w could we impose on so clever an enemy so
skilled in every kind of cunning and cheating if we did not use much
dissimulation, and especially if we did not pretend we were anxious
for peace? We will keep firm and unshaken the promises which we made
to Your Majesty with our last breath; if we do not we shall incur at
once the wrath of God and the contempt of men."

How faithfully they kept those promises and how the Spanish King
failed in his, their fate and the bitter ruin of their country shows.
That men fighting for Ireland had to meet Elizabeth and her statesmen
with something of her own cunning is made very clear to anyone reading
the State papers in Ireland.

Essex, in one of his "answers" wrote: "I advise Her Majesty to allow
me, at my return to Dublin, to conclude this treaty, yielding some
of their grants in the present; and when Her Majesty has made secret
preparations to enable me to prosecute, I will find quarrels enough to
break and give them a deadly blow."

The Irish, however, failed in this contest. They were not sufficiently
good liars, and lacked the higher flights of villainy necessary to
sustain the encounter. The essential English way in Tudor days, and
much later, for administering a deadly blow to an Irish patriot was
"assassination." Poison frequently took the place of the knife, and
was often administered wrapped in a leaf of the British Bible. A
certain Atkinson, knowing the religious nature of Cecil, the Queen's
Prime Minister, the founder of a long line of statesmen, foremost as
champions of Church and Book, suggested the getting rid of O'Neill by
some "poisoned Hosts." This proposal to use the Blessed Sacrament as
a veritable Last Supper for the last great Irish chief remains on
record, was endorsed by Cecil.

Another Briton, named Annyas, was charged to poison "the most
dangerous and open rebel in Munster," Florence MacCarthy More, the
great MacCarthy. Elizabeth's Prime Minister piously endorsed the
deed--"though his soul never had the thought to consent to the
poisoning of a dog, much less a Christian ."

To Carew, the President of Munster, Cecil wrote enjoining the
assassination of the young Earl of Desmond, then "in the keeping
of Carew": "Whatever you do to abridge him out of Providence shall
never be imputed to you for a fault, but exceedingly commended
by the Queen." After this, we are not surprised to learn that in
her instructions to Mountjoy, the successor of Essex, the Queen