h--He tries to induce Englishmen to join him--Smith is killed, and
the attempt to plant fails--Essex next tries to colonize Ulster--He dies
in Dublin--Sidney returns to Ireland--His Interview with
Granuaile--Massacre at Mullamast--Spenser's Account of the State of
Ireland.

[A.D. 1567-1579.]

Kilcolman Castle, with its fair domains, were bestowed on the poet
Spenser, who had accompanied Lord Grey to Ireland in 1579. He has left a
fearful description of the miseries of the country; but it scarcely
exceeds the official report of Sir Henry Sidney, which must first be
noticed. At the close of the month of January, 1567, the Lord Deputy set
out on a visitation of Munster and Connaught. In his official account he
writes thus of Munster: "Like as I never was in a more pleasant country
in all my life, so never saw I a more waste and desolate land. Such
horrible and lamentable spectacles are there to behold--as the burning
of villages, the ruin of churches, the wasting of such as have been good
towns and castles; yea, the view of the bones and skulls of the dead
subjects, who, partly by murder, partly by famine, have died in the
fields--as, in truth, hardly any Christian with dry eyes could behold."
He declares that, in the territory subject to the Earl of Ormonde, he
witnessed "a want of justice and judgment." He describes the Earl of
Desmond as "a man devoid of judgment to govern, and will be to be
ruled." The Earl of Thomond, he says, "had neither wit of himself to
govern, nor grace or capacity to learn of others." The Earl of
Clanrickarde he describes as "so overruled by a putative wife, as
ofttimes, when he best intendeth, she forceth him to do the worst;" and
it would appear that neither he nor his lady could govern their own
family, for their sons were so turbulent they kept the whole country in
disturbance. In Galway he found the people trying to protect themselves,
as best they might, from their dangerous neighbours; and at Athenry
there were but four respectable householders, who presented him with the
rusty keys of their town--"a pitiful and lamentable present;" and they
requested him to keep those keys, for "they were so impoverished by the
extortions of the lords about them, as they were no longer able to keep
that town."

Well might he designate the policy by which the country had been
hitherto governed as "cowardly," and contemn the practice of promoting
division between the native princes, which was still pr