He embarked at night in a vessel which was then lying at Dame’s Gate; but the ship was stranded near Clontarf, either through accident or design, and the unfortunate prelate was seized by Lord Thomas’ people, who instantly put him to death.  The young nobleman is said by some authorities to have been present at the murder, as well as his two uncles:  there is at least no doubt of his complicity in the crime.  The sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him, and those who assisted him, in its most terrible form.

Ecclesiastical intervention was not necessary to complete his ruin.  He had commenced his wild career of lawless violence with but few followers, and without any influential companions.  The Castle of Maynooth, the great stronghold of the Geraldines, was besieged and captured by his father’s old enemy, Sir William Skeffington.  In the meanwhile the intelligence of his son’s insurrection had been communicated to the Earl, and the news of his excommunication followed quickly.  The unfortunate nobleman succumbed beneath the twofold blow, and died in a few weeks.  Lord Thomas surrendered himself in August, 1535, on the guarantee of Lord Leonard and Lord Butler, under a solemn promise that his life should be spared.[386] But his fate was in the hands of one who had no pity, even where the tenderest ties were concerned.  Soon after the surrender of “Silken Thomas,” his five uncles were seized treacherously at a banquet; and although three of them had no part in the rebellion, the nephew and the uncles were all executed together at Tyburn, on the 3rd of February, 1537.  If the King had hoped by this cruel injustice to rid himself of the powerful family, he was mistaken.  Two children of the late Earl’s still existed.  They were sons by his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Grey.  The younger, still an infant, was conveyed to his mother in England; the elder, a youth of twelve years of age, was concealed by his aunts, who were married to the chieftains of Offaly and Donegal, and was soon conveyed to France, out of the reach of the enemies who eagerly sought his destruction.  It is not a little curious to find the native princes, who had been so cruelly oppressed by his forefathers, protecting and helping the hapless youth, even at the risk of their lives.  It is one of many evidences that the antipathy of Celt to Saxon is not so much an antipathy of race or person, as the natural enmity which the oppressed entertains towards the oppressor.

Henry made his first appearance at establishing his spiritual supremacy in the year 1534, by appointing an Augustinian friar, who had already[387] become a Protestant, to the see of Dublin.  He was consecrated by Cranmer, always the servile instrument of the royal pleasure.  The previous events in England, which resulted in the national schism, are too well known to require much observation.  It must be admitted as one of the most patent facts of history, that the English King never so much as thought of asserting