CHAPTER I
The “Reformation”—New Cause of Discord in Ireland
THE bitterness of race hatred had almost died out when the Reformation, as the opponents of the Church of Rome called the great schism of the sixteenth century, began to shake Europe like an earthquake. Luther, and other dissenters from Catholic faith, carried most of the north of Europe with them. The Latin countries, South Germany, all of Ireland, and most of England, clung to the old faith, and Henry VIII, who succeeded his father at an early age, and was quite learned in theology, wrote a pamphlet defending the Catholic dogmas against Luther and the others. This work procured for him from the Pope the title of the “Defender of the Faith,” which still, rather inappropriately, belongs to the sovereign of England. But Henry was a good Catholic only so long as religion did not interfere with his passions and ambitions. He had been married in early life to Catherine of Aragon, who had been the nominal wife of his elder brother, another Prince of Wales, who died uncrowned. After many years, Henry, who was a slave to his passions, tired of Catherine, and pretended to believe that it was sinful to live with his brother’s widow, even though the latter relationship was but nominal. In truth, he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, one of Queen Catherine’s maids-of-honor. The Pope was appealed to for a divorce and refused to grant it, after having carefully examined into the case. Then Henry severed England’s spiritual connection with Rome, and declared himself head of the English “Reformed” Church. In this he was sustained by Wolsey, Cromwell, and other high churchmen, all of whom were either ambitious or afraid of their heads, for Henry never hesitated, like his grand-uncle, Richard III, at the use of the axe, when any subject, clerical or lay, opposed his will. But the tyrant, while refusing allegiance to the Pope, still maintained the truth of Catholic dogma, and he murdered with studied impartiality those who gave their adhesion to the Holy See and those who denied its doctrines; no Englishman of note felt his head safe in those red days. As for the common people, nobody of “rank” ever gave them a thought. Henry now seized upon the Church property, and, therewith, bribed the great lords to take his side of the controversy. The boors followed the lords, and so most of England followed Henry’s schism and prepared to go farther.
Henry married Anne Boleyn when he had “divorced” Queen Catherine. After the Princess Elizabeth was born, he tired of his new wife, had her tried for faithlessness and high treason and beheaded. Scarcely was she dead when the inhuman brute married Lady Jane Seymour, of the great Somerset family. She gave birth to Prince Edward and died. Then he married Anne of Cleves, but, not liking her person, “divorced” her and sent her back to Germany. For “imposing” her on him, he disgraced, and finally beheaded, the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, who had been his great friend. The monster next espoused Lady Catherine Howard, of the House of Surrey, but he had her beheaded, on charges almost similar to those urged against Anne Boleyn, within the year. At last he married a widow of two experiences, Lady Catharine Parr, who, being a woman of tact and cleverness, managed to save her head, although frequently in danger, until the ferocious king, who must have been somewhat insane, finally fell a victim to his own unbridled vices. “The plain truth,” says Charles Dickens, in his “Child’s History,” “is that Henry VIII was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the history of England.”
This was the crowned “fiend in human shape” who sought to effect his “Reformation in Ireland,” where both the Old Irish and the Old English had united against his tyranny. The weight of his wrath fell first upon the Leinster Geraldines, whom he dreaded. He contrived to pick a quarrel with Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, who had been for many years his favorite viceroy in Ireland, and summoned him to London in hot haste, on flimsy, notoriously “trumped-up” charges of treason. He flung him into a dungeon in the Tower of London. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, son of the Earl, called “Silken Thomas,” because of the beauty of his person and the splendor of his apparel, was appointed deputy by his father, who thought his absence in England might be brief. Lord Thomas was young, brave, and rash, and, in short, the very man to fall an easy victim to the wiles of his House’s enemies. Tradition says that the false news of Earl Gerald’s execution, by order of King Henry, was spread in Dublin by one of the Butlers. The privy council, over which he usually presided, was already in session at St. Mary’s Abbey, when “Silken Thomas” heard the story. He, at once, with a large escort, proceeded to the abbey, renounced his allegiance to the English monarch, and, seizing the sword of state from the sword-bearer, threw it, with violent gesture, on the council table, “the English Thanes among.” Protests availed nothing. He rushed to arms, and for nearly two years held at bay Henry’s power. Had he but laid his plans with care and judgment, he would, no doubt, have ended the rule of England over Ireland, which, although not his primary, became his ultimate, object. In the end, his stronghold of Maynooth Castle was betrayed into the hands of the English general, Sir William Skeffington, by Lord Thomas’s foster-brother, Parez, for a sum in gold. General Skeffington paid the money on the surrender of the castle, and immediately hanged the traitor. For this act of chivalric justice, the name of that stern Englishman is still held in respect by all readers of Irish history. The loss of Maynooth depleted the strength of “Silken Thomas.” He struggled on for some time longer, but, at last, accepted the terms of Lord Deputy Gray, who offered him his life and guaranteed the safety of his five uncles—two, at least, of whom had had no hand in the outbreak. They were invited to a banquet by the Lord Deputy, and there, while drinking with their false hosts, were treacherously seized, placed in irons, and sent to England in a ship called the Cow. One of the uncles, hearing the name of the vessel, said: “We are lost! I have dreamed that six of us, Geraldines, would be carried to England in the belly of a cow and there lose our heads!” The augury was fulfilled. Henry VIII, with his usual disregard of terms, had them beheaded immediately after their arrival in London, at Tyburn. The old Earl of Kildare had not been executed after all, but died of a broken heart in the Tower on learning of the revolt and misfortunes of his son. Only one heir-male of the noble House of Kildare now survived, and for him, although only twelve years old, Henry sought, through his agents, with the relentless ferocity of a Herod. The boy was related to the great Celtic houses, for the Geraldines of that period preferred Irish wives, and his mother was a princess of the House of O’Neill of Ulster. By her, and by other noble Irish ladies, he was concealed and protected until he was enabled to escape to France. Thence he proceeded to Rome, where he was educated as befitted his rank and lineage. This young Gerald was restored to his titles and estates by Queen Mary I, but he accepted Protestantism when Elizabeth came to the throne, because, otherwise, he could not have saved land and title—a most unworthy motive, but one very common in that violent and sanguinary era. In his descendants the elder Geraldine branch still lives in Ireland—the present head of the family being Maurice Fitzgerald, “the boy-Duke” of Leinster.
“Bluff King Hal,” as the English called their royal Bluebeard, never did anything by halves, if he could help it. He did not think the title of “Lord of Ireland” sufficient for his dignity, and set about intriguing to be elected king. Accordingly, he caused to be summoned a parliament, or rather what we of to-day would call a convention, composed of Anglo-Irish barons and Celto-Irish chiefs, to meet in Dublin, A.D. 1541. This parliament or convention, at which the great Ulster princes, O’Neill and O’Donnell, did not attend, voted Henry the crown of Ireland—something the Irish chiefs, at least, had no power to do, as they held their titles by election of their clans and not by right of heredity. The outcome was, however, that Henry became King of Ireland—the first English monarch to achieve that distinction. In order to emphasize his power, he at once decreed that the old titles of the Irish princes should give way to English ones. Thus “The O’Brien” became “Earl of Thomond”; “The MacWilliam,” “Earl of Clanricarde”; “The MacMurrough” became “Baron of Ballynun,” and changed his family name to Kavanagh. Shameful to relate, O’Neill and O’Donnell, both old men, broken in health, “came in” and joined the titled serfs. The former became “Earl of Tyrone” and the latter “Earl of Tyrconnel.”
When the news reached the Irish clansmen, there was a general revolt and new chiefs of the same families, with the old Irish designations unchanged, were elected. The English interest supported “the King’s O’Donnell” and the others of his type, while the bulk of the Irish people stood for the newly chosen leaders. Thus was still another firebrand cast by English policy among the Irish people, and there was civil war, thenceforth, for generations in the clans themselves.
Nor was Henry satisfied with mere civil supremacy in Ireland. He also set himself up as head of the Irish Church. Many Anglo-Irish Catholic bishops basely acquiesced in his policy, but the Celtic bishops, almost to a man, spurned his propositions. The masses of the Irish nation, whether of Celtic, Norman, or Saxon origin, remained steadfastly Catholic, although, in the past, they had had little cause to be pleased with the political action of the Vatican, which had generally sided with the Catholic monarchs of England against Ireland’s aspirations after independence. Now, however, the favored country had become Rome’s most deadly enemy in Europe, while Ireland, inhabited by a highly spirited and stubborn people, who venerated the creed taught their fathers by St. Patrick, became the foremost European champion of the old faith.
We can not dwell at greater length on this lurid dawn of the Reformation in Ireland, because, fierce as was the persecution under Henry, it was trivial compared with what followed his reign, and made the distracted island a veritable den of outrage and slaughter.