Maurice Fitzgerald. He and his tutor visited Quebec, Montreal, and
Ottawa, and all the principal cities in the United States. They
inspected Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, and Stanford
University, for the young duke has recently taken a degree at Oxford,
and was naturally curious to see some American institutions. He spent
some time in New York, and was in Washington for a couple of days
without disclosing his rank. He enjoyed himself immensely during the
entire journey and escaped all the matchmakers, the lion hunters, and
the society cormorants. He was not in search of a wife, but was seeking
health and completing his education. I am told that he is an exceedingly
sensible young fellow, modest, intelligent, thoughtful, and studious. He
does not need to marry for wealth nor for position. He can pick his own
wife, and has plenty of time to consider the choice.
The duke has been very carefully brought up and educated. His mother
died when he was nine years old. She was Lady Hermione Duncombe,
daughter of the Earl of Faversham. His father died at the age of
forty-two, when he was fourteen. The present duke inherits his delicate,
frail constitution, and has symptoms of tuberculosis, which has been the
death of many Geraldines. To preserve himself from its dreaded grasp he
has lived an outdoor life under the care of a physician, and every
preventive that medical science can devise has been used for his
protection. Since the death of his mother he has been under the care of
three aunts,--Lady Cynthia Graham, Lady Ulrica Duncombe, and Lady Helen
Vincent,--his tutor, Rev. the Marquis of Normanby, and his trustee, the
Earl of Faversham. He has had governesses and tutors, spent two years at
Eton and three years at Oxford, although his studies have been
frequently interrupted by sea voyages and camping tours in the mountains
for his health. He has a brother, Desmond, two years his junior, and
another, Edward, who is fourteen years old.
The Duke of Leinster is prepared to take his proper place in public
life, and has recently been appointed master of the horse to the Earl of
Aberdeen, lord lieutenant of Ireland. His acceptance of this post
indicates that he is a liberal in politics and a home ruler; and,
indeed, the tendency of his education has been in that direction. His
tutors and trustees are all home rulers and liberals. He is in training
for the viceregal throne of Ireland, which so many of his ancestors have
occupied, and that is his ambition. If Ireland should be granted
autonomy under the plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone twenty-five years ago
and demanded as their ultimatum by the Irish national party, the Duke of
Leinster will be the most available candidate for lord lieutenant, and
for many reasons his selection would be agreeable to those most
interested on both sides of St. George's Channel. His advent in politics
is an event of great importance, and therefore will be watched with
anxiety.
The mansion at Maynooth is an immense building of more than two hundred
rooms, sumptuously furnished. There are fourteen drawing-rooms, and the
banqueting hall will seat three hundred people. The library contains one
of the largest and most valuable collections of books in Ireland, and
the pictures are of great value as well as artistic interest.
The Leinster coat of arms is a monkey stantant with plain collar and
chained; motto, "Crom-a-boo" ("To Victory"). This is the only coat of
arms, I am told, that has ever borne a monkey in the design, and it was
adopted by John Fitzthomas Fitzgerald in 1316 for romantic reasons.
While an infant he was in the castle of Woodstock, now owned by the Duke
of Marlborough, which caught fire. In the confusion the child was
forgotten, and when the family and servants remembered him and started a
search they found the nursery in ruins. But on one of the towers was a
gigantic ape, a pet of the family, carefully holding the young earl in
its arms. The animal, with extraordinary intelligence, had crawled
through the smoke, rescued the baby and carried it to the top of the
tower. When he grew to manhood the earl discarded the family coat of
arms and adopted a monkey for his crest, which has been retained to this
day, and wherever you find a tomb of a Fitzgerald you will see the
figure of a monkey at the feet of the effigy or under the inscription.
Fitzthomas Fitzgerald, the child thus miraculously saved, was the hero
of many romances and adventures, and for his eminent services to the
crown King Edward II. created him the first Earl of Kildare, May 14,
1316. He was the ancestor of the famous earls, dukes, and marquesses of
Ormonde and the earls, dukes, and marquesses of Desmond, although those
branches of the family afterward became the rivals and the foes of the
Kildares. The Duke of Leinster, by reason of the marriages of his
ancestors and collateral members of the family, is related to almost
every noble in the kingdom.
The Fitzgeralds are descended from the Gherardini family of Florence,
one of whom passed over into Normandy in the tenth century and thence to
England, where he became a favorite of Edward the Confessor, and was
appointed castellan of Windsor and warden of the forests of the king. In
1078 he is mentioned in Doomsday Book as the owner of enormous areas of
land in England and Wales. In 1168 Maurice Fitzgerald, whose name was
anglicized and who was the father of the Irish branch of the family,
accompanied Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known as
Strongbow, in the invasion of Ireland and was granted large estates. He
died at Wexford in 1177 and was buried in the Abbey of the Grey Friars
outside the walls of that town. One of his sons became Baron of Offlay,
another became Baron of Nass, and Thomas, the third, was the ancestor of
the earls of Desmond. The next earl was a man of great piety. In 1216 he
introduced into Ireland the Order of the Franciscans and built them an
abbey at Youghal. In 1229 he induced the Dominicans to send a band of
missionaries and built them an abbey at Adair. And his son was equally
devoted to the church.
The castle at Maynooth, which for several centuries was one of the
largest and strongest in Ireland, was built by Gerald, the fifth earl,
in 1427, whose second son was the founder of the house of Ormonde and
was created earl of that name.
For sixteen generations the earls of Kildare were the most active men in
Ireland, and the history of their adventures would fill a book as big as
a dictionary. There was always "something doing" wherever they went;
they were on all sides of all questions and were sometimes fighting each
other as fiercely as the family foes. They led rebellions against their
sovereign, have suffered imprisonment, and have been executed at Tyburn
and the Tower. They have been the boldest and most powerful defenders of
British authority in Ireland and several times have saved the island to
the British throne. More lords lieutenants have come from the Kildares
than from any other family, and among the long list of earls have been
some splendid characters.
The eighth earl subdued all the native chieftains and made them submit
to English authority. An early historian describes him as "A mightie man
of stature, full of honoure and courage, who has bin Lord Deputie and
Lord Justice of Ireland three and thirtie yeares. He was in government
milde, to his enemies stearne, he was open and playne; hardley able to
rule himself, but could well rule others; in anger he was sharp and
short, being easily displeased and easily appeased."
Thomas Gerald, the twelfth earl, having incurred the enmity of Cardinal
Wolsey, was called to England and committed to the Tower for treason.
When he left Ireland he intrusted his official authority and
responsibilities to his son and heir, familiarly known as "Silken
Thomas," because of the gorgeous trappings of his retinue. The boy was
then but twenty-one, bold, brave, patriotic, and generous, and became
the victim of a plot devised by agents of Cardinal Wolsey, who spread a
report that his father had been beheaded in the Tower. The impetuous
young lord left the Castle of Maynooth, rode into Dublin, and, entering
the chamber where the council sat, openly renounced his allegiance to
the King of England, gave his reasons and laid mace and sword, the
symbols of office, upon the table. Archbishop Cromer, the lord
chancellor, besought him to reconsider, explaining that the rumor from
London might be false, and the young earl was about to yield when the
voice of the family bard, who had followed him to Dublin, was heard
through the window singing the death song of the Kildares. "Silken
Thomas" seized his sword, summoned the Geraldines, the family clan,
which was the mightiest and most numerous in Ireland, assaulted the
castle, and soon involved the entire country in a desperate revolution.
When the old earl heard the news in his cell in the Tower he sent a
message to Henry VIII. asking pardon for the rashness of his son and
then died of a broken heart.
All Ireland was in flames; three-fourths of Kildare County and the
greater part of Meath was burned; thousands of innocent people died of
starvation and thousands in battle before the rebellion was suppressed.
Finally Kildare, who was then but twenty-four, surrendered upon a
promise that he should receive full pardon when he arrived in London and
renewed his allegiance personally to the king. This pledge was
shamefully violated. Henry VIII. refused to receive him, and sent him to
the Tower, where for eighteen months he lay neglected and in great
misery. He wrote an old servant asking money for clothes, saying: "I
have gone shirtless and barefoot and bare-legged divers times, and so I
should have done still but that poor prisoners of their gentleness hath
sometimes given me old hosen and shirts and shoes."
Five of his uncles, although it was well known that three of them had
remained stanch adherents of the crown, were hanged, drawn, and
quartered at Tyburn, Feb. 8, 1537, and orders went forth from Henry
VIII. that the house of Kildare should be exterminated.
Gerald, the baby heir, the only survivor of his race, was wrapped in
warm flannels by Thomas Leverus, afterward Bishop of Kildare, carried
across bog and mountain, and committed to the protection of the
O'Brians, who by sending the infant from place to place were able to
save its life. The O'Brians passed the child over to the MacCarthys, and
Lady Eleanor MacCarthy, a widow, disguised as a peasant, conveyed him
to St. Mels, France, upon a fishing boat. Even there he was pursued from
one place of refuge to another, by detectives and adventurers in hopes
of the great reward, until finally he obtained a safe retreat in Rome,
where Cardinal Pole, a distant relative, protected and educated him.
When he grew to manhood he entered the service of Cosmo de Medicis, the
great Duke of Florence, with whom he remained until Henry VIII., the
vindictive enemy of his family, was dead. He could then return in safety
to his native country, and Queen Mary soon after pardoned him and
restored his hereditary titles and estates. Fourteen generations of
Kildares have passed across the stage since then, and the present Duke
of Leinster represents a family that has had more exciting experiences
than any other in the United Kingdom.
XI
DROGHEDA, AND THE VALLEY OF THE BOYNE
One of the loveliest railway or automobile rides in Ireland is from
Dublin northward to the ancient town of Drogheda (pronounced Drawdah).
The railroad runs parallel with the highway along the shore of St.
George's Channel. Both touch several popular seaside resorts, fishing
settlements, and busy manufacturing towns, which alternate with
beautiful pastures filled with sleek cattle and unshorn sheep, and here
and there ivy-clad towers and little groups of chimney pots rise above
the foliage. The pastures and meadows, when we saw them, blazing with
yellow buttercups, looked like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. They are
divided into small plots by hedges of hawthorn twelve and fifteen feet
high, which in the early summer are as white as banks of snow, and so
fragrant that the perfume floated into the car windows.
Between the meadows and the pastures along the coast are plots of
cultivated ground, gardens of potatoes, cabbages, and other vegetables
and glorious groves. It isn't a bit like the Ireland one expects to see
after reading newspaper accounts of the terrible conditions that the
politicians complain of. It is not a country of downtrodden peasants and
a wretched tenantry crushed under the heels of oppressive landlords.
Right is not upon the scaffold in that section of Ireland, nor is wrong
upon the throne. On the contrary, every evidence of prosperity and
contentment and happiness abounds. The neatly whitewashed,
straw-thatched cottages are surrounded with gay gardens filled with
old-fashioned flowers, such as you see in Massachusetts and New
Hampshire. Large stables and storehouses are attached to almost every
cottage, which indicates that the farmer has something to put in them.
The traveler cannot see the mansions of the rich, because they are
hidden in glorious parks and protected by high walls. Occasionally in
the distance, however, he can catch glimpses of the towers of ancient
castles, each having a romance or a tragedy, and sometimes several of
both, contained in their history.
At Malehide forty or fifty golf players alighted from the train, with
kits of clubs over their shoulders, for there are two links near that
village--one for an exclusive club of rich Dubliners, and the other for
any one who is able to pay half a crown for the privilege of chasing a
little gutta-percha ball over the grass. Malehide is a lovely place,
situated on the seashore at the mouth of a little stream called Meadow
Water, with hotels of all grades and prices, fashionable and
unfashionable, and some of them are open for health seekers the year
around.
The chief attraction to tourists is the ancient castle of the Talbot
family, who have owned and occupied it continuously for seven hundred
years, an unusual record for Ireland or for anywhere else. The original
castle, built about 1180, in the reign of Henry II., is still standing,
although modern restorations and additions have changed it much. The
exterior has suffered more than the interior. The dining-hall, a very
large apartment, is considered one of the finest rooms in Ireland. The
wainscoting and the ceiling are of oak, richly carved, and mellowed by
exposure for more than six centuries. The chimney-piece, an exquisite
example of fourteenth century carving, represents the Conception. From
1653 to 1660 the castle was inhabited by Miles Corbet, the regicide, and
the very day he took possession of the place, according to tradition,
the figure of the Blessed Virgin was mysteriously detached from the rest
of the carving and disappeared until the night after the unholy tenant
fled from the place, when it was miraculously restored.
There is a fine collection of paintings in the castle, including
portraits by Van Dyck and other famous artists, three panels of
scripture subjects by Albert Dürer, which formerly belonged to Mary,
Queen of Scots, and were purchased by Charles II. for $2,000. The
library is a treasure-house of old tomes and manuscripts, and upon the
wall, in a heavy oaken frame, hangs the original patent by which the
estate was granted to the Talbot family by King Edward IV.
Within the roofless walls of an ancient abbey near by is the altar-tomb
of Maud Plunkett, whose husband, Sir Richard Talbot, according to the
epitaph, "fell in a fray immediately after the wedding breakfast, thus
making her maid, wife, and widow in a single day."
The village of Swords, three miles distant, has another ancient castle,
where the bodies of Brian Boru and his son Morrough rested the first
night after the battle of Clontarf while they were being carried to
their final tomb at Armagh.
All the little towns along the coast of the Irish Channel are associated
with St. Patrick and St. Columba, who spent more or less time there,
founding monasteries and building churches. One of the monasteries,
called "the Golden Prebend" because it was so rich, was held by William
of Wykeham in 1366 and was the seat of a cardinal for a century or two.
A mile and a half from the main line, beyond Swords, is the village of
Portraine, where Dean Swift's "Stella" lived for several years, and
where a branch of the insane asylum he founded in Dublin has since been
erected. It stands upon lands given by Sigtryg of the Silken Beard, the
Danish king of Dublin, for the endowment of a Christian church. The
house was occupied for many years by the nuns of St. Augustine, where
"the womankind of the most part of the whole Englisher of this land are
brought up in virtue, learning and in the English tongue and behaviour."
The little town of Rush, famous for its early potatoes and its tulip
bulbs, is called "Holland in Ireland." It has an old church, with
beautiful pointed arches, which dates back to the sixteenth century, and
contains a richly decorated monument to Sir Christopher Barnwell and his
beloved wife, who died in 1607.
Skerries is a fishing-town, where St. Patrick lived for several years,
and a quaint little chapel, like many others in Ireland, is attributed
to him, although it could not possibly have been built for several
centuries after his time. But in the history of these ancient
sanctuaries a few hundred years do not count.
While ruins are picturesque and ivy-clad castles that date back beyond
the Middle Ages have a fascination for tourists from a new world like
ours, it was a relief when the chauffeur brought us up to the entrance
of an old-fashioned factory in the compact little town of Balbriggan,
which has given its name to a certain kind of knitted goods that are
worn the world over. It is a quaint mass of high houses, built of stone
and brick on both sides of narrow but neatly kept streets, which seems
unnecessary when miles of green fields and glowing gardens encircle them
and give them every chance to spread out. But you will find the same
tendency to snuggle up as closely as possible in all the manufacturing
communities of Europe.
The men folks at Balbriggan fish and farm the soil, and the women work
in the mills, but the law, which is strictly enforced there, prohibits
child labor and compels the children to attend school for at least one
hundred and twenty-eight days in the year until they pass their
fourteenth birthday. The superintendents of the mills tell the same
story that I heard in the cotton factories of South Carolina and
Georgia, that they prefer adult operatives; that the children are
careless and inefficient and seldom earn their wages, but they are
compelled to employ them or lose the services of the parents. There are
two factories in Balbriggan for the manufacture of knitted hosiery and
underclothing by machinery invented here more than one hundred and fifty
years ago and since imitated everywhere. Both factories still remain
under the control of the families which founded them, but the shares are
distributed among a larger number of people by inheritance from
generation to generation.
Scattered along the coast at intervals of two or three miles, and
generally at the summits of hills overlooking the sea, are "martello
towers," fifty, sixty, and sometimes ninety feet high, and from forty to
a hundred feet in diameter. They were erected early in the nineteenth
century as defensive watch-towers, when the country was in dread of an
invasion by Napoleon. The name was taken from similar towers in Corsica
and Sardinia, where they were erected for protection against pirates in
the time of Charles V. These towers are said to have originally had
bells which were struck by hammers to alarm the people in case of
danger; hence they were called "martello" towers, that being the Italian
word for "hammer."
It makes a Protestant ashamed when he reads the history of Drogheda and
sees the ruins that Cromwell left there. Thousands of men and women and
children were butchered in the name of the Lord by Cromwell's soldiers
when he took that quaint old town by storm in September, 1649. It was a
ferocious massacre, and Cromwell admitted the facts while proclaiming
himself the agent of the Almighty to punish a rebellious people. This is
what he wrote with his own hand:
"The governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being
there, our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all
to the sword, and, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them
to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they
put to death about two thousand persons. Divers officers and soldiers
being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about
a hundred of them possessed St. Peter's Church steeple, some the West
Gate, and others a strong round tower next to the gate called St.
Sundays. These being summoned to yield for mercy refused. Whereupon I
ordered the steeple of St. Peter's Church to be fired. The next day the
other two towers were summoned. When they submitted their officers were
knocked on the head and every tenth man of the soldiers was killed. The
rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all
spared as to their lives only and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.
"I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these
barbarous wretches who have imbued their hands in so much innocent
blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the
future."
Two of the towers have remained these two hundred and fifty years just
as grim old Oliver left them, and there is much else of interest to the
antiquarian in the town, although today it is given up to linen
factories, flour mills, tanneries, and soap works, and has a large
provision trade with England. It is the center of a prosperous
agricultural community, and everybody seems to be doing well.
The greatest attraction is the ruins of Monasterboice, an extensive
monastery, founded by St. Patrick, like every other ecclesiastical
institution in this country, and three magnificent crosses which arise
among them, about six miles from town. We tried to get a carriage
instead of a jaunting car for the drive, because the latter allows you
to see only one side of the roadway, but Mrs. Murphy, who has a livery
stable and a tongue that is hung in the middle, could furnish us nothing
else. It is a delightful drive. On the outward journey we saw what there
is to see on one hand, and coming back we saw everything on the other.
The ruins of Monasterboice cover a large area, for five hundred monks
and several thousand students were there eight or nine hundred years
ago. It was one of the largest educational institutions in the world, as
well as a religious retreat. It dates back to the fifth century, and was
probably founded by St. Patrick,--certainly by one of his
disciples,--although there is no tangible evidence to prove that fact. A
"round tower" still in good condition, dates from the ninth century. It
is one hundred and ten feet high and fifty-one feet in diameter at the
base. It was intended for observation, for signaling to the country
around, for the storage of valuables and military supplies, and for
defensive purposes. Strangely enough, it sits in a hollow, in the lowest
part of an amphitheater, surrounded by hills, but the Irish monks as
well as the Irish warriors of ancient times always built beside streams
of running water and not upon the heights, like the Goths, the Huns,
the Teutons, and the Romans.
There are similar "round towers" at Cashel, Glendalough, Kildare,
Antrim, and other places in the interior of Ireland which have long been
subject of an irreconcilable dispute among archæologists. While no one
knows definitely who built them, or what they were for, the most
credited theory is that I have given above.