Fynes Moryson had full opportunity to observe and record the effect of all this terrible news, which first reached his master by letter on February 22nd, 1601. One longs vainly for more details, but Mountjoy was caution itself. We are just told that the intelligence "much dismayed him and his nearest friends, and wrought strange alteration in him: for, whereas before he stood upon terms of honour with the Secretary (Cecil), now he fell flat to the ground, and insinuated himself into inward love, and to an absolute dependency with the Secretary, so as for a time he estranged himself from two of his nearest friends for the open declaration they had made of dependency on the Earl of Essex; yet rather covering than extinguishing his good affection towards them." 1

Next day the deputy took his precautions, possibly with a view to flight into France, of which his secretary was fully aware. The day after the arrival of the packet he removed his private papers from the secretary's care, and the latter knew that after that day he never had his master's full friendship and confidence. Wherefore the scribe had reason for the written statement :

"In truth his Lordship had good cause to be wary in his words and actions, since, by some confessions in England, himself was tainted with privity to the Earl's practices; so that, howsoever he continued still to importune leave to come over, yet no doubt he meant nothing less but rather, if he had been sent for, was purposed, with his said friends, to sail into France, they having privately fitted themselves with money and necessaries thereunto."

Nothing but a miracle saved Mountjoy. The Queen presently wrote, assuring him of her confidence, and

1 Fynes Moryson's Itinerary.

kept him at his post. All evidence against him was deliberately suppressed. She could not afford to lose so useful a servant ere his task was accomplished.

One longs to have witnessed the tremendous revulsion of feeling through which Penelope's lover passed, when, in place of letters of arraignment, documents to remove him from his command and order his instant attendance in London before the Star Chamber, he opened a missive from his sovereign couched in the most adroit and affectionate language. The excuse for this letter is very subtle. She writes because, first, she has to inform him of the death of Essex, his friend, and secondly, because she trusts her soldier and feels that she can unbosom herself and tell him her sorrow. She declares that, in regard of his proved fidelity and love, it was an alleviation of her grief that she could pour it out to him. There is not a word of suspicion against him, or of accusation. She only implores him to be very watchful lest disloyalty should enter into his army, and bids him have a special eye to all those who owed their advancement to the Earl of Essex. With superb aplomb she adds the priceless assertion that, while she was aware of the power of the late Earl, she was ready to pardon all those, "who, by Essex's popular fashion. and outward profession of sincerity, had been seduced and violently led by him."

Mountjoy's piteous appeal for recall she treated with equal diplomacy. "She wished he would conceal this his desire until those rumours which the rebels spread of a Spanish invasion should be dissipated." So did she trump up excuses in order that she might get the utmost out of her men, and sweetened this dose by a promise to recall Mountjoy before the following winter, and to provide him with a Court post.

Essex died on the block just over a fortnight after his surrender, and with him Sir Charles Danvers and Sir Christopher Blount. Southampton was reprieved and banished.

Where Penelope hid herself during the months which intervened between these executions and the return of her lover it is impossible to say. Lord Rich could not have been much consolation. It must be added, from his point of view, that these latter incidents in the history of his wife's family were not likely to excite in him a desire to seek their society. He seems to have sat down and thought out the future coolly. He saw that no advantages could now accrue to him from that quarter. There was no member of Penelope's circle left who could be useful to him, as Essex had been. He had nothing to gain by blinking at his wife's repeated desertions. He was not an old man, and there were plenty of good matches in the world left for him. He formally abandoned Penelope, according to Mountjoy's subsequent statement. But his plans for divorce were not yet ripe. We leave her with the thricewidowed Lettice to their heavy sorrow, and the Queen to the belated remorse which, in the end, killed her.

AND

CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW REGIME

ND Penelope-now the true pattern of that idealised lady of Homer-waited. No more weaving of webs for her, no more dalliance with riddles in letters, or love buried beneath sonnets. For companions she had her children by Mountjoy, her grief-stricken mother, and her sister-in-law. Mountjoy naturally did not summon his beloved to Ireland, nor could she have gone to him, even had she been free to marry him. His whole attention was engrossed by his work. It was a task big enough to daunt a much more experienced soldier. Remember, also, that it was his first big "command." He had absolute say in the matter. He needed it. To have to undertake such a business so bungled and mishandled and then to be handicapped by rivals in authority would have annulled the whole of England's final effort to produce order over there. Except within. the immediate "lines," the fortified places, or the actual spots covered by camps or invested towns, there was scarcely an inch of ground that must not be reconquered. The people were half savage, wholly unsophisticated, except in regard to theft and piracy and bloodshed. Here and there travellers of the day give us glimpses of their dress and mien. When not in revolt they were a simple people, rejoicing in their olden heritage of a handto-mouth existence, and mostly hospitable. One explorer -a Bohemian baron-gives an astonishing picture of

his arrival some years previous at an Irish cabin, at which he applied for rest and a night's shelter. Fifteen women of various ages inhabited it with their relations. The fifteen appeared at the door amazingly unattired. Their legs were bare, their only garment a cloak and hood combined. Some of these were such "nymphs" that he was quite dazzled by their beauty, and had to be assisted into the house! The whole company slept in a huge circle-toes to the fire. The inmates of the house, before they sought the land of dreams, dipped their cloaks in water and wrapped the folds closely about the head and shoulders. The thing reads like an anticipation of the Kneipp Cure in a country where rheumatism was to be had without the asking-as Essex and Mountjoy knew to their cost.

But all the Irishwomen were not so childlike and simple. Co-existent with these naïve nymphs of the wayside cabin were such persons as Grainore O'Mailey, the amazon who so amazed and amused Philip Sidney and his father. She was the wife of Sir Richard David Bourke, surnamed "of the Iron," because he was so continually at war with his countrymen that he was always in harness. Grainore, Sir Henry Sidney wrote, was "the most notorious woman in all the coast of Ireland." He tells of her introduction to him and how she presented herself among the number of those Irish leaders and landowners who thought it wise to throw in their lot with the Queen:

"There came also to me a most famous feminine seacaptain, called Grainore O'Mailey, and offered her services unto me, wheresoever I would command her, with three galleys and two hundred fighting men, either

1 At the same time one must not believe implicitly such traveller's tales !