all who
joined the sacred enterprise and threats of damnation for all who
resisted it. "What will you answer to the Pope's treatment," ran his
letter to the Irish, "when he, bringing us the Pope's and other Catholic
princes' aid, shall charge you with the crime and pain of heretics for
maintaining an heretical pretensed Queen against the public sentence of
Christ's vicar? Can she with her feigned supremacy absolve and acquit
you from the Pope's excommunication and curse?" The news of the landing
of this force stirred in England a Protestant frenzy that foiled the
scheme for a Catholic marriage with the Duke of Anjou; while Elizabeth,
panic-stricken, urged the French king to save her from Philip by an
invasion of the Netherlands. But the danger passed quickly away. The
Papal attempt ended in a miserable failure. The fort of Smerwick, in
which the invaders entrenched themselves, was forced to surrender, and
its garrison put ruthlessly to the sword. The Earl of Desmond, who after
long indecision rose to support them, was defeated and hunted over his
own country, which the panic-born cruelty of his pursuers harried into a
wilderness.

[Sidenote: The Jesuit landing.]

Pitiless as it was, the work done in Munster spread a terror over
Ireland which served England in good stead when the struggle of
Catholicism culminated in the fight with the Armada; and not a chieftain
stirred during that memorable year save to massacre the miserable men
who were shipwrecked along the coast of Bantry or Sligo. But the Irish
revolt did much to give fresh strength to the panic which the efforts of
the seminary priests had roused in England. This was raised to frenzy by
news that to the efforts of the seminary priests were now added those of
Jesuit missionaries. Pope Gregory had resolved to support his military
effort in Ireland by a fresh missionary effort in England itself. Philip
would only promise to invade England if the co-operation of its
Catholics was secured; and the aim of the new mission was to prepare
them for revolt. While the force of San Giuseppe was being equipped for
Kerry a young convert, William Gilbert, was despatched to form a
Catholic association in England; among whose members the chief were
afterwards found engaged in conspiracies for the death of Elizabeth or
sharing in the Gunpowder Plot. As soon as this was organized, as many as
fifty priests, if we may trust Allen's statement, were sent to land
secretly on the coast