urgent advice, thrown into the Tower. Heavy accusations had been made
against him, the most formidable of which was that he had used the
king's ordnance to strengthen his own castle of Maynooth. The Ormonds
and the cardinal were bent upon his ruin. The earl, however, faced his
accusers boldly; met even the great cardinal himself in a war of words,
and proved to be more than his equal. Once again he was acquitted and
restored to Ireland, and after a while the deputyship was restored to
him, John Allen, a former chaplain of Wolsey's, being however appointed
Archbishop of Dublin, and Chancellor, with private orders to keep a
watch upon Kildare, and to report his proceedings to the
English Council.
Yet a third time in 1534 he was summoned, and now the case was more
serious. The whole situation had in fact in the meanwhile utterly
changed, Henry was now in the thick of his great struggle with Rome.
With excommunication hanging over his head, Ireland had suddenly become
a formidable peril. Fears were entertained of a Spanish descent upon its
coast. One of the emperor's chaplains was known to be intriguing with
the Earl of Desmond. Cromwell's iron hand too was over the realm and
speedily made itself felt in Ireland. Kildare was once more thrown into
the Tower, from which this time he was never destined to emerge. He was
ill already of a wound received the previous year, and the confinement
and trouble of mind--which before long became acute--brought his life
to a close.
His son Thomas--generally known as Silken Thomas from the splendour of
his clothes--had been rashly appointed vice-deputy by his father before
his departure. In the month of August, a report reached Ireland that the
earl had been executed, and the whole house of Geraldine was forthwith
thrown into the wildest convulsions of fury at the intelligence. Young
Lord Thomas--he was only at the time twenty-one--hot-tempered,
undisciplined, and brimful of the pride of his race--at once flew to
arms. His first act was to renounce his allegiance to England. Galloping
up to the Council with a hundred and fifty Geraldines at his heels, he
seized the Sword of State, marched into the council-room, and addressing
the Council in his capacity of Vice-deputy, poured forth a speech full
of boyish fanfaronade and bravado. "Henceforth," said he, "I am none of
Henry's deputy! I am his foe! I have more mind to meet him in the field,
than to serve him in office." With other words to the like effect he
rendered up the Sword, and once more springing upon his horse, galloped
out of Dublin.
He was back again before long, this time with intent to seize the town.
There was little or no defence. Ormond was away; the walls were decayed;
ordnance was short--a good deal of it, the Geraldine enemies said, had
been already removed to Maynooth. White, the commander, threw himself
into the castle; the gates were opened; Lord Thomas cantered in and took
possession of the town, the garrison remaining placidly looking on.
Worse was to come. Allen, the archbishop, and the great enemy of the
Fitzgeralds made an attempt to escape to England, but was caught and
savagely murdered by some of the Geraldine adherents upon the sea coast
near Clontarf. When the news of these proceedings--especially of the
last named--reached England, the sensation naturally was immense. Henry
hastily despatched Sir William Skeffington with a considerable force to
restore order, but his coming was long delayed, and when he did arrive
his operations were feeble in the extreme. Ormond had marched rapidly up
from the south, and almost single-handed defended the interests of
government. Even after his arrival Skeffington, who was old, cautious,
and enfeebled by bad health, remained for months shut up in Dublin doing
nothing, the followers of Lord Thomas wasting the country at pleasure,
and burning the towns of Trim and Dunboyne, not many miles from
its walls.
The Earl of Kildare had meanwhile died in prison, broken-hearted at the
news of this ill-starred rising, in which he doubtless foresaw the ruin
of his house. It was not until the month of March, eight months after
his arrival in Ireland, that Sir William ventured to leave Dublin, and
advance to the attack of Maynooth Castle, the great Leinster stronghold
and Paladium of the Geraldines. Young Kildare, as he now was, was away
in the south, but managed to throw some additional men into the castle,
which was already strongly fortified, and believed in Ireland to be
impregnable. The siege train imported by the deputy shortly dispelled
that illusion. Whether, as is asserted, treachery from within aided the
result or not, the end was not long delayed. After a few days
Skeffington's cannons made a formidable breach in the walls. The English
soldiery rushed in. The defenders threw down their arms and begged
mercy, and a long row of them, including the Dean of Kildare and another
priest who happened to be in the castle at the time were speedily
hanging in front of its walls. "The Pardon of Maynooth" was from that
day forth a well-known Irish equivalent for the gallows!
This was the end of the rebellion. The destruction of Maynooth Castle
seems to have struck a cold chill to the very hearts of the Geraldines.
For a while, Earl Thomas and his brother-in-law, the chief of the
O'Connors, tried vainly to sustain the spirits of their followers. The
rising seems to have melted away almost of its own accord, and within a
few months the young leader himself surrendered to Lord Leonard Grey,
the English commander, upon the understanding that his life was to be
spared. Lord Leonard was his near relative, and therefore no doubt
willing, as far as was compatible with safety to himself, to do the best
he could for his kinsman. Whether a promise was formally given, or
whether as was afterwards asserted "comfortable words were spoken to
Thomas to allure him to yield" the situation was considered too grave
for any mere fanciful consideration of honour to stand in the way. Lord
Thomas was not executed upon the spot, but he was thrown into prison,
and a year later with five of his uncles, two of whom at least had had
no share whatever in the raising, he was hanged at Tyburn. Of all the
great house of the Leinster Geraldines only a boy of twelve years old
survived this hecatomb.
[Illustration: FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH.]
XXI.
THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.
In spite of his feeble health and feebler energies, Sir William
Skeffington was continued Lord-deputy until his death, which took place
not many months after the fall of Maynooth--"A good man of war, but not
quick enough for Ireland"--seems to have been the verdict of his
contemporaries upon him. He was succeeded by Lord Leonard Grey, against
whom no such charge could be made. His energy seems to have been
immense. He loved, we are told, to be "ever in the saddle." Such was the
rapidity of his movements, and such the terror they inspired that for a
while a sort of awe-struck tranquillity prevailed. He overran Cork;
broke down the castles of the Barrys and Munster Geraldines; destroyed
the famous bridge over the Shannon across which the O'Briens of Clare
had been in the habit of descending from time immemorial upon the Pale,
and after these various achievements returned triumphantly to Dublin.
His Geraldine connection proved however his ruin. He was accused of
favouring the adherents of their fallen house, and even of conniving at
the escape of its last legitimate heir; of playing "Bo Peep" with him,
as Stanihurst, the historian puts it. Ormond and the deputy were never
friends, and Ormond had won--not undeservedly--great weight in the
councils of Henry. "My Lord-deputy," Lord Butler, Ormond's son had
declared, "is the Earl of Kildare born over again." Luttrell, on the
other hand, declared that "Ormond hated Grey worse than he had hated
Kildare." All agreed that Lord Leonard was difficult to work with. He
seems to have been a well-intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keen
soldier, but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough for his
place. He was accused of treasonable practices, and a list of formidable
charges made against him. At his own request he was summoned to court to
answer these. To a good many he pleaded guilty--half in contempt as it
would seem--and threw himself upon the mercy of the king. No mercy
however followed. Like many another "well-meaning English official" of
the period, his life ended upon the scaffold.
A more astute and cautious man, Sir Anthony St. Leger, next took the
helm in Ireland. His task was chiefly one of diplomacy, and he carried
it out with much address. In 1537 a parliament had been summoned in
Dublin for the purpose of carrying out the Act of Supremacy. To this
proposal the lay members seem to have been perfectly indifferent, but,
as was to be expected, the clergy stood firmer. So resolute were they in
their opposition that the parliament had to be prorogued, and upon its
re-assembling, a Bill was hastily forced through by the Privy Council,
declaring that the proctors, who had long represented the clergy in the
Lower House, had henceforward no place in the Legislature. The Act of
Supremacy was then passed: thirteen abbeys were immediately suppressed,
and the firstfruits made over to the king in place of the Pope. The
foundation of the new edifice was felt to have been securely laid.
This was followed five years later by another Act, by which the property
of over four hundred religious houses was confiscated. That the
arguments which applied forcibly enough in many cases for the
confiscations of religious houses in England had no application in
Ireland, was a circumstance which was not allowed to count. In England,
the monasteries were rich; in Ireland, they were, for the most part,
very poor: in England, they absorbed the revenues of the parishes; in
Ireland, the monks as a rule served the parishes themselves: in England,
popular condemnation had to a great degree already forestalled the legal
enactment; in Ireland, nothing of the sort had ever been thought of: in
England, the monks were as a rule distinctly behind the higher orders of
laity in education; in Ireland, they were practically the only
educators. These however were details. Uniformity was desirable. The
monasteries were doomed, and before long means were found to enlist most
of the Irish landowners, Celts no less than Normans, in favour of the
despoliation.
At a great parliament summoned in Dublin in 1540, all the Irish lords of
English descent, and a large muster of native chieftains were for the
first time in history assembled together under one roof. O'Tooles and
O'Byrnes from their wild Wicklow mountains; the McMurroughs from Carlow,
the O'Connor, the O'Dunn, the O'Moore; the terrible McGillapatrick from
his forests of Upper Ossory--all the great O's and Macs in fact of
Ireland were called together to meet the Butlers, the Desmonds, the
Barrys, the Fitzmaurices--their hereditary enemies now for four long
centuries. One house alone was not represented, and that the greatest of
them all. The sun of the Kildares had set for a while, and the only
surviving member of it was a boy, hiding in holes and corners, and
trusting for the bare life to the fealty of his clansmen.
Nothing that could reconcile the chiefs to the new religious departure
was omitted upon this occasion. Their new-found loyalty was to be
handsomely rewarded with a share of the Church spoil. Nor did they show
the smallest reluctance, it must be said, to meet the king's good
dispositions half way. The principal Church lands in Galway were made
over to McWilliam, the head of the Burkes; O'Brien received the abbey
lands in Thomond; other chiefs received similar benefices according to
their degree, while a plentiful shower of less substantial, but still
appreciated favours followed. The turbulent McGillapatrick of Ossory was
to be converted into the decorous-sounding Lord Upper Ossory. For Con
O'Neill as soon as he chose to come in, the Earldom of Tyrone was
waiting. McWilliam Burke of Galway was to become Earl of Clanricarde;
O'Brien of Clare, Earl of Thomond and Baron of Inchiquin. Parliamentary
robes, and golden chains; a house in Dublin for each chief during the
sitting of Parliament--these were only a portion of the good things
offered by the deputy on the part of his master. Could man or monarch do
more? In a general interchange of civilities the "King's Irish enemies"
combined with their hereditary foes to proclaim him no longer Lord, but
King of Ireland--"Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England
and Ireland on earth the Supreme Head."
[Illustration: FONT IN KILCARN CHURCH, CO. MEATH.]
XXII.
THE NEW DEPARTURE.
So far so good. Despite a few trifling clouds which overhung the
horizon, the latter years of Henry VIII.'s life and the short reign of
his successor may claim to count among the comparatively halcyon periods
of Irish history. The agreement with the landowners worked well, and no
serious fears of any purpose to expel them from their lands had as yet
been awakened. Henry's policy was upon the whole steadily conciliatory.
Tyrant as he was, he could be just when his temper was not roused, and
he kept his word loyally in this case. To be just and firm, and to give
time for those hitherto untried varieties of government to work, was at
once the most merciful and most politic course that could be pursued.
Unfortunately for the destinies of Ireland, unfortunately for the future
comfort of her rulers, there was too little patience to persevere in
that direction. The Government desired to eat their loaf before there
was fairly time for the corn to sprout. The seed of conciliation had
hardly begun to grow before it was plucked hastily up by the roots
again. The plantations of Mary's reign, and the still larger operations
carried on in that of her sister, awakened a deep-seated feeling of
distrust, a rooted belief in the law as a mysterious and
incomprehensible instrument invented solely for the perpetration of
injustice, a belief which is certainly not wholly extinguished even in
our own day.
For the present, however, "sober ways, politic shifts, and amicable
persuasions" were the rule. Chief after chief accepted the indenture
which made him owner in fee simple under the king of his tribal lands.
These indentures, it is true, were in themselves unjust, but then it was
not as it happened a form of injustice that affected them unpleasantly.
Con O'Neill, Murrough O'Brien, McWilliam of Clanricarde, all visited
Greenwich in the summer of 1543, and all received their peerages direct
from the king's own hands. The first named, as became his importance,
was received with special honour, and received the title of Earl of
Tyrone, with the second title of Baron of Dungannon for any son whom he
liked to name. The son whom he did name--apparently in a fit of
inadvertence--was one Matthew, who is confidently asserted to have not
been his son at all, but the son of a blacksmith, and who in any case
was not legitimate. An odd choice, destined, as will be seen, to lead to
a good deal of bloodshed later on.
One or two of the new peers were even persuaded to send over their heirs
to be brought up at the English Court, according to a gracious hint from
the king. Young Barnabie FitzPatrick, heir to the new barony of Upper
Ossory, was one of these, and the descendent of a long line of turbulent
McGillapatricks, grew up there into a douce-mannered English-seeming
youth, the especial friend and chosen companion of the mild
young prince.
While civil strife was thus settling down, religious strife
unfortunately was only beginning to awaken. The question of supremacy
had passed over as we have seen in perfect tranquillity; it was a very
different matter when it came to a question of doctrine. Unlike England,
Ireland had never been touched by religious controversy. The native
Church and the Church of the Pale were sharply separated from one
another it is true, but it was by blood, language, and mutual
jealousies, not by creed, doctrine, or discipline. As regards these
points they were all but absolutely identical. The attempt to change
their common faith was instantly and vehemently resisted by both alike.
Could a Luther or a John Knox have arrived, with all the fervour of
their popular eloquence, the case might possibly have been different. No
Knox or Luther however, showed the slightest symptom of appearing,
indeed hardly an attempt was made to supply doctrines to the new
converts. The few English divines that did come knew no Irish, those who
listened to them knew no English. The native priests were silent and
suspicious. A general pause of astonishment and consternation prevailed.
The order for the destruction of relics broke this silence, and sent a
passionate thrill of opposition through all breasts, lay as well as
clerical. When the venerated remains of the golden days of the Irish
Church were collected together and publicly destroyed, especially when
the staff of St. Patrick, the famous Baculum Cristatum, part of which
was believed to have actually touched the hands of the Saviour, was
burnt in Dublin in the market-place, a spasm of shocked dismay ran
through the whole island. Men who would have been scandalized by no
other form of violence were horror-stricken at this. Differences of
creed were so little understood that a widespread belief that a new era
of paganism was about to be inaugurated sprang up all over Ireland. To
this belief the friars, who, though driven from their cloisters, were
still numerous, lent their support, as did the Jesuits, who now for the
first time began to arrive in some numbers. Even the acceptance of the
supremacy began to be rebelled against now that it was clearly seen what
it was leading to. An order to read the new English liturgy was met with
sullen resistance--"Now shall every illiterate fellow read mass!" cried
Archbishop Dowdal of Armagh, in hot wrath and indignation. Brown, the
Archbishop of Dublin, was an ardent reformer, so also was the Bishop of
Meath, but to the mass of their brethren they simply appeared to be
heretics. A proposal was made to translate the Prayer-book into Irish,
but it was never carried into effect, indeed, even in the next century
when Bishop Bedell proposed to undertake the task he received little
encouragement.
The attempt to force Protestantism upon the country produced one, and
only one, important result. It broke down those long-standing barriers
which had hitherto separated Irishmen of different blood and lineage,
and united them like one man against the Crown. When the common faith
was touched the common sense of brotherhood was kindled. "The English
and Irish," Archbishop Brown wrote in despair to Cromwell, "both oppose
your lordship's orders, and begin to lay aside their own quarrels." Such
a result might be desirable in itself, but it certainly came in the form
least likely to prove propitious for the future tranquillity of the
country. Even those towns where loyalty had hitherto stood above
suspicion received the order to dismantle their churches and destroy all
"pictures and Popish fancies" with sullen dislike and hostility. Galway,
Kilkenny, Waterford, each and all protested openly. The Irish
problem--not so very easy of solution before--had suddenly received a
new element of confusion. One that was destined to prove a greater
difficulty than all the rest put together.
[Illustration: INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS.]
XXIII.
THE FIRST PLANTATIONS.
With Mary's accession the religious struggle was for a while postponed.
Some feeble attempts were even made to recover the Church property, but
too many people's interests were concerned for much to be done in that
direction. Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, who had been deprived, was
restored to his primacy. Archbishop Brown and the other conforming
bishops were deprived. So also were all married clergy, of whom there
seem to have been but few; otherwise there was no great difference. As
far as the right of exercising her supremacy was concerned, Mary
relished Papal interference nearly as little as did her father.
Although the religious struggle was thus for a time postponed, the other
vital Irish point--the possession of the land--now began to be pressed
with new vigour. Fercal, Leix, and Offaly, belonging to the fierce
tribes of the O'Moores, O'Dempseys, O'Connors, and O'Carrols, lay upon
the Kildare frontier of the Pale, and had long been a standing menace to
their more peaceful neighbours. It was now determined that this tract
should be added to the still limited area of shire land. The chiefs, it
is true, had been indentured by Henry, but since then there had been
outbreaks of the usual sort, and it was considered by the Government
that nowhere could the longed-for experiment of a plantation be tried
with greater advantage.
There was little or no resistance. The chiefs, taken by surprise,
submitted. The English force sent against them, under the command of Sir
Edward Bellingham, was irresistible. O'Moore and O'Connor were seized
and sent prisoners to England. Dangen, which had so often resisted the
soldiers of the Pale was taken. The tribesmen whose fathers had fed
their cattle from time immemorial upon the unfenced pastures of the
plains were driven off, and took refuge in the forests, which still
covered most of the centre of Ireland. The more profitable land was then
leased by the Crown to English colonists--Cosbies, Barringtons, Pigotts,
Bowens, and others. Leix and a portion of Offaly were called Queen's
County, in compliment to the queen, the remainder King's County, in
compliment to Philip. Dangen at the same time becoming Phillipstown, and
Campa Maryborough. The experiment was regarded as eminently successful,
and congratulations passed between the deputy and the English Council,
but it awakened a deep-seated sense of insecurity and ill-usage, which
argued poorly for the tranquillity of the future.
Of the rest of Mary's reign little needs to be here recorded. That
indelible brand of blood which it has left on English history was all
but unfelt in Ireland. There had been few Protestant converts, and those
few were not apparently emulous of martyrdom. No Smithfield fires were
lighted in Dublin, indeed it is a curious fact that in the whole course
of Irish history--so prodigal of other horrors--no single execution for
heresy is, it is said, recorded. A story is found in the Ware Papers,
and supported by the authority of Archbishop Ussher, which, if true,
shows that this reproach to Irish Protestantism--if indeed it is a
reproach--was once nearly avoided. The story runs that one Cole, Dean of
St. Paul's, was despatched by Mary with a special commission to "lash
the heretics of Ireland." That Cole slept on his way at an inn in
Chester, the landlady of which happened to have a brother, a Protestant
then living in Dublin. This woman, hearing him boast of his commission,
watched her opportunity, and stole the commission out of his cloak-bag,
substituting for it a pack of cards. Cole unsuspiciously pursued his
way, and presenting himself authoritatively before the deputy, declared
his business and opened his bag. There, in place of the commission
against the heretics, lay the pack of cards with the knave of clubs
uppermost!
The story goes on to say that the dean raged in discomfited fury, but
that the deputy, though himself a Roman Catholic, took the matter
easily. "Let us have another commission," he said, "and meanwhile we
will shuffle the cards." The cards were effectually shuffled, for before
any further steps could be taken Mary had died.
XXIV.
WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.