Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-55tpx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-14T22:48:36.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contemporary sources for Essex’s lieutenancy in Ireland, 1599

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

L.W. Henry
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On the intelligence side, the Irish wars in this period were little different from any of the large-scale enterprises overseas of the 1590s. The expedition to Ireland of 1599, as in the case of the Cadiz expedition of 1596 and its successor to the Islands in 1597, is preluded by a crop of ‘projects’ and ‘espialls’ in the state papers, and the preparations traceable there have the distinctive marks of a special service. Among the many eye-witness accounts of oversea operations in the 1590s, however, which take the form of private journals, as distinct from dispatches to the queen or the privy council, Sir John Harington’s journal of Essex’s command in Ireland stands by itself in importance, though its position appears to be challenged by the contemporaneous Treatice of Ireland, by John Dymmok, who like Harington served under Essex there. It was pointed out long ago that these two works, so far as they cover the same events, agree almost word for word with each other. The question of authenticity is not helped by the fact that Harington’s journal has shared the fate of all his letters and papers in that neither the original nor any contemporary copy of it are to be found. Internal evidence, however, shows that the borrower was Dymmok, perhaps acting with the indifference in these matters that was characteristic of the period, though more commonly found among the chroniclers. The wonder perhaps is that Dymmok has allowed himself to repeat a number of Harington’s misplaced verbal ‘conceits’, for the existing differences tell strongly in favour of Dymmok as witness. Where the differences are not due to copyists’ errors Dymmok has invariably improved the sense, and the matter-of-fact ending to his relation of the Munster journey is in noteworthy contrast to an unfair gloss in the corresponding passage in Harington.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 41 , March 1958 , pp. 8 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1958

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Unofficial ‘projects’ for Spain vary from the apparently well informed (‘… how to sack the city of Lisbon’: P.R.O., S.P. 12/223, no. 50; Cal. S.P. dom., 1581-90, p. 587) to the plausible (‘… the best mode to carry out the war against Spain’: P.R.O., S.P. 12/265, no. 100; Cal. S.P. dom., 1595-7, p. 562) and the fantastic (offers from English prisoners in Spain: Cal. S.P. dom., 1598-1601, p. 101). Among the unofficial projects for the Irish wars which are remarkably well informed and perceptive, if lavish in requirements, may be mentioned Capt. Thomas Reade’s ‘Opinion’ and Francis Jobson’s ‘Tractate’ (respectively, P.R.O., S.P. 63/202, pt 4, no. 19, first enclosure and no. 83: Cal. S.P. Ire., 1598-9, pp. 403, 445). The ‘espialls’ and ‘intelligences’ from Spain, likewise from Ireland, are too numerous to mention.

2 The phrase which is a recurrent one in the routine preparations for the expedition of 1597 in State Papers Domestic and the Acts of the privy council, appears to be first applied to the Irish service in connexion with Essex’s expedition in 1599. See especially the letter of Sir Thomas Knollys to the queen ‘March 1598/9 … your majesty’s especial service into Ireland’ (H.M.C. Salisbury MSS, ix, 124), and the postscript (omitted in the calendar) to the queen’s letter to Sir Edward Norreys, 15 Dec. 1598, ‘… such a public service for the saving of a kingdom’ (P.R.O., S.P. 12/269, no. 12).

3 Sir John Harington’s journal in Nugae antiquae (ed. T. Park, 2 vols, 1804), i. 268-93. John Dymmok’s A treatice of Ireland, transcribed by J. C. Halliwell from the original (B.M., Harl. MS 1291) and edited by R. Butler (Dublin, 1842). References in this article to Dymmok’s Treatice are to the pages of Butler’s edition.

4 Bagwell, Tudors, iii. 323 n. Bagwell’s note is somewhat misleading, since the verbal agreement between the journal and Dymmok’s Treatice is confined to pp. 30-47 (roughly a fifth) of the latter work. Even here the differences are not inconsiderable, as will appear.

5 See C. Hughes in N. & Q., 27 Feb. 1909.

6 An example is the tactical sense imparted by Dymmok to Harington’s account of the fighting in the southward march through Leinster in May (Treatice, pp. 32-3; Nugae antiquae i. 272-3). In the same passage, as elsewhere, Dymmok corrects a nonsensical error in Harington’s text which describes a well known hill as ‘the general latelie’ (in Dymmok, ‘Ratehill’ = place of assembly) ‘of the province of Leinster’.

Dymmok’s account of Essex’s journeys into Offaly and to the north, events not dealt with by Harington, show a perceptiveness and firmness that are absent from the latter’s journal.

7 Treatice, p. 40; Nugae antiquae, i. 292-3. Harington’s conclusion, which begins, ‘Thus is my discourse, guided by the footsteps of victorious and successful journeys, returned as it were (in a circular revolution) to Dublin, his first period, where the Ld Lft now remaineth …’, is characteristic of similar glancing depreciations in his journal.

8 ‘She swore … “we were all idle knaves and the lord deputy worse for wasting our time and his commandes in such ways as my journal doth make use of” …‘ (Nugae antiquae, i. 354). As has heen pointed out (N. E. McClure, The letters and epigrams of Sir John Harington (1930), p. 21), Harington gives three different accounts of his audience with the queen after his return to England (Nugae antiquae, i, 309-10, 341, 354-7). There seems no reason, however, to suppose that the single passage which describes, as above, the queen’s reaction to his journal is not accurate.

At least confidence in Essex’s future began to fluctuate after the journal came into the queen’s hands, which was evidently after Nov. 6, the date of Harington’s arrival at the court from Ireland (Cecil’s letter, bearing this date, to the lords justices of Ireland. S.P. 63/206, no. 12; Cal. S.P. Ire., 1599-1600, p. 235). In this letter Cecil writes that the queen ‘allowed’ the measures taken by Essex for the security of each of the provinces, and noted that the truce with Tyrone was ‘so seasonably made … as great good has grown … by it’. In the week following, within a space of three days in successive letters, a well-informed official at the court reported to Sir Robert Sydney: ‘… the voice is that he [Essex] shall go again to Ireland,’ ‘… my lord of Essex continues where he did [confined to the lord keeper’s house], and is like to do so’, and ‘… Her majesty seems resolved that Lord Essex shall never command in her wars’ (H.M.C., De L’Isle and Dudley MSS, ii. 414, 415).

9 Letter of Robert Markham to Sir John Harington ‘1598/9’ (otherwise undated), Nugae antiquae, i. 240 ff.

10 Sir James Perrott, The chronicle of Ireland, 1584-1608, edited in 1933 for the Irish Manuscripts Commission by Herbert Wood, who dates the manuscript in, or soon after, 1619. The author was an illegitimate son of Sir John Perrott and begins his chronicle with his father’s lord deputyship, 1584-8.

I am indebted to Professor R. Dudley Edwards for kindly drawing my attention to this work. Though I have not used it in my conclusions on Essex’s Irish service which were then completed and of which it is to some extent confirmatory, the necessity for its inclusion in the present sketch is evident.

11 Winwood, Memorials, i. 47.

12 Lord Grey to Lord Cobham, 21 July 1599, Cecil papers, 62, 71; H.M.C. Salisbury MSS, viii. 269. Through having been wrongly endorsed ‘1598’, this letter is misplaced in the calendar.

13 Perrott, Chronicle of Ireland, pp. 168-9.

14 Grey to Cobham, 21 July 1599, as cited above.

15 Perrott, Chronicle of Ireland, p. vii.

16 His support of the Munster journey is on much the same line as Dymmok’s.

17 The last part (1589-1603) of Camden’s Annales appears to have been completed in 1617 (D.N.B., iii. 734).

18 With the Grey episode may be linked another passage in which Perrott takes a collective view of friction amongst Essex’s voluntaries: ‘…. the principall places he had to bestow were not sufficient to satisfy the principall persons who followed hym with great charge (for the most part on their own purses) so the multitude of them made many more burdensome to hym …. But great commanders in the warres generally followed and beloved must runne this hazard or else lose followers of worth ….’ (Chronicle of Ireland, p. 161). An excessive creation of knights was obviously one solution, if a bad one.

19 Through the marriage in 1583 of Essex’s sister, Dorothy, to Thomas Perrott, Sir John’s son and heir (W. B. Devereux, Lives of the Devereux …., 157).

20 Bagwell, Tudors, iii. 157.

21 Perrott, Chronicle of Ireland, p. 172.

22 A contemporary copy of two portions of Essex’s journal 9-18 May and 28 Aug.-8 Sept. is in P.R.O. (S.P. 63/205, nos 63 and 164; Cal. S.P. Ire., 1599-1600, pp. 37-40, 144-7).

An important part, 22 May–1 July (also a contemporary copy), is in Lambeth Palace Library (MS 621, pp. 126-40; Cal. Carew MSS, 1589-1600, pp. 301-12). The remaining portion is the only part of Essex’s journal in holograph (B.M., Titus B xii, ff. 366-7); it deals, as does his accompanying letter to the queen, with his journey into Offaly, 21 July–3 Aug., and has not been printed.

23 Bagwell for example confines his citations from the journal to the last ten days of June, without, however, allowing it any expository value.

24 The fear of letters being intercepted or lost in transmission is one which recurs in State Papers Ireland (cf. Cal. S.P. Ire., 1599-1600, pp. 179, 235). Peter Lombard states that a letter written by Essex at Cork was ‘intercepted by the catholics’ (extracts from De Hibernia insula commentarius, edited and translated by M. J. Byrne under the title The Irish war of defence, 1589-1600, (1930), p. 75). This may have been the long letter which Essex dispatched to the queen from Waterford, 25 June, which was unacknowledged and apparently did not reach its destination. We owe our knowledge of the letter to the printed text of it in Fynes Moryson An itinerary (Glasgow edition), ii. 238-42: evidently the manuscript copy he used has been lost or destroyed.

25 Report of the trial of Essex for his Irish service at York House, 5 June 1600, in Devereux papers at Longleat (ii, f. 318). His failure to defend his Munster proceedings on this occasion may have been due, however, to the lord keeper’s intervention, the context suggests, after Essex had rebutted vigorously the charge that he had neglected the attack on Ulster.

There are two other accounts of the proceedings at York House: the incomplete report in B.M., Harl. MS 6854, ff. 177-85 (printed in J. A. Spedding The letters and the life of Francis Bacon (2 vols, 1890), ii. 175-88); and the more extensive account from a different but unknown manuscript source printed in Fynes Moryson (ed. cit., 11. 311-24). Of the three, the account at Longleat, which like the other two is anonymous and apparently contemporary, is far the fullest and most satisfactory; it has never been printed.

I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the marquess of Bath for his kindness in granting me access to these papers, and to his librarian, Miss Dorothy Coates.

26 J. R. Dasent gives reasons for thinking that the missing volume which covers the period 21 Apr. 1599 to 23 Jan. 1599/1600 was in all probability not removed from the collection until after 1610 (Acts of the privy council, 1598-9, editorial preface, p. vii).

27 Chamberlain’s extant letters to Carleton, which date from May 1598, were written with some regularity during the last five years of the reign, the longest hiatus being between 15 Mar. and 28 June 1599. Although N. E. McClure’s edition (2 vols, Philadelphia, 1939), of the letters, which extend to shortly beyond the end of the following reign, can claim to be definitive, Letters written by John Chamberlain in the reign of Queen Elizabeth (ed. Sarah Williams, Camden Soc, 1861) remains a standard work.

28 The considerably more weighty and frequent letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sydney have long been known in Arthur Collins’s edition of the Sydney Papers (2 vols, 1746) and in the report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission on these papers, of which the first volume appeared in 1925. For permission to make use of the originals of Whyte’s letters, I am indebted to the courtesy of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley, V.C., to whom and to the secretary of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, the late R. L. Atkinson, I wish to make grateful acknowledgement. Except in the case of material omissions from the manuscript in the printed text of the commission’s report, my references in this article are to the latter.

29 The original Latin of the work which Moryson variously describes as his ‘Irish journal’, ‘History of Ireland’, and ‘History of the earl of Tyrone’s rebellion’ is in B.M., Add. MS 36706. Moryson’s subsequent translation of this work into English was first printed as pt ii of his An itinerary (3 parts, 1617). It was reprinted as A history of Ireland for the years 1598-1603 (2 vols, Dublin, 1735) and was last printed in vols 2 and 3 of the re-issue of the 1617 edition of An itinerary by MacLehose (4 vols, Glasgow, 1907-8).

30 Moryson’s original Latin, B.M., Add MS 36706, f. 58v; An itinerary (Glasgow edition), ii. 189. This occurs in a letter from Mountjoy to Cecil (not now to be found) which is given by Moryson in paraphrase and which from internal evidence was written from Ireland in the early summer of 1600. In the original Latin the passage is more explicit and forthright than in Moryson’s subsequent English translation. Mountjoy was one of the first of Essex’s contemporaries who refused to judge him by any other criterion than that of time. Another was the anonymous privy councillor who is represented as ‘justifying Essex’s actions both in warre and in the peace intended and showing that his return was very necessary’ (Rowland Whyte’s letter to Sir Robert Sydney, 13 Nov. 1599, De L’Isle and Dudley papers, C 42. The passage quoted is omitted in H.M.C., De L’Isle and Dudley MSS, ii. 415. May the councillor whose code-number was undeciphered by the editors of these papers have been Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, whose intercession with the queen was besought later by Essex’s wife?).

31 Lughaidh O’Clery, Life of Hugh Roe O’Donnell, ed. P. Walsh, pt 1, p. 215.

32 Irish war of defence, p. 71.

33 A.F.M., v. 2121.

34 B.M., Add. MS 36706, f. 37v.

35 An itinerary, ii. 243.