Ireland under the Tudors. Bagwell Richard

enumerated the qualities desirable in a chief governor, and in so doing had drawn a heavy indictment against the last holder of that high office. The King, he said, should provide a Deputy ‘faithful, sure, and constant in his promise, and in especial to any concluding of peace; and that he shall be such a person that shall have more regard to his own honour and promise than to any covetous desire of preys or booties of cattle; and that he shall make no wilful war, and when war is made upon a good ground, that the same be followed till a perfect conclusion thereof be taken, and not left at large, nor yet to take a faint peace; and that the said Deputy shall not be in weighty causes counselled nor guided by such persons as be openly known to be ill-doers, or apt adherents of the ill-doers in their ill-doings against the King’s Majesty and his Grace’s subjects in time past, for the same hath and may hinder.’ In selecting St. Leger, Henry was probably actuated in part by such motives, and in part by hopes of an increased income. With him were associated as Revenue Commissioners Thomas Walsh, Baron, and John Mynne, Auditor of the English Exchequer, and William Cavendish, Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations; but the viceregal authority was not in any way impaired.235

      St. Leger’s policy. The Kavanaghs.

St. Leger seems clearly to have grasped the idea so often put forth and so often neglected, that the pacification of Ireland must begin with the neighbourhood of the Pale, and that distant expeditions were neither lightly to be undertaken nor abandoned without attaining their object. He resolved at once to punish those who had attacked the Pale at Grey’s departure, and he turned first to the Kavanaghs. Ormonde had lately ravaged Idrone for a week and taken hostages, reporting that all the mischief was done by Donnell MacCahir, ‘who, having nothing to lose, adhereth to Tirlogh O’Toole.’ St. Leger now ravaged the territory far and wide, and at the end of ten days the chief came in and submitted. He renounced the name of MacMurrough, and agreed to hold his lands of the Crown by knight-service. After the manner of Deputies in their early days of office, St. Leger believed that he had really made a final settlement. The Kavanaghs were ready enough to make promises, and even to boast their descent from the man who first brought the English to Ireland; but St. Leger was destined to have plenty of trouble with them.236

      The O’Mores and O’Connors, and their neighbours.

Offaly had been so often devastated that the new Lord Deputy could have little to do in that way; but the adjoining district of Leix had been more fortunate, and its turn now came. The O’Doynes, O’Dempseys, and others were separated by St. Leger’s policy from O’Connor, whom it was proposed to bridle by establishing fortified posts at Kinnegad in Westmeath, at Kishevan in Kildare, at Castle Jordan in Meath, and at Ballinure in what is now the King’s County. A letter arrived from the King with orders to expel O’Connor from his country and to give it to his brother Cahir, if he would behave in a civilised manner, as he had often promised to do. The incorrigible rebel should be made an example to all Ireland by his perpetual exile and just punishment. But this could not be honourably done, for Brereton had made a peace during the difficult days that followed Grey’s recall, and O’Connor, whose submission was of the humblest, had done no harm since then. St. Leger indeed showed some inconsistency in the matter, for he thought in September that O’Connor could never be trusted, and in November he advised his restoration to favour. Not only was it proposed to give him a grant of his land, but also to raise him to the peerage as Baron of Offaly, an ancient honour in the eclipsed family of Kildare.237

      The O’Tooles.

No tribe had hurt the Pale more than the O’Tooles, who could boast of giving a famous saint to Irish hagiology. Originally possessed of the southern half of Kildare, they had been driven into the Wicklow Mountains by Walter de Riddlesford in the early days of the Anglo-Norman occupation. They were afterwards known as lords of Imaile, a small district between Baltinglass and Glendalough, and at one time held nearly all the northern half of Wicklow. The Earls of Kildare expelled them from Powerscourt, and latterly they had led a very precarious life. True children of the mist, they either bivouacked in the open or crept into wretched huts to which Englishmen hesitated to give the name of houses. They cultivated no land, but levied 300l. a year from their civilised neighbours, partly in black-rent and partly in sheer plunder. The actual chief was Tirlogh O’Toole, who professed himself anxious to mend his ways, and offered to go to England and beg his lands of Henry himself. There was something chivalrous in Tirlogh; for when Grey was hard pressed by the northern confederacy he sent him word that ‘since all those great lords were against him he would surely be with him, but whensoever they were all at peace, then he alone would be at war with him and the English Pale.’ This simple-minded warrior had kept his word, and he now begged St. Leger to write to Norfolk, in the belief that the Duke would let him want nothing ‘when he knew that he had become an Englishman.’ In return for his undertaking to forego his exactions and to wear the English dress, he asked for a grant of the district of Fercullen, comprising Powerscourt and about twenty square miles of land, chiefly rocks and woods, but with some fertile spots. St. Leger was anxious to grant Tirlogh’s terms, for the lands actually held by him were worthless and would never pay to reclaim, while the O’Tooles were obliged to live on the Pale. The hardy mountaineers had nothing to lose, and they prevented land enough to support 2,000 inhabitants from being cultivated at all. The Lord Deputy accordingly sent over the wild man with a special recommendation to Norfolk, whose Irish experience made him a natural mediator. Tirlogh was so poor that St. Leger had to lend him 20l. for his journey, and he could not even afford decent clothes. ‘It shall appear to your Majesty,’ wrote the Irish Government, ‘that this Tirlogh is but a wretched person and a man of no great power, neither having house to put his head in, nor yet money in his purse to buy him a garment, yet may he well make 200 or 300 men.’238

      Tirlogh O’Toole at Court.

Tirlogh remained nearly a month at Court, where he was very well treated; perhaps Henry remembered how well Hugh O’Donnell had requited the kindness shown to him long since. The grant was authorised, and care was taken to make such a fair division among the clansmen as would prevent internal dissensions. Tirlogh became the King’s tenant by knight-service at a rent of five marks yearly, and his brother Art Oge, a man of some ability, was gratified with a grant of Castle Kevin. Henry desired that this case should form a precedent, and that in future chiefs received to peace and favour should be treated with on the same basis as the O’Tooles. In doing this he followed the advice of some of his wisest councillors at home. Cranmer, Audeley, and Sadleir did not believe in the possibility of a thorough conquest, and rightly considered that Ireland would be best gained by fair dealing. Pedants and flatterers might argue that the King was actually entitled to most of the land, that the Irish were intruders, and that grants to them were derogatory to the royal dignity. To this it was answered that the intrusions were of very old date, that future rebellions would be more easily punished when they involved a breach of contract, and that the Crown must gain by the mere acknowledgment of its title. The O’Tooles at all events seem to have given up plundering the Pale, and they make little further figure in history. But they could not give up fighting among themselves. The favoured Tirlogh had a grudge against one of his clansmen, and pursued him daily in spite of orders from the Government. At last the threatened man caught his persecutor asleep, and in the early morning killed him and all his companions; ‘and we think,’ wrote the Lord Deputy and Council, ‘the other would have done to him likewise, if he might have gotten him at like advantage.’ Tirlogh left no legitimate children, but St. Leger nevertheless recommended that his son Brian should be allowed to succeed him.239

      Proposed military order. The King vetoes it.

Finding Leinster in an unusually promising state, the Irish Council hit upon a strange device for keeping it permanently quiet. In the previous century Thomas, Earl of Kildare, had established the Brotherhood of St. George, an armed confraternity, whose thirteen officers, chosen from among the loyal gentlemen of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Louth,