p.184.] Further on Mr.Froude has another reflection connected with the death of Essex, supposed to have been poisoned, as his widow immediately after married Leicester.

He says: 'Notwithstanding Rathlin, Essex was one of the noblest of living Englishmen, and that such a man could have ordered such a deed, being totally unconscious of the horror of it, is not the least instructive feature in the dreadful story.' It is certainly a strange fact that nearly all the official murderers who ruled in Ireland in those times were intensely religious, setting to their own class a most edifying example of piety.

Thus, from the first, Protestantism was presented to the Irish in close connexion with brutal inhumanity and remorseless cruelty.

Essex, when dying, was described by the bystanders as acting 'more like a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man.' His opinion of the religious character of his countrymen was most unfavourable.

'The Gospel had been preached to them,' he said, 'but they were neither Papists nor Protestants--of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity.