Raleigh, whose society was one of Spenser's few pleasures in Munster, settled a very large number of English families upon his great estate in Cork and Waterford. Passing afterwards into Boyle's skilful hands, this settlement became of the greatest importance, but it was overrun like the rest in 1598. Ten years before the crash came, Raleigh could see that Thomas of Desmond and his son James were dangerous neighbours. Sir Richard Grenville and Fane Beecher had the whole barony of Kinalmeaky between them, and at the end of 1589 there were only six Englishmen there, upon land estimated at 24,000 acres. The hero of Flores had a very poor opinion of the prospect unless questions which proved insoluble could be speedily settled, and the English settlers found their position everywhere very disagreeable. Grenville and St. Leger planted a considerable number in the district immediately south of Cork, and Arthur Hyde did pretty well on the Blackwater; but, as a rule, the newcomers were greatly outnumbered by the natives. Nor can it be doubted that many returned to England when they found that Munster was not Eldorado. Irish tenants were easily got to replace them, and even to pay rents to the undertakers until it was possible to cut their throats. When the day of trial came, the remaining settlers were easily disposed of; they cried, and there was none to help them.[189] [Sidenote: The Clancarty heiress;] [Sidenote: secretly married to Florence MacCarthy.] Among other devices for balancing the Desmond power in Munster, Elizabeth had made Donnell MacCarthy More Earl of Clancare, and Shane O'Neill had spoken very sarcastically of this attempt to turn a foolish chief into a 'wise earl.' His only legitimate son ran away to France, where he died, and all hereditary rights were then vested in his daughter Ellen, who became an important figure in the eyes of English and Irish fortune-hunters. It appears that Clancare sold his daughter to Sir Valentine Browne as a wife for his son Nicholas, Sir Thomas Norris having first given up the idea of wooing her. Sir Valentine was a mortgagee, for the earl had wasted his substance in riotous living, and in the hands of a family of undertakers and land-surveyors every claim of that sort would have its full value. In the eyes of the MacCarthies and of the heiress's mother, who was a Desmond, the proposed match was a disparagement, and early in 1589 a private marriage was celebrated between Lady Ellen and Florence MacCarthy, who had probably come from London on purpose. Sir Nicholas Browne afterwards married a daughter of O'Sullivan Bere. The heiress does not seem to have been much consulted, and a marriage which began so romantically was not in the end even moderately happy. In 1599 she distrusted her husband, who called her 'foolish and froward,' and not long afterwards she was practically a spy upon his actions. [Sidenote: Mac Carthy politics.] [Sidenote: Florence and Donnell MacCarthy.]