Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599
The Lord Roche kept a freeholder, who had eight plowlands,
prisoner, and hand-locked him till he had surrendered seven
plowlands and a half, on agreement to keep the remaining
plowland free; but when this was done, the Lord Roche extorted
as many exactions from that half-plowland, as from any other
half-plowland in his country. . . . And even the great men
were under the same oppression from the greater: for the Earl
of Desmond forcibly took away the Seneschal of Imokilly's corn
from his own land, though he was one of the most considerable
gentlemen in Munster.[62:3]
And this is English dealing with Irish:--
Mr. Henry Sheffield asks Lord Burghley's interest with Sir
George Carew, to be made his deputy at Leighlin, in place of
Mr. Bagenall, who met his death under the following
circumstances:--
Mr. Bagenall, after he had bought the barony of Odrone of Sir
George Carew, could not be contented to let the Kavanaghs
enjoy such lands as old Sir Peter Carew, young Sir Peter, and
last, Sir George were content that they should have, but
threatened to kill them wherever he could meet them. As it is
now fallen out, about the last of November, one Henry Heron,
Mr. Bagenall's brother-in-law, having lost four kine, making
that his quarrel, he being accompanied with divers others to
the number of twenty or thereabouts, by the procurement of his
brother-in-law, went to the house of Mortagh Oge, a man
seventy years old, the chief of the Kavanaghs, with their
swords drawn: which the old man seeing, for fear of his life,
sought to go into the woods, but was taken and brought before
Mr. Heron, who charged him that his son had taken the cows.
The old man answered that he could pay for them. Mr. Heron
would not be contented, but bade his men kill him, he desiring
to be brought for trial at the sessions. Further, the morrow
after they went again into the woods, and there they found
another old man, a servant of Mortagh Oge, and likewise killed
him, Mr. Heron saying that it was because he would not confess
the cows.
On these murders, the sons of the old man laid an ambush for
Mr. Bagenall; who, following them more upon will than with
discretion, fell into their hands, and were slain with
thirteen more. He had sixteen wounds above his girdle, and one
of his legs cut off, and his tongue drawn out of his mouth and
slit. There is not one man dwelling in all this country that
was Sir George Carew's, but every man fled, and left the whole
country waste; and so I fear me it will continue, now the
deadly feud is so great between them.[63:4]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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