Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH POLITICS AND POLITICAL HISTORY 1 59
as short cuts to their ends ;
of a native aristocracy, almost
every man of whom had his price, frankly posting up that
price in the secret market kept by the State for that vile
traffic ; men whom no oaths could bind, or any public
or religious principle control ; Earls, Barons, great
territorial chieftains, belted knights, and high gentlemen
offering for money or land to betray their cause and their
comrades. Slowly but surely the monstrous criminalities
of the men of this age, evidenced by testimonies gradually
accumulating as one pores over the contemporary monuments—
^usually letters written by their own noble-ignoble
hands—arises before the mind of the amazed reader.
For money or land there appear to have been few things
to which even the greatest of them would not stoop ;
stoop lower even than the basest men of our own time.
From reputation after reputation the perusal of these
documents, now brought to light out of the dark archives
of the State, strips away all the glamour and glitter,
revealing, not men greater than ourselves, but—at least as
judged by modern standards of private honour and public
principle
—
a great deal worse. Examples sufficient will
be forthcoming in this work of Stafford's ;
yet Stafford
does not tell the worst. He does not tell, for example
apparently he did not know it—how Carew and the Lord
Deputy of Ireland despatched James Blake into Spain,
with instructions to poison his friend and associate the
brave and chivalrous Hugh Roe.
Take now on the other hand a quite typical example of
the ignoble depths to which our " great gentlemen " would
stoop for the achievement of their purposes. The
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