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Later there is mutiny and rumour of sore disruption in the English-Irish army. Young Captain St. Loe’s men forgather with discontented spirits, and the whole of his stalwart retinue of three hundred, “men of high courage and activity,” revolts so badly that, though he and his captains are cleared of all blame, it is necessary to “bend the ordnance” on the mutineers and proceed against them in “battle array.” Little wonder that the men, henchmen and yeomen, doubtless, of Gloucestershire, hated the campaign. Even Lord Leonard himself shared the destitution of the privates and was pinched for the lack of a loaf. “And so,” he goes on after his comment on the price of bread, “I among others lay in my harness, without any bed, almost famished with hunger, wet, and cold.”

Fortune and personality carried William St. Loe onward. In the forties of the sixteenth century he appears as seneschal of Waterford, and complains bitterly of the way in which he is hampered in office by the Lord Chancellor in Ireland. The contention of his official companions, however, as given in a letter to the Court, describes him as “a good warrior, but unfit to administer justice.” Military disorder is stated to be the result, and if the complainants only “had the disposal of the farms Seyntlow now has” things would be very different. It is suggested that he is turning into a regular freebooter.... And so on.