Page 191 - Demo

Chapter Six 191
appalling misery and wretchedness which then existed in Munster in the wake of this pro- tracted and brutal rebellion. Slaughter and pestilence carried of a great number of people, and the survivors, it is said ‘looked like anatomies of death.’ The Four Masters describing the abomination of desolation that prevailed wrote “that the low of a cow was not heard from Dún Chaoin (Kerry) to Caiseal Mumhan, Cashel in county Tipperary.” In his Hollinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, the esteemed English chronicler Raphael Hol- linshed, who was an oicer with the English army in Ireland at the time recorded:
“The slaughter of Irishmen was looked upon as literally the slaughter of wild beasts. Not only men, but even women and children who fell into the hands of the English were deliberately and systematically butchered. Bands of soldiers traversed great tracts of country, slaying every living thing they met.The land which before was populous and rich in all the good blessings of God; plenteous of corn; full of cattle-is now waste and barren, yielding no fruit, the pastures no cattle, the ields no corn, the air no birds. Finally, every way, the curse of God is so great and the land become so barren-both of man and beast-that whoever did travel from one end of Munster to the other, over six score miles, would not meet any man or child, save in towns and cities; nor yet see any beasts save wolves, dogs, and other ravening things.”
With the rebellion suppressed and Desmond dead, almost 600,000 acres of land were coniscated from the families of the rebels with ease and divided among a number of Eng- lishmen-these English recipients were subsequently known as “Undertakers.” Each Under- taker was to pay the Crown a head-rent of a few pence an acre, he was to plant his land with English-born farmers and cottiers, and to have no communication with the natives.
Among the irst Undertakers were the earlier referenced Sir Edmund Spenser who was given four thousand acres, and Sir Walter Raleigh, who received forty thousand acres. The plantation, however, was not a success, simply because the government could not induce a suicient number of English farmers and cottiers to come to a war-ravaged and restive country such as Ireland. Of the few who braved the dangers, many lost heart and quickly returned to England, and left with no other choice, the new owners of the estates found it proitable to accept Irish tenants.
Moreover, many of the planters who stayed permanently in Ireland soon became Gaeli- cised, so instead of the expected loyal English colony, there now was an uneasy blend of newcomers, Old English and Irish.