Ireland under the Tudors. Bagwell Richard

by the chief. O’Neill was to receive his customary black-rent, but none of his clans were to levy Irish exactions,147 or to graze cattle in the English districts. All Englishmen were to enjoy free trade with Tyrone, and O’Neill undertook to help Skeffington in his hostings in as ample a manner as any of his predecessors had helped any previous Lord-Deputy or Lord-Lieutenant.148

      But Skeffington makes little progress.

O’More, an able man, who was anxious to deserve well of his new friends, accompanied Brabazon into the wastes of Allen, where Kildare was lurking. After the usual plundering, he advised the Englishmen to turn as if in full retreat, but, in reality, to occupy all the passes, while the O’Mores engaged the Earl’s party in the plain. But the Northumberland moss-troopers under Dacre and Musgrave had not forgotten their old habits, and made off with the booty, leaving an unguarded pass, through which the Geraldines escaped.149 The O’Mores would not kill Kildare’s men, but were very active against the O’Connors; indeed, the Earl was believed to have been in O’More’s hands for a time, and to have been purposely released. But Brabazon took Burnell of Balgriffin, one of the original advisers of the rebellion, and William Keatinge, captain of the Keatinge kerne, who had hitherto been the rebels’ chief strength. The latter was released on giving security, but Burnell was reserved for the scaffold. The remarkable unfitness of Skeffington for the post in which Henry maintained him was strikingly shown at this time. He was unable to stir from Maynooth, and seemed half dead if he rose before ten or eleven o’clock. Marauding bands came with impunity to the castle gates, and stole the Deputy’s horses; and he allowed the army to lie in the open country without orders, and to consume provisions instead of fighting. The sick man was jealous of Lord Leonard Grey, the marshal of the army, whom rumour had designated as his successor; he was himself incapable of action, and was unwilling to let others act in his stead.150

      Surrender of Kildare.

Before his release Keatinge undertook to drive the Geraldine chief out of Kildare. The wretched peasants crept back to their fields to save what was left of the harvest; and Cahir O’Connor, who saw how things were likely to end, came to Grey and Brabazon, and took an oath to defend the King’s interests against Kildare, and against his own brother. The Earl had a stronghold in a boggy wood near Rathangan, fortified with earthworks and wet ditches, and almost impregnable had it been well manned and armed. Not being defended it was easily taken, and whatever would burn was burned. At last Skeffington felt well enough to take the field, and advanced with Grey and Butler to the borders of Offaly. Despairing of the cause, and anxious to save his harvest, O’Connor came in and submitted to the Lord Deputy at Castle Jordan; and Kildare, finding himself alone, then surrendered to Butler and Grey in the presence of three witnesses. Skeffington positively asserts that no condition was made, ‘either of pardon, life, land, or goods;’ and this is confirmed by a despatch from the Council sent three days later and signed by Lords Butler and Delvin, Rawson, Prior of Kilmainham, Saintloo, Brabazon, Aylmer, Salisbury, and Sir Rice Maunsell, the last two having been present at the surrender. But the councillors admitted that ‘comfortable words were spoken to Thomas to allure him to yield,’ and begged the King to spare his life according to the comfort of those words.151

      The surrender was unconditional.

A great effort was made to cause a belief in England that the surrender was conditional, but it does not appear that the prisoner himself made any such assertion. He wrote to his connection Grey, confessing himself a rebel, but urging that he had done all by the advice of Thomas Eustace and Sir Gerald MacShane. He begged intercession for his life and lands: failing the efficacy of such aid, he had, he said, only to shift for himself as he best could. Writers favourable to the Geraldines have nevertheless stated that he was promised his life, and this has been copied into a long succession of popular manuals. Even at the time, the legal mind of Lord Chancellor Audeley refused to believe that the Irish Council had so dealt ‘with so errant and cankered a traitor.’ ‘If this,’ he added, ‘be intended that he should have mercy, I marvel much that divers of the King’s Council in Ireland have so largely told the King, afore this time, that there should never be good peace or order in Ireland till the blood of the Garrolds were wholly extinct. And it was also said that the Irishmen spared their effectual diligence in the persecution of him, because they heard that he should have pardon, and then he would revenge; and now it seemeth they would procure him mercy. They be people of a strange nature and much inconstancy.’152

      Kildare is sent to England;

In writing his thanks to Skeffington the King regrets that Kildare’s capture had not been ‘after such a sort as was convenable to his deservings’—alluding to the report that conditions had been made with him. The letter is worthy of Elizabeth at her best, and very creditable to Henry, who declares his unabated confidence in Skeffington, and promises to make every allowance for his age and infirmities. As to the disposal of the prisoner, not only Audeley but Norfolk, who spoke from the fulness of his Irish experience, thought he should be sent to the Tower and executed in due course, ‘except it should appear that by his keeping alive there should grow any knowledge of treasons, or other commodity to the King’s grace.’ The Duke advised a long respite, lest Lord Butler and Lord Leonard Grey should lose all their credit in Ireland. The Chancellor wished to proceed in the King’s Bench under the new Statute of Treasons, by which he considered that such offences, though committed in Ireland, might be tried in an English shire. Had this opinion finally prevailed, modern Ireland might be easier to govern than it ever seems likely to be. Both Norfolk and Audeley allude to the report that Kildare had been promised his life, but neither they nor the King confirm it.153

      and harshly treated in the Tower.

An account is extant showing that twenty shillings a week were allowed for Kildare’s maintenance in the Tower, but intercepted letters tell of great harshness. His object in writing was to borrow 20l. from O’Brien, who had his plate, and he urged that chief to help the Deputy as the best means of helping him. ‘I never,’ he wrote to a trusty servant, ‘had any money since I came into prison but a noble, nor I have had neither hosen, doublet, nor shoes, nor shirt but one; nor any other garments, but a single frieze gown, for a velvet furred with budge, and so I have gone woolward, and barefoot and barelegged, divers times (when it hath not been very warm), and so I should have done still, and now, but that poor prisoners, of their gentleness, hath sometimes given me old hosen, and shoes, and old shirts.’ For sixteen months the rash young man endured this misery, and then, an Irish Act of attainder having passed in the meantime, he and his five uncles were carried to Tyburn and there duly hanged, drawn, and quartered.154

      The Desmonds and MacCarthies.

Having followed the fortunes of the House of Kildare until their great eclipse, we may now turn to the southern Geraldines, who had also entered upon the slippery paths of rebellion. The dispute between Desmond and Ormonde was of old standing, the real cause of it being the fact that Munster was not large enough to hold two such families. In 1520 Surrey brought about a meeting at Waterford between James, the eleventh Earl of Desmond, and Sir Piers Butler. They were solemnly sworn to keep the peace and to help each other on lawful occasions. Cormac Oge MacCarthy, Lord of Muskerry, and MacCarthy Reagh, who had allied themselves with the Butlers as a defence against their great neighbours’ oppressions, were parties to this agreement. Surrey took hostages from them, and reported that they were wise men and more conformable than some Englishmen. If the King would undertake to protect them, he thought that they and many other Irishmen would be content to hold their lands of him. The peace was short; for Desmond no sooner got back to his own country than he proceeded to waste Muskerry with fire and sword. The two MacCarthies joined