443 
ing it to be Yoghall Port, we tacked about, to beate out at Sea, the 
night following. But having some howers before sprung a Leake, and 
our Pumpes being foule, so as they would not worke, we had no hope 
to live so longe at sea, and againe not knowing the coast, wee durst not 
venture to put in upon it, besides that in case it were Yoghall Har- 
bour, our best fortune was to enter a barrd Haven by night. In this 
distress by Divine Providence, we were preserved, the Moone breaking 
out through the dispersed clouds, and shining so bright, as our best Mar- 
rines easily discovered the Harbour of Yoghall, and the tide serving 
happily, we passed the barre into the same. And the next morning we 
might see the danger we had escaped most apparent; for our ship was 
so farre unable to indure the waves of the sea, with her great leake and 
the foulenesse of the Pumpes, (if we had been forced to keepe abord till 
the next daies light might make us know the coast,) as the same night 
she had sunke in the quiet Harbour, if the Marriners had not chosen 
rather to drive her on ground.” 
Part i., Book i., chap. ili, page 48. ‘Opinions of Nations. Long 
Life.”—“ The Irish report, and will sweare it, that towards the West, 
they have an Iland, wherein the Inhabitants live so long, as when they 
are weary and burthened with life, their children in charity bring them 
to die upon the shoare of Ireland, as if their land would not permit 
them to die. In our time the Irish Countesse of Desmond, lived to the 
age of about 140 yeeres, being able to goe on foote foure or five miles to 
the Market Towne, and using weekly so to doe in her last yeeres, and 
not many yeeres before shee died, shee had all her teeth renewed.” 
Our first concern now is to get the old Countess and her decrepit 
daughter, the former walking, the latter in a little cart, up from Bristol 
to London, at some period of some year intervening between 1589, 
when Sir Walter Raleigh knew her at Inchiquin, and 1603, when 
Queen Elizabeth died. 
As her daughter may have been 120 years of age, we may allow her to 
have been decrepit, and that she required the little cart ; but the question 
naturally arises, why did she accompany her mother? Scarcely as a pro- 
tectress. The pedigree of the Desmonds, given by the “Quarterly,” 
states, that the old Countess’s only child, a daughter, was married to 
Philip Barry Oge; and as her father, Earl Thomas, had a son and 
grandson, her marriage portion would have been in money. Earl Gar- 
rett, in 1574, when making the feofment of his estates, settles ‘‘ the 
sum of one thousand pounds to the preferment of evrie of my daughters, 
which at the time of my death shall not be preferred.’’—Cotton MSS., 
Titus, B. xiii., page 195. 
The Countess herself had only a life-interest in the jointure, conse- 
sequently neither on her own nor on her mother’s right could Mrs. Philip * 
Barry Oge have any claim on government. Ifthe Countess had been de- 
crepit, and the daughter, at the age of 120, strong and courageous, we 
should have to admire filial piety braving all dangers. But my Lord Lei- 
cester’s narrative reverses all this, and we commence with the absurdity 
of the Countess encumbering herself with a helpless companion, for no 
