Munster. Expectation of the return of Fitzmaurice, at
the head of a liberating expedition, began to be rife
throughout the south and west, and the coasts were watched
with the utmost vigilance. In the month of June, three
persons having landed in disguise from a Spanish ship,
at Dingle, were seized by government spies, and carried
before the Earl of Desmond. On examination, one of them
proved to be O'Haly, Bishop of Mayo, and another a friar
named O'Rourke; the third is not named. By the timid,
temporizing Desmond, they were forwarded to Kilmallock
to Drury, who put them to every conceivable torture, in
order to extract intelligence of Fitzmaurice's movements.
After their thighs had been broken with hammers, they
were hanged on a tree, and their bodies used as targets
by the brutal soldiery. Fitzmaurice, with his friends,
having survived shipwreck on the coast of Galicia, entered
the same harbour (Dingle) on the 17th of July. But no
tidings had yet reached Munster of Stukely and Pisano;
and his cousin, the Earl, sent him neither sign of
friendship nor promise of co-operation. He therefore
brought his vessels round to the small harbour of Smerwick,
and commenced fortifying the almost isolated rock of
_Oilen-an-oir_--or golden island, so called from the
shipwreck at that point of one of Martin Forbisher's
vessels, laden with golden quartz, some years before.
Here he was joined by John and James of Desmond, and by
a band of 200 of the O'Flaherties of Galway, the only
allies who presented themselves. These latter, on finding
the expected Munster rising already dead, and the
much-talked-of Spanish auxiliary force so mere a handful,