459 
in their eyes beyond those that enabled them to appropriate their neigh- 
bour’s chattles and possessions to their own use and behoof? or, among 
the smaller fry, than would assist their endeavour to keep the little they 
might have left from these ‘‘ Dragons of Wantley,’”’ by whom the land 
was infested? Had a bard, a mason, or a smith sought shelter or em- 
ployment at their castle gates, they would have been understood, and, as 
pride or necessity induced, they may have been entertained or employed; 
but had the painter made his appearance, and tendered the appliances of 
his art at Inchiquin, so utterly incomprehensible would his application 
have sounded in the ears of the grim, savage, old earl, our Countess’s 
husband, whose historian gravely records as a subject of gratulation to 
“The Bald: Knight,” that two lords of Muskerry, one of whom was his 
first wife’s father, fell beneath his sword! that, in the conviction of the 
stranger being either a spy or a wizard, his fate would have been to dangle 
in a halter over the outer wall of the castle,—a warning for ‘ the likes 
on him’ to keep at a safer distance, if they valued their necks.* 
I think this is a fair and rational estimate of the state of Irish-chief- 
tain society at this period ; and we have now to inquire is there anything 
that has come to our knowledge of the old Countess that can induce the 
slightest idea that she ever sat for her portrait ? 
All the reliable information that we have of her, that Iam aware of, 
is that of Sir Walter Raleigh, who writes that he personally knew her in 
1589 ; and we are to presume that on her authority he states that she 
was married in the reign of King Edward IV.; but he does not specify 
where she was married. Sir George Carew fixes her death to have oc- 
curred in 1604; nine years after this (1613), Fynes Moryson, at Youghal, 
is informed that she lived to about the age of 140. Where she resided 
from her marriage (probably about 1482) to her husband’s becoming earl, 
in 1529, we have no information. On attaining the title he was 76, and took 
* “ From Calendar of State Papers of Ireland, 1509 to 1573.” London, 1860 :— 
1566, March 1. Dublin. Lord Deputy Sidney to the Earl of Leicester.—“ The 
English Pale spoiled daily, and in utter poverty, the soldiers so beggarlike and insolent, 
and allied with the Irish, that nothing can correct them. One may ride 30 miles, and 
not see one house left standing, where Sydney has known it as well inhabited as in many 
counties in England. Thomond worse still.” 
April 20, 1567, p.330.—“ Lord Deputy to the Queen. Description of Munster 
during Sydney’s eleven weeks and two days’ journey. Good conformitie of the towns, 
and some parts of the country. Great disorders and wasted towns in other parts. 
Ikerwin, called O’Meagher’s Country, all waste and uninhabited. Verie greate posses- 
sioners in that county of Cork, who ought to be free subjects, are so injured and exacted 
upon by the late Earl of Desmond, as as in effect they are, or were, become his thralls 
or slaves. Desmond’s flagrant tyrannies, the burning of villages and ruin of churches 
in his land. Yea, the view of the bones and skulls of your ded subjects, who partelie by 
murder, partelie by famine, have died in the feldes is such that hardelie anny Christian, 
with drie eyes, coulde beholde.” " . 
“ Castletown, Septr. 14, 1568, p.390. Lord Roche to the Lords Justices, complains 
that the Earl of Clancarty and others, with 6 or 7 banners displayed, has taken 1500 
kine, burned 7000 sheep, all his corn, and a great number of men, women and children, 
desires a commission to hurt the said Earl.” 
