What?  Bring those women and children, those sick and aged folk, back to their homes?  Essex had made peace by treaty with the O’Neill.  He had killed or chased away every man that could disturb the peace; and an act of humanity like this would have had a most conciliatory effect, and ought to recommend the hero to the queen, who should be supposed to have the heart as well as the form of a woman.

No; the order was, to go over ‘and kill whatever he could find!’ Mr. Froude resumes:  ’The run of the Antrim coast was rapidly and quietly accomplished.  Before an alarm could be given, the English had landed, close to the ruins of the church which bears St. Columba’s name.  Bruce’s castle was then standing, and was occupied by a score or two of Scots, who were in charge of the women.  But Norris had brought cannon with him.  The weak defences were speedily destroyed, and after a severe assault, in which several of the garrison were killed, the chief who was in command offered to surrender, if he and his people were allowed to return to Scotland.  The conditions were rejected.  The Scots yielded at discretion, and every living creature in the place, except the chief and his family (who were probably reserved for ransom), was immediately put to the sword.  Two hundred were killed in the castle.  It was then discovered that several hundred more, chiefly mothers and their little ones, were hidden in the caves about the shore.  There was no remorse, nor even the faintest shadow of perception that the occasion called for it.  They were hunted out as if they had been seals or otters, and all destroyed.  Sorleyboy and other chiefs, Essex coolly wrote, had sent their wives and children into the island, “which be all taken and executed to the number of six hundred.  Sorleyboy himself,” he continued, “stood upon the mainland of the Glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he there lost all that he ever had!” The impression left upon the mind by this horrible story, is increased by the composure with which even the news of it was received.  “Yellow-haired Charley,” wrote Essex to the queen, “might tear himself for his pretty little ones and their dam,” but in Ireland itself the massacre was not specially distinguished in the general system of atrocity.  Essex described it himself as one of the exploits with which he was most satisfied; and Elizabeth, in answer to his letters, bade him tell John Norris, “the executioner of his well-designed enterprise, that she would not be unmindful of his services."’

I have transcribed this narrative partly for the sake of the reflection with which Mr. Froude concludes.  He says:  ’But though passed over and unheeded at the time, and lying buried for three hundred years, the bloody stain comes back to the light again, not in myth or legend, but in the original account of the nobleman by whose command the deed was done; and when the history of England’s dealings with Ireland settles at last into its final shape, that hunt among the caves at Rathlin will not be forgotten.’[1] It was for services like these that Essex got the barony of Farney, in the county Monaghan.  He had mortgaged his English estates to the queen for 10,000 l.,and after his plundering expeditions in Ireland he went home to pay his debts.