Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/138

118 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 42. a wilderness, but the desolation would be no security. The Irish, Fitzwilliam anxiously reported, could keep the field where the English would starve ; ' no men of war ever lived the like, nor others of God's making as touching feeding and living ; they were like beasts and vermin bred from the earth and the filth thereof; but brute and bestial as by their outward life they showed, there was not under the sun a more craftier vipered undermining generation/ * The immediate fear was of the great southern earls. If Kildare and Desmond rose, the whole of Ireland would rise with them, even the Pale itself. They had promised Fitzwilliam to be loyal, but he did not trust them. They had met at Limerick in the winter ; they were known to have communicated with Shan, and O'Brien of Inchiquin had gone to Spain and France to solicit assistance. If he brought back a favourable answer, the Geraldines ' would take the English part until such time as the push came, and then the English company should be paid home/ 2 Most fortunately for Elizabeth the success of the Queen of Scots was more formidable to Philip than the temporary triumph of heresy. He discouraged all advances to himself; he used his best endeavours to pre- vent the Irish from looking for assistance in France ; and although his advice might have been little attended to had the Guises been at liberty to act, Elizabeth's intrigues with the Huguenots had provided them with 1 Fitzwilliam to Cecil, March and April, 1560 : Irish MSS. Holla Rouse. 2 Ibid.