PELHAM to the EARL OF LEICESTER.

Your letter shows me the cause of her Majesty's displeasure towards me. I hope I have acquitted myself by a true and dutiful answer. "What English forces I left there, how planted either to offend or to defend, and how easily to be gathered together in an hour's warning, and to have marched over Desmond's back and his belly, though my Lo. of Ormond had been present or absent, your Lo. will judge, if, by view of the plot, you will consider of the places of their garrisons.

I could have been contented to have attended the service, if the actions northward had not been such as required my presence upon that border. The stirs then being in Connaught craved also Sir Nicholas Malbie's return to his charge, which disorder I doubt not was the sooner appeased by my marching through that province. And it had been small help to Youghall to have had my Lord of Ormond stayed at Limerick; for though I could have wished that he had continued in the field if his preparation had so served, yet the distance is great between those places. And I am persuaded (since neither my predecessor nor I, with the aids of the Earls of Kildare and Ormond, could not get any espial for reward against the rebels) the traitors, if the Earl of Ormond and I both had been in camp, might have been at Youghall before I could have learned what was become of them; for Barrie, nor Roche, through whose countries he must needs and did pass, did not reveal it to any of the army; neither would they, I think, have done it to the Earl, if he had been there in person. And for the traitorous townsmen, they are not to be pitied, since they were the allurers of the Earl and the rebels thither, drew them over the walls with ropes, and neither made defence nor would be content to have any aid when it was formerly offered.

I think Ormond was well chosen for a general. In his own actions against Desmond he has been ever thought a hard match for him, without aid of her Majesty.

Dublin, 26 December 1579. Signed.

Contemp. copy.