[Footnote 1:  History of England, vol. xi. p.184.]

Further on Mr. Froude has another reflection connected with the death of Essex, supposed to have been poisoned, as his widow immediately after married Leicester.  He says:  ’Notwithstanding Rathlin, Essex was one of the noblest of living Englishmen, and that such a man could have ordered such a deed, being totally unconscious of the horror of it, is not the least instructive feature in the dreadful story.’  It is certainly a strange fact that nearly all the official murderers who ruled in Ireland in those times were intensely religious, setting to their own class a most edifying example of piety.  Thus, from the first, Protestantism was presented to the Irish in close connexion with brutal inhumanity and remorseless cruelty.  Essex, when dying, was described by the bystanders as acting ’more like a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man.’  His opinion of the religious character of his countrymen was most unfavourable.  ’The Gospel had been preached to them,’ he said, ’but they were neither Papists nor Protestants—­of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity.  There was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity!—­atheism, atheism!—­no religion, no religion!’ What such tiger-like slaughterers of women and children, such ruthless destroyers, could have meant by religion is a puzzle for philosophers.

Sidney reluctantly resumed the office of viceroy in 1575.  Tirlogh O’Neill congratulated the Government on his appointment, ’wretched Ireland needing not the sword, but sober, temperate, and humane administration.’  Though it was winter, the new deputy immediately commenced a progress through the provinces.  Going first to Ulster, he saw Sorleyboy, and gave him back Rathlin.  He paid a friendly visit to the O’Neill, who gave him an assurance of his loyalty.  Leinster he found for the most part ‘waste, burnt up and destroyed.’  He proceeded by Waterford to Cork.  He was received everywhere with acclamation.  ‘The wretched people,’ says Mr. Froude, how truly!—­’sanguine then, as ever, in the midst of sorrow, looked on his coming as the inauguration of a new and happier era.’  So, in later times, they looked on the coming of Chesterfield, and Fitzwilliam, and Anglesey.  But the good angel was quickly chased away by the evil demon—­invoked under the name of the ‘Protestant Interest.’  The Munster and the Connaught chiefs all thronged to Sidney’s levees, weary of disaffection, and willing to be loyal, if their religion were not interfered with, ’detesting their barbarous lives,’—­promising rent and service for their lands.  ’The past was wiped out.  Confiscation on the one hand, and rebellion on the other, were to be heard of no more.  A clean page was turned.’  Even the Catholic bishops were tractable, and the viceroy got ’good and honest juries in Cork, and with their help twenty-four malefactors were honourably condemned and hanged.’  Enjoying an ovation as he passed on to Limerick and Galway, he found many grievances to be redressed—­’plenty of burnings, rapes, murders, besides such spoil in goods and cattle as in number might be counted infinite, and in quantity innumerable.’