[193] _Perrott's Life._ N. White to Burghley, April 9 and May 15. These operations were in April and May, 1571.
[194] Fitzwilliam and Weston to the Queen, with enclosures, July 31.
[195] Ormonde to Burghley, June 27, 1571; Brief of Expenses, Sept. 7; Fitzwilliam to Burghley, July 31. The siege of Castlemaine lasted from June 21 to July 27. To judge from slight remains, this renowned stronghold must have been small: probably, as in many other cases, the garrison ordinarily lived in thatched houses on the mainland.
[Sidenote: Fitzmaurice wishes to make it a religious war.]
No doubt Fitzmaurice was encouraged in his seemingly desperate task by the hope of succour from France or Spain. The fear of losing their lands bound the Irish chiefs and nobles together, but that would not weigh one grain with any foreign potentate. The chiefs were doubtless with few exceptions Catholics, but that alone would not have tempted them to incur the penalties of treason any more than it tempted Protestants like Cecil or Perrott to conspire against Queen Mary. Sir Edmund Butler fought against Sir Peter Carew, but not against the Queen. The Desmonds and their allies fought against the St. Legers and Grenvilles and against their hereditary foes of the House of Ormonde. The O'Neills feared schemes of colonisation: if the Queen would let them alone they asked for no other sovereign. Purely Irish interests were sure to be sacrificed by France, Spain, and Rome; but Catholicism was an inheritance in which they all shared.
Fitzmaurice therefore lost no opportunity of giving the struggle a religious character, and there were plenty of abuses in Ireland calculated to scandalise the devout as well as to give a handle to those who were actuated only by worldly motives. Irish priests at Louvain, often men of honesty and virtue, took care to tell English travellers that the Lord Deputy had one archbishopric and two bishoprics in farm, Cashel for 40_l._, the others for less; that the revenues of one see supported the grand falconer, and those of another the clerk of the kitchen--'sufficient parsons no doubt to have such cure of Irish souls as the English doctrine will permit them to have at this day.' The deanery of St. Patrick's was appropriated to the support of the Great Seal, much to the disgust of the Chancellor Weston, a pious and conscientious man, who saw the abuse clearly enough. The parsonage of Dungarvan was assigned for the maintenance of the Lord President. Laymen were appointed to ecclesiastical dignities. English Jesuits who found their way to Ireland could report these things on the Continent, adding that Sidney's gentleness did their cause more harm than any severity could have done.[196]