Heroes, Villains or Nutcases?

Heroes and villains are a matter of perspective and these things are never simple here we will find many strange and notable individuals trying to negotiate the chaotic years of the

heroes, villains, nutcase or genius? You decide.

 

 

 Miler Magrath, nutcase?

Sir Thomas Lee, nutcase?

Sir William Stanley

In 1570 he was sent on service to Ireland.

 

Thomas Stukely Rebel against Queen Elizabeth I

he made firm friends with the Gaelic nobleman, Shane O'Neill of Ulster, upon the latter's visit to court at London

suspected of proposing an invasion of Ireland to King Philip II of Spain, and soon after his release he offered his services to Fénelon, the French ambassador in London. He returned to Ireland in 1570, where he fitted out a ship at Waterford and made a great show of his piety, proceeding through the streets of the city on his knees as he offered himself up to God. He then sailed from Waterford on 17 April, supposedly for London, but his real destination was Vimiero. He had 28 men on board, but only the sole Italian knew their course, and the rest fell into despair when they arrived in Spain after a five day voyage.

 

 

The Earl of Essex,

Rebel against Queen Elizabeth I

The Pope conspires to have his son made King of Ireland

 

 ohn Sir J Norrys thomas norris willian norrys henry norrys

 

 

 

 Edward Maria Wingfield

founder of virginia When Edward Maria was nineteen he apparently accompanied his uncle, one of the key settlers involved in building a plantation in Munster, Ireland, truly the "forging house for Virginia", with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir John Popham and othersIn the 1590s Captain Wingfield was garrisoned at Drogheda in Ireland^[20] - where commanders reported for pay, rations and munitions to the Clerk of the Cheque & Muster-Master, Colonel Sir Ralph Lane,^[21] the former Deputy Governor of Sir Walter Ralegh's ill-fated 1584-86 Roanoke Colony

In 1594, Lane was severely wounded during an Irish rebellion against the Crown. He never fully recovered and died in 1603

 

Sir Walter Raleigh

 

 

Sir Francis Drake

 2nd Desmond rebellion,

 In the wake of the first Desmond Rebellion, Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland and William Drury, the Lord President of Munster, had up to 700 unemployed or "masterless" soldiers executed, judging them to be a danger to the public peace. The surviving mercenary soldiers in Munster would form the backbone of the coming rebellion.

 

 The Levellers

In the words of the Leveller leader Walwyn, "the cause of the Irish natives in seeking their just freedoms...was the very same with our cause here in endevouring our own rescue and freedom from the power of oppressors."   

 In April, 300 infantrymen of Colonel John Hewson's regiment, who declared that they would not serve in Ireland until the Levellers' programme had been realised, were cashiered without arrears of pay.

  While in Ireland he was involved in the Siege of Drogheda and commanded an English force during the siege and battle of Tecroghan. He lost an eye at the siege of Kilkenny and was made Governor of Dublin.

 

Sorley Boy gave no further trouble to the English government, although he did assist survivors of the Spanish Armada to escape Ireland in 1588

 The Massacre at Rathlin

In 1575, Sir Francis Drake was present at Rathlin Island, part of the English plantation effort in Ulster where 600 men, women, and children were massacred after surrendering.¹

Francis Drake was in charge of the ships which transported John Norreys' troops to Rathlin Island, commanding a small frigate called Falcon, with a total complement of 25. At the time of the massacre, he was charged with the task of keeping Scottish vessels from bringing reinforcements to Rathlin Island.

 

 

 

Somairle Bui MacDomnaill

  Essex had to withdraw to Carrickfergus for lack of provisions, but he then ordered a follow-up operation, with the intention of driving the Scots from Ulster. Under the commands of John Norreys and Francis Drake an amphibious strike force proceeded by sea from Carrickfergus to Rathlin Island, where Sorley Boy's children and valuables, together with the families of his principal retainers, had been lodged for safety; and while the chieftain was himself at Ballycastle, within sight of the island, the women and children (perhaps 700) were massacred by the English. Sorley Boy retaliated with a successful raid on Carrickfergus, in which the garrison broke before a highland charge, and managed to re-establish his power in the Glynns and the Route, which the Mac Quillans made ineffectual attempts to recover.

 

 

Guy Fawkes

Fawkes is sometimes referred to as "the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions"

 

 Sir Humphrey Gilbert 1539 – 9 September 1583 and the walk of severed heads half-brother (through his mother) of Sir Walter Raleigh.^[1] Adventurer, explorer, member of parliament, and soldier, he served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth^[1] and was a pioneer of English colonization in North America and the Plantations of Ireland

.Sir Arthur Champernowne, involved Gilbert in efforts to establish Irish plantations between 1566-1572.^[2]

 educated at Eton and the University of Oxford,

During the three weeks of this campaign, all enemies were treated without quarter and put to the sword - including women and children - which explains, perhaps, the swiftness with which so many castles had been abandoned before Gilbert's aggression. A particularly gruesome spectacle was devised by him to cow the rebel supporters:

The heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies and brought to the place where he incamped at night, and should there bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie ledying into his owne tente so that none could come into his tente for any cause but commonly he muste passe through a lane of heddes which he used ad terrorem...[It brought] greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kindsfolke, and freinds.

 Gilbert's attitude to the Irish may be captured in one quote from him, dated 13 November 1569: "These people are headstrong and if they feel the curb loosed but one link they will with bit in the teeth in one month run further out of the career of good order than they will be brought back in three months."

 . He backed Martin Frobisher's trip to Greenland, which yielded a cargo of a mysterious yellow rock, subsequently found to be worthless

 In pursuit of his Irish commission, Gilbert set sail in June 1579 after a spell of bad weather, and promptly got lost in fog and heavy rains off Land's End, an incident that caused the Queen to doubt his seafaring abilities.

 Gilbert was certainly an interesting psychological case, with the symptoms of disturbed personality that often go with men of mark,

sankin the Squirrel on a voyage from Newfoundland last seen pointing at the sky shouting that we are as near to heaven at sea as on land.

 

 

John Perrot
Sir John Perrot, mezzotint after George Powle
Born	between 7 & 11 Nov, 1528
Died	3 Nov 1592 (aged 63)
Parents	Thomas Perrot (1505 - 1531) Mary Berkeley (1510/1 - after 1586)

Sir John Perrot (November 1528 – 3 November 1592) served as Lord Deputy of Ireland under Queen Elizabeth I of England during the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

  In one grisly incident, after fifty rebels had been slain, Perrot sought to awe the rebels by cutting of the heads of the slain and fixing them to the market cross of Kilmallock. Fitzmaurice refused to come in and Perrot issued him with a challenge to single combat, which the rebel declined with the comment, "For if I should kill Sir John Perrot the Queen of England can send another president into this province; but if he do kill me there is none other to succeed me or to command as I do."

 Perrot authorised over 800 hangings - most by martial law

 The Crown sought to parcel out lands at nominal rents from the confiscated estates of the lately defeated Earl of Desmond - some 600,000 acres (2,400 km²) - on condition that the undertakers establish English farmers and labourers to build towns and work the land.

 Sir John Perrot, the English Lord Deputy, had banned aspects of traditional Gaelic Irish culture, including Brehon law, bardic Irish language poetry and Irish dress.

  In 1585 Perrot did have success? in perfecting a composition of the western province of Connaught,

  he was said to have called the queen a "base bastard piskitchin" and to have disparaged her legitimacy on many occasions. Perrot protested his loyalty to the jury and, in reaction to a hectoring prosecution counsel, eloquently cried out, "You win men's lives away with words". But his defence then descended into blustering, and a verdict of guilty was returned. Sentencing was put off for some months in the expectation of a royal pardon, but Perrot died in the Tower in September 1592.

 

Sir Christopher Blount (1555/1556 – 18 March 1601)

 

was an English soldier, secret agent, and rebel.

Fiach McHugh O'Byrne Origin Irish

 Carew Petre

 In 1568, Carew undertook his greatest adventure, when he laid claim to lands in the south of Ireland. He had sent ancient documents for examination by John Hooker, who became convinced - after travelling to Ireland - that the documents established Carew's hereditary entitlement to extensive properties in that country. these clames are still occurring today!

 Then he secured a decree of Sidney and council for the barony of Idrone in County Carlow, which was then in the possession of the Kavanagh clan, and was appointed captain of Leighlin castle (in succession to Sir Thomas Stukley) in the centre of the barony.

 . The land seizure caused great disquiet locally and eventually led to the Butler Wars, which contributed to a wider insurrection, the first of the Desmond Rebellions

  Not content to pursue the acquisition of Irish lands by right of inheritance, he extended his ambitions with a scheme for plantation. In April 1569, the privy council at London approved in principle a proposal by him, along with Sir Warham St Leger, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Richard Grenville, for a corporate settlement by confiscation of lands at Baltimore on the coast of the province of Munster (see Plantations of Ireland) to be accomplished via legal proceedings for the purpose of exposing defective titles, expelling rebels and introducing English colonists. Carew's solicitor, John Hooker, had by then become a prominent New English member (for Athenry) in the Irish Parliament in Dublin.

 

What is Greys Faith?

 Arthur Grey,  

14th Baron Grey de Wilton (1536–1593) Origin English

was a baron in the Peerage of England, remembered mainly for his memoir of his father, and for participating in the last defence of Calais.hewas the commander who ordered the massacreat smerwick in 1580

  His first main encounter was when he led an army of about 3,000 in the Battle of Glenmalure, County Wicklow in August, where he was defeated, with casualties of 800. Later in the same year he led a force of 800 to Ard na Caithne (Smerwick) in County Kerry where he massacred 600 Irish/Italian/Spanish troops who surrendered, a notorious incident known as the Siege of Smerwick. According to some versions of this event, Grey promised the garrison their lives in return for their surrender, a promise which he broke - which resulted in the Irish proverb 'Grey's faith'.

 he was also responsible for the hanging of Nicholas Nugent the former Chief Justice for little more than hinting he approved of the rebellion.

 Nicholas Nugent Irish Judge Origin Anglo-Irish

 Sir Richard Grenville

 

In pursuit of his military career, Grenville fought against the Turks in Hungary in 1566. In 1569, he arrived in Ireland with Sir Warham St. Leger to arrange for the settlement of lands in the barony of Kerricurrihy. These had been mortgaged^{[clarification needed]} to St Leger by the Earl of Desmond. At about this time, Grenville also seized lands for colonisation at Tracton, to the west of Cork harbour. Sir Peter Carew had asserted his claim to lands in south Leinster. St Leger settled nearby, and Humphrey Gilbert pushed westward from Idrone along the Blackwater River. All of these English efforts to take over land in the south of Ireland led to bitter disputes. They escalated into the first of the Desmond rebellions, led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald.

As sheriff of Cork, Grenville witnessed the rebellion in which Fitzmaurice, along with the Earl of Clancar, James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald (the Seneschal of Imokilly); Edmund Fitzgibbon (the White Knight); and others, attacked Tracton. They overcame the English defence with pickaxes and killed nearly the entire garrison. The three surviving English soldiers were hanged the next day by the Irish.

 Following a period of supporting Sir Walter Raleigh's venture in America (see below) he returned to Munster to arrange the estate granted him under the plantation of the province. Following the suppression of the Second Desmond Rebellion in 1583, he had purchased some 24,000 acres (97 km²) in Kinalmeaky and brought settlers over. His renewed efforts beginning in 1588 yielded little success, and Grenville returned to England late in 1590.

In America

 In 1585, Grenville was admiral of the seven-strong fleet that brought English settlers to establish a military colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of modern North Carolina in North America. He was heavily criticised by Ralph Lane, General of the expedition, who referred to Grenville's "intolerable pride and unsatiable ambition".

????

 "He would carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery take the glasses between his teeth and crash them in pieces and swallow them down, so that often the blood ran out of his mouth without any harm at all unto him.",^[2] Tudor History

 Spectacular Demise but Why?

At Flores, the English fleet was surprised by a much larger squadron sent by Philip II of Spain. Howard retreated to safety, but Grenville faced the 53 enemy ships alone, leading his single ship in what amounted to a suicide mission, saying that he "utterly refused to turn from the enimie...he would rather chose to die than to dishonour himselfe".^[3] His crew was down by nearly 100 men because of sickness on shore, but he chose nonetheless to confront the far superior Spanish force.^[3] For 12 hours he and his crew fought off the Spanish, causing heavy damage to fifteen galleons. According to Raleigh's account, Grenville and his soldiers fought for hour after hour:

"until all the powder of The Revenge, to the last barrell, was now spent, all her pikes broken, fortie of her best men slain, and the most part of the rest hurt".^[3] The ship itself was "marvellous unsaverie, filled with bloud and bodies of deade and wounded men like a slaughter house".^[3]

 

 Out-gunned, out-fought, and out-numbered fifty-three to one",^[4] Grenville was said to have wished to blow up his ship rather than give up the fight: "

 

 His crew however refused to obey these orders and his officers duly surrendered what was left of their vessel to the Spanish, on a promise of fair treatment. Grenville died of his wounds several days later, screaming that his men were "traitors and dogs"

 the Conde de Caracena, the Irish were nuestros hermanos, los españoles del norte. It is striking that Spain, a country which perhaps more than any other in Europe was obsessed with limpieza de sangre, recognised and upheld the class system, titles and genealogy of Gaelic Ireland.

 

  Elton sees Henry as competent, but too lazy to take direct control of affairs for any extended period; that is, the king was an opportunist who relied on others for most of his ideas and to do most of the work.

 Cardinal Wolsey

henry was disinterested in domestic affairs allowing the Cardinl to the fore

 It was to Wolsey’s advantage that Henry VII had introduced measures to curb the power of the nobility and was prepared to favour those from more humble backgrounds.^[8] Henry VII appointed Wolsey royal chaplain.^[9] In this position Wolsey was secretary to Richard Foxe, who recognized Wolsey's innate ability and dedication and appreciated his industry and willingness to take on tedious tasks.

 Wolsey was adamantly anti-war; however, when the King expressed his enthusiasm for an invasion of France, Wolsey was able to adapt to the King's mindset and gave persuasive speeches to the Privy Council in favour of war. Warham and Foxe, who failed to share the King’s enthusiasm for the French war, fell from power (1515/1516) and Wolsey took over as the King's most trusted advisor and administrator.

  The Tudors valued stability, and this mass urban migration represented a serious crisis. Wolsey conducted national enquires in 1517, 1518 and 1527 into the presence of enclosures. In the course of his administration he used the court of Chancery to prosecute two hundred and sixty-four landowners, including peers, bishops, knights, religious heads, and Oxford colleges. Enclosures were seen as directly linked to rural unemployment and depopulation, vagrancy, food shortages and, accordingly, inflation. This pattern was repeated with many of Wolsey’s other initiatives, particularly his quest to abolish enclosure. Despite spending significant time and effort in investigating the state of the countryside and prosecuting numerous offenders, Wolsey freely surrendered his policy during the parliament of 1523, in order to ensure that Parliament would pass his proposed taxes for Henry’s war in France. Enclosures continued to be a problem for many years to follow.

 

 

 

 Thomas Cromwell

 the critical moment in English history with the forced breaking with Rome of England

 

 

 Cromwell brought in the most significant revision of the treason laws since 1352, making it treasonous to speak rebellious words against the royal family, to deny their titles, or to call the King a heretic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper. The Act of Supremacy also clarified the King's position as head of the church, and the Act for Payment of First Fruits and Tenths substantially increased clerical taxes.

  On 21 January 1535, the King appointed him royal vicegerent, or vicar-general, and commissioned him to organize visitations of all the country's churches, monasteries, and clergy. In this capacity, Cromwell conducted a census in 1535 to enable the government to tax church property more effectively

 

 cromwell triggered the rising of the North of England

 

 The Pilgrimage of Grace was a popular rising in York, Yorkshire during 1536, in protest against Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, as well as other specific political, social and economic grievances. It was done in action against Thomas Cromwell.

 In February 1537 a new rising took place in Cumberland and Westmorland called Bigod's Rebellion (not authorised by Aske) under Sir Francis Bigod, of Settrington in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Upon this the king arrested Aske and several of the other leaders, such as Darcy, Constable, and Bigod, who were all convicted of treason and executed. Aske was hanged in chains from the walls of York Castle as a warning to other would-be 'rebels'. Sir Francis Bigod, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Stephan Hamilton, Sir Nicholas Tempast, Sir William Lumley, Sir Edward Neville, Sir John Constable, Sir William Constable, Sir Robert Constable, Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx, the abbots of Barlings, Sawley, Fountains abbeys and the prior of Bridlington were executed in June and July 1537. In all, 216 were put to death; lords and knights, half a dozen abbots, 38 monks, and 16 parish priests.^[4] The loss of the leaders enabled the Duke of Norfolk to quell the rising and martial law was imposed upon the demonstrating regions, ending predication.

 

 

 

Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy de Darcy

 before 1468 - London, 30 June 1537), was an English statesman and rebel leader, who was executed for his part in an English rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.