A short while thereafter, my grandfather sailed to Ireland, where befell him the last great adventure, and, as he was wont to say, the most fortunate, of his life. The O’Neill, called Earl of Tyrone, had been long time a thorn in the side of Queen Elizabeth, taking gold from the King of Spain to sustain his treasons, and in the year 1597 making open war upon the English governor. He did great despite upon the people of the Plantation, and lurking in the forests, long defied the English soldiery. My Lord Mountjoy, whom the Queen had sent to Ireland as her deputy in the room of Essex, being resolved to make an end of the rebellion, ravaged and wasted the country, driving off the cattle, starving the people, and fortifying all the passes through the woods. And you shall read now how my grandfather once more, and for the last time, drew his sword, and the strange fashion whereby he was led to put it up again, for ever. *THE FIFTH PART* *CHRISTOPHER RUDD’S ADVENTURE IN IRELAND, AND THE MANNER OF HIS WINNING A WIFE* [Illustration: headpiece to Fifth Part] *I* I hold it ill that a man should be under no constraint to labour for his bread. To have a competency is indeed a comfortable thing; but being so possessed, a man lacks a spur to high emprise, and his faculties are like to wither and decay. It was my fortune to receive from my father a property sufficient to supply the needs of the body; and the gear I added thereto in divers enterprises and adventures gave me the wherewithal to maintain a decent port before the world, and even at the Court of the Queen’s Majesty, where a man had need be of some substance. But my ambition did not soar a high pitch: I was content to play a modest part on the world’s stage; and when I fell out of humour, as sometimes I did, with the fevered life at Court, I withdrew myself to my little estate in the country, and there lived rustically among the boors and the pigs. Nevertheless, from having seen many men and cities in my time, I was not long of finding this rustical employment stale upon me. After some few months I would begin to yearn again for the stir and bustle of London, where I might at the least whet my wits that had grown dull and rusty among my simple country fellows. One such time, in the late autumn of the year 1601, my years then numbering thirty, I rode out of Hampshire to London, and took up my lodging in King Street, in Westminster, rejoicing to meet my old friends again, to hear the clash of wits, and feed my mind on the marvellous inventions of Will Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and other ornaments and luminaries of that glorious age.