and were now reduced to such
obedience, and so civil a course, and so well planted with a mixture
of English, that there was not a man that showed a forehead likely to
give a frown against his majesty, or his government. Cornwallis went
on to plead the incomparable virtues of the king his master, among
which liberality and magnificence were not the least. But if he had
given largely, it was upon a good exchange, for he had sowed money,
which of itself can do nothing, and had reaped hearts that can do
all. As for the alleged number of 'groaning Catholics,' he assured
the secretary that there were hardly as many hundreds as the fugitives
reckoned thousands.

According to his report the minister heard him with great attention,
and at the conclusion protested, that he joined with him in opinion
that those fugitives were dangerous people and that the Jesuits were
turbulent and busy men. He assured him on the word of a caballero,
that his majesty and council had fully determined never to receive or
treat any more of those 'straying people;' as they had been put to
great inconvenience and cost, how to deliver themselves from those
Irish vagabonds, and continual begging pretenders.

This despatch, dated October 28, 1607, was crossed on the way by one
from the English minister Salisbury, dated the 27th, giving the
king's instructions 'concerning those men that are fled into Spain.'
Cornwallis was directed not to make matters worse than they really
were, because the end must be good, 'what insolencies soever the
Jesuits and pack of fugitives there might put on. King James knew that
this remnant of the northern Irish traitors had been as full of malice
as flesh and blood could be, no way reformed by the grace received,
but rather sucking poison out of the honey thereof.' He knew also that
they had absolutely given commission to their priests and others to
abandon their sovereign if Spain would entertain their cause. But this
he could not demonstrably prove _in foro judicii_, though clear _in
foro conscientiae_, and therefore punishment would savour of rigour.
So long as things were in that state his majesty was obliged to suffer
adders in his bosom, and give them means to gather strength to his
own prejudice, whereas now the whole country which they had possessed
would be made of great use both for strength and profit to the king.
What follows should be given in his majesty's own words:--

'Those poor creatures who knew no king