The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

The first Ango-Norman conquerors had been granted great lordships upon the ruins of the Irish
supremacies. In Munster the Fitzgeralds became earls of Desmond in 1329 and possessors of
palatine jurisdiction in Kerry, and they came to rule as independent princes over County Kerry,
Limerick, Waterford and North Cork. At the same time the Butlers received the earldom of Ormond.
They had extensive possessions in the south, especially in Tipperary, which they held as a liberty
palatine, and in the area around Kilkenny, a 'second Pale'. In the late fifteenth century the Butlers
and the Fitzgeralds held these areas still, against the extreme hostility of neighbouring Gaelic lords
and of each other, and by means fitting to a rough border world. The Fitzgerald Desmonds maintained private armies of hired kerns (foot-soldiers) and gallo-glasses (professional axemen) ready to march against rival lords; not only against the Gaelic MacCarthy Mór but also against the Earl of Ormond.
The feudal barons had to defend the vast lands and liberties they had gained. They had little help,
and little interference, from their overlord, the absentee king in England, who depended on their
power while disapproving of their methods. In this marcher society, conditioned to war, they were
the arbiters and keepers of peace. In England, war was the king's war, peace the king's peace;
not so in Ireland where Ormond and Desmond waged private war into the later sixteenth century.
To English government officials, who saw a chasm between how things were and how they thought they should be, these feudal lords had, by making so many accommodations with their Gaelic
neighbours, become Irish themselves. It was true that the earls of Ormond and Desmond used
Irish law as well as English law; and that in the north-west the Anglo-Irish Mayo Burkes were inaugrating their chiefs after the Gaelic manner. From the beginning, there was intermarriage between Anglo-Irish and Gaelic families; feudal lords took pledges and hostages, and fostered chiefs' children,
as the Irish did; spoke Irish as well as English; employed Irish bards and wore Gaelic dress. But life
on the edge of the 'land of war' entailed compromise: Gaelic allies were needed to overawe Gaelic
enemies. And while bureaucrats safe in Dublin and Westminster saw the Anglo-Irish as 'degenerate', fallen from their race, they saw themselves as quite distinct from, and superior to, their Irish neighbours, for they held their lands and titles by feudal tenure and succeeded to their estates by primogeniture, a world away from the Gaelic system. When in 1488 Sir Richard Edgecombe tried
to make the Anglo-Irish nobility accept certain conditions of pardon, they obdurately refused:
they would rather be Irish, they said, appalled.
The Fitzgerald earls of Kildare, the feudal magnates who became ascendant in Ireland under the
first Tudors, the bringers and the beneficiaries of English recovery there, had not been pre-eminent
through the later middle ages. The 7th Earl (d. 1478) had begun to restore the Kildare estates
during a long period as chief governor for the king. In their perennial absence, the English kings,
as Lords of Ireland, delegated their authority to their viceroys - their 'lieutenants' or 'deputy lieutenants' (for simplicity the term 'chief governor' will hereafter be used throughout). The position of chief governor was one of extraordinary power and autonomy. Pre-eminent in Ireland and isolated
from the king in England, he had remarkable freedom to act. Garret Mór, the 8th Earl, attained huge
power through his personal lordship over Palesmen, his clients, vassals annd allies in Leinster, and
also over many Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords far beyond the Pale and the bureaucratic control of
Dublin, who paid tribute to him in return for his protection. Though he might have looked like a
high king come again, his lordship depended on the powers eventually entrusted to him as governor
by the Lord of Ireland, Henry VII, a king who always unwilling to send those whom he trusted and
to trust those whom he sent.

At his accession Henry Tudor was in many ways fortunate. He was a king with few rivals. Richard III
was dead with no child to succeed him. Henry had gained his throne because Richard had alienated most of the landed community of Yorkist England by his plantation of the southern counties with his
northern followers, by breaking his own bonds of fidelity, by his usurpation and his presumed
murder of the princes. 'Men of honour' had been uncertain where to give allegiance and, according
to the Great Chronicles of London, most would gladly have been French, subject to the ancient
enemy, as ruled by Richard. Henry was the inheritor, if tortuously, of the Lancastrian claim, but
as the vast royal affinity transferred allegiance to him, he also became the Yorkist claimant. He had support from Edward of York's former household and was married to Edward's daughter. Henry had no brothers and there was no focus among his kindred for political discontent. There was a kingmaker,
and kingmakers were often dangerous to the kings they had made, but this one, Lord Stanley,
soon to be elevated to Earl of Derby, was safely married to the King's redoubtable mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond. The destruction during the last few years of the greatest
English magnates - Clarence, Neville, Buckingham, Hastings - had left the major noble families
leaderless, powerless to set up petty kingdoms in the regions, even if they had so wished. Whole
regions were without traditional local rulers. In East Anglia, the de la Poles and Howards, loyal Yorkists, were displaced by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a stalwart ally of the new king. Henry chose not to give any one noble a commanding position in the Midlands; instead he allowed second-rank
magnates to compete for regional dominance. The consequence would be a failure of law and order.
In the South-West, royal favour was given almost exclusively to Giles, Lord Daubeney. Yet royal
favour could not always guarantee loyalty; either from the lord who had been rewarded, or from the
local political community, who might show a greater allegiance to their lord than to the King.
A redistribution of patronage followed Bosworth, but it could not, of course, please everyone, and
some thought themselves ill rewarded.