Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/181

1564.] SHAN a NEIL. 161 He broke loose from time to time to keep his hand in practice : at Carlingford, for instance, he swept off one day some two hundred sheep and oxen, while his men violated sixty women in the town. 1 But Elizabeth looked away and endeavoured not to see ; the English Govern- ment had resolved ' to stir no sleeping dogs in Ireland till a staff was provided to chastise them if they would bite.' 2 Terence Daniel, the Dean of those rough-riding canons of Armagh, was installed as Primate ; the Earl of Sussex was recalled to England ; and the new Arch- bishop, unable to contain his exultation at the blessed day which had dawned upon his country, wrote to Cecil to say how the millennium had come at last glory be to God ! Meantime Cecil set himself to work at the root of the evil. Relinquishing for the present the hope of ex- tending the English rule in Ireland, he endeavoured to probe the secret of its weakness and to restore some kind of order and justice in the counties where that rule sur- vived. On the return of Sussex to England Sir Thomas Wroth and Sir Nicholas Arnold were sent over as com- missioners to inquire into the complaints against the army. The scandals which they brought to light, the recrimination, rage, and bitterness which they provoked, fill a large volume of the State Papers. Peculation had grown into a custom ; the most bare- faced frauds had been converted by habit into rights ; and 'a captain's' commission was thought ' ill-handled ' 1 Fitzwilliam to Cecil, June 17, 1565 : 7mA MSS. 2 Cecil to Sir Nicholas Arnold : 7mA MSS. VOL. VII. 11