Within a few months, a warrant for his arrest was issued on a charge of uttering false money and he fled abroad again, deserting his wife, to enter the service of the duke of Savoy.

On the death of his wife's grandfather at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he came into money, and he accommodated himself to the Protestant succession and became a supporter of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

In 1561, he was given a captaincy at Berwick, where he lived sumptuously; during the winter, he made firm friends with the Gaelic nobleman Shane O'Neill of Ulster, upon the latter's visit to court at London.

Having staged a naval pageant for the queen on the Thames, he promptly sailed his fleet to the coast of Munster in Ireland in June 1563 to go privateering against French, Spanish and Portuguese ships.

[10] After repeated remonstrances on the part of the offended powers, Elizabeth disavowed Stucley and sent a naval force under the command of Sir Peter Carew to arrest him.

Sidney then sought permission of the crown for Stucley to purchase the estates and office of Sir Nicholas Bagenal, marshal of Ireland, for £3,000, but Elizabeth refused to permit the transaction.

Undeterred by this failure, Stucley was appointed seneschal of Kavanagh's country in south-east Leinster, and had some say in the controversial land claims of his adversary, Peter Carew (who succeeded him in that office).

Philip II invited him to Madrid, where he was loaded with honours, probably with a view to impressing upon Elizabeth the threat of an invasion of Ireland to detract from English support for the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands.

The Irish invasion was to have been aided by the Plymouth fleet of Sir John Hawkins, who betrayed the supposed plot to the privy council, leading to the arrest of the Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk.

Amidst this international feinting and shaping, the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, Maurice Reagh Fitzgibbon – an ally of the Irish leader in Munster James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald – made some effort while in Spain to discredit Stucley's ambitions [citation needed], much to the displeasure of Feria, and was supported by the Duke of Alba, who dismissed the proposed invasion on the ground that once England fell, Ireland would fall of itself.

Stucley's exploits restored him to favour in Madrid, and by the end of March 1572 he was at Seville, offering to hold the narrow seas against the English with a fleet of twenty ships.

[citation needed] In June, Stucley had an interview at Naples with his Lepanto commander Don John, and passed on details of the plans for an October expedition.

In 1575, Friar Patrick O'Healy arrived at Rome bearing a letter from the king and announcing that he sought sanction for an unnamed Irish gentleman to revolt and to request assistance; he insisted Philip II had given his blessing.

Pope Gregory bargained for Philip II to defray the entire expense of the expedition, and suggested that if the Vatican were to pitch in then it should receive some benefit in Italy by way of material return.

In 1578 Walsingham had similar intelligence, and having failed to induce Archbishop Fitzgibbon to give up his secrets in return for his passage back to Ireland, procured his arrest in Scotland.

The force had, it was claimed, been raised by enlisting Apennine highwaymen and robbers in return for pardons and 50-day indulgences, the latter to be gained by contemplation of crucifixes supplied to Stucley.

In April, he reached Cadiz with rotted ships, where he issued magnificent passports to Irishmen returning home, describing himself as Marquess of Leinster (a title bestowed by the Pope).

Here, King Sebastian of Portugal invited Stucley to take up a command in his army, which included Portuguese and German mercenaries, in preparation for an invasion of Morocco (an ally of England against Spain) in an attack upon the Moors.

The Jesuit polemicist Nichola Sanders and Irish members of the expedition made their way back to Rome, and continued the now ill-fated invasion, deprived of most of its money and men by Stucley's desertion.

[citation needed] He reportedly fought with courage on 4 August 1578 at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, commanding the centre, but was killed early in the day when a cannonball cut off his legs—or perhaps, as tradition asserted, he was murdered by his Italian soldiers after the Portuguese had been defeated.

[11] There is a detailed biography of Stucley, based chiefly on the English, Venetian and Spanish state papers, in R Simpson's edition of the 1605 play (School of Shakespeare, 1878, vol.