ABSTRACT

The rapidly declining prosperity of the Pale’s urban and rural communities during Ireland’s Nine Years’ War (1594–1603) provoked great bitterness toward the crown’s Irish administration, manifesting itself in a flurry of complaints which increased in both frequency and urgency as the war dragged on. In fact, by the war’s closing years, efforts were made to restrain Irish suitors from coming into England, partially because their services were needed in Ireland, but largely because the queen and Privy Council were overwhelmed by the number of Irish suitors coming to court to plead their cases. 2 But the queen’s loyal Irish lieges were frustrated. Repeated efforts to obtain recognition, redress, and reward had been made throughout the 1590s, and by 1600, the overburdened Palesmen were determined to dispatch a formal embassy to the English Court. Though they had hoped to send three men from every Pale shire to impress upon the queen the magnitude of their situation, the Palesmen could ill afford such an impressive commission at this time, and so they sent the three most qualified. In June 1600, a delegation led by Nicholas St. Lawrence, the Baron of Howth, Sir Patrick Barnewall, and a Mr. Rocheford traveled to the English Court to represent a petition containing the grievances of Ireland’s loyalist Old English community. 3 Like many petitions before it, this 1600 supplication focused on three interrelated wartime problems: first, the endless and unfair demands placed upon the Palesmen’s resources and bodies to support the crown’s war machine; second, the corruptions of ‘bad gouernors’ and the abusive behavior of soldiers who had been appointed to defend them; and third, the infinite accusations of backwardness and disloyalty leveled at them by those corrupt officers. While all three issues greatly troubled the Palesmen, according to at least one Pale lord, it was the third ‘which toucheth them neerer at the hart, then the losse of theire goodes, the ruyne of theire houses, and spoile of theire lands occasioned thereby’. 4