Sir William Drury was appointed president of Munster; and he was determined that in his case the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain.  Going round the counties as an itinerant judge, he gleaned the malefactors Sidney had left, and hanged forty-three of them in Cork.  One he pressed to death for declining to plead to his indictment.  Two M’Sweenys, from Kerry, were drawn and quartered.  At Limerick he hanged forty-two, and at Kilkenny thirty-six, among which he said were ‘some good ones,’ as a sportsman might say, bagging his game.  He had a difficulty with ‘a blackamoor and two witches,’ against whom he found no statute of the realm, so he dispatched them ’by natural law.’  Although Jeffreys, at the Bloody Assizes, did not come near Drury, the latter found it necessary to apologise to the English Government for the paucity of his victims, saying, ’I have chosen rather with the snail tenderly to creep, than with the hare swiftly to run.’  With the Government in Ireland, as Mr. Froude has well remarked, ‘the gallows is the only preacher of righteousness.’

But the gallows was far too slow, as an instrument of reform and civilisation, for Malby, president of Connaught; and as modern evictors in that province and elsewhere have chosen Christmas as the most appropriate season for pulling down dwellings, extinguishing domestic fires, and unhousing women and children, so Malby chose the same blessed season for his ‘improvements’ in 1576.  It is such a model for dealing with the Fenians and tenants on the Tory plan, that I transcribe his own report, which Mr. Froude has found among the Irish MSS.  ‘At Christmas,’ he wrote, ’I marched into their territory, and finding courteous dealing with them had like to have cut my throat, I thought good to take another course; and so with determination to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, I entered their mountains.  I burnt all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them the best leaders they had.  This was Shan Burke’s country.  Then I burnt Ulick Burke’s country.  In like manner I assaulted a castle where the garrison surrendered.  I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers.  They were all slain.  Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers, that they could not tell where to bestow themselves.  Shan Burke made means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people.  I would not hearken, but went on my way.  The gentlemen of Clanrickard came to me.  I found it was but dallying to win time, so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses standing as I left his brother; and what people was found had as little favour as the other had. It was all done in rain and frost and storm, journeys in such weather bringing them the sooner to submission.  They are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to offer them.’