withdrawing places, as ferrets to draw rabbits out of their burrows.’  Moreover all other parts of Ireland were now reduced to such obedience, and so civil a course, and so well planted with a mixture of English, that there was not a man that showed a forehead likely to give a frown against his majesty, or his government.  Cornwallis went on to plead the incomparable virtues of the king his master, among which liberality and magnificence were not the least.  But if he had given largely, it was upon a good exchange, for he had sowed money, which of itself can do nothing, and had reaped hearts that can do all.  As for the alleged number of ‘groaning Catholics,’ he assured the secretary that there were hardly as many hundreds as the fugitives reckoned thousands.

According to his report the minister heard him with great attention, and at the conclusion protested, that he joined with him in opinion that those fugitives were dangerous people and that the Jesuits were turbulent and busy men.  He assured him on the word of a caballero, that his majesty and council had fully determined never to receive or treat any more of those ‘straying people;’ as they had been put to great inconvenience and cost, how to deliver themselves from those Irish vagabonds, and continual begging pretenders.

This despatch, dated October 28, 1607, was crossed on the way by one from the English minister Salisbury, dated the 27th, giving the king’s instructions ‘concerning those men that are fled into Spain.’  Cornwallis was directed not to make matters worse than they really were, because the end must be good, ’what insolencies soever the Jesuits and pack of fugitives there might put on.  King James knew that this remnant of the northern Irish traitors had been as full of malice as flesh and blood could be, no way reformed by the grace received, but rather sucking poison out of the honey thereof.’  He knew also that they had absolutely given commission to their priests and others to abandon their sovereign if Spain would entertain their cause.  But this he could not demonstrably prove in foro judicii, though clear in foro conscientiae, and therefore punishment would savour of rigour.  So long as things were in that state his majesty was obliged to suffer adders in his bosom, and give them means to gather strength to his own prejudice, whereas now the whole country which they had possessed would be made of great use both for strength and profit to the king.  What follows should be given in his majesty’s own words:—­

’Those poor creatures who knew no kings but those petty lords, under the burden of whose tyranny they have ever groaned, do now with great applause desire to be protected by the immediate power, and to receive correction only from himself, so as if the council of Spain shall conceive that they have now some great advantage over this state, where it shall appear what a party their king may have if he shall like to support it, there may be this answer: