Thomas Kildare, 1st Earl of Kildare

“ Though born in Dublin, he never visited Ireland as a man, and the government was administered by a succession of Deputies. The fate of one of these Deputies, Thomas, eighth Earl of Desmond, deserves particular mention. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, whose beautiful Latinity had moved Pope Æneas Sylvius to tears, was entrusted with the government in 1467, and he assembled a Parliament in which Desmond and Kildare were attainted. Kildare escaped to England, and procured a reversal of the attainder, but Desmond was enticed to Drogheda, and there beheaded. ”

“ Kildare was involved in the opposition led by Maurice Fitzthomas, earl of Desmond [q. v.] , to the new policy which the justiciar, Ralph D'Ufford, endeavoured to enforce, of superseding the 'English born in Ireland' by 'English born in England.' In 1345 Ufford sent a knight named William Burton to Kildare with two writs, one summoning him to an expedition to Munster, the other a secret warrant for his arrest. ”

“ While we frequently feel indignant at the tone they take towards the "Irish enemy" in their despatches to London—the pretended enemies being at that very time their confidants and allies—on farther reflection we feel disposed to make some allowance on the score of circumstance and necessity, for a duplicity which, in the end, brought about, as duplicity in public affairs ever does, its own punishment.
In Ulster as well as in Leinster, the ascendency of the Earl of Kildare over the native population was widespread and long sustained. ”

“ Three years later, Earl Gerald set out to besiege Leap Castle, in O'Moore's country; but it happened that as he was watering his horse in the little river Greese, at Kilkea, he was shot by one of the O'Moores: he was immediately carried to Athy, where shortly afterwards he expired. If we except the first Hugh de Lacy and the Red Earl of Ulster, the Normans in Ireland had not produced a more illustrious man than Gerald, eighth Earl of Kildare. ”

“ The Patriots had at this crisis a great addition to their strength, in the accession of James, the twentieth Earl of Kildare, successively Marquis and Duke of Leinster. This nobleman, in the prime of life, married to the beautiful Emily Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, followed Dorset to England, and presented to the King, with his own hand, one of the boldest memorials ever addressed to a sovereign by a subject. ”

“ FLATTISBURY, PHILIP (fl. 1500) , compiler, was of a family members of which, from the thirteenth century, held important positions as landowners in the county of Kildare, Ireland, and occasionally filled legal offices under the English government there. Flattisbury appears to have been a retainer of Gerald Fitzgerald, eighth earl of Kildare [q. v.] ”

“ The theory that the Kildares were the only people who could carry on the government had by this time become firmly established. No one in Ireland could stand against the earl, and when the earl was out of Ireland the whole island was in an uproar. The confusion too between Kildare in his proper person, and Kildare as the king's Viceroy was, it must be owned, a perennial one, and upon more than one occasion had all but brought the government to an absolute standstill. ”

“ Sir Richard first touched at Kinsale, where he received the homage of the Lords Barry and de Courcy; he then sailed to Waterford, where he delivered to the Mayor royal letters confirming the city in its privileges, and authorizing its merchants to seize and distress those of Dublin, unless they made their submission. After leaving Waterford, he landed at Malahide, passing by Dublin, to which he proceeded by land, accompanied with his guard. The Earl of Kildare was absent on a pilgrimage, from which he did not return for several days. ”

“ Dublin, and was allied by blood with the Earl of Kildare and the most important of the Anglo-Irish families. The third Viscount Baltinglas did not conform to the established church, and from an official record it appears that shortly before his accession to the title he was fined one hundred marks for having heard a mass. He does not seem to have been regarded by his contemporaries as endowed with eminent abilities, but he is stated to have been a zealous religionist. ”

“ On 18 April 1359 he was made viceroy of Ireland as lord justice, and after a short absence in England, during which the office was held by Maurice FitzThomas, earl of Kildare, he was again appointed on 15 March 1360. When Lionel, duke of Clarence, was sent to Ireland as viceroy in 1361 in order to take more energetic measures for its reduction, he was appointed one of the three chief officers of his army at the pay of 4s. ”

“ Those in search of the picturesque alone will not find very much to interest them in Kildare or its immediate vicinity. There may be said to be hardly any remarkable scenic beauties in its neighbourhood. ”

“ FitzGerald, Richard, 3rd Earl of Kildare, 182
FitzGerald, Robert, 190
FitzGerald, Robert, 19th Earl of Kildare, 190
*FitzGerald, Thomas, 136
FitzGerald, Thomas, 2nd Earl of Kildare, 181
FitzGerald, Thomas, 7th Earl of Kildare, 182
FitzGerald, Thomas, 10th Earl of Kildare, 186
*FitzGerald, Thomas an-Apa, 136
FitzGerald, Wentworth, 17th Earl of Kildare, 190
FitzGerald, William, 13th Earl of Kildare, 190
FitzGerald, William, 2nd Duke of Leinster, 191
FitzGibbon, John, Earl of Clare, 195
FitzHenry, Miler, 198
FitzMaurice, James, 199
FitzMaurice, Thomas, Lord of Kerry, 199 ”

“ Kildare and Grey respectively asserted rights as governors, and presided over rival parliaments of the English settlement in Ireland. After the termination of the contest Kildare was, in 1481, appointed as deputy in Ireland for the viceroy, Richard, duke of York, and during the closing years of Edward IV advanced much in wealth and influence. He married Alison, daughter of Sir Rowland Fitzeustace, baron of Portlester, and formed alliances with the most important Irish and Anglo-Irish families. ”

“ From Leixlip to Naas they traversed the estates of one of their active foes, the new made Earl of Kildare, and from Naas they directed their march to Callan in Ossory, taking special pleasure, according to Anglo-Irish Annals, in harrying the lands of another enemy, the Lord Butler, afterwards Earl of Ormond. From Callan their route lay to Cashel and Limerick, at each of which they encamped two or three days without seeing the face of an enemy. But if they encountered no enemies in Munster, neither did they make many friends by their expedition. ”

“ Grey presided over the parliameat in Ireland in 1636-7, in which were enacted the important statutes for the abolition of papal authority, the attainder of the Earl of Kildare, the establishment of Henry VIII as head of the church, and the dissolution of houses of religion. Grey occasionally acted independently of the privy council at Dublin, with many of whose members, and especially with the Earl of Ormonde, he was soon on very bad terms. ”

“ When, therefore, they met, their first resolution was to despatch Sir Robert Talbot to the Viceroy, with a letter suspending all negotiations till the Earl of Glamorgan was set at liberty. By the end of January, on the joint bail, for 40,000 pounds, of the Earls of Clanrickarde and Kildare, the English envoy was enlarged, and, to the still further amazement of the simple-minded Catholics, on his arrival at Kilkenny, he justified rather than censured the action of Ormond. To most observers it appeared that these noblemen understood each other only too well. ”

“ He was summoned to three parliaments in 1295, and in December of that year he was sent to Gascony ‘on the king's service.’ In the mythical Geraldine version of the quarrel with Fitzthomas, Vescy's employment in France is represented as his fleeing beyond sea to avoid his antagonist, and in the same way Vescy's surrender of Kildare, effected two years later, is made out to be the consequence of this, and Edward is said to have granted it at once to Fitzthomas, who really became earl of Kildare in 1316. Vescy was now growing old and infirm. ”

“ Rymer, ii. 2) . According to the Earl of Kildare, quoting from Ware, in 1273 'he invaded Offaly, but was betrayed by his own people into the hands of the O'Conors' (Earls of Kildare, p. 16, but cf. Ware, p. 57) . ”

“ The Bishops of Meath and Kildare, the nearest to Dublin, for resisting it were banished their sees; the former to die an exile in Spain, the latter to find refuge and protection with the Earl of Desmond. Several Prelates were tolerated in their sees, on condition of observing a species of neutrality; but all vacancies, if within the reach of the English power, were filled as they occurred by nominees of the crown. Those who actively and energetically resisted the new doctrines were marked out for vengeance, and we shall see in the next decade how Ireland's martyr age began. ”

“ Those of Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Kildare, and Leix, had been inherited by the heirs of the Earl Marshal's five daughters; four other counties Palatine were now added—Ulster, Meath, Ormond, and Desmond. "The absolute lords of those palatinates," says Sir John Davis, "made barons and knights, exercised high justice within all their territories; erected courts for civil and criminal causes, and for their own revenues, in the same form in which the king's courts were established at Dublin; they constituted their own judges, seneschals, sheriffs, coroners, and escheators." ”

“ The young Earl of Ormond was glad to compound for a portion of his estates; the Earl of Kildare was committed to prison for refusing a similar composition; the Earl of Cork was compelled to pay a heavy fine for his intrusion into lands originally granted to the Church; the O'Byrnes of Wicklow commuted for 15,000 pounds, and the London Companies, for their Derry estates, paid no less than 70,000 pounds: a forced contribution for which those frugal citizens never forgave the thorough-going Deputy. ”

“ Kildare acted as governor of Dublin under the parliamentarian colonel, Michael Jones, in 1647, and in 1649 he received a pension of 46s. weekly from the government. In a subsequent petition to the chief justice of Munster Kildare stated that during eleven years he and his family had been driven to great extremities and endured much hardship in England and Ireland through his constant adherence and faithful affection to the parliament of England ”

“ In January 1393 he complained to the king that, being minded, by the advice of the Anglo-Irish lords, and others, to go to England to lay the evils of the country before the sovereign, the Earl of Kildare quartered a hundred ‘kernemen’ on the lands of his seigniory of Ballymore in county Dublin (ib. pp. 130–132) . ”

“ The king seems to have felt, that Kildare was less dangerous as sheep-dog--even though a head-strong one--than as wolf, even a wolf in a cage. He released him and restored him to his command. Prince Henry, according to custom, becoming nominally Lord-Lieutenant, with Kildare as deputy under him. The earl's wife had lately died, [pg 141] and before leaving England he strengthened himself against troubles to come by marrying Elizabeth St. John, the king's cousin, and having left his son Gerald behind as hostage for his good behaviour, sailed merrily home to Ireland. ”

“ In 1521 he was appointed to the archbishopric of Dublin. In 1527 he was made lord chancellor of Ireland, and held the office until his death, being 'accounted a person of great probity and justice' (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 732) . He strongly sympathised with Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth earl of Kildare [q. v.] , and his party, and protested in a letter written to Wolsey Jointly with Chief-justice Bermingham, against Kildare's imprisonment in 1528, and against the accusation of treason brought against him. ”

“ And Kildare is restored.
[Pg 266] The permission was sufficient; in 1524 he was again deputy; and no deliberate purpose of misrule could have led to results more fatal. The earl, made bold by impunity, at once prepared for a revolt from the English crown. Hitherto he had been contented to make himself essential to the maintenance of the English sovereignty; he now launched out into bolder measures, and encouraged by Henry's weakness, resolved to dare the worst Desmond makes a league with Francis I.,
Kildare secretly conniving at it, and preparing for a general insurrection. ”

“ The wind which filled the sails of the ship 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'Neil was out in the north; Desmond in the south; and the English pale was overrun by brigands. ”

“ On July 14th, nearly a fortnight before the insurrection actually broke out, the Archbishop of Dublin met Kildare on the legendary hill of Tara. Baltinglas was only two miles off, and in charge of the Earl’s own troop. Kildare had been told everything, and he informed Loftus that the Viscount and other Papists had conspired and were ready to rebel. ‘The first exploit they will do,’ he said, ‘is to kill you and me; you, for the envy they bear to your religion, and me, for that being taken away, they think there is no one to make head against them.’ Dr. ”

“ 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. ”