A second band of Papal soldiers, comprised of Italians, Spaniards and Frenchmen, came to Ireland in 1580, and made Smerwick their headquarters, a fort on the shore fully exposed to the Atlantic winds. Here Lord Grey came upon them, but was obliged to wait eight days with his men until Sir William Winter arrived in Ventry harbour with cannon and ammunition, and at length joined Admiral Bingham in Smerwick Bay. Lord Grey galloped down over the sands to welcome Winter. Speedily the cannon were landed and placed in position before the fort, and the bombardment began. The English crept nearer after the first day, until the cannon were within a cable's length of the wall, and Sir William Winter himself taking careful aim, brought down the enemy's chief piece, and a man appeared on the ramparts waving a white hand-kerchief. The firing ceased. Then Signor Jeffrey, an Italian, came to entreat grace from the Lord Deputy, but grace was refused him. "Afterward their Coronnel Don Sebastian came forth to intreate that they might part with their armes like souldiers, at the least with their lives according to the custome of war ... it was strongly denied him and told him by the Lord Deputie himselfe that they could not justly pleade either custome of warre or lawe of nations--for that they were not any lawfull enemies...." The Pope sent them? asked Lord Grey de Wilton, and declared himself surprised, the bitter old enthusiast, that gentlemen should undertake a commission from "a detestable shaveling the right antichrist and patron of the doctrine of devils." He would only agree to wait till morning. So on the morning of the next November day, the garrison, seven hundred men, piled their arms, and with a few women and children stood waiting, while the great Atlantic waves beat coldly, sullenly on the shore. "Then put I in certain bands who fell straight to execution," writes Grey, with grim brevity. Six hundred men in all were slain that November morning, and Grey had the bodies stripped and laid in neat lines upon the shore, and Grey looked at them without emotion, and thought them "as gallant and goodly personages as ever I saw." So he wrote to the Queen, informing her of the victory, and the Queen wrote back thanking him, adding a postscript in her own hand (a special mark of honour) warmly approving of his action: and Camden courteously lies when he says that Grey shed tears and Elizabeth wished the cruelty had been unnecessary. Captain of one of these "certain bands" was Walter Ralegh. Edmund Spenser was at this time secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, and he writes in that scholarly graphic treatise in dialogue form, which has been already quoted, namely the "View of the State of Ireland"--"Whereupon the said Coronell did absolutely yeeld himselfe and the fort, with all therein, and craved only mercy, which it being not thought good to shew them, for danger of them, if, being saved they