offers to take him as their lord and to do homage to him. It was even said that James meditated an invasion of Ireland in person. O’Neill probably waited for the result of these negotiations before sending a confidential servant with a letter to Henry. He begged the King not to send his enemies into his country, where Grey had, as he affirmed, sowed dissensions from selfish motives. He was willing to do anything he was asked unless the new Lord Deputy should prove very extortionate, and he advised the King not to waste his money in Ulster. Henry answered graciously, and acknowledged some trifling presents which accompanied the chief’s letter. Future royal favours, his Majesty was careful to point out, must depend on performance and not on promises. Pardon in the meantime would be granted for the heinous offences committed.232
Murder of James FitzMaurice, Earl of Desmond, 1540.
With the sea at hand, and Ormonde ever ready to help him, it was supposed that James FitzMaurice would be able to maintain himself as Earl of Desmond. At first he confined himself to Kerrycurrihy and Imokilly, but after three months he was tempted to go inland towards the Limerick district, in which James Fitzjohn’s strength lay. Near Fermoy he was set upon and murdered by his rival’s brother, who had earned the title of ‘Maurice of the Burnings.’ James Fitzjohn, who now believed himself to be undisputed Earl, at once repaired to Youghal, where he was well received and joined by all the chiefs who had lately made such professions to Grey and Ormonde. The garrison had, through over-confidence, withdrawn to Waterford. Gerald of Kildare had just escaped to France, and the web of policy which the English Government had cast over both branches of the Geraldines was torn to pieces for the time.233
James Fitzjohn is allowed to succeed him.
There was no evidence of James Fitzjohn’s complicity in his cousin’s murder, and Ormonde received the King’s authority to pardon him, if he could be brought to promise good behaviour. He preferred to ally himself with O’Brien, and pleaded that Irish confederacies were too strong for him to withstand. To gain his confidence Ormonde risked his own person in the Desmond country for two nights, and passed right through it to parley with O’Brien, who refused to listen to anything. But Desmond would not show himself, and Ormonde then went for a few weeks to England. On his return he found that little harm had been done, and this he attributed solely to O’Brien having been out of his mind. But Desmond claimed the credit of holding his hand. ‘In like,’ he wrote to Ormonde, ‘I desire you, according to my full trust, for to bring me in the King’s favour the best ye can; and in case that his Grace will so accept me, I trust we shall both be able to do his Grace acceptable service according to our duty.’ On his return from England Ormonde at once resumed negotiations, and St. Leger had been scarcely a month in Ireland before he received friendly letters both from Desmond and O’Brien.234
Fall of Cromwell. St. Leger is made Deputy, 1541.
In the meantime Cromwell’s head had fallen on the scaffold to which he had sent so many better men. Grey was in the Tower, and Henry found time to appoint a new Lord Deputy. He chose Sir Anthony St. Leger, who already knew much of Ireland, and whose temper would at least save him from his predecessor’s chief faults. Sir Patrick Barnewall of Fieldston, an eminent lawyer, had lately enumerated the qualities desirable in a chief governor, and in so doing had drawn a heavy indictment against the last holder of that high office. The King, he said, should provide a Deputy ‘faithful, sure, and constant in his promise, and in especial to any concluding of peace; and that he shall be such a person that shall have more regard to his own honour and promise than to any covetous desire of preys or booties of cattle; and that he shall make no wilful war, and when war is made upon a good ground, that the same be followed till a perfect conclusion thereof be taken, and not left at large, nor yet to take a faint peace; and that the said Deputy shall not be in weighty causes counselled nor guided by such persons as be openly known to be ill-doers, or apt adherents of the ill-doers in their ill-doings against the King’s Majesty and his Grace’s subjects in time past, for the same hath and may hinder.’ In selecting St. Leger, Henry was probably actuated in part by such motives, and in part by hopes of an increased income. With him were associated as Revenue Commissioners Thomas Walsh, Baron, and John Mynne, Auditor of the English Exchequer, and William Cavendish, Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations; but the viceregal authority was not in any way impaired.235
St. Leger’s policy. The Kavanaghs.
St. Leger seems clearly to have grasped the idea so often put forth and so often neglected, that the pacification of Ireland must begin with the neighbourhood of the Pale, and that distant expeditions were neither lightly to be undertaken nor abandoned without attaining their object. He resolved at once to punish those who had attacked the Pale at Grey’s departure, and he turned first to the Kavanaghs. Ormonde had lately ravaged Idrone for a week and taken hostages, reporting that all the mischief was done by Donnell MacCahir, ‘who, having nothing to lose, adhereth to Tirlogh O’Toole.’ St. Leger now ravaged the territory far and wide, and at the end of ten days the chief came in and submitted. He renounced the name of MacMurrough, and agreed to hold his lands of the Crown by knight-service. After the manner of Deputies in their early days of office, St. Leger believed that he had really made a final settlement. The Kavanaghs were ready enough to make promises, and even to boast their descent from the man who first brought the English to Ireland; but St. Leger was destined to have plenty of trouble with them.236
The O’Mores and O’Connors, and their neighbours.
Offaly had been so often devastated that the new Lord Deputy could have little to do in that way; but the adjoining district of Leix had been more fortunate, and its turn now came. The O’Doynes, O’Dempseys, and others were separated by St. Leger’s policy from O’Connor, whom it was proposed to bridle by establishing fortified posts at Kinnegad in Westmeath, at Kishevan in Kildare, at Castle Jordan in Meath, and at Ballinure in what is now the King’s County. A letter arrived from the King with orders to expel O’Connor from his country and to give it to his brother Cahir, if he would behave in a civilised manner, as he had often promised to do. The incorrigible rebel should be made an example to all Ireland by his perpetual exile and just punishment. But this could not be honourably done, for Brereton had made a peace during the difficult days that followed Grey’s recall, and O’Connor, whose submission was of the humblest, had done no harm since then. St. Leger indeed showed some inconsistency in the matter, for he thought in September that O’Connor could never be trusted, and in November he advised his restoration to favour. Not only was it proposed to give him a grant of his land, but also to raise him to the peerage as Baron of Offaly, an ancient honour in the eclipsed family of Kildare.237
The O’Tooles.
No tribe had hurt the Pale more than the O’Tooles, who could boast of giving a famous saint to Irish hagiology. Originally possessed of the southern half of Kildare, they had been driven into the Wicklow Mountains by Walter de Riddlesford in the early days of the Anglo-Norman occupation. They were afterwards known as lords of Imaile, a small district between Baltinglass and Glendalough, and at one time held nearly all the northern half of Wicklow. The Earls of Kildare expelled them from Powerscourt, and latterly they had led a very precarious life. True children of the mist, they either bivouacked in the open or crept into wretched huts to which Englishmen hesitated to give the name of houses. They cultivated no land, but levied 300l. a year from their civilised neighbours, partly in black-rent and partly in sheer plunder. The actual chief was Tirlogh O’Toole, who professed himself anxious to mend his ways, and offered to go to England and beg his lands of Henry himself. There was something chivalrous in Tirlogh; for when Grey was hard pressed by the northern confederacy he sent him word that ‘since all those great lords were against him he would surely be with him, but whensoever
