OF ROBERT EARL OF ESSEX. 307 



tunities and occasions for the performing and exe 

 cuting of his own treasonable ends. 



But after he had once, by her majesty s singular 

 trust and favour toward him, obtained his patent of 

 commission as large, and his list of forces as full as 

 he desired, there was an end in his course of the 

 prosecution in the North. For being arrived into 

 Ireland, the whole carriage of his actions there was 

 nothing else but a cunning defeating of that jour 

 ney, with an intent, as appeared, in the end of the 

 year, to pleasure and gratify the rebel with a dis 

 honourable peace, and to contract with him for his 

 own greatness. 



Therefore not long after he had received the 

 sword, he did voluntarily engage himself in an un 

 seasonable and fruitless journey into Munster, a 

 journey never propounded in the council there, never 

 advertised over hither while it was past : by which 

 journey her majesty s forces, which were to be pre 

 served intire both in vigour and number for the 

 great prosecution, were harassed and tired with long 

 inarches together, and the Northern prosecution 

 was indeed quite dashed and made impossible. 



But yet still doubting he might receive from her 

 majesty some quick and express commandment to 

 proceed ; to be sure he pursued his former device of 

 wrapping himself in other actions, and so set himself 

 on work anew in the county of Ophaley, being re 

 solved, as is manifest, to dally out the season, and 

 never to have gone that journey at all : that setting 



