The Lord Deputy, Mountjoy, was pressing for Elizabeth to grant Tyrone a pardon so that the war could be concluded. Cecil supported him, arguing that if they were to defend themselves from the Spanish, Ireland needed to be secure. Elizabeth, however, had turned down Mountjoy’s request, informing him that she would not accept any submission from “the author of so much misery to our loving subjects.”

The Irish rebels had indeed been cruel. The wives of English settlers in Munster had been forced to watch their own children being slain, and had then been raped, had their noses slit and were whipped as they ran naked down the roads. But now the rebel army was ruined and the Irish people were starving. Essex’s former secretary in Ireland, Fynes Moryson, recorded “no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up about the ground.”

Harington described the famine as “so terrible… as no chronicle or Jew or Gentile hat the like.” No purpose, not even revenge, could be served by continuing the war.

Source:

Lisle, Leanda De. "Westward… Descended a Hideous Tempest" After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England. New York: Ballantine, 2005. 96. Print.

Original Source(s) Listed:

Richard Berleth, The Twilight Lords, p. 292.

Harington, State of Ireland, p. 3.

Source:

Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy and 1st Earl of Devonshire

Elizabeth I of England / The Virgin Queen / Gloriana / Good Queen Bess

Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone) / The Great Earl / The Ó Néill

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley KG PC

Fynes Moryson

John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton

[Cogadh na Naoi mBliana (Nine Years’ War) / Tyrone’s Rebellion]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years%27_War_(Ireland)