“I do not know how that will be, my lord; as I came up a captain shouted to me off the walls that there were mutineers; and, denying that he surrendered, would have pulled down the flag of truce, but the soldiers beat him off.”

“A house divided against itself will not stand long, gentlemen.  Tell them that I give no conditions.  Let them lay down their arms, and trust in the Bishop of Rome who sent them hither, and may come to save them if he wants them.  Gunners, if you see the white flag go down, open your fire instantly.  Captain Raleigh, we need your counsel here.  Mr. Cary, will you be my herald this time?”

“A better Protestant never went on a pleasanter errand, my lord.”

So Cary went, and then ensued an argument, as to what should be done with the prisoners in case of a surrender.

I cannot tell whether my Lord Grey meant, by offering conditions which the Spaniards would not accept, to force them into fighting the quarrel out, and so save himself the responsibility of deciding on their fate; or whether his mere natural stubbornness, as well as his just indignation, drove him on too far to retract:  but the council of war which followed was both a sad and a stormy one, and one which he had reason to regret to his dying day.  What was to be done with the enemy?  They already outnumbered the English; and some fifteen hundred of Desmond’s wild Irish hovered in the forests round, ready to side with the winning party, or even to attack the English at the least sign of vacillation or fear.  They could not carry the Spaniards away with them, for they had neither shipping nor food, not even handcuffs enough for them; and as Mackworth told Winter when he proposed it, the only plan was for him to make San Josepho a present of his ships, and swim home himself as he could.  To turn loose in Ireland, as Captain Touch urged, on the other hand, seven hundred such monsters of lawlessness, cruelty, and lust, as Spanish and Italian condottieri were in those days, was as fatal to their own safety as cruel to the wretched Irish.  All the captains, without exception, followed on the same side.  “What was to be done, then?” asked Lord Grey, impatiently.  “Would they have him murder them all in cold blood?”

And for a while every man, knowing that it must come to that, and yet not daring to say it; till Sir Warham St. Leger, the marshal of Munster, spoke out stoutly:  “Foreigners had been scoffing them too long and too truly with waging these Irish wars as if they meant to keep them alive, rather than end them.  Mercy and faith to every Irishman who would show mercy and faith, was his motto; but to invaders, no mercy.  Ireland was England’s vulnerable point; it might be some day her ruin; a terrible example must be made of those who dare to touch the sore.  Rather pardon the Spaniards for landing in the Thames than in Ireland!”—­till Lord Grey became much excited, and turning as a last hope to Raleigh, asked his opinion:  but Raleigh’s