d with
three thousand English soldiers.

[Sidenote: Fitzgerald burns Trim and Dunboyne, within six miles of
Dublin.]

[Sidenote: He again writes to the emperor.]

Fitzgerald, as soon as the army was landed, retired into the interior;
but finding that the deputy lay idle within the walls, he recovered
heart, and at the head of a party of light horse reappeared within six
miles of Dublin. Trim and Dunboyne, two populous villages, were sacked
and burnt, and the blazing ruins must have been seen from the
battlements of the Castle. Yet neither the insults of the rebels nor the
entreaty of the inhabitants could move the imperturbable Skeffington. He
lay still within the city walls;[356] and Fitzgerald, still further
encouraged, despatched a fresh party of ecclesiastics to the pope and
the emperor, with offers of allegiance and promises of tribute,[357]
giving out meanwhile in Ireland that he would be supported in the spring
or summer by the long talked-of Spanish army. Promises costing Charles
V. nothing, he was probably liberal of them, and waited for the issue to
decide how far they should be observed.

[Sidenote: Skeffington ventures an expedition to Drogheda, and brings
back the army in safety.]

If this was so, the English deputy seemed to be determined to give the
rebellion every chance of issuing as the emperor desired. The soldiers
were eager for employment, but Skeffington refused to give his officers
an opportunity for distinction in which he did not share,[358] and a few
ineffectual skirmishes in the neighbourhood were the sole exploits which
for five months they were allowed to achieve. One expedition, as far as
Drogheda, the deputy indeed ventured, towards the end of November; and
in the account of it which he sent to England, he wrote as if it were
matter of congratulation that he had brought his army back in safety.
Nor were his congratulations, at least to himself, without reason, for
he owed that safety to God and to fortune. He had allowed the archers to
neglect the old precaution of taking cases for their bows. They were
overtaken by a storm, which wetted the strings and loosened the feathers
of the arrows; and thus, at disadvantage, they were intercepted in a
narrow defile,[359] and escaped only because the Irish were weak in
numbers.

[Sidenote: He excuses himself on the ground of bad health.]

[Sidenote: Consequence of the deputy's inaction.]

He excused himself for his shortcomings on the plea