Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/172

152 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 42. Such, after six months of preparation, was the De- puty's hopeless condition ; the money, in which, if the complaints in England of the expenses of the Irish war were justified, he had not been stinted, all gone ; and neither food nor even spade and mattock. In the Pale 'he could not get a man to serve the Queen, nor a peck of corn to feed the army.' 1 At length, with a wild determination to do something, he made a plundering raid towards Ologher, feeding his men on the cattle which they could steal, wasted a few miles of country, and having succeeded in proving to the Irish that he could do them no serious harm, relinquished the expedition in despair. He exclaimed loudly that the fault did not rest with him. The Scots had deceived him. ' The Englishry of the Pale ' were secretly unwilling that the rebellion should be put down. The Ulster chiefs durst not move because they distrusted his power to protect them. The rupture be- tween England and France had given a stimulus to the rebellion, and ' to expel Shan was but a Sisyphus' la- bour/ 2 There may have been some faint foundation for these excuses. The Irish council, satisfied of the De- puty's incapacity, had failed to exert themselves ; while in England the old policy of leaving Ireland to be | governed by the Irish had many defenders ; and Eliza- beth had been urged to maintain an inefficient person against his will in the command, with a hope, un- 1 Sussex to the Council, April 28 : Irish MSS. 2 Sussex to Cecil, May 20.