to despatch a vigorous lord deputy to crush Tyrone's insurrection. Mountjoy was generally believed to be best fitted for the office, but it seems almost certain that Essex brought all his influence to bear against Mountjoy's appointment. Ultimately the post was accepted by Essex himself, who wrote to Harrington at the time, ‘I have beaten Knollys and Mountjoy in the council’ (Harrington, Nugæ Antiquæ, i. 245). It was expected that Mountjoy would have accompanied Essex to Ireland, but he remained at home, and in August of the following year was appointed lieutenant of the force to be raised to resist another anticipated Spanish Armada. But there was no breach in his friendly relations with Essex. In the summer of 1599 Mountjoy sent a secret messenger to Scotland to assure King James that Essex would support his succession to the English throne, and according to Essex's friend, Sir Charles Davers, Mountjoy ‘entered into’ the business to ‘strengthen’ Essex's position. This expression implies that Mountjoy was encouraging Essex in his treasonable plan of relying upon an armed force from Scotland to overcome his enemies at the English court. When Essex was in confinement in October 1599, he committed the care of his fortunes to Mountjoy and Southampton. In the same month Mountjoy was offered the office in Ireland vacated by Essex. At first he declined it, but by the close of November he had accepted orders to depart within twenty days with thirteen or fourteen thousand men. But delays arose. On 11 Jan. 1600–1 a warrant was issued to pay him a large sum of money for preliminary expenses. He did not leave England till the following month. In the interval Essex was in frequent communication with Mountjoy, and begged him to bring his army from Ireland into England, and in concert with King James of Scotland to rescue him from prison and to overthrow the queen's councillors. But King James was unwilling to join in the plan, and Mountjoy refused to meddle with it after he had once reached Ireland. When Essex and his fellow-conspirators were charged with high treason in 1600–1, the queen and her government, who needed Mountjoy's services in Ireland, boldly overlooked his complicity in Essex's earlier plans, and suppressed passages in the confessions of the prisoners which implicated him. But Mountjoy was terribly alarmed on first hearing of the arrest of his friends (Fynes Morison, Itinerary, pt. ii. bk. i. c. 2, p. 89). In 1604 Sir Francis Bacon addressed his ‘Apologie … concerning the late Earl of Essex’ to Mountjoy, ‘because you loved the earl.’
Mountjoy's success in Ireland well warranted the government's confidence in him. On his arrival he found the rebels holding all Ireland up to the very walls of Dublin, and at first his progress was slow. On 21 Oct. 1600 it was reported in London that Blount had asked for his recall, and that Sir George Carew was to take his place. But Mountjoy's services were not to be lightly dispensed with, and his persistent harrying of the enemy began to tell upon them. By July 1601 Lough Foyle, Tyrone's chief stronghold, had fallen. In December 1601 Tyrone summoned the largest rebel army ever known in Ireland, marched upon Kinsale, where 4,000 Spaniards, lately landed in his behalf, were besieged by Mountjoy. On 24 Dec. 1601 a battle was fought and a decisive victory gained by the English (cf. Winwood, Memorials, i. 369–70). The Spaniards capitulated, surrendered all the places they held, and left the country. Mountjoy assiduously marched through the enemy's country in the neighbourhood, laid it waste, and planted military garrisons in all the rebel fortresses. Reinforcements in 1602 enabled Mountjoy in the north and Sir George Carew in the south to obtain military possession of almost the whole of Ireland, and the deputy's commission was renewed for three years. Tyrone was thus rendered helpless, and, finding all offers of conditional submission rejected, agreed on 22 Dec. 1602 to ‘both simply and absolutely submit himself to her majesty's mercy.’ No very decided advice was sent Mountjoy from home. He was ordered to offer Tyrone his life—a course which he seems to have advised—and other ‘honourable and reasonable’ conditions. On 30 March 1602–3 Mountjoy received Tyrone in state at Dublin, and promised him pardon and the restoration of his title and some of his lands. But the queen died six days before, and on 6 April Mountjoy compelled Tyrone to make a new submission to King James. He was reinstated, although he wished to be recalled immediately, in the office of lord deputy on 17 April, and shortly afterwards given the honorary title of lord-lieutenant with increased salary. The latter patent was signed by James (21 April) at Worksop on his way to London, and is the earliest extant document signed by him as king of England (Egerton Papers, Camd. Soc. p. 367). But Mountjoy's work was not quite completed. The chief towns of Ireland had several grievances against his system of government. He had, like all his predecessors, debased the coinage, and had compelled the towns to maintain his garrisons, while he had shown little favour to the catholics. In April 1603 the magistrates of Cork quarrelled with the garrison there,
