That Kildare’s authority, even during this latter period of his government was wholly exercised in the cause of tranquility it would be certainly rash to assert.  At the same time it may be doubted whether any better choice was open to the king—­short of some very drastic policy indeed.  That he used his great authority to overthrow his own enemies and to aggrandize his own house goes almost without saying.  The titular sovereignty of the king could hope to count for little beside the real sovereignty of the earl, and the house of Kildare naturally loomed far larger and more imposingly in Ireland than the house of Tudor.  Despotism in some form was the only practical and possible government, and Earl Gerald was all but despotic within the Pale, and even outside it was at any rate stronger than any other single individual.  The Desmond Geraldines lived remote, the Butlers, who came next to the Geraldines in importance, held Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary, but were cut off from Dublin by the wild mountains of Wicklow, and the wilder tribes of O’Tooles, and O’Byrnes who held them.  They were only able to approach it through Kildare, and Kildare was the head-quarters of the Geraldines.

One of Earl Gerald’s last, and, upon the whole, his most remarkable achievement was that famous expedition which ended in the battle of Knocktow already alluded to in an earlier chapter, in which a large number of the lords of the Pale, aided by the native allies of the deputy, took part.  In this case there was hardly a pretence that the expedition was undertaken in the king’s service.  It was a family quarrel pure and simple, between the deputy and his son-in-law McWilliam, of Clanricarde.  The native account tells us that the latter’s wife “was not so used as the earl (her father) could be pleased with,” whereupon “he swore to be revenged upon this Irishman and all his partakers,” The notion of a Fitzgerald stigmatizing a De Burgh as an Irishman is delightful, and eminently characteristic of the sort of wild confusion prevailing on the subject.  The whole story indeed is so excellent, and is told by the narrator with so much spirit, that it were pity to curtail it, and as it stands it would be too long for these pages.  The result was that Clanricarde and his Irish allies were defeated with frightful slaughter, between seven and eight thousand men, according to the victors, having been left dead upon the field!  Galway, previously held by Clanricarde, was re-occupied, and the deputy and his allies returned in triumph to Dublin, whence the archbishop was despatched in hot haste to explain matters to the king.

A slight incident which took place at the end of this battle is too characteristic to omit.  “We have done one good work,” observed Lord Gormanston, one of the Lords of the Pale, confidentially to the Lord-deputy.  “And if we now do the other we shall do well,” Asked by the latter what he meant, he replied, “We have for the most part killed our enemies, if we do the like with all the Irishmen that we have with us it were a good deed[7].”  Happily for his good fame Kildare seems to have been able to resist the tempting suggestion, and the allies parted on this occasion to all appearances on friendly terms.