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Updated: June 12, 2025
It seems hardly credible that the 15,000 regular troops in the country at his coming should be mostly taken up with garrison duty, yet we cannot otherwise account for their disappearance from the field. He asked for 2,000 fresh troops, and while awaiting their arrival, sent a detachment of 600 men into Wicklow, who were repulsed with loss by Phelim, son of Feagh, the new Chief of the O'Byrnes.
In Wicklow, too, Sir Charles Coote, sent to suppress a disturbance amongst the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles, perpetrated atrocities the memory of which still survives in the region, and which, for cold-blooded, deliberate horror almost surpass those committed in the north.
The attainder of the late Earl of Desmond, and the living Viscount of Baltinglass, in arms with the O'Byrnes in Glenmalure, are the only measures of consequence to be found among the Irish statutes of the 27th and 28th of Elizabeth. But though not remarkable for its legislation, the Parliament of 1585 is conspicuously so for its composition.
The young Earl of Ormond was glad to compound for a portion of his estates; the Earl of Kildare was committed to prison for refusing a similar composition; the Earl of Cork was compelled to pay a heavy fine for his intrusion into lands originally granted to the Church; the O'Byrnes of Wicklow commuted for 15,000 pounds, and the London Companies, for their Derry estates, paid no less than 70,000 pounds: a forced contribution for which those frugal citizens never forgave the thorough-going Deputy.
The Earl of Ormond enjoyed similar rights in Kilkenny and Tipperary, as did the Desmond family in the South, and the De Burgos in Connaught. The O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Connors, McCarthys, O'Byrnes, and a host of minor chieftains, exercised ecclesiastical patronage in their respective territories.
The attainder of the late Earl of Desmond, and the living Viscount of Baltinglass, in arms with the O'Byrnes in Glenmalure, are the only measures of consequence to be found among the Irish statutes of the 27th and 28th of Elizabeth. But though not remarkable for its legislation, the Parliament of 1585 is conspicuously so for its composition.
The Desmond Geraldines lived remote, the Butlers, who came next to the Geraldines in importance, held Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary, but were cut off from Dublin by the wild mountains of Wicklow, and the wilder tribes of O'Tooles, and O'Byrnes who held them. They were only able to approach it through Kildare, and Kildare was the head-quarters of the Geraldines.
Even in the Pale, the presence of the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, O'Kavanaghs, and other septs, protested against and openly denied, from moor and glen and mountain fastness, that outrage on humanity, which bestows on the few every thing meant for all.
He had driven the O'Moores and their Allies out of Naas; had reinforced some garrisons in Kildare; he had broken up, though not without much loss, an entrenched camp of the O'Byrnes at Kilsalgen wood, on the borders of Dublin; at last the Justices felt secure enough, at the beginning of March, to allow him to march to the relief of Drogheda.
He next despatched reinforcements to the garrisons of Wicklow and Naas, menaced by the O'Moores and O'Byrnes, and to those of Drogheda, Dundalk, Newry, and Carrickfergus, the only northern strongholds remaining in possession of the Queen.
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