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xxiv INTRODUCTION
his conception of duty To the governors of those days the only course
open seemed to be one of suppression, and what others accepted from
a sense of political expediency was to Grey a deep religious obligation
No compromise was possible, there could be no half measures Ireland,
said Grey, could not be built up ' before force have planed the ground
for the foundation', and he lost no time in setting about the planing
When he landed in Dublin the country was in a ferment, torn by feuds
of one clan against another, and united only in deadly hatred of the
English In the south Desmond was in active revolt, and Grey soon
learned that on the south-west coast of Kerry a band of foreign invaders,
under the Pope's blessing, had landed and fortified a port at Smerwick,
which was to serve as the base for attacks upon the English rule Grey
first marched against the rebels at Glenmalure in Wicklow and suffered
a reverse Then he turned to Smerwick, reduced it to surrender, and
put the whole garrison of 600 to the sword, 400 of them ' as gallant and
goodly persons as of any I ever beheld ' Through the length and breadth
of Ireland he passed like a scourge, hanging and mutilating the rebels,
burning the crops, reducing the wretched inhabitants to surrender by the
terror of famine and the sword His record after two years' campaign
in Ireland was '1,485 chief men and gentlemen slain not accounting those
of the meaner sort, nor yet executions by law, which were innumerable'
Grey's term of office does not make pleasant reading But it is idle to
expect the humamtananism of the twentieth century in an Elizabethan
who combined the spirit of imperialism with the religious fervour of an
early crusader He reproached himself with a lack of thoroughness in
the extirpation of his foes , and to the criticism of an unsympathetic
government which professed to dislike his cruelty whilst, in reality, it
only grudged his expenditure, ' he sorrowed that pity for the wicked and
evil should be enchanted unto Her Majesty' And Spenser endorsed all
that Grey did To him, and he must have had ample opportunity for
judging, Grey was a man ' whom, who that well knewe, knewe him to be
most gentell, affable, loving, and temperate, but that the necessitye of
that present state of thinges enforced him to that violence, and allmost
changed his very naturall disposition' As private secretary he would
probably accompany Grey on all his expeditions, and the vivid pictures
which he drew of the poverty and destitution of Ireland, which suggested
not a little detail in the Faerie Queene, read like the records of an eyewitness
The Veue of the Present State of Ireland, written some years later,
is a reasoned defence of Grey's character and policy, and that same man
who after two years' fruitless attempt to crush rebellion was recalled
to England to undergo a strict examination of his stewardship, was
glorified in the Faerie Queene as Sir Artegall, the chosen instrument of
Justice—' Most sacred vertue she of all the rest'
After Grey's departure Spenser remained in Ireland executing subordinate
but not unlucrative duties as a civil servant Already, in the previous