spoiled O’Rourke’s country, and returned to Tyrone driving before him 4,000 head of cattle.  While proceeding at this rate he wrote soothing and flattering words to the Queen.  It was for her majesty he was fighting; he was chastising her enemies and breaking stiff-necked chiefs into her yoke; and he begged that she would not credit any stories which his ill-willers might spread abroad against him.  On the contrary he hoped she would determine his title and rule without delay, and grant him, in consideration of his good services, some augmentation of living in the Pale.  Elizabeth, however, excused his conduct, saying ’we must allow something for his wild bringing-up, and not expect from him what we should expect from a perfect subject.  If he mean well he shall have all his reasonable requests granted.’

But there was among Elizabeth’s advisers a statesman who felt that this sort of policy would never do.  Sir Henry Sidney, on being requested to take charge of the Government of Ireland, urged the absolute necessity of a radical change.  The power of O’Neill, and such rulers as he, must be utterly broken, and that by force, at whatever cost.  And this, he argued, would not only be sound policy but true economy.  The condition of Ireland was unexampled; free from foreign invasion, the sovereignty of the Queen not denied, yet the revenue so mean and scanty that ’great yearly treasures were carried out of the realm of England to satisfy the stipends of the officers and soldiers required for the governance of the same.’  He must have 10,000 l. or 12,000 l. to pay out-standing debts and put the army in proper condition.  As for his own remuneration, the new viceroy, as he could expect nothing from the Queen, would be content with permission to export six thousand kerseys and clothes, free of duty.

Sir Henry Sidney struck out the only line of policy by which the English government of Ireland could be made successful or even possible.  He said:  ’To go to work by force will be chargeable, it is true; but if you will give the people justice and minister law among them, and exercise the sword of the sovereign, and put away the sword of the subject, omnia haec adjicientur vobis—­you shall drive the now man of war to be an husbandman, and he that now liveth like a lord to live like a servant, and the money now spent in buying armour, and horses, and waging of war, shall be bestowed in building of towns and houses.  By ending these incessant wars ere they be aware, you shall bereave them both of force and beggary, and make them weak and wealthy.  Then you can convert the military service due from the lords into money; then you can take up the fisheries now left to the French and the Spaniards; then you can open and work your mines, and the people will be able to grant you subsidies.’[1] When the lord deputy arrived in Ireland he found a state of things in the Pale far worse than he could have imagined.  It was ’as it were overwhelmed