question: if the king has made his son general, then needless to say, he has full authority to consider and negotiate the conditions of the agreement. Hastings’s satisfaction with this reply assumes that negotiating with Lancaster is the same as negotiating with the king. Then, there is the archbishop of York’s response. Like Hastings, the archbishop also assumes that Lancaster and the king are one in this matter; he dismisses Mowbray’s skepticism as misjudgment: No, no, my lord. Note this. The King is weary Of dainty and such picking grievances. For he hath found to end one doubt by death Revives two greater in the heirs of life, And therefore will he wipe his tables clean And keep no telltale to his memory That may repeat and history his loss To new remembrance. (IV.i. 195–202) The archbishop is in fact the one making a misjudgment. He makes not one but three assumptions: first, Lancaster will review the rebels’ conditions as if he is guilty of his father’s deeds; second, if the king does not agree to the conditions, the rebellion will escalate and the king will not be able to contain civil war; and third, the king’s reconciliation with the rebels will improve his reputation. Both Hastings and the archbishop’s views seem to take Lancaster’s commission and his representation of royal authority more literally than intended. While Lancaster acts in the king’s name, he is not the king. The authority delegated to Lancaster allows him to make decisions that he perceives to be in the best interest of the king, which is not quite the same as carrying out the wishes of the king. At best, the rebels can only hope that the king’s deputy is trustworthy and that he will convey their grievances as promised. The rebel’s attempt to answer to charges of treason and to defend his cause, as O’Neill’s complaints in the ceasefire documents indicate, is the most challenging aspect of negotiating with Crown authorities; promises may be made and assurances provided, but

172  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV there is no way of knowing if the messages are intercepted or misrepresented. In other words, the rebel has no choice but to trust the negotiators, and this trust and assumption of good faith is teneous. While the development of the negotiation aims to reach agreements that are ideally beneficial to both parties, the act of negotiating is a gamble of sorts: both parties must decide how “truthful” they should/want to be. The role that Rumor plays in destabilizing “truths” in the early scenes of 2 Henry IV is transformed into something far more sinister in the rebels’ meeting with the king’s negotiators. Westmoreland explicitly assures the rebels that he will “show the General” their articles of grievances and their desire to reconcile with the king, but in Shakespeare’s rendition of this historical moment, there is no sign that he has indeed done so (IV.i. 176). Audiences and readers must decide whether this act (of Westmoreland conveying the rebels’ message to Lancaster), which takes place off-stage, actually took place at all. The fact that it is offstage is problematic. The supposed consultation between Westmoreland and Lancaster is anything but visible, and under such circumstances, it suggests a sense of secrecy and treachery. As such, Hastings’s and the archbishop’s dismissal of Mowbray’s seeming paranoia is ironic. In his opening speech to the rebels, Lancaster, endowed with royal authority, condemns the archbishop of York’s cause: O, who shall believe But you misuse the reverence of your place, Employ the countenance and grace of heaven, As a false favorite doth his prince’s name, In deeds dishonorable? You have ta’en up, Under the counterfeited zeal of God, The subjects of His substitute, my father, And both against the peace of heaven and him Have here upswarmed them. (IV.ii 22–29) Lancaster’s speech is more preoccupied with the “fasle” pretenses of the revolt than with the rebels’ reasons for plotting rebellion. He is concerned with making distinctions between truths and counterfeits. The archbishop of York, accused as a “false favorite”, is a counterfeit as he has broken his oath of loyalty to both king and god.48 The king is 48 Lancaster’s speech complicates and blurs the distinctions between substitutes (stand-ins) and counterfeits (imitations) especially after the king sends out counterfeits of himself at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1 Henry IV. He seems to imply that “substitutes” are so-called because they are approved and endorsed by the king, and thus seen as an appropriate replacement for that which is absent; “counterfeits” are false and untrue, and associated with ideas deceit and deception.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  173 placed on the other end of the spectrum as the true and rightful “substitute” of god, just as Lancaster is the true “substitute” of the king. By distinguishing the king’s authority as true and thus just, and the rebels’ cause as counterfeit, Lancaster’s exchange with the archbishop does not simply challenge the legitimacy of the revolt, it also draws attention to the anxieties in Lancaster’s speech. The archbishop demands to know if the negotiators are indeed defenders of that which is true, just, and truthful, and his speech undercuts the assurances of their promises: […] I sent your Grace The parcels and particulars of our grief, The which hath been with scorn shoved from the court, Whereon this Hydra son of war is born, Whose dangerous eyes may well be charmed asleep With grant of our most just and right desires, And true obedience, of this madness cured, Stoop tamely to the foot of majesty. (IV.ii. 35–42) For Lancaster’s speech to be honorable, his promise to convey the rebels’ grievances to the king must be fulfilled. Mowbray, too, is keen to know if the king has heard their grievances, and he threatens that if the king has not, then the rebels are prepared to fight to “the last man” (IV.ii. 43). The message is clear: there is no room to negotiate if the king will not give audience to the rebels; an impasse means the rebels will be forced to revolt. The rebels’ quarrel with the negotiators is not concerned with the king’s refusal to consider their grievances, but that he may not even have been aware of their grievances in the first place; the off-stage meeting between Westmoreland and Lancaster seems to suggest this, but it is the second off-stage episode that seals the fates of the rebels.

Truce Lancaster’s behavior in the negotiation scene is highly suspicious and his rhetoric stems from bad faith. The rebels, on the other hand, seem to operate more “openly.” Shakespeare gives a full view of the rebels’ discussions among themselves; all their dialogues are presented in plain sight on stage. Even though rebellion is associated with disobedience and disloyalty, the king’s men appear more sinister than the rebels. Those who manage state affairs – Westmoreland and Lancaster – operate in the shadows off-stage; they present themselves as the rightful defenders of

“Substitutes” connote good faith by virtue of religious and royal sanction, and “counterfeit” is associated with bad faith for lack of sanction.

174  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV justice and divinity. More strikingly, Lancaster stakes his princely honor in his negotiations with the rebels: lancaster:  I

like them all, and do allow them well, And swear here, by the honor of my blood, My father’s purposes have been mistook, And some about him have too lavishly Wrested his meaning and authority […] My lord these griefs shall be with speed redressed. archbishop:  I take your princely word for these redresses. (IV.ii. 65–66)



After this promise is made, the dialogues between the men become increasingly riddled with clues that it may not be honored. Even so, the archbishop of York welcomes Lancaster’s promise cheerfully, but Mowbray, the perpetual skeptic, says that he feels ill. At this very moment, the tide of time, which Westmoreland blames as the cause of all misunderstanding and conflict, is already turning against the rebels: ARCHBISHOP:  Against ill chances men are ever merry, But heaviness foreruns the good event. WESTMORELAND:  Therefore be merry, coz, since sudden sorrow Serves to say thus, “Some good thing comes tomorrow.”

(IV.ii. 83–84) As soon as Lancaster gives orders for the archbishop to dismiss the rebel army (while he secretly readies his troops), Lancaster utters the line that dooms the disbanded rebels: I trust, lords, we shall lie together tonight. (IV.ii. 97) Lancaster’s remark, that everyone “shall lie together,” is arguably one of the most important lines in this episode. “Lie” is a linguistic signifier here not only because of its equivocal nature – lying (resting, for the rebels) and lying (deceiving, on Lancaster’s part) – but also because it suggests that words mean one thing to Lancaster and another to the rebels. More importantly, Lancaster plays a game of dissimulation here. His exchanges with the rebel leaders, tinged with equal amounts of sincerity and dissimulation, are dangerous precisely because “[d]issimulation was the most radically subversive and most feared of all dialogue games… for it was often difficult, if not impossible, for those taking part in the dialogue to tell who was playing and who was not.”49 49 Jon R. Syder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (Berkeley; London: Berkeley University Press, 2012), 5–6.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  175 Elizabethan audiences familiar with Shakespeare’s plays may, like Mowbray, have been suspicious of Lancaster’s promise. Shakespeare’s kings and princes are as likely to deceive, lie, and break promises as merchants and paupers. As some critics have pointed out, creditworthiness in early modern England deteriorated at an unprecedented rate because of the transformation of the market economy. 50 Shakespeare’s references to bonds and promises, so prevalent in his plays, can also be interpreted as social commentaries about trust: “In terms of total numbers, suits over bonds and other legal instruments increased by over 500 per cent between 1560 and 1606… At the time Shakespeare penned The Merchant [of Venice] the country was awash with lawsuits, the vast majority of which centred on allegations of broken promises or hard dealings.”51 These problems were not confined to England. The early modern period in Europe has also been described as “the age of dissimulation.” Jon Synder’s Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe examines the widespread and often necessary practice of dissimulation in religious and political settings. In one instance, he describes a 1584 Spanish attack at Antwerp; given the opportunity to surrender, the Dutch wavered, even when they were assured that the Spanish commander, the Duke of Parma, was “void of all dissimulation.”52 The idea that history and historical experience should govern notions of trust and judgment is of interest. In the case of Antwerp, the strongest proof that the Spanish would honor their promise is a comparison of the Duke of Parma to his predecessor, the notorious Duke of Alba, who was reputed in Europe for his dissimulation, ruthlessness, and brutality in the Low Countries. In Shakespeare’s drama, historical experience has limitations; inclinations to truth or distrust are more often than not determined by the assumptions of the value of binding language. There is nothing ambiguous about Lancaster’s promise; in fact, his oath must be all the more binding because it is sworn on the honor of his father, the king, and on his royal blood – he gives his “princely word” to the rebels. The king’s honor rests

50 A historical overview that examines the cultural and sociological aspects of the phenomenon can be found in Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: the Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 51 Tim Stretton, “Conditional Promises and Legal Instruments in The Merchant of Venice,” in Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern English Literature, edited by Donald Beecher, et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 72. 52 Syder, Dissimulation, 5. Also see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), his “The Historical Significance of Lying and Dissimulation,” Social Research 63.3 (1996), 863–912, and Andrew Hadfield, “Lying in Early Modern Culture,” Textual Practice 28.3 (2014), 339–63.

176  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV on the prince’s oath. If Mowbray is suspicious of Lancaster’s intentions in the earlier scene, then a promise of such gravity must offer some reassurance. But even though oaths and promises are forms of “mortgaged honour,” in John Kerrigan’s words, their binding nature had limitations because “honour is not the same as honesty”: “You swear to something because it might be doubted, though this frequently heightens doubt. You make your honour, your status, the stake of your word, yet honour can be held in the breaking of a word if it brings honour by other means.”53 In drawing an example from the Nine Years War in Ireland, Kerrigan adds: “military treatises of the time, many of them dedicated to Essex, are clear that soldiers should keep their word, but that such undertakings could, ‘vpon iust cause’, be broken.”54 In the ceasefire documents, O’Neill calls “to mynde a colleccion of the particularities of my greffes, aswell againste the marshall, as also declaring the not performance of promyses, made unto me, in the late lord general Norreys his time.”55 Here again, time erodes words; promises that were made yesterday are not honored today. This pattern confirms that those who play the games of dissimulation, like Westmoreland and Lancaster, operate under the cloak of time; words and time are on their sides and under the pretext of preserving the king’s honor, they do not need to be held accountable for atrocities committed. According to Lancaster, his status as the king’s chief negotiator necessitates his dishonorable treatment of the rebels; his first duty is to protect the honor of the king. But in spite of his success in doing so, his actions beg the following questions: if the king’s honor was “mortgaged” in making the promise, wouldn’t the king’s honor be tainted when that promise is broken? Can the exchange of one type of honor for another achieve a higher (royal) honor? Since it is generally acceptable to use dissimulation and deception to protect the king’s honor, this implies that there are two types of honor system operating simultaneously in the negotiation process. In the early stages of the negotiation, Lancaster gives the rebel leaders the impression that he has conveyed their grievances to the king, that the king has accepted their conditions, and that the king is willing to make peace with them. All in all, the impression is that Lancaster has done what he promised to do and both parties appear to have honored their promises. But as soon as the rebel armies are disbanded, Westmoreland arrests the archbishop, Hastings, and Mowbray: MOWBRAY:  Is this proceeding just and honorable? WESTMORELAND. Is your assembly so?

53 John Kerrigan. “Oaths, Threats and Henry V,” The Review of English Studies 63.261 (2012), 554–55. 54 Ibid., 555. 55 Morgan, “Ceasefire,” 15.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  177 ARCHBISHOP. [To Prince John] Will you thus break LANCASTER. I pawned thee none. I promised you redress of these same grievances



your faith?

Whereof you did complain, which, by mine honor, I will perform with a most Christian care. (IV.ii. 110–15)

The two systems of honor that have been operating simultaneously become apparent in this exchange. Westmoreland’s answer to Mowbray’s question is of utmost importance here; it negates the ethical implications of the scene. Westmoreland’s rhetorical question – “Is your assembly [just and honorable]?” – essentially justifies the breaking of the promise: the rebels have broken their oath of allegiance to the king and thus his representatives are not obligated to deal with them in good faith. Nearly a decade before this scene was staged, a similar episode took place at the siege of Smerwick. Lord Grey’s slaughter of the rebels and civilians after promising them safe passage remained in popular memory.56 “Grey’s faith,” a term that denoted bad faith, was also coined after the incident; O’Neill also cited Grey’s brutality in the Pale (in the executions and attainders of Palesmen “upon the witness of a raskall horseboy”) in his “book of grevances.”57 What may be relevant in this instance is the way in which Grey attempted to fend off the charges levied against him (by his Irish and Anglo-Irish victims): he believed that he is not obligated to keep faith with rebels and that their war could not be considered a just war because they were not fighting under the banner of a king.58 The queen’s praise of Grey’s actions indicates that his explanation was entirely acceptable and that royal representatives must honor their duties to the queen even if they dishonor promises to others, especially since promises to rebels are, as Lancaster’s actions suggests, not promises in the first place. Westmoreland and Lancaster’s justifications cover all the grounds of honor even as they disregard it. Westmoreland frames definitions of honor and loyalty strictly around the king, and Lancaster’s outright denial of any promises made is a declaration of the king and the rebels’ standing in god’s eyes. Lancaster’s insistence that he did not break his faith (“I pawned thee none”) and that he has attended to the rebels’ grievances “with a most Christian care” underscores the duty of a good and faithful Christian. In doing so, he categorizes the rebels as “bad” Christians. As Westmoreland implies in an earlier scene, the

56 Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland, edited by Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (Oxford, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 103. 57 Morgan, “Ceasefire,” 21. 58 See Grey’s report to the queen in CSPI, Vol. 2: 1574–1585, 92–103.

178  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV rebels’ disobedience against the king, god’s “substitute,” is also an act of disobedience against god; this legitimazies his treachery: God, not we, hath safely fought today. Some guard these traitors to the block of death, Treason’s true bed and yielder up of breath. (IV.ii. 121–23) For Westmoreland, there is the honor system of the king and his loyal subjects, and for Lancaster, of god, and both conflate into the only honor system that is just and even divine. Any alternative systems of honor that fall outside of this framework or challenge its values threatens royal honor. In this case, the honor system of the unchristian, faithless rebels is deemed incompatible with the honor system of king and god. The ways in which the “bad” Christian rebels in 2 Henry IV are dealt with are not unlike the ways infidels are treated: promises to rebels, like promises to infidels, are not binding. Andrew Hadfield’s study of the culture of lying in the early modern period points to the acceptance of lying and breaking faith when they are committed against infidels. He notes a passage from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Part Two, where the Hungarian Sigismund reminds Baldwin that they swore “oaths and articles of peace” in Christ’s name and they should not attack the pagan Turks; but Baldwin disagrees: No whit,



my lord: for with such infidels, In whom no faith nor true religion rests, We are not bound to those accomplishments, The holy laws of Christendom enjoin: But as the faith which they profanely plight Is not by necessary policy, To be esteemed assurance for ourselves, So what we vow to them should not infringe Our liberty of arms and victory.59

Defending god’s honor is prioritized over any other alternative systems of honor but in both 2 Henry IV and Tamburlaine, Part Two, the defense of Christian honor and the rejection of subversive voices remain tensed. Marlowe’s play questions the undisputed righteousness of Christian values: “The Christian perfidy [in the play] misfires, and they [the Christian fighters] are overwhelmingly defeated by the Turks in battle in the next Act—a sign that God was really on the side of the Turks, that

59 Qtd. in Andrew Hadfield, “Literature and the Culture of Lying Before the Enlightenment,” Studia Neophilologica 85 (2013), 137.

Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV  179 he was eager to punish the Christians for breaking oaths, or that he is indifferent to human actions.”60 Like Marlowe’s Baldwin, Lancaster’s rhetorical justifications of bad faith in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV is meant to assert Christian justice and royal supremacy, but questions regarding the legitimacy of Henry IV’s kingship persist in the undercurrents of the Henriad. The rebels are suppressed “underneath the yoke of government,” there is news that Northumberland and Lord Bardolph are planning to revive the revolt (IV.iv. 10). The king’s incessant worries throughout 2 Henry IV, amplified by his deteriorating health, his anxieties about rebellion, and his anxieties about Prince Hal’s impending ascension to the throne all cast a long shadow on Westmoreland’s and Lancaster’s seeming confidence in their defense of what they consider to be just and honorable. On the English stage, Shakespeare’s Tudor myth struggles with some difficulty to silence Lancastrian treachery, though his source material presents a fuller view of the event. Holinshed’s Chronicles report the negotiation between Lancaster and the rebels with Thomas Walsingham’s account. The chronicler tells readers that “other[s] write somewhat otherwise of this matter”: Herevppon as well the Archbiſhop as the Erle Marſhall, submitted themselues vnto the king, and to his sonne the lorde Iohn that was there preſent, and returned not to their armie. Wherevpon their troupes scaled and fled their waies: but being pursued, manie were taken, many slaine, and many spoiled of that they had about them, & so permitted to go their waies […] The archbishop suffered death verie constantlie, insomuche as the common people tooke it, he dyed a martyr, affirming that certaine miracles were wrought as well in the field where he was executed, as also in the place were he was buried: and immediately vpon such bruits, both men and women began to worship his dead carcasse, whom they loued so much when he was aliue, till they were forbidden by the Kings freendes, and for feare gaue ouer to visit the place of his sepulture.61 This account departs from Walsingham’s description, which includes a mention of the exchange of peace tokens but says nothing about a “submission,” the slaughter of the disbanded rebels, and the people’s reaction to the archbishop of York’s death or his martyrdom. Lancaster and Westmoreland’s convictions in 2 Henry IV, however persuasive they may seem to those who believe in the righteousness of king and

60 Ibid., 138. 61 Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Ireland and Scotland (1587). Volume III, England (New York: AMS Press, 1965), 38.

180  Truth, Trust, and Truce in 2 Henry IV god, are not accepted by the historical “others” who seem fully capable of making personal and independent judgments of their king’s actions. Shakespeare’s omission of the slaughter and the people’s “disapproval” of Lancaster’s treatment of the rebels perpetuates the Tudor myth, but it is equally likely that his audiences did not need the additional and explicit descriptions of the event from the Chronicles to make their own judgments of Lancaster’s actions.62 Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, several similar instances of dissimulation and treachery practiced on her Irish subjects were reported. In the ceasefire documents, O’Neill reminds her of these incidents to strengthen his cause; he insists that Ireland “was being destroyed, unbeknownst to [her], by the rapacious activities of soldiers and captains and was in process of being divided up by officials, lawyers and court clerks.”63 Although his complaint was made in a very different political context and from a very different era, it is relevant to Westmoreland and Lancaster’s swift betrayal of the rebels. In Shakespeare’s play, Westmoreland and Lancaster’s actions appear to be solely motivated by their loyalty to the king, but where historical drama gives only one explanation, history provides another. Shortly after the Hotspur’s death at Shrewsbury, his post, the wardenship of the East March, was left vacant and was quickly filled by Westmoreland. A reposting took place soon after, and Westmoreland was put in charge of the West March; the wardenship of the East March was then given to none other than John of Lancaster. The North, a traditional Yorkist stronghold, where people “knew no prince but a Percy,” was being carved up and transformed into Lancastrian territory, though this transformation, one suspects, was probably carried out with the knowledge of the king.64

62 Annabel Patterson’s Reading Holinshed’s Chronicle (1994) has been immensely influential in changing the way we think about early modern historiography and how the most ambitious historiographical project of the early modern period accommodated subversive interpretations of history even though the Elizabethan authorities were highly sensitive to writings that were perceived to undermine the legitimacy of the queen and her government. More recent assessments related to this topic can be found in Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer, and Felicity Heal, eds., Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 63 Morgan, “Ceasefire,” 21, 8. For an overview of the colonization projects in early modern Ireland, especially the political implications of land grants, and agricultural and economical reforms, see Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland, 1583–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), and John Patrick Montaño, The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 64 Ellis, Ireland, 108; King, “‘They Have the Hertes,’” 146.

Epilogue

In 1987, Seamus Heaney immortalized one of the most striking images in early modern Irish history in his poem, “Terminus.” He re-imagines Hugh O’Neill’s famous encounter with Essex, at the River Lagan; both men, on their horses, met midway at a ford of the river to determine the fate of Ireland.1 In one of his final negotiations with English authorities in 1599, O’Neill showed up unexpectedly amidst English forces and requested to speak with the lord lieutenant. Essex agreed. During their conversation, O’Neill and his entourage remained on their horses in the river, with the water level up to the horses’ saddle-girths; Essex, on hard ground, spoke from the river bank. Brendan Kane attributes Essex’s estranged relationship with Elizabeth to this encounter. Apparently, Essex reported that O’Neill only agreed to parley with him because of “his affection for his father’s sake, as he would not draw his sword against him, but he would do that for him which he would not do for any other.”2 O’Neill’s friendship with Walter Devereux, the first earl of Essex, is less important than the implications that developed from the negotiation. 3 As Kane astutely notes, the meeting “displays not only O’Neill’s sense that as an Irish peer he was entitled to such negotiations, but also Essex’s belief that as a noble commander he was able to pick his parleys as he wished.”4 Essex was probably not aware until later that the negotiation was one that should not have been conducted. The event represented a “gentlemen’s agreement, related to state affairs, but one

1 Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1987), 5. Also see Andrew Murphy’s “Heaney and the Irish Poetic Tradition” (2009), esp. 141–43. 2 Brendan Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541– 1641 (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 114. 3 For a brief discussion of Walter and Robert Devereux’s roles in Ireland, see Wayne E. Lee’s Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500–1865 (2011), esp. his chapter on “The Earls of Essex, 1575 and 1599.” 4 Kane, The Politics and Culture, 114.

182  Epilogue in which the actual prestige of the monarch was cut out.”5 Yet, if the queen was displeased with Essex’s disregard for royal protocol—­ prohibiting Crown representatives from negotiating with the enemy as if they were equals—then her anger may have been misplaced considering the authority she had granted him when she appointed him lord lieutenant of Ireland. As the last years of the Nine Years War came to show, the struggle for authority between the queen and her representatives in Ireland changed little since Henry Sidney’s time. In the 1580s, Sidney had campaigned hard for the title of lord lieutenant, as opposed to lord deputy. The difference between the titles was not merely one that had to do with prestige, but with authority, and Sidney’s desire to be commissioned lord lieutenant was entirely in line with the complaints in his Memoir: he wished to have complete authority in governing Ireland. Traditionally, the highest appointment of the chief governor of Ireland was that of the king’s lieutenant. The terms that the king’s lieutenant negotiated with his monarch varied and they could be limited, or outright limitless. When Edmund Mortimer was made king’s lieutenant to Richard II, he was entitled to use “all the normal revenues of Ireland, as well as taxes, and [he was] not required to account to the English exchequer.”6 He was paid 20,000 marks (an increase of 14,000 marks from the office in 1316) and given “permission to expend the King’s revenue as he wished.”7 The king’s lieutenant also had the authority to appoint deputies and other important officers to this council. When Essex negotiated for the position of lor lieutenent, he asked to be made lieutenant and governor general of Ireland and persuaded Elizabeth to pardon his debts and those that his father incurred. The queen did not forgive all his debts; she “made up for it by the ample powers given to Essex in his instructions,” but even so, “ great blame [was] laid upon him for having exercised the authority given him.”8 The office of lord lieutenant promised immense wealth, but it was the authority that came with it that made the position a dangerous one. In Essex’s case, his grandeur and authority were potentially threatening to the queen’s honor. Christopher Marlowe has dramatized the implications

5 Ibid. 6 H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Administration of Ireland 1172–1377 (Dublin: Stationery Office for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1963), 13. 7 Herbert Wood, “The Office of Chief Governor of Ireland, 1172–1509,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 36 (1921–24), 207. 8 Walter Bourchier Devereux, ed., Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex, in the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, 1540–1646 (London: J. Murray, 1853), 11.

Epilogue  183 of the chief governor’s privileges in Edward II (1593) when the king tells Piers Gaveston: I’ll give thee more; for, but to honour thee, Is Edward pleas’d with kingly regiment. Fear’st thou thy person? thou shalt have a guard: Wantest thou gold? go to my treasury: Wouldst thou be lov’d and fear’d?: receive my seal, Save or condemn, and in our name command What so thy mind affects, or fancy likes. (1.162–68) Shortly after, Gaveston is made king’s lieutenant in Ireland. Mortimer the Younger then warns Mortimer the Elder of the danger Gavenston’s appointment: Know you not Gaveston hath store of gold, Which may in Ireland purchase him such friends As he will front the mightiest of us all? And whereas he shall live and be belov’d, ‘Tis hard for us to work his overthrow. (4.257–62) The threat that Edward’s nobles felt is not unlike the queen’s sentiments toward Essex’s meeting with O’Neill. The rebel’s affinity with his father, which he inherited, removed royal authority from the negotiations. The English government’s attitude toward Essex and the Irish crisis was also a reaction to popular sentiments that were spreading through England. The discontent of the people stemmed from fears that England could be fighting a losing battle in Ireland at the expense of English citizens. John Hooker’s providential interpretation of Irish history was echoed at the turn of the century. In his description of pre-1603 Ireland, John Davies commented that Ireland was called the “Land of Ire, because the Irascible power was predominant there,” which implied that it was virtually impossible to conquer the country.9 War and chaos, Davies claims, are “universal and perpetual” in Ireland: “For the plagues of Egypt, though they were grievous, were but of a short continuance. But the plagues of Ireland, lasted four hundred years together.”10

9 John Davies, A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued and Brought Under Obedience of the Crown of England Until the Beginning of His Majesty’s Happy Reign (1612), edited by James P. Myers Jr. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 153. 10 Ibid., 157–58.

184  Epilogue The prospect of an endless war and heightened public awareness of England’s losses in Ireland generated a climate of immense anxiety. The attempt to reverse these sentiments has called critics’ attention to Shakespeare’s depiction of Essex’s expedition to Ireland in the fifth chorus in Henry V: The mayor and all his brethren in best sort— Like to the senators of th’antique Rome, With the plebians swarming at their heels— Go forth and fetch their conqu’ring Caesar in; As, by a lower but by loving likelihood, Were now the general of our gracious Empress (As in good time he may) from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause Did they this Harry. (Chorus 5.25–35) But the celebration of medieval martial prowess that Shakespeare associates with Essex is undercut in the course of the play.11 By the time Essex was sent to Ireland in 1599, England had already spent too much money and lost many more lives in Ireland. It was no longer a question of whether the war would end or if England would win—she must win, Agincourt style, to legitimize her losses. Against the backdrop of the Irish war, Williams’s conversation with the disguised Henry V provides an eloquent interpretation of public responses to the war: But if the [King’s] cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, “We died at such a place” […] I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey, were against all proportion of subjection. (IV.i. 136–49)

11 Richard Dutton has argued that the empress’ general in the fifth chorus is in fact the Lord Deputy Mountjoy, Charles Blount, who was appointed in 1600 to take over Essex’s place in Ireland. This interpretation also changes the traditional dating of the play from mid to late 1599, since it was apparent by the summer of 1599 that Essex’s campaign was not doing well. See “‘Methinks the Truth Should Live from Age to Age’: The Dating and Contexts of Henry V” (2005).

Epilogue  185 Williams speaks his mind, but at the end of this conversation, his comments are entirely subverted by the king. Exasperated with the king’s counterarguments, Williams tells him that a common subject’s trust means nothing to a monarch: one “may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather” (IV.i. 204–6). The helplessness and exasperation that Williams expresses in Henry V echo anti-war sentiments in England. The English people, however, was more concerned with the financial burden of the war than they were with the ethical implications of the conflict. Barnabe Rich, a soldier-poet, noted that most people hate war “not so much for any special loue they haue for peace, as for fear of taxes, payments, & other charges hanging vpon warre.”12 The financial problems that the military faced in during the Irish war were unlike those of historical wars fought before her time, or for that matter, those that were conducted in the Low Countries and France. In the medieval era (when the peerage was obligated to participate in the king’s wars), martial men were keen to join the bands led by aristocratic commanders in hopes of returning to England with riches from loot and ransom. In the Elizabethan era, wars became less profitable for officers and soldiers because of changing practices in raising and supporting the army. Lawrence Stone has noted that the 1596 Cadiz expedition was really the only foreign conflict that brought home rich stores of loot and ransom. By contrast, “no ransoms could be expected from kerns and gallowglasses running wild in the bogs of Ireland —the English took to headhunting instead—no rich booty in the long defensive campaigns in Flanders or in scrambling about the wet and barren rocks of Brittany.”13 The lack of treasure and ransom from the Irish war pushed soldiers to resort to other means to obtain wealth. Of those who had the most capacity to appropriate funds in Ireland, the war administrators and higher officials had most to gain. Sir ­William Russell served as lord deputy in the early phase of the war, and within a brief period of his 3-year term (1594–97), he was reported to have returned to England “very fat… both in body and purse.”14 On both sides of the Irish Sea, Sir William Fitzwilliam’s notoriety for corruption was well known, and it was common knowledge that “[n]ever a man went from Ireland of his calling with more money and less love,” and Sir George Carew was later discovered to have amassed 150,000 during his 7-year term as treasurer of war. Lord Deputy Mountjoy did not suffer from charges of corruption probably because he was credited with bringing the war to an end; nonetheless, “he complained to Cecil that he 12 Barnabe Rich, Allarme to England Forshewing What Perilles Are Procured (1578). 13 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 457. 14 Chamberlain, John. Letters Written During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, edited by Sarah Williams (London: Camden Society; Old Series 79, 1861), 2.

186  Epilogue was likely to return from Ireland a beggar.”15 The extent of ­Fitzwilliam’s corruption is exposed in Thomas Lee’s treatises on Ireland, most particularly in A Brief Declaration of the Government of Ireland (1594) and The Discovery and Recovery of Ireland with the Author’s Apology (ca. 1598–1600). Lee’s accusations, however, must be taken with a grain of salt. He was known for double-dealing; he served as the queen’s representative (under the Lord Deputy’s command), and also negotiated on behalf of the Irish rebels, which included O’Neill. Marcus Gheeraerts II’s famous portrait of Lee, “Portrait of Captain Thomas Lee (1594),” has been of interest to artists and historians for its depiction of English– Irish identity. In the painting, Lee is dressed in the Irish soldier’s apparel, which was outlawed in Ireland. Vast amounts of funds from England were mismanaged at an upper level (among the lord deputies, treasurers, and their administrative officers). But the corruption also appeared more concentrated at these levels because investigations could focus on a single individual whereas at the lower rungs the mismanagement of funds was so widespread that efforts to contain corruption was next to impossible. Attempts to reform the mismanagement of funds coming from the royal exchequer had been a consistent problem for the English government as the queen’s administrators in England and Ireland were constantly pressed to account for where the money from the exchequer was spent. Responding to Elizabeth’s complaints, the government tried to monitor war expenditures more closely. Over the 1570s and 80s, Burghley became directly involved in drafting and demanding detailed reports of military expenses, but these efforts did little to discourage corruption as it became apparent when war began in the 1590s.16 Unlike lord deputies or treasurers of wars who had direct access to the funds transported from England, junior officers and captains made handsome profits through indirect channels. War profiteering over the course of the Nine Years War was widespread at all levels, even in the first phases of recruitment. Captains were responsible for finding able-bodied men from the appropriate shires, and like Falstaff, those who were able to bribe them to their satisfaction

15 John McGurk, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: The 1590s Crisis (Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester University Press; St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 19. A detailed discussion of Lee’s status can be found in Hiram Morgan’s “Tom Lee: the Posing Peacemaker” (1993). Also see J. P. Meyers’ “Early English Colonial Experiences in Ireland: Captain Thomas Lee and Sir John Davies” (1988), and Ian Leask’s “Sex on (Bare) Legs? Thomas Lee and ‘Irishness’” (2010). 16 An overview of these proposals can be found in Christopher Maginn’s William Cecil, Ireland, and the Tudor State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 119–20.

Epilogue  187 were discharged from service.17 Another common practice among the captains in Ireland was the arrangements they made with army clerks. The captains appropriated funds that were assigned to soldiers who were either not on the muster list or had deserted; their salaries continued to be sent from ­England because their names remained on official registers. In other cases, when checks were carried out to ascertain the number of men in a band, missing names would be given to men borrowed from other companies. In the early years of the war, the government indicated displeasure at the muster books which were “always very generallie and uncertainlie.” Discrepancies in the books were common. For instance, Sir Ralph Lane’s books showed that there were 8000 men on payroll, but it was discovered (by Lord Deputy Russell) that there were in fact only nearly 5000 men on the field.18 In 1598–99, Sir Geoffrey Fenton reported to Cecil “a strange difference between the numbers extant and the persons standing in the list, the one being above 14,000, and the other scarce 10,000; whereby Her Majesty is charged in her pay with 14,000 and upward, and hath to answer her service in the field not fully 10,000,” and that the queen appeared to be paying for 10,000 men but in reality, only “4,000 or 5,000, which stand in list, for whom Her Majesty ought not to be charged with any pay, considering they are not persons serviceable.”19 The relentless complaints directed to the Privy Council from Ireland demonstrated that efforts to clamp down on corruption among the captains were futile. Corrupt officers and administrators established an efficient and intricate network of minor officials and private army contractors that resisted interferences from those that threatened war profiteering.20 Muster masters gave accounts of the difficulties they faced when they were overly enthusiastic about controlling corruption and trimming war expenditures. There was no doubt that the position was not one for the faint of heart. Humphrey Covert, muster master at the Derry garrisons, reported: “The captains are most violently bent against my proceedings in the musters and daily myself and such as I use in this employment, are boldly threatened to have our throats cut.”21 His successor, Anthony Reynolds, tried to “outwit the captains in their frauds”; not only did his efforts fail, they backfired when the captains conspired to have him arrested for an illicit affair with the preacher’s maid. His bimonthly audits of the muster rolls came to an end immediately after this. 17 18 19 20

Ibid., 24. Ibid., 69. CSPI, Vol. 7: 1598–1599, 1120. For similar instances reported in the Low Countries, see C. G. Cruickshank’s ­Elizabeth’s Army (1966), esp. 136–40. 21 McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 196.

188  Epilogue When Maurice Kyffin (sent to assist Sir Ralph Lane to reform the muster practices) warned officers that they could be hanged for corruption, they simply laughed at him; soldiers were also reluctant to report their captains’ offences because they were afraid that they would hanged “as mutineers the moment the muster-master’s back was turned.”22 As John McGurk’s comparison of the levies drawn from Kent, Cheshire, and Lancashire shows, the burden of the Irish war stretched the tolerance of the English people to a breaking point at the turn of the century: “‘England,’ one historian commented, ‘generally grew weary of an old woman’s government’. By the beginning of the new century it was becoming increasingly difficult to raise levies as the government sensed and feared a hostile attitude.”23 In response to the mounting war debt and Essex’s botched campaign in Ireland, the instructions for his replacement, Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, signaled a notable shift in the government’s approach toward its new chief governor. Mountjoy was strictly cautioned that there must be no repetition of the Essex debacle and that he (Mountjoy) must make do with what dwindling resources that remained from Essex’s command; the government of England had “received dishonor and consumed infinite masses of treasure through the errors of those to whom we formerly committed it.”24 More interestingly, among the usual orders that could be found in similar documents, a number of clauses in Mountjoy’s commission referred directly to Essex’s abuse of royal authority. For instance, when negotiating with rebel forces, the lord deputy was advised to follow royal protocol: [t]o avoid bloodshed, we have given large authority to our governors to receive even those that have most notoriously conspired against us, but this has been so indiscreetly used that in showing mercy we have punished our best subjects and dishonored ourselves. 25 Mountjoy was also specifically ordered to exercise restraint in granting knighthoods: “The excess which other governors have used has made that degree so common as to be contemptible, and created jealousies here [in England].”26 By December of the same year, he received further orders having to do with army regulations, and was told that “No man

22 Ibid., 141. 23 Ibid., 99. 24 Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts Preserved at Lambeth, edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen, 6 vols. (London: Longman & Co., 1867–73), Vol. 3, 356. 25 Ibid., 359. 26 Ibid., 361.

Epilogue  189 shall use any traitorous word against her Majesty’s person or royal authority, upon pain of death.”27 There was little doubt of the embarrassment the government experienced after Essex’s return. In the Irish section of his Itinerary (1617), Fynes ­Moryson expressed optimism that Elizabeth finally chose the right man to lead her army in the last phase of the Nine Years War. 28 As secretary to Mountjoy, Moryson describes his employer as a martial man who was wholly unlike Essex. In Moryson’s narrative, Mountjoy’s martial prowess rivals that of Essex even though he is a man of few words; unlike Essex, Mountjoy does not surround himself with inferiors who ready to flatter and entertain him. Mountjoy’s campaigns are seen to achieve far more than Essex. Even so, the lord deputy repeatedly complained about the lack of support from the Pale. He was also immensely frustrated that the Palesmen disrupted his campaign with petty concerns and complaints to the queen while he was in the midst of a war. 29 His winter campaign, while difficult, was more successful. Two years after his appointment, Mountjoy turned the direction of the war around at the siege of Kinsale. Hugh O’Donnell’s premature death, O’Neill’s tactical errors, and his failure to garner more support from Spain and the Old English community culminated in a formal defeat of the Irish rebels on 30 March 1603. The events that unfolded have led modern historians to consider whether Mountjoy’s triumph was his to claim, or if it was a chance victory. John Silke has argued that the Irish defeat could be partly attributed to Spain’s relationship with ­England: “Spanish interest in Ireland…was in reality but a pawn on the

27 Ibid., 503. See the famous case of Lord Deputy John Perrot (1584–88), who was thrown into the tower for treason and corruption. When charges were brought against him, he was accused of uttering treasonous words against the queen; refusing to follow her orders, he purportedly exclaimed: Stick not so much upon Her Majesty’s letter, she may command what she will but we will do what we list; Ah, now wily woman, now she shall not curb me, she shall not rule me now; God’s wounds, this it is to serve a base bastard piss kitchen woman, if I had served any prince in Christendom I have not been so dealt withal. (Morgan, “The Fall of Sir John Perrot,” 121) Roger Turvey’s extensive study of the case can be found in Treason and Trial of Sir John Perrot (2005). Also see Julia M. Walker’s ed., Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana (1998). 28 Fynes Moryson, An History of Ireland, From the Year 1599 to 1603 (reprinted from An Itinerary: Containing His Ten Years Travel Through the Twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland, Netherland, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Turkey, ­ France, England, Scotland and Ireland [1617]), (Dublin: S. Powell for G. Ewing, 1735). 29 Frederick M. Jones’s Mountjoy, 1563–1606: The Last Elizabethan Deputy (Dublin; London: Clonmore & Reynolds; Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1958).

190  Epilogue chessboard. If the pawn must be sacrificed to gain the greater piece of England, then it would be so.”30 England’s reconquest of Ireland and the way in which it was finally achieved can be read as an analogue of Elizabeth’s relationship with her representatives in Ireland. The two major rebellions in 1569 and 1579, her quarrels with Crown representatives, and their struggle to consolidate royal authority in their own ways all contributed to the changing ideas of what Irish reform entailed and how it could be achieved in the Elizabethan period. These ideas were perpetually in flux and were fiercely contested between the queen and her colonial advisors. The conflict between England and Ireland was also a conflict between queen and subjects. The dialogues among English writers and their representations of Irish affairs reflect the way Ireland was perceived in Elizabeth’s eyes. Those in the English court often commented on how their queen was burdened with Irish affairs. Sir Robert Naunton describes the “Irish action” as “a malady and consumption of [Elizabeth’s] times; for it accompanied her to her end, and it was of so profuse and cast an expence, that it drew neare unto a distemperature of state, and of passion in herself, for towards her last, she grew somewhat hard to please.”31 To a large degree, the queen’s anxieties about the Irish crisis had as much to do with the practical aspects of the reconquest as they did with her perceptions of her subjects’ relationship with her. It was said that she expressed this to her court in the last months of her life: “I find that I sent wolves not shepherds to govern Ireland for they have left me nothing but ashes and carcasses to reign over.”32 Whether or not she still thought so at the time of her death is less certain; she died just six days shy of England’s longawaited reconquest of Ireland, when the Treaty of Mellfont was signed on 30 March 1603.

30 John J. Silke, Kinsale: The Spanish Intervention in Ireland at the End of the ­Elizabethan Wars (New York: Fordham University Press, 1970), 63. 31 Robert Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia: Memoirs of Elizabeth, Her Court and Favourites (1641) (London: C. Baldwin, 1824), 14. 32 McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 203.

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Index

Adrian III (Pope), 40 Alen, John 15, 40, 41 Alforde, John 31 Archipelagaic (Archipelago) 2, 3 Aristotle 132, 133; Nicomachean Ethics 131, 132 Armada (Spanish) 13, 115 Bale, John 1, 13, 28–32, 34, 35, 37–9, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50, 53–7, 59; King Johan 28–39, 42, 45, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60; The Vocacyon of Johan Bale 33 Bacon, Francis 67 Battle of Affane 96 Beacon, Richard 123 Becket, Thomas 29, 44, 59, 212 Bible (biblical) 30, 167 Bingham, Richard 23, 128, 129 Bishopric(s) 34, 41–5, 47, 53 Bishops’ Ban 154 Blount, Charles (eighth earl of Mounjoy) 4, 12, 108, 118, 143, 184, 185, 188, 189 Bodin, Jean 131 de Briouze, William 48, 49, 50, 51 Boleyn, Anne 28 Brown, Thomas 31 Browne, George 34, 142, 207 Bryskett, Lodowick 162, 163 de Bry, Theodor 21, 22 de Burgh, William 49 Butler (Ormond): Butler, Edmund 19, 96, 102, 117; Butler, Edward 115, 116; Butler, Piers (eighth earl of Ormond and first earl of Ossory) 9, 12, 71, 86; Butler, Thomas (tenth earl of Ormond) 16, 93, 96–101, 103, 104, 111, 118, 152, 160, 163

Cadiz 19, 20, 185 Cambro-Norman 63, 66, 68, 69 Camden, William 16, 17, 93, 105, 185 Campion, Edmund 9, 10, 83, 86, 90; A Historie of Ireland 9, 83, 90, 105 Carew, George 13 Carew, Peter 102, 185 Cecil, Robert 108, 138 Cecil, William (Lord Burghley) 12, 18, 23, 97, 185, 187 Cess 11, 17, 92 Chapuys, Eustace 40, 41 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor; Spain) 25, 27, 39, 40 Churchyard, Thomas 120, 121 Cicero 23, 131, 160 de Clare, Richard (Strongbow) 65, 68, 69 Coign and livery 11, 125 Colonization 2, 106, 180 Commons (House of), 27, 57, 86, 115; see also Lords, House of Conscience 124, 131, 132, 133, 149 Connacht 23, 49, 51, 53, 64, 98, 120, 128, 129 Cope, Alan see Harpsfield, Nicholas Cordale, Francis 154 de Courcy, John 49, 57 Court of Chancery 131, 132 Cox, Richard 93 Cranmer, Thomas 30, 31, 37 Creagh, Richard 86, 203 Cromwell, Thomas 8, 29–31, 33, 41, 42, 56, 58, 71 Cusack, Thomas 34, 108 Davies, John 85, 183; Discovery of the True Causes 85 Dermot, MacMurrough 63, 64, 65, 66 Derrick, John 116, 117, 118

216 Index Desmond see Fitzgerald Desmond rebellion: First Desmond rebellion 96, 100, 120; Second Desmond rebellion 106, 109, 121, 127 Devereux, Robert (second earl of Essex) 4, 11, 18–20, 138, 154, 176, 181–4, 188, 189 Devereux, Walter (first earl of Essex) 181, 182 Dudley, Robert (first earl of Leicester) 16, 17, 56, 97, 103, 118 Education 85–9, 152 Edward VI (England) 34, 72, 80, 89, 97 Elizabeth I (England) 13, 16–18, 21, 23, 29, 72, 73, 80, 87, 93–5, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 112, 113, 118, 119, 128, 129, 133, 135–42, 152, 153, 168, 170, 180, 181, 182, 186, 189, 190 Elyot, Thomas 139, 162 Equity 56, 129–33, 145–9 Fenton, Geoffrey 23, 109, 110, 140, 161, 169, 187 Feron, Robert 27 Fish, Simon 28, 29, 41 Fitzgerald (Desmond): Fitzgerald, Gerald (fifteenth earl of Desmond) 96–101; Fitzgerald, James (tenth earl of Desmond) 24, 26; Fitzgerald, James (de jure twelfth earl of Desmond) 26, 39; Fitzgerald John FitzJames (Sir John of Desmond, de factor twelfth earl of Desmond) 26, 27, 101 Fitzgerald (Kildare); Fitzgerald, Gerald (eighth earl of Kildare) 7, 71; Fitzgerald, Gerald (ninth earl of Kildare) 9, 25; Fitzgerald, Gerald (eleventh earl of Kildare) 16, 83; Fitzgerald, Thomas (“Silken Thomas”) 25, 39, 40, 41 Fitzgerald, Robert 65 Fitzgerald, Maurice 67, 68 Fitzmaurice, James 13, 26, 67, 96, 102 Foxe, John 28, 46; Actes and Monumentes 46 France (French) 13, 26–9, 34, 38, 39, 45, 50, 56, 59, 97, 155, 185, 189 Francis I (France), 26

Gardiner, Robert 160, 170 Galdelli, Humphrey 154 Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) 1, 7, 9, 14, 15, 16, 25, 40, 61–7, 69, 70, 71, 74–6, 78, 83, 84, 96; Expugnatio Hibernica v, 1, 15, 40, 61–70, 74; Topographia Expugnatio 1, 14, 61, 75, 78, 83 Germany (Germans) 88, 89, 189 Gerrard, William 79 Gilbert, Humphrey 23, 120, 121, 128 de Gray, John 44, 45 de Grey, Walter 44 Grey, Arthur (Baron Grey de Wilton) 18, 44, 106, 109, 121, 124, 127–9, 131, 142, 143, 146, 147, 148, 177 Hale, John 27, 28, 31 Hardyn, John 157, 158 Harpsfield, Nicholas (pseudonym Alan Cope) 88 Heaney, Seamus 4, 181 Henry II (England) 1, 29, 42, 44, 62, 63 Henry V (England) 155, 184 Henry VII (England) 7, 8, 12, 71, 158 Henry VIII (England) 7, 8, 9, 13, 26–31, 34, 52, 55–7, 60, 73, 80, 85, 87, 99, 140, 159 Holinshed’s Chronicles 14, 15, 61, 62, 73, 89, 105, 106, 107, 113, 118, 119, 165, 179 Hooker (alias Vowell), John 91, 93, 105–19, 126, 159, 183 Howard, Thomas (earl of Surrey, third Duke of Norfolk) 10, 12 Humanism (Humanist views/ practices) 86, 88, 139, 160, 167 Innocent III (Pope) 40, 53 Interdict 28, 44–9, 53, 54, 55, 56 Ireland: Anglo-Irish 7–11, 16, 27, 60, 67, 71–3, 81, 96, 97, 99, 102, 106, 152, 153, 158, 160, 177; Irish (and Anglo-Irish) aristocracy 13, 50 96, 159; Irish confederacy 160, 163; Lord Deputy 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 58, 71, 74, 76, 80–2, 90, 92–6, 98–101, 103–20, 128, 143, 146, 148, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189; Lord Lieutenant 10, 12, 18, 104, 181, 182; Martial law 21, 120, 127, 128, 129; New English 12, 14, 15,

Index  217 62, 72, 7–9, 84, 85, 87, 90, 102, 105, 128, 141; Old English 12, 14, 15, 17, 62, 67, 70–9, 81, 82, 84–6, 89, 90, 93, 105, 189; plantation 149, 151, 180; presidential council 98, 99, 159; rebellion (see Desmond rebellion); religious reformation 13, 140, 141, 142 Kildare see Fitzgerald King John 28–32, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 54, 56, 57; Prince John 62, 70, 155, 177 Kinsale 85, 189 de Lacy, Hugh 49, 51 de Lacy, Walter 48, 51, 57 Laios 81 Laudabiliter 40 Leland, John 30, 46, 203 Loftus, Adam 13, 18, 160 Lords (House of) 58 Low Countries 28, 118, 140, 175, 185 Malby, Nicholas 109, 110 Marcher(s), 48, 63, 66–71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 157, 159 Marlowe, Christopher 178, 179, 182, 205; Edward II, 183; Tamburlaine, Part Two 178 Mary Tudor 72, 80, 99 Mary Stuart 137, 138, 146 Mercy 21, 23, 58, 119–22, 126, 128, 133, 134, 136–40, 142, 145–50, 152, 153, 188 More, Thomas 28 Moryson, Fynes 118, 189 Mountjoy see Blount, Charles Netherlands 118 New World 17, 22, 105, 106 Northern Rebellion 128 Northumberland 157, 158, 166, 179 Ó Conchobair, Cathal Crobderg 51 O’Donnell, Hugh 152, 189 Ó Néill, Áed Méith 51, 52 O’Neill, Hugh 13, 19, 20, 85, 108, 152, 160–4, 168, 169, 170, 171, 176, 177, 180, 181, 183, 186, 189 O’Neill, Shane 16, 17, 85, 98, 100 O’Neill, Turlough Luineach 116, 117 O’Rourke, Tiernan 63, 64, 65 Oath of Supremacy 26

Ormond see Butler Ortelius, Abraham 61 Parliament 7, 24, 33, 56, 58, 59, 71, 81, 85, 110, 115, 116, 135 Paul III (Pope) 40, 41 Percy, Henry (Percies) 157, 158, 165, 166, 180 Perrot, John 17, 18, 100, 128 Petrarch 1, 61 Pius V (Pope) 141 Plato 131 Pocock, J. G. A. 2, 3, 5, 7 Proctors 57, 58, 59 Royal progress 107, 112–15 Radcliffe, Henry 81 Radcliffe, Thomas (third earl of Sussex) 11, 16, 17, 81, 82, 87, 89, 90, 91, 96, 97, 106–8, 128 Ralegh, Walter 21, 22, 105, 106, 138 Ralph of Coggeshall 32, 36, 37, 45 Rawson, J. 40, 41 Reformation articles 26, 27 Reynolds, Charles 39, 40 Rich, Barnabe 125, 185 Richard II (England) 165, 182 Roger of Wendover 45, 51 Rome (Roman) 13, 14, 26, 31, 34–6, 39–43, 50, 53, 56, 57, 59, 60, 141, 152, 184 Rumor 164, 165, 166, 172 Said, Edward 4, 121 Scotland (Scottish), 2, 3, 17, 26, 34, 37–41, 47, 48, 105, 113, 141, 157, 158, 165, 179, 189 Shakespeare, William 3, 4, 5, 19, 20, 21, 83, 115, 118, 128, 153–6, 164–6, 169, 172, 173, 175, 179, 180, 184; 1 Henry IV 164, 165; 2 Henry IV 152, 155, 156, 164, 165, 167, 169, 178, 179; Henry V 4, 5, 153, 155, 156, 184, 185; Merry Wives of Windsor 154; Richard II, 153, 155, 164, 169 Sidney, Henry 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 49, 81–3, 85, 86, 90–120, 127, 128, 143, 164, 182 Sidney, Philip 94 Simnel, Lambert 8 Skeffington, William 12, 58 Song of Dermot and The Earl, The 65, 66

218 Index Spain (Spanish) 13, 26, 34, 39–41, 56, 59, 97, 115, 127, 141, 152, 175, 189, 190 Speed, John 39 Spenser, Edmund 3, 4, 6, 7, 18, 114, 120–2, 123, 124, 127–38, 141–3, 145–51, 153, 177; A View of the Present State of Ireland 4, 121–3, 141, 148, 150, 151, 177; Faerie Queene 4, 121–4, 126, 127, 135, 138, 141, 143 St Leger, Anthony 80, 81, 90, 91, 99, 106, 158, 159 St Leger, Warham 98, 99, 100, 158 Stanihurst, Richard 14, 15, 16, 61, 62, 68, 73–93 Stanihurst, James 85

Totehill, Henry 31 Treason 18, 178, 189 Tyndale, William 28 Vergil, Polydore 1, 61 Wales (Welsh) 1, 2, 14, 18, 27, 37–41, 47, 48, 50, 61, 63–7, 78, 118, 157, 159 Walsingham, Frances 94 Walsingham, Francis 94, 97, 104, 109, 179 Walter, Hubert 45 Whitgift, John 13 William of Newburgh 49 Wolsey, Thomas 9, 10, 12, 41, 42 Yeats, Willliam Butler 4, 199