freebooters and pirates. After four days' siege (22–6 July) the inhabitants surrendered and were ruthlessly slaughtered; a raid was made on the old women and children who had taken refuge in the caves of the island, and all were put to the sword (cf. Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. v. 89–92; Hill, Macdonnells of Antrim (1873), pp. 183–7; M'Skimin, Carrickfergus (Belfast, 1832), pp. 31–2). A useless fort was erected on the island. Mr. J. S. Brewer in letters to the ‘Athenæum,’ 1870 (pt. i. pp. 261, 326), questioned the accuracy of Mr. Froude's description of this massacre of Rathlin. Mr. Froude states that Sorley Boy witnessed the murder of his children from the mainland, and that Essex and the queen regarded the success of the operation with special gratification. The former statement has been practically proved to be possibly true (ib. p. 516), and extant despatches leave little doubt that Mr. Froude is right on the second point. Although (as Mr. Brewer insists) the victims were Scots and not Irish, their sufferings were long remembered as one of Ireland's grievances against England. This massacre was Essex's final operation. When Sir Henry Sidney, the new lord-deputy, visited Clandeboye and other parts of Ulster in the following November, he found it ‘utterly disinhabited’—such was the final result of Essex's scheme of an Ulster plantation.
Early in November Essex arrived at his house at Lamphey (Llanffydd), Pembrokeshire. The passage from Dublin was stormy, and sea-sickness aggravated his anxieties. In December he was at Durham House, London, and on the 29th of the month petitioned the privy council to take his misfortunes into consideration, and to determine his future position in Ireland. Some compensation was, he argued, due to him for the dissipation of his fortune in his defeated enterprise; he suggested a confirmation of the grant of the estate of Farney in Monaghan with Island Magee, and that the government should use its influence in mollifying his numerous creditors. The negotiations dragged. Certain offers were made which Essex rejected. Burghley was irritated by the refusal, and complained that it was needful ‘to humiliate the style’ of the letter in which Essex repudiated the proposed arrangement before showing it to the queen. At length, on 9 May 1576, the queen signed a warrant reappointing Essex ‘earl marshal of Ireland,’ and confirmed the grant of the Irish territory, which embraced all the barony of Donymayne—a fifth part of county Monaghan. After selling lands in Staffordshire, Cornwall, Essex, Wiltshire, and Yorkshire in order to defray some of his debts, which amounted in all to 35,473l., Essex left Chartley in the middle of July for Holyhead, and was at Dublin on the 23rd. Sir Henry Sidney was absent, but Essex was warmly welcomed by the chancellor, Gerrard, and the Archbishop of Dublin. On 8 Aug. he was entertained by the Earl of Ormonde [see Butler, Thomas, tenth earl], and two days later met Sidney twenty-eight miles from Dublin. Soon afterwards Essex visited his land at Farney, and was publicly invested by Sidney in the office of earl marshal. Early in September Essex was seized with violent dysentery. He bore intense suffering with marvellous fortitude; on 20 Sept. he wrote to the queen that he was on his deathbed, and begged her to favour his eldest son; and on the next day sent a pathetic note to the same effect to Lord Burghley. He died calmly on 22 Sept. 1576, aged 35, and was buried at Carmarthen on 26 Nov. By his will he left money to be expended on the fortification of the English Pale, at the will of the lord-deputy. A funeral sermon by Richard Davies, bishop of St. David's, was published (Lond. 1577). An ‘epitaph’ was entered in the Stationers' Company's register in 1575. This may be identical with ‘The Death of Devoreux’ printed by J. P. Collier, from a manuscript in his possession, in his ‘Extracts from the Stationers' Company's Registers,’ ii. 35–7 (Shakespeare Soc.). Thomas Churchyard published an elegy in his ‘Generall Rehearsall of Warres,’ 1579, which may possibly have been issued separately at the time of the earl's death.
A report that Essex had been poisoned caused Sir Henry Sidney to order an investigation immediately after the earl's death. The rumour proved groundless; the post-mortem examination showed no trace of poison. Sidney's report, addressed to Walsingham, describes minutely Essex's last days, and Essex's secretary, Edward Waterhouse, also wrote a pathetic account, printed in Camden's ‘Annals’ (ed. Hearne, 1717). A manuscript copy of the latter, erroneously said to be in the handwriting of Thomas Churchyard the poet, once belonged to William Cole, the Cambridge antiquary; Cole's copy is now in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 5845, ff. 337–49). In spite of this convincing testimony, Father Parsons, in ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ (1584), insisted that Leicester was responsible for Essex's death, and that the murder was prompted by Leicester's adulterous connection with Essex's wife. The same story is repeated in a ballad entitled ‘Leicester's Ghost,’ not published till 1641, although obviously written many years earlier. We know that Lady Essex did not accompany her husband to Ireland; that in 1575 she was at Kenilworth when
