A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  The Earl of Kildare, Chief Governor of Ireland [Garret Óg], the most illustrious of the English and Irish of Ireland in his time, died in captivity in London. After which, his son Thomas proceeded to avenge his father upon the English, and all who had been instrumental in removing him from Ireland. He resigned the king’s sword, and did many injuries to the English.

  In these words the Annals of the Four Masters chronicled the death in the Tower of London of Garret Óg FitzGerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, and the outbreak of the great rebellion of his son Silken Thomas against Henry VIII in 1534. The account continues:

  The Archbishop of Dublin came by his death through him, for he had been opposed to his father; many others were slain along with him. He took Dublin from Newgate outwards, and pledges and hostages were given by the rest of the town through fear of him. The son of the earl on this occasion totally plundered and devastated Fingall from Three Rock Mountain to Drogheda, and made all Meath tremble beneath his feet.

  Silken Thomas forged an alliance with Conor O’Brien, the Lord of Thomond, who in turn was seeking Spanish aid. Thomas was also sure of the support of his father’s cousin, Conn Bacach O’Neill of Tír Eóghain. Then he issued an ultimatum that all those of English birth should immediately leave the country or face the consequences. There was no turning back now.

  If Silken Thomas was to succeed, he had to take the capital. He laid siege to Dublin Castle, but the fortress was too strong, and it was well equipped to withstand a long siege. The garrison was even able to sally out, capture artillery pieces, and kill over a hundred of Thomas’s gallowglasses. Narrowly avoiding capture, Silken Thomas made the fatal error of agreeing to a six-week truce. The immediate reason for this decision was that Piers Butler, Earl of Ormond, had remained loyal to King Henry and was ravaging the Kildare lands. When Conn Bacach arrived with his O’Neills from Tír Eóghain, he was sent, not to take Dublin but to take on Ormond in south Leinster.

  Lord Thomas, now the tenth Earl of Kildare, hoped that the Emperor Charles V would send him aid, but all he got was some gunpowder and ammunition from a Spanish vessel putting in at Dingle in Kerry. Sir William Skeffington landed in Dublin on 24 October. Though he brought with him the largest English army Ireland had seen in over a century, it took Skeffington months of bloody campaigning before he closed in on Maynooth Castle in Co. Kildare, Thomas’s main stronghold. For six days in March 1535 Skeffington’s cannon battered the castle. In the end Maynooth was taken, not solely by cannon fire, as Thomas’s foster-brother informs us:

  Christopher Paris, to whose care the guard of the castle was principally committed, being blinded by avarice, privately agreed with Skeffington, for a certain sum of money to deliver up the castle.... The appointed night being come, he made the guard drunk, who being then buried in wine and sleep, the castle was easily won a little before day, the scaling ladders being applied to it.

  Silken Thomas managed to escape, but one by one his allies made their peace with Skeffington. Finally on 24 August 1535 he surrendered to the newly appointed marshal of the English army, who was also his uncle-in-law, Lord Leonard Grey. Richard Stanihurst tells us that Lord Thomas,

  being in conference with Lord Grey ... was persuaded to submit himself to the king’s mercy, with the governor’s faithful and undoubted promise that he should be pardoned on his repair to England. And to the end that no treachery might have been misdeemed on either side, they both received the sacrament openly in the camp, as an infallible seal of the covenants and conditions of either part agreed.

  It would have been better for Silken Thomas if he had held out in the Bog of Allen like his Gaelic Irish allies. On his arrival in London, the English Lord Chancellor expressed his amazement that

  so arrant and cankered a traitor should come into the king’s sight, free and out of ward. If this be intended, that he should have mercy, I marvel much, that divers of the king’s council in Ireland have told the king, afore this time, that there should never be good peace and order in Ireland, till the blood of the Geraldines were wholly extinct.

  Henry VIII was a suspicious and ruthless monarch who would brook no opposition from over-powerful subjects. Now, early in 1537, he had no hesitation: Silken Thomas, along with five of his uncles, was condemned to a traitor’s death. The Grey Friars in London recorded their end:

  The 3rd day of February the Lord Fytzgaarad with hys five unkelles of Ireland ... were draune from the Tower in to Tyborne, and there alle hongyd and hedded and quartered, save the Lord Thomas for he was but hongyd and heeded and his body buryd at the Crost Freeres in the qwrere, and the quarters with their heddes set up about the cittie.

  Just before the execution Lord Leonard Grey and Lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell appropriated Silken Thomas’s jewellery. For entirely unconnected and separate reasons, both men were to be beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII during the next four years.

  Episode 50

  THE CHURCH IN TURMOIL

  Throughout the Middle Ages all the people who lived in Ireland, natives and colonists alike, were Christians, and all, of course, were Catholics. There were some differences, however. In the English-controlled lordship the church was organised in much the same way as in France and England. In the areas beyond the reach of the English—more than half the island—the church was still run in the old Irish way. Above all, in Gaelic areas the rule of celibacy was everywhere ignored.

  John Colton was the only Archbishop of Armagh who in several centuries had the courage to visit his flock in both the English and Gaelic parts of Ireland. This Englishman had taken a considerable risk in visiting Derry in the heart of Gaelic Ulster in 1397. He was kindly received, however, and was lodged there in the Black Abbey of the Augustinian canons. There he confirmed the election of Hugh Gillibride O’Doherty as abbot, but at the same time he issued this clergyman with a strict instruction to

  dismiss and expel from your dwelling, cohabitation and care that Catherine whom it is said you have lately taken into concubinage and shall never afterwards take up with her again ... and that you should make no promise concerning any other concubine whom, heaven forbid, you should take to yourself in future.

  But Archbishop Colton was wasting his breath: his attempt to make clergy in Gaelic areas remain celibate was a complete failure. For example, Cathal MacManus, Archdeacon of Clogher, proudly recorded in the Annals of Ulster the names of over a dozen children he had fathered—yet his obituary declared him to be ‘a gem of purity and a turtle-dove of chastity’.

  There is no doubt that the church throughout Ireland enjoyed strong and warm support. Gaelic lords, particularly in Ulster, went out of their way to fund the building of friaries. The friars, especially the Franciscans, were extremely popular because they were dedicated to a simple communal life, open-air preaching and pastoral work among the people. Donegal friary was founded in 1474 by Finola O’Connor, wife of the Lord of Tír Conaill; Bonamargy friary was built in 1500 by Rory MacQuillan, Lord of the Route; and others sprang up at Larne, Massereene, Lambeg, Sligo, and all over what the English described as the ‘land of war’.

  This friary building boom was in full swing in the 1530s when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in England. Soon afterwards he decided to get rid of the monasteries in Ireland as well.

  When the papacy refused to allow Henry VIII to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, the king severed the English church from Rome and declared himself to be the head of that church. In May 1536 a parliament in Dublin agreed to accept Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Irish church:

  Forasmuch as this land of Ireland is depending and belonging justly and rightfully to the imperial crown of England, for increase in virtue in Christ’s religion within the said land of Ireland, and to repress and extirpate all errors, heresies and other enormities and abuses, heretofore used in the same: be it enacted by authority of this present parliament that the king our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors ... shall be accepted, taken, and reputed the only su
preme head in earth of the whole church of Ireland.

  There is no doubt that Irish nobles, knights and burgesses attending this parliament were deeply unhappy about this break with the Roman church. But too many of them feared for their lives, having been involved so recently, however indirectly, in the rebellion of Silken Thomas FitzGerald: they therefore passed the legislation as the king wished. The task of enforcing the act was given to Archbishop Browne of Dublin, who sent out this instruction to the clergy:

  I exhort you all, that ye deface the said Bishop of Rome in all your books, where he is named pope, and that ye shall have from henceforth no trust in him, nor in his bulls or pardons, which, beforetime, with his juggling, casts of binding and loosing, he sold you for your money ... and also that ye fear not his great thunder claps of excommunication, for they cannot hurt you.

  The Irish clergy, including those most loyal to the crown, were aghast. They were even more shaken when a royal commission recommended the shutting down of Irish monasteries, stating its reasons for doing so in the bluntest terms:

  It being manifestly apparent that the monks and nuns dwelling there being so addicted, partly to their own superstitious ceremonies, partly to the pernicious worship of idols, and to the pestiferous doctrines of the Roman pontiff, that the whole Irish people may be speedily infected, to their total destruction, by the example of these persons ...

  Ireland was experiencing the first impact of a profound upheaval in western Christianity—the Reformation.

  Episode 51

  ‘SOBER WAYS, POLITIC DRIFTS, AND AMIABLE PERSUASIONS’

  During the reign of the Tudor monarchs in the sixteenth century England grew more prosperous and powerful. The population was rising and ambitious younger sons, inheriting nothing at home, sought their fortunes elsewhere. Ireland, with a sparse population, attracted the English, just as the Spaniards were drawn across the Atlantic to Mexico and Peru.

  Henry VIII was determined to recover all the lands in Ireland his predecessors had lost. But how was Ireland to be reconquered? One of the king’s correspondents, signing himself ‘Pandor’, gave the following advice:

  Yf the king were as wise as Salamon the Sage, he shalle never subdue the wylde Iryshe to his obeysaunce, without dreadde of the swerde, and of the myght and streyngthe of his power, and of his Englyshe subgettes, orderyd as aforesayd; for aslong as they may resyste and save their lyffes, they will never obey the kyng.

  Certainly Lord Leonard Grey put his faith in brute military force when he was appointed chief governor in 1536. With great energy and skill, Grey transported cannon on carts across rough country. He drove the O’Byrnes into their fastness of Glenmalure, recovered Athlone Castle for the crown, besieged Dungannon, and, after a fierce artillery battle, smashed down the bridge over the Shannon at Limerick in the face of the O’Briens.

  King Henry was informed that ‘Irishmen were never in such fear as they be at this instant time’. So alarmed were the Gaelic lords of Ulster by this vigorous campaigning that they sank their differences to unite in a great attack on the Pale in 1539, as the annals record:

  O’Neill and O’Donnell, by mutual permission and encouragement, made a hosting into Meath, devastating and burning the country as far as Tara; and never in later times had the Gaels assembled against the Foreigners an army which destroyed more of the wealth of Meath than this army. Immense were the booties of gold, silver, copper, iron and valuables of all kinds.

  The governor, however, brought in men by sea to cut them off in Co. Monaghan:

  And as they were returning from this expedition loaded with pride and haughtiness and spoil, Lord Leonard followed after them together with a full muster and men from a large fleet in Carlingford harbour.... The army of the Gaels was overtaken at Bellahoe, to wit, and they were not able to array themselves in order but fled leaving much of their spoils.

  But Lord Leonard Grey had his enemies, and he fell foul of his capricious monarch. His ally at court, Thomas Cromwell, was executed on Tower Hill in June 1540, and, despite all his military triumphs in Ireland, Lord Leonard followed him to the same scaffold exactly a year later.

  Henry VIII found Grey’s aggressive campaigning far too great a burden on his treasury. Could the Irish not be cajoled into loyalty rather than battered by cannon into submission? In an attempt to stop more and more of the English in Ireland going native, the king persuaded the Irish parliament to make the adoption of Irish dress, customs and language illegal in the Pale:

  Be it enacted ... that no person or persons, the king’s subjects within this land ... shall be shorn, or shaven above the ears, or have any hair growing upon their upper lips ... or wear any shirt, smock, kerchief or linen cap, coloured or dyed with saffron ... and that no person or persons shall wear any mantles, coat or hood made after the Irish fashion ...

  Every person shall use and speak commonly the English language ... and keep their house and households, as near as ever they can, according to the English order, condition and manner.

  That statute proved as difficult to enforce as previous ones. More effective measures were needed. In a long letter the king set out his thoughts: to ‘bring Irish captains to further obedience’ and to recover royal lands, he suggested ‘circumspect and politic ways’,

  which thing must as yet rather be practised by sober ways, politic drifts, and amiable persuasions, founded in law and reason, than by rigorous dealing, or any other enforcement by strength and violence. And, to be plain unto you, to spend so much money for the reduction of that land, to bring the Irishry in appearance only of obedience ... it were a thing of little policy, less advantage, and least effect.

  Sir Anthony St Leger, appointed chief governor in 1540, was a firm believer in ‘amiable persuasions’. His scheme, known as ‘surrender and regrant’, was to erase the partition of Ireland between the English Pale and the Great Irishry. Henceforth Gaelic lords were to be invited to hold their lands by English feudal law from the king; the recommended procedure was that they would drop their traditional Irish titles and give up their lands to the king, receiving them back immediately with English titles. It was a scheme which was to enjoy a remarkable amount of initial success.

  Episode 52

  CONN BACACH O’NEILL VISITS LONDON

  Forasmuch as the king our most gracious dread sovereign lord, and his Grace’s most noble progenitors, Kings of England, have been Lords of this land of Ireland ... be it enacted, ordained and established by authority of this present parliament, that the King’s highness, his heirs and successors, Kings of England, be always Kings of this land of Ireland, and that his Majesty, his heirs and successors, have the name, style, title, and honour of King of this land of Ireland, with all manner prerogatives, dignities and other things whatsoever they be to the majesty of a king imperial belonging ...

  And so the Irish parliament in 1541 gave Henry VIII the title ‘King of Ireland’. No great protest followed. It was one thing, however, to assume a new title—it was another to make it a reality over large tracts of Ireland entirely beyond English control.

  For most of the sixteenth century the viceroy, the royal governor, was given the title ‘Lord Deputy’. Lord Deputy St Leger’s scheme to get Irish lords to make their peace and adopt English titles seemed to be working well. Turlough O’Toole, lord of the mountains overlooking Dublin, was the first to surrender his lands to the king and then have them regranted with a knighthood. He also agreed to stop exacting a ‘black rent’ from Dubliners, to use the English habit and manner, to teach his children to speak English, and to support the Lord Deputy with his fighting-men when required.

  One by one nearly all the lords submitted and received English titles. Murrough O’Brien became Earl of Thomond; Ulick MacWilliam Burke of Connacht became Earl of Clanricarde; Dermot MacCarthy, Lord of Muskerry, got a knighthood; and so on. The greatest coup was to get the most powerful Gaelic lord in Ulster—and probably in the whole of Ireland—to submit. He was ‘The O’Neill’, Conn Bacach O’Neill
, Lord of Tír Eóghain. Admittedly, St Leger had to fight a ruthless winter campaign against him, during which twenty-one days were spent destroying butter and corn in mid-Ulster. Then this man who had fought in common cause with Silken Thomas in his rebellion, put his X mark to a formal submission, confessing ‘that by my ignorance, and for lack of knowledge of my bounded duty of allegiance, I have most grievously offended your Majesty’.

  On Sunday 1 October 1542 Conn Bacach was in London to receive his new title of Earl of Tyrone. Before being presented to Henry VIII, he put on his robes in the queen’s closet at Greenwich, which was ‘richly hanged with cloth of arras, and well strewed with rushes’:

  And immediately after the King’s Majesty, being under the cloth of state, accompanied with all his noblemen, councillors and others, came in the earl, led between the Earl of Oxenford, and the Earl of Hertford, the Viscount Lisle bearing before him his sword, the hilt upwards, Garter before him, bearing his letters patent; and so proceeded to the King’s Majesty, who received of Garter the letters patent, and took them to Mr Wriotesley, secretary, to read them openly. And when the Viscount Lisle presented unto the king the sword, and the king girt the said sword baudrickwise [on his belt], the foresaid earl kneeling, and the other lords standing that led him. And so the patent read out, the King’s Highness took him his letters patent, and he gave him thanks in his language, and a priest made answer of his saying in English. And so the earls in order aforesaid took their leave of the King’s Highness, and departed unto the place appointed for their dinners, the Earl of Tyrone bearing his letters patent himself, the trumpets blowing before him unto the chamber which was the king’s lodging. And so they sat at dinner. At the second course Garter proclaimed the king’s style, and after the said new earl’s in manner following: Du très haut et puissant Seigneur Con O’Neill, Comte de Tyrone, en le Royaume d’Irelande.