The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

In 1520 O'Donnell warned that if Henry VIII gave the office of chief governor to Kildare again, he might as well resign the lordship of Ireland to the Fitzgeralds forever. In 1522-4 Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormond was made chief governor, but only for a time, because he lacked the military and financial resources to discharge the duties with which he was entrusted, and because a sulking Kildare used his power to obstruct his rival. Ormond's failure and replacement by Kildare in 1524 left a legacy of hostility to disturb the peace of th lordship. The intrigues of Kildare's Fitzgerald kinsman, the 11th Earl of Desmond, with Francis I of France, allowed Ormond to impute treasonable communication with the King's enemies to Kildare also. In 1526 both Ormond and Kildare were summoned to court, leaving Gaelic borderers to raid the Englishry. Two years later Ormond returned to Ireland, but Kildare was detained. Meanwhile, O'Connor of Offaly ran riot, not without Kildare's collusion. That year Kildare came very close to being charged with treason. Now and throughout the century factional rivalry within Irish politics was closely enmeshed with alignments at court in England. Kildare was restored yet again as chief governor in 1532, partly through the favour of the Duke of Norfolk, who was not only concerned to protect his own Ormond inheritance against the Butlers, but saw in Kildare the best hope of peace in Ireland. But Kildare's rivals, Archbishop Alen of Dublin and the Butlers, were in communication with Thomas Cromwell, who was taking a closer interest in Ireland, an interest that was regarded with the deepest suspicion by Kildare. In September 1533 Kildare was summoned to England once more. His countess went, but he stayed and and began marshalling ordnance. Late that year Cromwell's memorandum noted: 'to adhere as many of the great Irish rebels as is possible'; and 'to withstand all other practices that might be practised there', where 'practice' meant conspiracy. In February 1534 Kildare arrived in England, leaving his son, Thomas, Lord Offaly ('Silken Thomas') to rule in his absence. Three months later 'manifold enormities' were proved against Kildare, and a message came to Offaly from his father, telling him to 'play the best or gentlest part' and not to trust the Council. On 11 June 1534 Offaly marched through Dublin to the Council, denounced the King's policies, yielded his sword of office, and signalled Geraldine (Fitzgerald) resistance. Archbishop Alen was murdered, Dublin Castle besieged. This was rebellion from a feudatory of the Crown, rebellion not from desperation but from overweening confidence. The Geraldines could not believe that any English government could replace their grand networks of alliance and power, nor that any policy could be pursued which they opposed. Presented with moderate proposals for reform, they revolted. This rebellion, like every rebellion in sixteenth-century Ireland thereafter, claimed a religious motive, although no changes in religion had yet been effected there. Lord Thomas began to call up that great 'knot of all the forces of Ireland' which were 'twisted under his girdle': Conor O'Brien of Thomond in Munster, Fitzgerald of Desmond, Conn Bacach O'Neill in Ulster, O'Connor of Offaly. The revolt was a desperate miscalculation. Even the force of Kildare and his allies could not withstand a Tudor campaign army, and the promised forces from Emperor Charles V never came. Seventy-five of the revolt's leaders were executed. The ascendancy of the Fitzgeralds was shattered, their slantyaght leaderless, their great lands confiscated. This was a disaster not for the Fitzgeralds alone but for all the lords of Ireland, for the destruction of the House of Kildare destroyed all the fragile equilibrium and peace which their supremacy had intermittenly assured. As the English governors now stumbled erratically towards alternative ways of ruling the lordship, the Gaelic lords entered new alliances to replace the old, and politics became ever more volatile, until finally a radical estrangement appeared between the two worlds of Englishry and Irishry. As Henry VIII asserted his imperial authority in England, he thought to extend it to his lordship of Ireland also. A corpus of Reformation legislation was enacted in the Irish Parliament in 1536-7.