TUDOR RE-CONQUEST IN KILDARE
IRELAND 1400-1603
THE TUDOR RE-CONQUEST IN KILDARE
James Durney
Beyond the Pale, the authority of the Dublin government was tenuous. The Gaelic Irish were, for the most part, outside English jurisdiction, maintaining their own language, social system, customs and laws. The English referred to them as ‘His Majesty’s Irish enemies’. The great dynasties of Fitzgerald, Butler and Burke, achieved effective independence, raising their own armed forces, enforcing their own law and adopting Gaelic Irish language and culture. The FitzGeralds as deputy lieutenants, or justiciars, in the absence of the resident lord lieutenant, governed the lordship on behalf of the English monarch. The expansion of the county heartland under Garret Mor benefited both FitzGeralds and the English crown. From being in a vulnerable position in the mid-1400s, the Kildare manors, centred on Maynooth and Leixlip, had by the early sixteenth century been encompassed by an expanding circuit of stoutly fortified acquisitions. As a competent administrator and well-connected local nobleman Garret Mor, known as ‘the Great Earl,’ governed the Irish colony at no expense to the English crown. Under the terms of Poynings’ Law (1494), Garret as Lord Deputy could not call parliament or place bills before it without prior authority from the king. Under the auspices of the FitzGeralds as governors, the physical borders of the colony had been extended, and the judicial and fiscal regimes of the Dublin government were to a greater and lesser degree effective even in parts of the remoter colonial territories, such as Kerry and the outlying cities of Galway and Limerick.[3] But by the sixteenth century the House of Kildare had become an unreliable servant to the English government, by scheming with Yorkist pretenders to the English throne, and signing private treaties with foreign powers. In 1513 Garret Og FitzGerald, the Ninth Earl, became Governor when his father, Garret Mor, died while campaigning in the midlands. He was already experienced as a courtier, administrator and soldier by the time of his appointment and took his father’s place as governor with the minimum of upheaval. An arguably better ruler than his father Garret Og pursued a policy of Irish unity, of ‘Ireland for the Irish.’ He leased portions of his estates to Gaelic activists and established the College of Saint Mary near his castle in Maynooth. In 1519 Garret was summoned to England and lost his appointment as Lord Deputy due to alleged ‘seditious practices, conspiracies and subtle drifts’. He was forced to remain in the London area until his return from England in 1523.[4]
The lord privy seal, and chief advisor to Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, had built up much loyal support in the Irish Council and used these to his advantage in accusing Garret Og of, among other things, treason. FitzGerald was refused licence to depart England and the actions of confinement and interrogation took toll on his health. Henry, learning that FitzGerald was not likely to live long and no doubt intending to head off conflict summoned Thomas FitzGerald, with instructions to form a government in his father’s absence. Garret sent word to Thomas in May, warning him not to place any trust in the Irish council and against obeying a summons to London. Apparently following the king’s instructions, Thomas summoned the Irish Privy Council to St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, for 11 June. But on the day it met, Thomas accompanied by 140 horsemen, rode to the abbey and publicly denounced the government’s policies, renounced his allegiance to King Henry VIII, and proclaimed a Catholic crusade. Colm Lennon maintains that Thomas was ‘well-prepared for this crisis’ and in the ‘weeks before 11 June solicited support from traditional or sometimes Kildare allies’. Lennon claims that it was a public relations exercise that escalated into a full-scale rebellion when Henry incarcerated Garret Og in the Tower of London and Thomas sought overseas help.[8] There is little information on the start of the rebellion, but Thomas seemed to have much success. Thomas delivered a proclamation against English-born persons and even made an example of some, which discouraged commercial sea traffic. Consequently, communications between Dublin and London were severely disrupted. Thomas denounced the king as a heretic and demanded an oath of allegiance to himself, the pope and the emperor. The crusade won him some support from conservative clerics in Ireland, and also considerable sympathy abroad and from English dissidents. However, ‘little more than prayers, promises and the odd shipment of arms’ were provided. [9]
In July Silken Thomas attacked and besieged Dublin Castle, while two rebel armies campaigned in counties Louth and Wexford. The siege continued until English reinforcements landed in October. Within the Pale Thomas was given aid, men and money ‘in the style normally reserved for the king or his governor’.[10] Sir William Skeffington, again Lord Lieutenant, lost no time in declaring Thomas a traitor, leaving those members of the Pale gentry who had been wavering in their support for the crown confirmed instead as loyalists. By this time Garret Og had died in London and Thomas had become the Tenth Earl of Kildare. The English reinforcements spent much of the winter uselessly guarding Dublin and the main towns, and rather than risk a pitched battle Thomas retreated to his stronghold at Maynooth, which had been prepared against a siege. While Thomas burned other parts of the Pale Maynooth was attacked in March 1535 by an English force under Skeffington. After a ten-day siege the English took the base court by assault after an artillery bombardment. The constable betrayed the garrison, but when Skeffington took the castle he executed him and gave the garrison the ‘Maynooth Pardon’, that is, they were all put to death. As Thomas’ principal castle the capture of Maynooth heralded the complete failure of the Rebellion. Thereafter his raids on the Pale had little more than nuisance value, though they were still a serious embarrassment to the government, especially outside the country.
The Tudor re-conquest of Kildare.
The House of Tudor had been founded by King Henry VII who succeeded in ending the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York. Henry VII, his son Henry VIII and his three children Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I ruled for 118 years. During this period, England developed into one of the leading European colonial powers, and finally brought Ireland under English control. The Tudor period saw many changes in England, including that of religion. With the assistance of Thomas Cromwell, the king implemented the policy of surrender and regrant. This extended Royal protection to all of Ireland’s elite without regard to ethnicity; in return the whole country was expected to obey the law of the central government; and all Irish lords were to officially surrender to the Crown, and to receive in return by Royal Charter, the title to their lands. The keystone to the reform was in a statute passed by the Irish parliament in 1541, whereby the lordship was converted to a kingdom. Overall, the intention was to assimilate the Gaelic and Gaelicised upper classes and develop a loyalty on their part to the new crown; to this end, they were granted English titles and for the first time admitted to the Irish parliament. In practice, lords around Ireland accepted their new privileges but carried on as they had before. Henry’s religious Reformation - although not as thorough as in England - caused disquiet; his Lord Deputy, Anthony St Leger was largely able to buy off opposition by granting lands confiscated from the monasteries to Irish nobles. Important monastic settlements at Athy, Castledermot, Kildare, Naas and Clane were confiscated and were used as strategic strongholds or bestowed as rewards on officials and military men who were prominent in crushing the Kildare Rebellion.[15] The crisis of the Geraldine League disrupted the royal commission’s work but the bulk of the houses in the Pale surrendered in October-November.[16] However, St Leger allegedly regretted that the government had ‘meddled to alter religion’ during a minority, but worked constructively to ensure local conformity. Local men were preferred where available and while Englishmen were appointed to the sees of Kildare (Thomas Lancaster) and Leighlin (Robert Travers), the existing Gaelic curates were indemnified by grants of denization against the medieval statute excluding them from benefices in the Englishry.[17]
In 1574 Gerald was accused of assisting Gaelic rebels and was arrested and called to England, but returned to supervise the defense of the Pale as the O’Mores and O’Conors raided and destroyed parts of Kildare. He faced serious problems on his return to Ireland in December 1578. His county Kildare lands had been seriously damaged and some of his most prominent Gaelic tenants had been killed in the midlands war that had recently ended with the killing of Rory Og O’More in June 1578. The latter’s rebellion and its vicious suppression by the New England captains laid large sections of Kildare, Laois and Offaly waste, areas that had traditionally been protected by the Earl of Kildare. In order to end the ongoing and embarrassing border conflict the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, was forced to give the midland captains carte blanche in their dealings in this traditional Geraldine-controlled area. The head hunt carried out by these captains marked a significant departure from the traditional low intensity anti-insurgent methods of native border magnates like the Earl of Kildare and resulted in a staggering loss of life. The Massacre of Mullagmast in Kildare’s absence had facilitated this slaughter, exposing his allies and tenants to harassment and ultimately weakened his political credibility on the border and in the Pale.[22] The Massacre of Mullagmast had occurred on New Years Eve 1577. Captain Francis Cosby with reinforcements from Kildare town and Monasterevan lured the rebellious O’Mores and O’Conors to a meeting at Mullaghmast, an ancient meeting place for Leinster chieftains, where the Annals of the Four Masters records: ‘The English of Leinster and Meath, upon that part of the people of Offaly and Leix that remained in confederacy with them and under their protection committed a horrible and abominable act of treachery. It was effected thus: they were all summoned to show themselves with the greatest number they could be able to bring with them at the great Rath of Mullach Maistean; and on their arrival at that place they were surrounded on every side by four lines of soldiers and cavalry who proceeded to slaughter them without mercy so that not a single individual escaped by flight or force.’[23] Over forty of the seven septs (families) of Laois were murdered and in an instant Irish opposition to the plantation was delivered a mortal blow. Rory Og O’More retaliated with raids on Naas, Athy, Carlow and Leighlin Bridge.
In 1580 when Arthur Gray arrived in Ireland as Lord Justice, he was met by rebellion from James Eustace and the surviving Gaels of Offaly and Laois.[24] The O’More and O’Connors burned the towns of Carlow, Athy and Naas. The government response was just as ferocious. Gerald FitzGerald was arrested on suspicion of helping the rebels and died in England after five years under arrest. Henry, his son, was appointed his successor by the English Council. The O’Mores captured Athy in 1598, while the new Lord Justice, Lord Borough, arrived with a large English army and secured the co-operation of among others, Henry, the Earl of Kildare. Henry died in Drogheda on the way home from campaigning in Ulster of wounds or fever and was buried with great pomp in Kildare. His brother William was installed in his place and travelled to England. On his return home by ship in the spring of 1599 William and eighteen chiefs of Meath and Fingall disappeared, believed murdered by the English. His cousin Garret was appointed by the Queen and joined Lord Essex in his campaign against the Irish.[25] Naas was among one of the many towns to receive an English garrison before they marched southwards. Meanwhile the Ulster Irish raided Leinster in 1601 and burned and plundered parts of Kildare. But the writing was on the wall – Gaelic Ireland was no more.
Conclusion
The prevailing consensus among historians is that Silken Thomas’ rebellion was not conceived as such, but was a gesture of protest intended to force concessions from Henry VIII, which only escalated into rebellion after Garret Og was arrested. While the Kildare Rebellion was a disaster for the FitzGerald family, resulting in the executions of its leading members and the confiscation of most of their property, for the rest of the country the rebellion opened the way for one of the most significant changes in Ireland with the imposition of the Reformation. Within the Pale the FitzGerald’s were the most powerful of Henry VIII’s allies, or enemies, and with the Geraldine’s power broken it facilitated the Reformation and the re-conquest of the English colony. The rebellion was thus a disaster for the FitzGerald’s and Ireland as a whole. While, the medieval world of Gaelic Ireland only began to come to an end decisively after the battle of Kinsale in 1603, it really began to decline with the fall of the house of Kildare in 1534.
End Notes
2. Ibid, p.35.
3. Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland, p.81-2.
4. Farrell, p.43.
5. Lennon, p.100.
6. Jeffries, The Kildare Revolt, JCKAS, vol. XIX, p.449.
7. Ellis, pp.135-6.
8. Lennon, pp.108-9.
9. Ellis, p.137.
10. Ibid, p.138.
11. Farrell, pp.44-5.
12. Annals, p.1445.
13. Lennon, p.67.
14. Ellis, p.142.
15. Farrell, p.46.
16. Ellis, pp.212-3.
17. Ibid, p.220.
18. Lennon, p.71.
19. Ibid, p.270.
20. Ibid, p.274.
21. Carrey, Surviving the Tudors, p.187.
22. Nolan, Kildare from the Documents of Conquest, KHS, pp.248-9.
23. Farrell, p.149.
24. Annals, p.1737.
25. Ibid, p.2093.
Carrey, Vincent P., Surviving the Tudors. The ‘wizard’ earl of Kildare and English rule in Ireland 1537-1586. Dublin, 2002.
Ellis, Steven G., Ireland in the Age of the Tudors 1447-1603. English expansion and the end of Gaelic rule. Essex, 1998.
Lennon, Colm. Sixteenth Century Ireland. Dublin, 2005.
Marsden, John. Galloglas. Hebridean and West Highland Mercenary Warrior Kindreds in Medieval Ireland. East Linton. Scotland, 2003.
O’Farrell, Padraic. A History of County Kildare. Dublin, 2003.
Kildare from the Documents of Conquest: the Monastic Extents 1540 and the Civil Survey 1654-1656. William Nolan. Kildare. History and Society. Editors: William Nolan and Thomas McGrath. Dublin 2006.
WE HAVE ADDED A NEW CATEGORY TO THE EHISTORY SITE - 'ESSAYS' - WHICH WILL ACT AS FORUM FOR STUDENTS OF ALL DISCIPLINES AND AGES TO PUBLISH MATERIAL RELATING TO THE HISTORY OF CO. KILDARE - OUR FIRST ESSAY IS BY JAMES DURNEY ON THE TUDOR RE-CONQUEST OF CO. KILDARE