Many eminent names figure in the long list of these “undertakers”; amongst them Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Wareham St. Leger, Edmund Spenser himself, Sir Thomas Norris, and others, all of whom received grants of different portions.  But “the greater,” says Leland, “their rank and consequence, the more were they emboldened to neglect the terms of their grant.”  Instead of completing their stipulated number of tenantry, the same persons often were admitted as tenants to different undertakers, and in the same seniory sometimes served at once as freeholder, leaseholder, and copyholder, so as to fill up the necessary number of each denomination.

The whole scheme of colonization proved, in short, a miserable failure.  English farmers and labourers declined to come over in sufficient numbers.  Those that did come left again in despair after a time.  The dispossessed owners hung about, and raided the goods of the settlers whenever opportunity offered.  The exasperation on both sides increased as years went on; the intruders becoming fewer and more tyrannical, the natives rapidly growing more numerous and more desperate.  It was plain that the struggle would break out again at the first chance which offered itself.

That occasion arose not in Munster itself, but at the opposite end of the island.  In Ulster the great southern rising had produced singularly little excitement.  The chiefs for the most part had remained aloof, and to a great degree, loyal.  The O’Donnells, who had been reinstated it will be remembered in their own territory by Sidney, kept the peace.  Sir John Perrot, who after the departure of Grey became Lord-deputy, seems in spite of his severity to have won confidence.  Old Tyrlough Luinagh who had been elected O’Neill at the death of Shane, seems even to have felt a personal attachment for him, which is humorously shown by his consenting on several occasions to appear at his court in English attire, habiliments which the Irish, like the the Scotch chiefs, objected to strongly as tending to make them ridiculous.  “Prythee at least, my lord,” he is reported to have said on one of these occasions, “let my chaplain attend me in his Irish mantle, that so your English rabble may be directed from my uncouth figure and laugh at him.”

[Illustration:  Sr.  John Perrot LORD-DEPUTY FROM 1584 TO 1588.]

Perrot, however, had now fallen under the royal displeasure; had been recalled and sent to the Tower, a common enough climax in those days to years spent in the arduous Irish service.  His place was taken in 1588 by Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had held it nearly thirty years earlier.  Fitzwilliam was a man of very inferior calibre to Perrot.  Avaricious by nature he had been highly dissatisfied with the poor rewards which his former services had obtained.  Upon making some remonstrance to that effect he had been told that the “position of an Irish Lord-deputy was an honourable one and should challenge no reward.”