University of Virginia Library

Sir John Harington's Irish Journals
by
R. H. Miller

Very little is known about Sir John Harington's participation in the Essex expedition into Munster in 1599 and of his whereabouts during the early period of that campaign; and in recent years some questions have arisen regarding the attribution to him of the "Report to Queen Elizabeth, Concerning the Earle of Essex's Journeys in Ireland."[1] It is a document long considered one of the important sources of information about Essex's Munster campaign of 10 May-1 July, and because it is thought to have been written by Harington, it has been given a place of the first rank among the eyewitness accounts and in the Harington canon. An unpublished journal of the Munster campaign, which appears in a miscellaneous manuscript volume of Harington's writings, was found in 1933, by Ruth Hughey, among the family papers. This manuscript is now B.L. Add. MS. 46369; the journal appears in it on ff. 7-18r. It has been assumed to be Harington's also.[2] However,

new materials, both manuscript and printed, not previously cited, provide answers to the questions both of Harington's movements in Ireland during that time and of the authorship of both the "Report" and the unpublished journal. They show that Harington was not with Essex on the Munster campaign and that he could not have been the author of either of the accounts.

Initially, Harington was directed by his cousin Robert Markham to keep a careful record of events in Ireland: "High concerns deserve high attention; you are to take accounte of all that passes in your expedition, and keepe journal thereof, unknown to any in the company; this will be expected of you." In his letter Markham intimates strongly that Harington is to act as a collector of intelligence and will be expected to report to the Queen regarding Essex's performance.[3] Harington kept such a journal, and according to a later letter from him to Markham, he showed it to Queen Elizabeth on his return from Ireland, and then presented it to his cousin sometime in 1606.[4]

In 1775 Henry Harington of Bath, a descendant of Sir John's, published the second volume of the first edition of the Nugae Antiquae, a collection of manuscript materials in the family's possession, most of which date back to Tudor and Stuart times. Among the documents published in that edition is the "Report to the Queen," and its attribution to Sir John rests solely on Henry Harington's editorial judgment. No other evidence of its authenticity exists. From what we know about young Henry's casual handling of his ancestors' papers, any ascription on that basis alone ought to be carefully questioned.[5]

Richard Bagwell first noticed that the text of the "Report" in the Nugae paralleled almost verbatim an account in John Dymmok's "A Treatice of Ireland," but he accepted Harington's authorship of it and expressed the opinion that Dymmok's treatise derived from Harington's report.[6] L. W. Henry, looking at both accounts some fifty years later, was critical of errors in Harington's text but did not go so far as to deny its authorship.[7] In 1969,

however, Timothy G. A. Nelson first became aware of the possibility that Harington might never have been in Munster and thus might never have written the "Report."[8] On the basis of an obscure statement in Harington's letter to his personal servant Thomas Combe, Nelson argues that the letter's account of Harington's movements in Ireland places him in Connaught at the time when Essex was in Munster, that is, from 10 May to 1 July.[9] Noting that the "Report" is an eyewitness account, which it definitely is, Nelson concludes that Harington's presence in Connaught during the period excludes him from being considered the author of the "Report." Nelson, however, was unaware of the existence of Dymmok's treatise and of previous discussions of it, and of other important material bearing on this question. And neither Bagwell, Henry, nor Nelson seems to have known of the existence of the unpublished journal.

Additional evidence now establishes that Harington was not in Munster. First of all, it is curious, that, except for the "Report," Harington never, in any of his published or unpublished writings, makes any reference to his serving in the Munster campaign, though there are numerous references to his service in Ireland in 1599.[10] Whatever references there are to Munster are to his first journey there in 1586, as one of the undertakers for the colonization of the area.[11] In addition, both the Combe letter, in a better text, unknown to Nelson, and a letter among the State Papers for Ireland indicate that during the Munster expedition of 1599 Harington was in fact in Connaught till late June. The letter to Combe, printed initially in the first edition of the Nugae (Vol. I) of 1769, exists in an autograph version in B.L. Add. MS. 46369, ff. 45-48, in a somewhat different text.[12] In the passage in the letter in which, in the printed texts, Harington refers to having served in Connaught for "some weeks," the manuscript text reads more exactly "some vi weekes" (Letters, p. 71; Add. 46369, f. 45r). We know that Sir Conyers Clifford's troops were sent into Connaught on 9 May, and undoubtedly Harington and his kinsman Griffin Markham were a part of that group.[13] The evidence of the letter indicates then that Harington was occupied in the West until at least late June. He seems not to have been with Clifford at the rendezvous

with Essex in Limerick, in early June, but he did join Essex in July for the campaign in Leix and Offaly.[14]

Another letter, which has gone unnoticed, also records the same fact. Among the State Papers for Ireland, it is from Harington to Sir Robert Cecil, dated 12 June 1600, and is a response to Cecil's request for a record of persons knighted by Essex.[15] In it Harington refers to a "breefe Iowrnall" through which he is able to answer Cecil's question.[16] He says, "What tyme my Lo Levetenaunt began his Iowrney to Munster, and sr Griffin Markham and I with his Trowpe of Horse sent to Roscommon in Connoght, but we herd the same moneth of the knightinge of a Capten called Mr. Rushe." Sir Francis Rush was knighted at Maryborough on 17 May.[17] This letter corroborates Harington's statement in the Combe letter, that he and Markham were in Connaught for the remainder of May, into late June. The two letters show clearly that Harington was not in Munster at that time.

At first glance the published "Report" would seem to have a candidate for its author, that is, the mysterious John Dymmok; but a closer examination of the evidence tends to rule him out. Little is known about him. He may have been a member of the well known family of Dymoke, of Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire.[18] Constantia Maxwell describes him as "probably" an official in Essex's employ.[19] A "John Dymok" attested a note to the will of Thomas Burgh, Lord Deputy of Ireland, on 12 October 1597 (CSP Ireland, 1596-1597, p. 417). If this person is our John Dymmok, he seems to have been in Ireland some time before the arrival of Essex. The provenance of Harl. 1291, Dymmok's autograph manuscript, is not known. It is not accounted for in C. E. Wright's Fontes Harleiani (British Museum, 1972), nor do the early catalogues trace it. The work was presented to "Sir Edmund Carey," probably some time after 1600, and contains a letter of presentation from Dymmok to Carey, f. 1r.[20] In it Dymmok describes his work as "These rude leaves in their fullness of imperfection . . . beinge abortiuelye brought forth in an

other shape. . . ."[21] The "Treatice" is a pastiche of material on Ireland's geography, culture, and recent history, most of which is taken directly from Edmund Campion's History of Ireland, Richard Stanyhurst's "Description of Ireland," and ultimately from Giraldus Cambrensis' Topographia Hiberniae.[22] To that introductory material is added the narrative of Essex's movements, both during the Munster campaign and after, to 9 September, with a brief interpolated account of Sir Conyers Clifford's defeat in the Curlew Mountains in August. It is clear that the author of the interpolated account, whoever he was, knew Harington. He mentions him by name and reproduces in his text Harington's copy of the letter by the rebel MacDermon O'Donnell, which he must have taken from Add. 46369, f. 20r, where it appears in Harington's hand.[23] Taken as a whole, then, Dymmok's "Treatice" gives every evidence of being a patchwork of accumulated materials, pieced together from papers Dymmok accumulated while in Ireland.

The Munster account itself occupies ff. 25v-33 of Harl. 1291 and is titled "A iornall relation of the principall accidents which haue happened in the kingdom of Irelande from the x. of maye vntill the ix. of September 1599" (printed in Tracts, II, 30-40). Differences between the two accounts have been commented on by L. W. Henry.[24] Space does not allow a full analysis of the more than forty significant differences between the two texts, but my own estimate is that in cases where differences of fact occur, the Nugae text is more exact and more in agreement with the other journals kept during the campaign (CSP Ireland, 1599-1600, pp. 37-40; Cal. Carew MSS., 1599, no. 304; and the unpublished journal, Add. 46369, ff. 7-18r). The "Treatice" tends to be more general in its documentation. Also, noticeably absent from the "Treatice" are the longer passages referring to Essex. For example the account of Essex's bravery at Cashel, in Nugae, I, 274, lines 14-18, is missing, as is the description of his glorious entry into Clonmel (Nugae, I, 275). At

the close of the text, a passage is missing, consisting of lines 6-21 in Nugae, I, 292, which describes Essex's survey of the site of the battle in which Sir Henry Harington and his troops were crushed. This absence is in addition to that of the closing passage on pp. 292-293, already noted by L. W. Henry. The omissions may argue for dating Harl. 1291 after Essex's fall from grace. Generally, the variants between the texts indicate that the two versions descended independently of each other, with the Nugae text representing a version closer to the original but marred by blatant errors in its extant printed version.

In addition to the "Report" the unpublished journal in B.L. Add. 46369, ff. 7-18r must be withdrawn from the Harington canon. This manuscript volume, labeled on its outer cover "Sr Iohn Harringtons own Mss relating to the war in Ireland 1599," was first discovered and described by Ruth Hughey (see n. 2). It was in the possession of the Harington family until 1947, when it and a number of other Harington manuscripts were obtained by the British Museum.[25] To assist in making its contents known, I have included a description of the contents of the whole volume as an appendix to this discussion.

The journal, covering twenty-three pages, is written loosely in diary form, with entries divided by days, in a casual but quite readable secretary hand. The first three pages are in Harington's autograph, but the remainder of the text is in the hand of a copyist who appears to have copied the whole out at one sitting, as the handwriting shows gradual but definite deterioration as the journal progresses. That part of the manuscript not in Harington's hand contains marginal notations in his hand. Unlike other items in the volume that are identified by Harington as being his own, the journal is noncommittally labeled "A Iournal of my lords Iorney" and appears to be an account that Harington had copied out for his personal use and keeping. Its style is curt and direct, with almost no felicities of phrasing evident. Essentially it seconds the other known accounts of the expedition, but it also gives a much closer and more detailed view of day-to-day events. This journal presents a stark picture of the difficulties Essex had to face, and to some extent mitigates the traditional judgment of Bagwell and others that Essex's southern campaign was a foolish venture.[26]

The authors of both the printed "Report" and the unpublished journal remain to be identified. However, it is important to recognize that Harington was not their author, if only to remove from the accounts that special significance they have been accorded by virtue of their being associated with Harington. While he was in Ireland Harington kept his eyes and ears open. As one charged to observe events there, he undoubtedly wrote a good deal, but he also collected intelligence bearing on the entire campaign, carried it back

to England with him, and reported it to the Queen personally.[27] It is more likely the case that he was most anxious to have accounts of the Munster expedition, a campaign he did not participate in, and that both the "Report" and the unpublished journal are the results of his efforts to collect such accounts. And it is not surprising that, over 170 years later, young Henry Harington, laden with family archives and with a limited knowledge of his ancestor's whereabouts in Ireland during that year of 1599, would credit him with writing an eyewitness account of a campaign he never participated in, an account he could not have written.

Appendix: B.L. Add. MS. 46369

The manuscript contains several hands, two of which are readily identifiable, that of Sir John, who has left us numerous autographs; and that of John Harington his son (1589-1654), who appears to have used the manuscript as a notebook and is thus responsible for the sporadic shorthand notes throughout it, placed between the lines of his father's texts and on blank pages.[28] A specimen of his hand can be seen in his autograph diary, B.L. Add. MS. 10114. In addition the manuscript has accumulated several other hands, including a table of contents in a later hand, and numerous mathematical sums and doodlings, characteristic of the way in which the Harington descendants defaced other manuscripts in the family's keeping.[29]

The volume is bound in vellum, and on its front cover carries the title, in a seventeenth-century italic hand: "Sr Iohn Harringtons own | Mss relating to the war in Ireland | 1599 [sic underlining]." It measures 192 x 142 mm. and contains 66 leaves, 65 of which have been numbered by the cataloguer. On the inside front cover is the signature "H Harington," with the notation below it, "Above is Dr Harington's signature, RHH." I have not been able to determine the identity of "RHH," nor to determine if the signature is that of Dr. Harington père or Dr. Harington fils, the latter being the editor of the Nugae. In the description of contents below, items which have been published are so indicated with complete references.

Notes