tracted legal proceedings. She was widely-known as a poet and novelist. (3) Jane, married the Duke of Somerset. 16 196† 254 307
Sidney, Sir Henry, Lord-Deputy of Ireland, was born early in the 16th century. He was knighted and sent Ambassador to France by Edward VI., and was Lord-Justice of Ireland in 1557 and 1558. Early in Elizabeth's reign he again filled the latter post for a few months, and was afterwards Lord-President of Wales, and was sent upon a confidential mission to France. His Irish career will be found narrated at length in Froude's England. It was with great reluctance he consented to go over as Deputy in 1565.—"If the Queen would but grant him leave to serve her in England, or in any place in the world else, saving Ireland, or to live in private, it should be more joyous to him than to enjoy all the rest and to go thither." He stipulated that he should have a military chest of at least £10,000, and 200 horse and 500 foot, in addition to those already in Dublin. He would not go as others had gone to "twine ropes of sand and sea-slime to bind the Irish rebels with." "To go to work by force," he said, "will be chargeable, it is true; but if you will give the people justice and minister law among them, and exercise the sword of the sovereign and put away the sword of the subject—omnia hoec adjicientur vobis—you shall drive the now man of war to be an husbandman, and he that now liveth like a lord to live like a servant; and the money now spent in buying armour and horses, and waging of war should be bestowed in building of towns and houses. By ending these incessant wars ere they be aware, you shall bereave them both of force and beggary, and make them weak and wealthy. Then you can convert the military service due from the lords, into money; then you can take up the fisheries now left to the French and the Spaniards; then you can open and work your mines, and the people will be able to grant you subsidies." Leaving London in December, he was detained six weeks at Holyhead by contrary winds, and did not reach Dublin until the middle of January 1565-'6. He found the Pale, as he said, "overwhelmed with vagabonds;" the English soldiers "worse than the people, so insolent as to be intolerable; so rooted in idleness as there was no hope by correction to amend them." "Not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend £20." In Munster, as the fruit of the Desmond wars, "a man might ride twenty or thirty miles and find no houses standing." Connaught was tolerably quiet." In Ulster there tyrannizeth the prince of pride; Lucifer was never more puffed up with pride and ambition than that O'Neill is; he is at present the only strong and rich man in Ireland, and he is the dangeroustest man, and most like to bring the whole estate of this land to subversion and subjugation, either to him or to some foreign prince, that ever was in Ireland." He invited O'Neill to Dublin; but Shane, subscribing himself Sidney's "loving gossip to command," reminded him that Sussex had twice attempted his assassination, and that, however desirous he might be to visit the Lord-Deputy, his "timorous and mistrustful people" would not trust him any more in English hands. Sidney made immediate preparations for an expedition again Shane, who appealed to France for aid, and commenced the campaign by invading Tirconnell. Sidney had difficulty in impressing the gravity of the occasion upon Elizabeth, who ultimately consented to send 1,000 men under command of Colonel Randolfe. He took the field with his own forces in September 1566, marching into Shane's country, burning and destroying in every direction. In his own words, he "found by experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most hurt." Early in October he joined Randolfe, who had landed in Lough Foyle. They erected a fort where the city of Derry now stands, agreeing that it was the best spot in all the north to build a fort to curb O'Neill. Sidney next pushed on to Donegal, leaving Randolfe in command, reduced one of Shane's strongholds, and put O'Donnell into possession of it. On 19th October he was at Ballyshannon; on the 22nd at Sligo; on the 24th he passed over the bogs and mountains into Roscommon, and then, "leaving behind them as fruitful a country as was in England or Ireland, all utterly waste," the army forded the Shannon at Athlone on the 26th, and so back to the Pale. Sidney declared that now "her Majesty's honour was re-established amongst the Irishry, and grown to no small veneration; "while one of his admirers wrote to Cecil that the expedition was "comparable only to Alexander's journey into Bactria." Mr. Froude adds that, "the weakest, maddest, and wildest Celts were made aware that when the English were once roused to effort they could crush them as the lion crushes the jackal." Randolfe fell soon afterwards in an engagement with Shane's kerns. By the middle of March the garrison at Derry was reduced by want and disease from 1,100 to 300 men; and in April the stronghold was burnt and blown up by an accidental fire in which thirty men perished. The re-
