[7] Book of Howth.

XX.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.

The battle of Knocktow was fought five years before the death of Henry VII.  Of those five years and of the earlier ones of the new reign little of any vital importance remains to be recorded in Ireland.  With the rise of Wolsey to power however a new era set in.  The great cardinal was the sworn enemy of the Geraldines.  He saw in them the most formidable obstacle to the royal power in that country.  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.

Geroit Mor had died in 1513 of a wound received in a campaign with the O’Carrolls close to his own castle of Kilkea, but almost as a matter of course his son Gerald had succeeded him as Viceroy and carried on the government in much the same fashion; had made raids on the O’Moores and O’Reillys and others of the “king’s Irish enemies,” and been rewarded with grants upon the lands which he had captured from the rebels.  The state of the Pale was terrible.  “Coyne and livery,” it was declared, had eaten up the people.  The sea, too, swarmed with pirates, who descended all but unchecked upon the coast and carried off men and women to slavery.  Many complaints were made of the deputy, and by 1520 these had grown so loud and long that Henry resolved upon a change, and like his predecessor determined to send an English governor, one upon whom he could himself rely.

The choice fell upon the Earl of Surrey, son of the conqueror of Flodden.  Surrey’s survey of the field soon convinced him to his own satisfaction that no half measures was likely to be of any avail.  The plan proposed by him had certainly the merit of being sufficiently sweeping.  Ireland was to be entirely reconquered.  District was to be taken after district, and fortresses to be built to hold them according as they were conquered.  The occupation was thus to be pushed steadily on until the whole country submitted, after which it was to be largely repopulated by English colonists.  The idea was a large one, and would have taken a large permanent army to carry out.  The loss too of life would have been appalling, though not, it was represented to the king, greater than was annually squandered in an interminable succession of petty wars.  Probably the expense was the real hindrance.  At any rate Surrey’s plan was put aside for the time being, and not long afterwards at his own urgent prayer he was allowed to lay down his uneasy honours and return to England.