Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/249

1568.] STATE OF IRELAND. 229 the Tower. He was allowed to live at large on his own recognizances, but he was forbidden to leave England. At last when, weary of his restraint, he attempted to escape out of the country, he was arrested and made to purchase his life by a surrender of everything that he possessed. A brief entry in the Records informs us ' that on the I2th of July, 1568, the Earl of Desmond acknowledging his offences, his life being in peril, his goods liable to forfeiture, and himself in danger to her Highness for the forfeiture of 2o,ooo/. by his securities^- relinquished into her Majesty's hands all his lands, tenements, houses, castles, signories, all he stood pos- sessed of, to receive back what her Majesty would please to allow him, and engaging to make a full and complete assurance to her Majesty of all which she might be pleased to keep/ So enormous were the feudal superiorities pretended by the Munster Geraldines that half the province could be construed by implication to have fallen into the Queen's hands. A case for forfeiture could be made out with no great difficulty against the Irish owners of the remainder. In the scheme which had been drawn out by Sir Henry Sidney for a Southern Presidency, the MacCarties, the O'Sullivans, and the other chiefs were to have been associated in the Government, in the hope that they would be reclaimed to ' civility ' by the possession of legitimate authority. A project briefer and less expensive was submitted to the Queen from another quarter. It was an age of enterprise, restlessness, and energy.