Catalogue description The EARL OF ESSEX to the PRIVY COUNCIL.

This record is held by Lambeth Palace Library

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Title: The EARL OF ESSEX to the PRIVY COUNCIL.
Description:

"In my last, sent by Greene from Wyclowe, I gave an account of the end of my journey through Mounster and Lynister; since which time till I came to Dublin the care of the troops ... and my daily marches did take up all my time. To Dublin I brought an indisposed and distempered body, yet forced myself to spend the next morning after my coming in Council, where I both gave and demanded an account of all that had passed during our separation, and conferred of our necessary provisions against my going into the North .....

 

"Upon our breaking up of Council, I delivered myself to the physicians, who had charge of me for three days, though all that while I received and answered all letters from several parts of this kingdom, and did my best to give contentment to private suitors.

 

"On Monday last I called a martial court upon the captains and officers who were under Sir H. Harrington, when our troops, having advantage of number and no disadvantage of ground, were put in rout, and many cut in pieces, without striking a blow. In this court Peirce Walshe, lieutenant to Captain Adam Loftus, for giving the first example of cowardice and dismaying to the troops, was condemned to die, and afterwards accordingly executed. The other captains and officers, though they forsook not their places assigned them, but were forsaken by their soldiers, yet, because in such an extremity and distaste they did not something very extraordinary, both by their example to encourage the soldier and to acquit themselves, were all cashiered, and are still kept in prison. The soldiers, being before condemned all to die, were by me most of them pardoned, and for example's sake every tenth man only executed. Sir H. Harrington, because he is a privy councillor in this kingdom, I forbear to bring to trial till I know her Majesty's pleasure.

 

"Since my tedious and painful sitting on Monday, I have not been free any one hour from alarms, both from the West and from the North, Tirone lying with one half of his forces by Dondalke, and his brother Cormack, McGuyre, O'Rourke, and McMahon with the other half upon the border of Westmeath; so that every hour I send out messengers, troops, and directions, and yet am no whole hour free from indisposition. And albeit the poor men that marched with me eight weeks together be very weary and unfit for a new journey, and besides the horsemen so divided that I cannot draw 300 to an end; yet, as fast as I can call these troops together, I will go look on yonder proud rebel. And if I find him on hard ground and in an open country, though I should find him in horse and foot three for one, yet will I, by God's grace, dislodge him, or put the Council here to the trouble of choosing a Lord Justice.

 

"But to leave this, and to come to that which I never looked should have come to me--I mean your Lordships' letter touching the displacing of the Earl of Southampton. Your Lordships say that her Majesty thinketh it strange, and taketh it offensible, that I appointed the Earl of Southampton general of the horse, seeing her Majesty not only denied it when I moved it, but gave an express prohibition to any such choice. Surely, my Lords, it shall be far from me to contest with your Lordships, much less with her Majesty, howbeit God and my own soul are my witnesses that I had not in this nomination any disobedient or irreverent thought. That I ever moved her Majesty for the placing of any officer, my commission freely enabling me to make free choice of all officers and commanders of the army, I remember not. That her Majesty in the privy chamber at Richmond, I only being with her, showed a dislike of his having any office, I do confess. But my answer was that, if her Majesty would revoke my commission, I would cast both myself and it at her Majesty's feet; but if it pleased her Majesty that I should execute it, I must work with mine own instruments. And from this profession and protestation I never varied. Whereas, if I had held myself barred from giving my Lord of Southampton place and reputation someway answerable to his degree and expense, no man I think doth imagine that I loved him so ill as to have brought him over. Therefore, if her Majesty punish me with her displeasure for this choice, poena dolenda venit.

 

"And now, my Lords, were it as then it was that I were to choose, or were there nothing in a new choice but my Lord of Southampton's disgrace and my discomfort, I should easily be induced to displace him, and to part with him. But when, in obeying this commandment, I must discourage all my friends, who now, seeing the days of my suffering draw near, follow me afar off, and are some of them tempted to renounce me,--when I must dismay the army, which already looks sadly upon me, as pitying both me and itself in this comfortless action,--when I must encourage the rebels, who doubtless will think it time to hew upon a withering tree, whose leaves they see beaten down and the branches in part cut off,--when for ever I must disable myself in the course of this service, the world now clearly perceiving that I either want reason to judge of merit, or freedom to right it (disgraces being there heaped where in my opinion rewards are due),--give just grief leave once to exclaim, 'O miserable employment, and more miserable destiny of mine, that makes it impossible for me to please and serve her Majesty at once!' Was it treason in my Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long imprisonment nor no punishment, besides that hath been usual in like cases, can satisfy or appease? Or will no kind of punishment be fit for him, but that which punisheth not him, but me, this army, and poor country of Ireland? Shall I keep this country when the army breaks, or shall the army stand when all our voluntaries leave it? Or will my voluntaries stay when those whom they have will and cause to follow are thus handled? No, my Lords, they already ask passports, and that daily; yea, I protest before God, they that have best conditions here are as weary of them as prisoners of fetters. They know--this people knows--yea, the rebels know--my discomforts and disgraces. It is a common demand, 'How shall he long prosper, to whom they which have her Majesty's ear as much as any wish worse than to Tyrone and O'Donell?' ....

 

"I do prostrate myself at her Majesty's feet. I will humbly and contentedly suffer whatsoever her Majesty will lay upon me. I will take any disgraceful displacing of me or after punishing of me dutifully and patiently. But I dare not, whilst I am her Majesty's minister in this great action, do that which shall overthrow both me and it. Deal with me, therefore, as with one of yourselves whose faith and services you know. Deal with this action as with that which will make you all joy or mourn. Deal with her Majesty according to her infinite favours and your oaths, that she do not one day resume the saying of Augustus, 'Had Mæcenas or Agrippa been alive, she should have sooner been put in mind of her own danger.'"

 

Dublin, 11 July 1599.

 

P.S.--"Your Lordships' letters of the 27th of June touching the discharge or revictualling of her Majesty's ships here had been answered ere this, but that I made a despatch by my servant Gibon from Waterford to your Lordship the Lord Admiral (the Earl of Nottingham), for order to be sent to Waterford for the now victualling of them."

 

Copy.

Date: 11 July 1599
Held by: Lambeth Palace Library, not available at The National Archives
Former reference in its original department: MS 621, p. 141
Language: English
Physical description: 4 Pages.
Unpublished finding aids:

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. J. S. Brewer & W. Bullen (6 vols., 1867-73, vol. III, document 306.

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