606 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [en. 62. had never failed. The present Earl had stood with his countrymen against confiscation and appropriation. His .share in the massacre of the Greraldines was partly re- cognized as legitimate, the Butlers being their hereditary foes, partly attributed to the English Viceroy at Dublin, whose officer Ormond was. Who then could be found fitter than he to heal the wounds of the unhappy people ? There had been enough and too much of slaughter ; the superior strength of England was written in characters too conspicuous to be mistaken. Kildare, Delvin, per- haps Desmond, might now be -pardoned safely, and the long waited for Irish millennium begin. So wished and so hoped Elizabeth ; but from every English officer serving in the country, every English settler, every bishop of the Anglo-Irish Church, there rose one chorus of remonstrance and indignation. To them it appeared as a proposal now would appear in Calcutta to make the Nizam Viceroy of India. ' If the Earl of Ormond shall have the government of Ireland/ wrote Sir Henry Wallop in cipher to Wal- singham, ' there will be no dwelling here for any Eng- lishman, nor Ireland long be quiet. Ormond has written that so long as the Lord Justice is in Dublin, 1 he will never come thither. No harm will grow by it if he never do. Ormond is too great for Ireland already.' 2 The objection prevailed so far, that Ormond was not ap- pointed Viceroy, but he was reconfirmed in the military government of Munster. Fresh troops were sent over ' Archbishop Loftus was now Lord Justice in the absence of a Viceroy. 2 MSS. Ireland, July, 1582.
