His interests in helping Armada survivors were not purely humanitarian. By 1586, two years before the Armada, he had made his peace with England-at least publically-by prostrating himself before a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in Dublin. Sorley Boy McDonnell had reason enough to hate the English-they had massacred his family. In another massacre outside Kinnagoe Bay, County Donegal, where the Spanish ship La Trinidad Valencera had grounded, ~400 survivors were encircled and slaughtered by cavalry and harquebusiers. Near Galway, one mass killing so horrified the townspeople that they gathered up the bodies with great dignity and buried them in an Augustinian friary outside the town walls. Often they were killed after surrendering and having been promised fair treatment and safe passage. Sir William Fitzwilliam, Deputy of Ireland, ordered that all Spanish survivors were to be executed. The English authorities governing Ireland were none too keen about an influx of enemy Spanish-Catholic-refugees so close to home. In 16 th Century Ireland, thousands of Spanish sailors washed ashore after the dissolution of the failed Armada attack against England. Armada galleass, public domain via wikimedia commons
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