Volume II Part 25 (2/2)

[Sidenote: Kildare again in London, and committed to the Tower.]

[Sidenote: O'Connor invades the pale, and takes the vice-deputy prisoner.]

The alliance of England and France had disconcerted the first scheme. No sooner was this new opportunity opened than, with Kildare's consent, Desmond applied to Charles V. with similar overtures.[312] This danger was too serious to be neglected; and in 1527, Kildare was a second time summoned to London. He went, so confident was he of the weakness of the government, and again he was found to have calculated justly. He was arraigned before the council, overwhelmed with invectives by Wolsey,[313] and sent to the Tower. But he escaped by his old art. No sooner was he committed, than Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, who had accompanied him to England, hurried back across the Channel to the castle of her brother-in-law, O'Connor.[314] The robber chief instantly rose and attacked the pale. The Marchers opened their lines to give his banditti free pa.s.sage into the interior;[315] and he seized and carried off prisoner the Baron of Delvin, who had been made vice-deputy on Kildare's departure. Desmond meanwhile held Ormond in check at Kilkenny, and prevented him from sending a.s.sistance to Dublin; and the Irish council were at once prostrate and helpless.

[Sidenote: The Duke of Richmond viceroy.]

[Sidenote: Skeffington made deputy to govern with the help of Kildare.]

Henry VIII., on receipt of this intelligence, instead of sending Kildare to the block and equipping an army, condescended to write a letter of remonstrance to O'Connor. ”A letter from the king!” said the insolent chieftain when it was brought to him, ”what king! If I may live one year, I trust to see Ireland in that case that there shall be no more mention here of the King of England than of the King of Spain,”[316]

Still, however, it was thought inconvenient to venture extremities.

Henry allowed himself to make use of Kildare's a.s.sistance to soothe the immediate storm.[317] An old desire of the Irish had been that some prince of the blood should govern them;[318] he nominated therefore, his natural son, the Duke of Richmond as viceroy; and having no adequate force in Ireland to resist an insurrection, and no immediate means of despatching any such force, he was once more obliged to pardon and restore the traitorous Geraldine; appointing, at the same time, Sir William Skeffington, a moderately able man, though too old for duty, as the Duke of Richmond's deputy, and directing him to govern with the advice and cooperation of the Earl of Kildare.

[Sidenote: John Allen appointed Archbishop of Dublin.]

To this disastrous weakness there was but one counterpoise--that the English party in the council of Ireland was strengthened by the appointment of John Allen to the archbishopric of Dublin and the office of chancellor. Allen was one of the many men of talent who owed their elevation to Wolsey. He was now sent over to keep watch on Kildare, and to supply the government with accurate information which might be relied upon as a ground for action. Till this time (and the fact is one which ought to be borne in mind), the government had been forced to depend for their knowledge of the state of the country either on the representations of the deputy, or the private accusations of his personal enemies; both of them exceedingly untrustworthy sources.

Henceforward there runs a clear stream of light through the fog and night of confusion, furnished either by the archbishop or by Allen, Master of the Rolls, who was most likely his kinsman.

[Sidenote: Kildare a third time deputy.]

[Sidenote: Saturnalia of madness.]

[Sidenote: Despatch of the two Allens.]

[Sidenote: Till great men suffered there would be no peace in Ireland.]

The policy of conciliation, if conduct so feeble deserves to be called a policy at all, had now reached its limit; and it amounted to confessed imbecility. Twice deposed from power on clear evidence of high treason, Lord Kildare was once more restored. It cost him but a little time to deliver himself of the presence of Skeffington; and in 1532 he was again sole deputy. All which the Earl of Surrey had foretold came to pa.s.s.

Archbishop Allen was deprived of the chancellors.h.i.+p, and the Archbishop of Armagh, a creature of the Geraldines, was subst.i.tuted in his place.

Those n.o.blemen and gentlemen who had lent themselves to the interests of the English in the earl's absence were persecuted, imprisoned, or murdered. They had ventured to be loyal from a belief in the a.s.surances which had been made to them; but the government was far off and Kildare was near; and such of them as he condescended to spare ”were now driven in self-defence, maugre their wills, to follow with the rest.”[319] The wind which filled the sails of the s.h.i.+p in which Kildare returned, blew into flames the fires of insurrection; and in a very Saturnalia of Irish madness the whole people, with no object that could be discovered but for very delight in disorder itself, began to tear themselves to pieces.

Lord Thomas Butler was murdered by the Geraldines; Kildare himself was shot through the body in a skirmish; Powerscourt was burnt by the O'Tooles; and Dublin Castle was sacked in a sudden foray by O'Brien Oge.

O'Neile was out in the north; Desmond in the south; and the English pale was overrun by brigands.[320] Ireland had found its way into its ideal condition--that condition towards which its instincts perpetually tended, and which at length it had undisputedly reached. The Allens furnished the king with a very plain report of the effect of his leniency. They dwelt boldly on the mistakes which had been made.

Reechoing the words of the Report of 1515, they declared that the only hope for the country was to govern by English deputies; and that to grudge the cost seemed ”consonant to the nature of him that rather than he will depart with fourpence he will jeopard to lose twenty s.h.i.+llings--which fourpence, disbursed in time, might have saved the other.”[321] They spoke well of the common Irish. ”If well governed,”

they said, ”the Irish would be found as civil, politic, and active, as any other nation. But what subjects under any prince in the world,” they asked, ”would love or defend the rights of that prince who, notwithstanding their true hearts and obedience, would afterwards put them under the governance of such as would persecute and destroy them?”

Faith must be kept with those to whom promises had been made, and the habit of rewarding treason with concessions must be brought to an end.

”Till great men suffer for their offences,” they added, significantly, ”your subjects within the English pale shall never live in quietness, nor stand sure of their goods and lives. Therefore, let your deputy have in commandment to do justice upon great thieves and malefactors, and to spare your pardons.”[322]

These were but words, and such words had been already spoken too often to deaf ears; but the circ.u.mstances of the time were each day growing more perilous, and necessity, the true mother of statesmans.h.i.+p, was doing its work at last.

[Sidenote: Henry awakes at last.]

The winter months pa.s.sed away, bringing only an increase of wretchedness. At length opened the eventful year of 1534, and Henry learnt that excommunication was hanging over him--that a struggle for life or death had commenced--and that the imperial armies were preparing to strike in the quarrel. From that time onward the King of England became a new man. Hitherto he had hesitated, temporized, delayed--not with Ireland only, but with the manifold labours which were thrust upon him. At last he was awake. And, indeed, it was high time. With a religious war apparently on the eve of explosion, he could ill tolerate a hotbed of sedition at his door; and Irish sedition was about to receive into itself a new element, which was to make it trebly dangerous.

[Sidenote: The religious element is introduced into Irish sedition.]

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