Note 64 — Chapter XXXVIII

Strype’s Life of Cheke, ch. vi. Bingham to Leicester, November 11, 1580, in Wright’s Elizabeth; to Walsingham, November 12; Grey to the Queen and to Walsingham, November 12; Anonymous to Walsingham, November (No. 27). Bingham says the confusion and slaughter were increased by the sailors who swarmed in over the sea-face of the fort, but Grey makes no excuse. See also G. Fenton to Walsingham, November 14, Hooker, Camden, and Spenser’s State of Ireland. The poet expressly says that he was present. All the above agree that Grey made no promise, and the Four Masters do not materially contradict the English writers, for their ‘promise of protection’ may only refer to the negotiations. O’Daly and O’Sullivan, whose accounts seem to have been drawn from the same source, and very probably from Sanders, accuse Grey of bad faith; but they also say the siege lasted forty days, and that the English had recourse to fraud because force had failed. Now it is certain that only one clear day elapsed between the turning of the first sod and the surrender of the fort. Graia fides became a by-word in Catholic Europe, but that would be a matter of course, and it is a pity that so great a scholar as O’Donovan should give implicit faith to rumour, while scouting as ‘mere fiction’ the solemn statement of such an eye witness as Edmund Spenser.