THOMAS LE STRANGE AND THE ELIZABETHAN CONQUEST OF  IRELAND

English rule was for the first time imposed upon Ireland in the 16^th century under the House of Tudor.  The events of the following century, namely the defeat of the Spaniards and Irish at Kinsale in 1603 and the flight of the Earls in 1607 were the culminating points of this process.  In the middle years of the Tudor period effective English rule was confined to Dublin and the Pale.  Outside the Pale power lay in the hands of the Norman-Irish and Gaelic lords. The Norman-Irish Fitzgeralds exercised a vague vice-royalty, the Earl of Kildare.  When in 1534 Silken Thomas, the eldest son of the then Earl of Kildare revolted against interference by English officials, the rising was suppressed in a manner which gave a foretaste of what was to come.  The Fitzgerald fortress at Maynooth was bombarded into surrender by heavy guns, a devastating form of armament; and the leading resistance members beheaded in London. Thereafter, the representative of the Crown in Ireland, the Lord Deputy, was always an Englishman, and an English army remained in Ireland until 1922.

King Henry VIII

Henry VIII declared himself to be head of the church and dissolved the monasteries thus making available large tracts of monastic lands for purchase by his wealthy English subjects.  In 1541 Henry, who had held the papal title of Lord of Ireland, was declared by the Dublin Parliament to be King of Ireland.  The next major step was taken in the reign of his elder daughter, Mary, when the fateful policy of plantation was begun.

  The present day counties of Offaly and Laois were shires and named King’s and Queen’s counties respectively.  Plantation evoked violent resistance and did not at first prove a success.   The same policy was applied throughout Munster where the local chiefs under the dominant leadership of the Earl of Desmond were twice provoked into rebellion.   The two Desmond rebellions were suppressed with the highest degrees of cruelty on both sides. Munster was laid waste; famine, giving rise to the poet Spenser’s description of the inhabitants of that province as ‘anatomies of death’, prevailed throughout the land; and 400,000 acres had been confiscated by the time the risings were suppressed.  Fortunately for Connaucht the policy of plantation was not applied to that province, except that, as we shall see, attempts were made to attract English settlers to Athlone and Roscommon.

What was the purpose of this atrocious policy of conquest?  In the first place, as the history of the New World shows, colonisation became part of the policy of the newly emergent nation-states of Europe. Spain, the wealthiest and most powerful of the European states, had acquired its wealth by colonisation in the Americas. Wealth was the means of conquest.  In addition a new dimension was added by what would now be called the ideological conflict between the Catholic and Protestant religions following the Reformation. Catholic Spain was intent on the conquest of England. Unless England was the ruler of Ireland, the latter presented a perhaps-fatal weakness in England’s defenses.  During the Desmond rebellion 1579 a mixed bag of 800 troops provided by the Pope with the assistance of Spain landed on the Kerry coast.  The English slaughtered them all.  The episode of the Spanish Armada may be left to speak for itself. The culminating event of Kinsale in 1603 was fought against the Irish and a Spaniard army. In the religious conflict the Pope played a trump card in 1569 when he excommunicated Elizabeth, thus pronouncing her a heretic who had forfeited her right to allegiance on the part of her catholic subjects.  Conversely her catholic subjects were cast as traitors subject to the penalty of death.

In the realm of civil government the English gradually extended the division of the country into shires. The principal officer of the Crown in each county was the sheriff who was primarily responsible for the maintenance of law and order through the sheriff’s court. This development was in accordance with the pattern of English civil government and was part of the policy of the anglicisation of Ireland. The more powerful chiefs were induced to adopt the English pattern of landholding by a policy of surrender and re-grant.  In England all land was nominally the property of the monarch and was held by the tenants-in-chief directly for the monarch.  Under this policy, the Irish chiefs were induced to surrender to the Crown lands previously regarded as theirs, although such land was not their individual property but the property of the appropriate tribe. Following surrender the land was re-granted by the Crown to the Irish chief in return for a money rent. This policy was particularly applied to Connacht where confiscation’s on the scale of those in Munster were not carried out. By and large this policy was successful in particular under the terms of the Composition of Connacht in 1585.

Against this background we will now attempt to relate the history of Thomas Le Strange.  For this purpose one must turn to the contemporary documents, the chief of which is calendared, and is reproduced in full or in précis form, in the State Papers (Ireland).  These are English documents reproduced in 24 large volumes consisting of the written communications made between the government in London and its representatives in Dublin.  Another voluminous source is the Calendar of the Carew manuscripts, the originals of which are in the Library at Lambeth Palace.  A third major source is the Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland during the reign of Elizabeth.

According to Burke’s Irish Family Records Sir Thomas Le Strange (he was knighted in the course of his services in Ireland) was the seventh son of Sir Thomas Le Strange of Hunstanton, Norfolk, by the latter’s wife Anne, daughter of Lord Vaux of Harrowden, Northamptonshire.  The younger Thomas is the founder, although not the direct ancestor, of the Irish family of L’Estrange.  As very much a younger son he no doubt regarded the prospect available, of holding land in Ireland as a particularly favourable opportunity.  His chief service to the crown was performed in Connacht, but the first Irish land, which he held, was in Co. Westmeath.  This consisted of the estates of a dissolved monastery at Loughseudy near Ballymore.  Like all such grants, these estates were held by the Crown, in Le Strange’s case at an annual rent of £24 -14 - 8.  After his death, this lease continued in favour of his heirs; it was renewed in 1608 and again in 1616.

The first mention in point of time of Le Strange is to be found in the Carew manuscripts for 1557.   In that year the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Sussex, visited the newly formed King’s County.  The English were meeting stubborn resistance dissenting against the policy of plantation.  The castle at Meelick, on the west bank of the Shannon, a few miles downstream from what is now Shannon Harbour, was an Irish stronghold.

The defenders of the castle fired handguns at Sussex and his party.  Sussex summoned reinforcements from Athlone as a result of which Le Strange, who is described as the sub-constable of Athlone, traveled by boat down the Shannon to Meelick bringing with him his kern (a lightly armed troop of foot soldiers) together with ‘great ordnance’.   The ordnance consisted no doubt of the heavy guns available for the defence of Athlone.   These guns were manhandled onto the riverbank and one shot was fired as a warning.   Undismayed, the Irish announced their intention to defend the castle.  Sixteen rounds were then fired by the English, causing the defenders to abandon the castle and flee to safety.   The incident shows that from an early stage Le Strange was prominent amongst the Crown’s servants in Connacht.  At about this time he was appointed to exercise martial law in Co. Westmeath. He was then described as ‘Captain of Athlone’, indicating perhaps that as sub-constable or captain he was probably second-in-command to the Governor or the town.

Throughout the Tudor period the main obstacle to English conquest lay in Ulster.  In the 1560’s Elizabeth decided that Shane O’Neill of Tyrone should be defeated and crushed.  The Lord Deputy left Dublin for Ulster ‘to chastise the rebel and traitor O’Neill. He appointed as Lords Justices, to act in his absence, the Archbishop of Dublin and the Earl of Kildare, while commissions were sent out to named persons to execute martial law.  Le Strange was again appointed for Westmeath.  The duties of a commissioner were to survey the muster and array of the inhabitants (that is to bring together those who were loyal and capable of fighting) and assess the number of horses and arms, fast soldiers and cavalry which were to be provided by land holders according to the extent of their lands. Furthermore, to cess (tax) the men in each barony (a county division) for the defence of the county; to fine and imprison those who disobeyed.  They were charged to punish with fire and sword those who should attempt any evil against the Crown; and, as far as the Lord Justices were concerned, to lead and govern the array of the army so long as it should remain in the field.   The Lord Deputy failed to chastise the rebel O’Neill, but in his absence the rest of Ireland remained comparatively undisturbed.

The English appreciated the importance of the two towns,   Roscommon and Athlone both on the eastern boundary of Connacht.   Athlone was also an important crossing place over the Shannon.  What was later to become the county of Roscommon was the territory of O’Connor Don, while the future county of Sligo consisted of the lands of O’Connor Sligo. O’Connor Roe ruled over the lands around Lough Key.   Roscommon castle had been built by the Norman’s.  The Lord Deputy, then Sir Henry Sidney, persuaded O’Connor Don to hand over Roscommon castle to the English.  In 1569 Le Strange was appointed Governor of the castle and at the same time he was granted the lands of the dissolved monasteries around Roscommon.

A year later the English established presidencies in the two western provinces of Munster and Connacht, the first president of Connacht being Sir Edward Fitton.  Munster was already being planted with English settlers, a policy, which in a few years led to the Desmond rebellions.  Fitton decided to follow the same policy of plantation in Connacht.  In this he failed and Connacht was never planted, but he proposed to make a start with Roscommon. To this end he wrote to Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s minister, asking for fifty gentlemen  to ‘turn the earth of Roscommon to good use’.  The fifty gentlemen were not forthcoming) thus leaving Roscommon isolated in a ‘sea of Irishry’.

The Norman-Irish Burkes provided a turbulent element in Connacht.  They were divided into two septs, the Mayo Burkes to the north and the Clanrickard Burkes to the south.  The head of the latter was the Earl of Clanrickard who pretended to assist and support the English while at the same time encouraging his followers to cause the English as much trouble as possible.  From the English point of view his sons, Ulick and John, were far worse for they were usually in open rebellion.  They were known as the sons of the Earl, in Irish the Mac-an-Iarlas.  When Fitton arrested the Earl and proposed to try him at sessions in Galway the sons assembled an army of Scots mercenaries, troops which were generally readily available, and in 1572 with this force burnt Athlone.  In the same year another force of 2000 foot and 60 horse burnt Ballymore where, as the reader will remember, Le Strange held the confiscated monastic lands of Loughseudy.  But there was one significant feature in the burning of Ballymore.  In reporting the event to the Lord Deputy, the Bishop of Meath wrote that the whole of Ballymore was burnt except Mr. Le Strange’s house and castle.  The leader of the attacking force, Maurice Fitzgerald, saved these.

The following year Le Strange was not so lucky. spurred on the example of the Mac-an-Iarlas, O’Connor Roe descended on Roscommon from Boyle and burnt the town and castle.  This was the end of Le Strange’s governorship.  In the fire he lost what he described as staff and plate which, in a letter to Lord Burghley, he valued at £1,000.  He made mention also of other great losses he had suffered since coming to Ireland.   Three years after the fire he traveled to London to petition the Queen for recompense for his losses, which he then quantified at £1,847.  One does not know whether this sum was paid or not.   He took with him to London letters from the Lord Deputy and Fitton recommending him to Burghley.  In his letter Fitton wrote that Le Strange had served with him to the great peril of his (Le Strange’s) life.  On the loss of the governorship of Roscommon,  Le Strange acquired Athleague where he built Castle Strange.  At about this time he was knighted and made a member of the Irish Privy Council.   But by now the Queen and the English Privy Council were putting their faith in Sir Nicholas Malby who had played a prominent part in the suppression of the risings in Munster.  In 1576 Malby was appointed President of Connacht in the place of Fitton and at about the same time he was granted a lease of Roscommon Castle, together with the confiscated monastic lands that went with it.   The windows that can today be seen in the walls of the castle were inserted there by him.   Malby had an advantage over Le Strange, for while the latter was making repeated claims for compensation for the losses he had suffered, Malby was putting before the Queen a plan to tax Connacht in accordance with the policy of surrender and regrant.  It was his plan, which provided the foundation for the composition of Connacht of 1585.

In the year of Malby’s appointment as President, the Lord Deputy visited Connacht.   He reported to London as follows:

‘I left in Connacht Thomas Le Strange and Thomas Dillon, learned in the laws, as commissioners to determine controversies and Robert Dampart, provost Marshal, to apprehend and execute the thieves and destroyers of the country.  They of Connacht are willing to bear men of war for the suppression of rebels and outlaws’.

The reference to Le Strange being learned in the laws (if the phrase does refer to him as well as to Dillon) suggests that as a young man he had attended one of the Inns of Court in London.  If so he combined his legal knowledge with military prowess.  During the Lord Deputy’s visit his troops hunted down the Mac-an-Iarlas and their followers including the usual Scots mercenaries.   Le Strange was singled out for thanks for having slain sixty of them near Loughrea.

The two-faced Lord Clanrickard made overtures for peace.  As a result the Lord Deputy wrote to him saying that he was sending five named persons, one of them being Le Strange, to receive Clanrickard’s castle at Loughrea and to deliver to him the Lord Deputy’s protection.   But at the same time the Lord Deputy caused various witnesses to be examined, all of whom implicated Clanrickard in the risings led by his sons. The Mac-an-Iarlas also made their submission but were committed to prison.  On their release they revolted again and burnt the church at a place which appears in the state papers as Balieaurhie.  Their own ancestors were buried there, a fact, which increased the magnitude of the crime. This church was presumably near Loughrea.

In 1583 the Lord Deputy proclaimed the Mac-an-Iarlas traitors and rebels, detained the Earl and appointed to his castle Le Strange and a Captain Collier with 250 men.  Captain Collier had previously acted with Le Strange.   Both had been commended for their service against the Irish with their Scots mercenaries in 1576 and in the same year they were joint commissioners to receive Clanrickard’s Castle.  The next step taken by the Lord Deputy was to summon Clanrickard and the other Irish chiefs to Galway.  There they made their submission and acknowledged that they held their lands subject to the English Crown.  Grace O’Malley (Grannuaile), a relative of the Mayo Burkes and a pirate operating independently from ClareIsland in ClewBay, also attended.  She offered to put at the Lord Deputy’s disposal three galleys and 200 fighting men for service in Ireland or Scotland.

The varied services performed by Le Strange are further exemplified by the issue to him in 1587 of a commission to survey Mc Costelloe’s country.  The commission consisted of Le Strange and seven others and Le Strange presided when the enquiry took place.  The centre of Mc Costelloe’s country was at Ballyhaunis in Mayo.   This area had been omitted from the composition of Connacht because it consisted mostly of bogs, moors, woods and mountains.  The commission was charged with viewing and estimating the number of quarters (units of 120 acres each) in that country and to accept from the inhabitants a rent appropriate to the value of the land.   The commissioners recommended to the Lord Deputy that four quarters should be assessed as one quarter elsewhere.  That Le Strange performed this sort of service perhaps suggests that he could speak Irish.

Malby died at a comparatively early age in 1584. He was succeeded in Connacht by Sir Richard Bingham.  Bingham was a man of hitherto unheard  cruelty.  He massacred an army of Scots mercenaries in Mayo.   Many of the Mayo Burkes suffered the same fate.

Sir John Perrot was appointed Lord Deputy in 1584. Perrot, reputedly an illegitimate son of Henry VIII, was himself something of a ruffian, but he was unable to tolerate the barbarities committed by Bingham.   The latter was removed in 1587 and sent off to serve in the English army in the Netherlands.   Thomas Le Strange was appointed to succeed him as Governor of Connacht.  This was the high-water mark of Le Strange’s service to the crown, but it was short lived.  When Bingham passed through London he used his influence to have Le Strange removed and himself re-instated as Governor.

The Irish were no doubt delighted at the departure of Bingham, but at least some of the English preferred him to his successor. In a letter to the Lord Treasurer in London one George Castell expressed dismay at the change. He wrote:

‘We could hardly get justice, though Sir Richard Bingham stood by us, and now we look for none at all, for our justice is an Irishman, Sir Thomas Le Strange in Sir Richard’s place, married to an Irishwoman, the justice’s wife’s mother.’

Le Strange’s wife was Margaret Burke, the mother of (Sir) Francis Shaer, whose name suggests that he was an Irishman. It is significant that by 1587 Le Strange, a younger son from Norfolk, could be described as an Irishman.  In the same vein and in the same year one Andrew Trollop wrote to the Lord Treasurer giving a sorry picture of the shortcomings of the English in Ireland.  He picks out for mention the fact that there was no divine service in the country. All the churches were in great decay, that not seven bishops were able to preach, few ministers having £5 a year. He mentions that sheriffs and other officers were guilty of evil doings, and that there was great apprehension on the part of the soldiers.   But he adds:

‘‘The readiness of the Irish to receive English among them is proved by their gifts of land to Sir Thomas Le Strange, Mr. Crofton and others.’

Meanwhile reports from Spain informed the English government that invasion was imminent.   The event had been long anticipated.  In January 1586, the Lord Deputy and the Council of Ireland addressed a memorandum written in DublinCastle to the Privy Council in England.  Le Strange was a signatory to this document.  The Memorandum stated:

The country is outwardly calm, but the Irish are inconstant and desirous of change.  They prefer barbarous looseness to lawful liberty and good government.  They readily accept rumours of Spanish invasion. The pretended Bishop of Derry is travelling through France, Spain and Scotland.  We feel that an invasion of Ireland is utterly probable.  Ireland is utterly unprepared.  A schedule of ammunition is attached.  This is inadequate.  We have no money and no credit on which to borrow any.  The victualler has no corn left.  It is also bad and will scarce make any bread.  As a result the soldiers have grown out of clothes and heart.   We have to keep them here by force; as many as can do steal away.  What we need is munitions; a good round mass of money to pay debts and to answer present charges together with £10,000 as a stock in readiness, only to be used in case of foreign invasion; and a good supply of corn. We suggest also reserve forces to be kept in Wales to be transported to Ireland in case of necessity.  Shipping is also required which, if it is not needed to combat invasion, may cut off the pirates that haunt this coast.

Bingham’s return as President of Connacht coincided with the appointment of a new Lord Deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, a cousin of Le Strange’s, probably on his mother’s side.  This lamentable pair (Bingham and Fitzwilliam) arrived in Ireland shortly before the Armada sailed up the English Channel so that they were in time to organise the hunting down of Spanish survivors on the Connacht coast.  If the Armada had not suffered such serious loss by shipwreck on Irish shores the Spaniards might have succeeded in landing a substantial number of troops in Ireland.  Strictly from the historian’s point of view we can only regret that an episode of such fascination never took place.

Some of the ship-wrecked Spaniards who escaped the mass slaughter which awaited them as they struggled ashore, succeeded in making their way inland where they sought protection from such Irish Chiefs as were prepared to help them.  One of these chiefs was Sir Brian O’Rouke of Breffni, whose territory was centred on Dromahair.  O’Rouke, who had been knighted by the English by way of a sop, had for long been a cause of trouble.  In 1580 he had launched an attack on Roscommon in alliance with O’Connor Roe. This had been repulsed with the assistance of a sept named Kelly, who were described as Le Strange’s men.  More recently O’Rouke had consistently neglected or refused to pay the rent due from him to the crown under the terms of the composition of Connacht.  The shelter, which he gave to some of the survivors of the Armada, was to Bingham the last straw.

At first a final effort was made to persuade O’Rouke to come to terms and to submit to the Queen.   The Lord Deputy wanted O’Rouke to appear before him, and to this end he sent Sir Henry Harrington and Sir Thomas Le Strange to him with a safe conduct. Playing for time, O’Rouke refused to obey the summons on the ground that he wanted it brought by the Bishop of Meath and Sir Robert Dillon, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.  So a last effort was made.  Fitzwilliam wrote to Burghley:

I sent the Lord Primate (Garvey), the Bishop of Meath (Jones), Sir R. Dillion and Sir T. Le Strange to parley with O’Rouke upon the borders of his country, who could not reclaim him to his duty and obedience; whereupon soon after his prosecution was begun by Sir Richard Bingham.

The prosecution took the form of a full-scale attack on O’Rouke’s territory.  The cattle were driven off and the country laid waste and burnt.  O’Rouke escaped to the north and crossed to Scotland, seeking the protection of James VI. James, later James I of England, handed him over to Elizabeth with the result that he was hanged in London.  O’Rouke was an Irish Chief who was in no way fighting for anything that could be called Ireland but merely for himself.  Two of his nephews and their followers had fought with Bingham in an attempt to avenge the death of their father who had been murdered at the behest of O’Rouke.

The four commissioners referred to above, next turned their attention to the Burkes, and their allies the O’Flaherties.  They persuaded them to surrender themselves once again at Galway and to make their submission to the Lord Deputy. In 1590 a large number of chiefs assembled in St Nicholas church and made their submission upon their knees in the presence of the Lord Deputy and the commissioners.  Articles of peace were signed, one of the signatories being Le Strange.  Amongst the terms were the following: They were to disperse their forces, deliver to the Lord Deputy all Spaniards, Portuguese and other foreigners from the Spanish fleet as were among them, pay compensation for spoils and hurts done by them, and pay a fine fixed by the Lord Deputy.   When these terms were met they would receive the Lord Deputy’s general pardon.

Bingham wrote to the Queen’s secretary, Walsingham saying that, almost immediately after this peace was made, Grace O’Malley with two or three boats full of knaves, who not having heard of the peace, committed some spoil on the Isle of Aran on two or three of Sir Thomas Le Strange’s men.  This island, which lies off the western coast of Donegal, is not to be confuses with the Aran Islands which lie off the entrance to GalwayBay.  A grant of the Isle of Aran had been made to Le Strange.  Sir Moragh O’Flaherty claimed that an earlier grant of the island had been made to himself and it was he who no doubt prompted Grace to make her raid.  The Burkes, however, were by now not going to upset neither the peace nor Sir Thomas Le Strange.  Bingham reported that Richard Burke, Grace’s son-in-law had Grace in hand till she restored the spoils and repaired the harm.

Shortly before his death Le strange lent his boat to Sir George Carew. This for the purpose of raising from the waters of Dunmore Bay, (which is on the western shores of Clare), some of the guns from a Spanish vessel which had been wrecked there at the time of the  Armada.  Was this the same boat, one wonders, as the boat in which he had brought ‘great ordnance’ from Athlone to Meelick over thirty years earlier?  Sir George and his men had already raised three brass cannon using their own boats, but a basilisk (a brass gun capable of throwing a shot of 200 pounds weight) was too heavy for them.   In addition to the basilisk four more brass pieces could be seen lying at four and a half fathoms of water.   With the aid of Le Strange’s boat the salvage of these guns was successfully completed.

Thomas Le Strange died in 1590.   This event was noted in the Annals of Lough Key.   These annals are a monastic compilation covering the years from 1014 to 1636, some parts of which may have been written on an island in Lough Key.   In 1871 they were published in the original Irish together with an English translation. For the year 1590 there is an entry which reads:

Sir Thomas Le Strange died in Galway; and that was a great calamity, for there was not in Connacht a foreigner whose, death was more to be deplored by Connacht than his.

That brief entry is a moving tribute to Sir Thomas. He suppressed rebellion but without the cruelty usually shown by the leading men among the English.

The view of the Irish as expressed in the Annals of Lough Key is in striking contrast with the dismay expressed by George Castell, an Englishman, when Sir Thomas was appointed Govenor of Connacht.

Following Sir Thomas’ death the English suffered many setbacks, including the Battle of the Curlews in 1599 when the then Goveror of Connacht was killed.  But in 1601 an invading Spanish army and the armies of the northern Earls were defeated at Kinsale.  Ulster submitted.  The Flight of the Earls followed in 1607 and Gaelic Ireland was dead.

Castle Strange lies at about two miles north-west of Athleague.  The road, which approaches it, crosses the river Suck by a long causeway bridge, consisting of a number of arches.  The usual tell-tale humps and bumps in the grass indicate where Sir Thomas’s castle once stood.  Near this site is the ruin of a later building also called Castle Strange which was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1921.  It is roofless and the floors have fallen in, but the outer walls remain showing that it was a square castle-like structure of four stories in height. During the 19^th century and until its destruction in 1921 a family named Mitchell occupied it.  The stables and ancillary buildings which are contemporary with the house form an impressive range in the shape of a hollow square.  There is a modern farm house, and the farm lands are extensive.