Sorleyboy and other chiefs, Essex coolly wrote, had sent their wives and children into the island, "which be all taken and executed to the number of six hundred.
Sorleyboy himself," he continued, "stood upon the mainland of the Glynnes and saw the taking of the island, and was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself, and saying that he there lost all that he ever had!" The impression left upon the mind by this horrible story, is increased by the composure with which even the news of it was received.

"Yellow-haired Charley," wrote Essex to the queen, "might tear himself for his pretty little ones and their _dam_," but in Ireland itself the massacre was not specially distinguished in the general system of atrocity.

Essex described it himself as one of the exploits with which he was most satisfied; and Elizabeth, in answer to his letters, bade him tell John Norris, "the executioner of his well-designed enterprise, that she would not be unmindful of his services."' I have transcribed this narrative partly for the sake of the reflection with which Mr.Froude concludes.

He says: 'But though passed over and unheeded at the time, and lying buried for three hundred years, the bloody stain comes back to the light again, not in myth or legend, but in the original account of the nobleman by whose command the deed was done; and when the history of England's dealings with Ireland settles at last into its final shape, that hunt among the caves at Rathlin will not be forgotten.'[1] It was for services like these that Essex got the barony of Farney, in the county Monaghan.

He had mortgaged his English estates to the queen for 10,000 l.,and after his plundering expeditions in Ireland he went home to pay his debts.
[Footnote 1: History of England, vol.xi.