And so Malby and his soldiers enjoyed a merry Christmas; and when Walsingham read his letters, giving an account of his civilising progress, to the Queen, she, too, must have enjoyed a fresh sensation, a new pleasure amidst the festivities and gallantries of her brilliant court.  Mr. Froude has rendered a timely service in this Christmas time to the Coercionists, the Martial Law men, and the Habeas Corpus Suspension men of our own day.  He has shown them their principles at work and carried out with a vengeance, and with what results!  He has admirably sketched the progress of English rule in Ireland up to that time—­a rule unchanged in principle to the present hour, though restrained in its operation by the spirit of the age.  Mr. Froude says:  ’When the people were quiet, there was the rope for the malefactors, and death by the natural law for those whom the law written could not touch.  When they broke out, there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, the nursing mother and the baby at her breast.  These, with ruined churches, and Irish rogues for ministers,—­these, and so far only these were the symbols of the advance of English rule; yet even Sidney could not order more and more severity, and the president of Munster was lost in wonder at the detestation with which the English name was everywhere regarded.  Clanrickard was sent to Dublin, and the deputy wished to hang him, but he dared not execute an earl without consulting his mistress, and Elizabeth’s leniency in Ireland, as well as England, was alive and active towards the great, although it was dead towards the poor.  She could hear without emotion of the massacres at Rathlin or Slievh Broughty; but the blood of the nobles, who had betrayed their wretched followers into the rebellion for which they suffered, was for ever precious in her sight.  She forbade Sidney to touch him.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Vol. xi, p.197.]

Next came the great Desmond Rebellion, by which Munster was desolated.  The Pope had encouraged an expedition against the heretics in Ireland, and some Spanish forces joined in the enterprise.  It was organised by an English ecclesiastic, named Sanders, and an exiled Geraldine, named Fitzmaurice of Kerry, both able and energetic men.  The Spaniards landed at Dingle in 1579.  In a few days all Kerry and Limerick were up, and the woods between Mallow and the Shannon ’were swarming with howling kerne.’  ‘The rebellion,’ wrote Waterhouse, ’is the most perilous that ever began in Ireland.  Nothing is to be looked for but a general revolt.’  Malby took the command against them, joined by one of the Burkes, Theobald, who when he saw Fitzmaurice struck by a ball and staggering in his saddle, rode at him and cut him down.  The Papal standard was unfolded in this battle.  Malby then burnt the Desmonds’ country, killing all the human beings he met, up to the walls of Askeaton.  When opportunity