This year was memorable for the return of Gerald of Kildare, whose titles and estates were restored to him. The attainder, however, was not renewed till 1569. Old Brian O’Connor was released from the Tower, and allowed to revisit Offaly, an indulgence which he owed to the exertions of his daughter Margaret, who was Kildare’s aunt, and who relied upon the number of her connections at Court, as well as her own knowledge of the English language. Barnaby Fitzpatrick, Lord of Upper Ossory, King Edward’s bosom friend, returned about the same time, and so did a far more important personage, the young Earl of Ormonde. ‘There was great rejoicing,’ say the ‘Four Masters,’ ‘throughout the greater part of Leath-Mhogha because of their arrival; for it was thought that not one of the descendants of the Earls of Kildare, or of the O’Connors Faly, would ever come to Ireland.’
Constant war among the Irish.
While the obedient shires were busy with the restoration of the ancient religion, the native Irish made war among themselves, with but little interference from the Government. Donough O’Brien, the second Earl of Thomond, and a firm friend of the Crown, was killed in April 1553 by his brother Donnell, leaving the earldom to Connor, his eldest son, by Lady Helen Butler, who survived him. Donnell, however, assumed the title of O’Brien, and the clansmen were divided between the representatives of the old and new order. Donnell petitioned that, having been nominated according to the ancient custom, he might be acknowledged as chief. St. Leger was unable to grant this, but offered to write to the Queen in his favour. In the meantime other controversies were submitted to the arbitration of O’Carroll, O’Mulrian, and MacBrien Arra, on the part of Donnell; and of the barons of Mountgarret, Cahir, and Dunboyne, all Butlers, on the part of the Earl. The umpires in case of disagreement were the Lord Deputy, the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of Desmond. It is very hard to make out the exact sequence of events, but either just before or just after this negotiation, Donnell attacked one of his nephew’s castles, and was driven off by the arrival of the Earl of Ormonde. He then turned his attention to the plunder of Clanricarde. The Baron of Delvin continued to ravage MacCoghlan’s country, and one of the Nugents, who was foster-brother of Kildare, being killed, the newly restored Earl, who lost no time in showing that he meant to keep up the family traditions, exacted 340 cows as an eric. The O’Carrolls in the south, the MacSweenys in the north, killed each other in the old fashion. Shane O’Neill persuaded the Earl of Kildare and the Baron of Delvin to take his part in a quarrel with one sept of his name, and old Tyrone was defeated by another sept, supported by the MacDonnells, who were also intriguing with Calvagh O’Donnell.[399]
The Pope and the ‘Rex Hiberniæ,’ 1555.
We have seen that the Queen had no intention of yielding any part of the dignity which had belonged to her predecessors. Notwithstanding the Papal pretension to suzerainty, she had as a matter of course assumed the royal title created by her father in Ireland. The Holy See found it necessary to respect accomplished facts, and had not Julius III. abandoned all claims to the monastic lands, Pole would never have been allowed into England. Paul IV.’s pretensions were boundless, but he could not afford to quarrel about a mere trifle both with England and Spain. He considered it a great glory for his pontificate that its opening should be signalised by the arrival of an English ambassador. Whether he wished it or not, Philip and Mary were, and would remain, King and Queen of Ireland. He therefore ignored all that Henry had done, and, as if of his own mere notion, erected Ireland into a kingdom. The world might perhaps suppose that Mary took it from his hand, and not in right of blood. ‘The Popes,’ says the sarcastic Venetian, ‘have often given that which they could not take from the possessors, and, to avoid contentions, some have received their own goods as gifts, and some have dissembled the knowledge of the gift, or of the pretence of the giver.’ But in Ireland, where distance cast a halo of enchantment over Papal politics, and where Franciscans and Jesuits swayed the popular mind, the bull which announced the gracious gift was taken by many for what it pretended to be, and not for what it really was.[400]
The Queen maintains her prerogative.
Mary gave evidence of her desire to restore the splendour of religion by re-establishing St. Patrick’s as a cathedral. Leverous was the first Dean of the new foundation, and was allowed to hold the preferment along with the see of Kildare. The man selected to undo Browne’s work was Hugh Curwin, Dean of Hereford, a native of Westmoreland, and one of the Queen’s chaplains. He had become known as a preacher in favour of Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn, in opposition to the Franciscan Peto. The deanery of Hereford had been his reward. Peto, on the other hand, had become the Queen’s confessor, and was the chosen instrument of Paul IV., when that Pope in a fit of anger appointed a legate to supersede Pole. Mary so valued the royal authority that she resented the irregular honour intended for her confessor, though he had been the champion of her own legitimacy, stopped the red hat at the gates of Calais, and never allowed Peto any benefit from the Pope’s irritability. On the whole, Anne’s advocate fared better than Catherine’s. Curwin, whose first article of belief enjoined submission to principalities and powers, no doubt knew how to turn the Queen’s love of power, as he had done her father’s, to his own advantage. He was treated with exceptional favour, and gained practical control of the temporalities even before his consecration, which was performed in London by Bonner, Thirlby, and Griffin. Immediately afterwards he received the Great Seal of Ireland. Curwin had the pall from Rome, and in the Papal record of his appointment Philip and Mary are said to have supplicated for it, Browne being ignored, and Curwin made successor to Alen. But the King and Queen only acknowledged that Curwin was preferred on their recommendation, and he had to renounce on oath all things prejudicial to the Crown, whether contained in the Papal bull or not. Curwin held a provincial synod soon after his arrival in Ireland, at which the principal business was the restoration of the ancient rites.[401]
No progress made in Ulster. St. Leger has no money, 1555.
Ulster was in a state of more than usual confusion. Manus O’Donnell, who had been constantly at war with his father, was opposed by his son Calvagh, who had the help of the Scots. They addressed him as illustrious lord, and he went over to Scotland to claim the proffered aid. Returning with a large force, and with a piece of ordnance which the annalists inexplicably call a crooked gun, he entered Lough Swilly, took his father prisoner, and battered Greencastle and another fortress on Lough Foyle. Calvagh thenceforth assumed practical control of his clan. The Scots slew Hugh MacNeill Oge, and St. Leger divided his territory between Phelim O’Neill and the sons of Phelim Bacagh. The hardy interlopers had even designs on Carrickfergus, which St. Leger says were frustrated ‘by the help of God and Mr. Parker;’ but in a campaign of six weeks the Lord Deputy could gain no real advantage. As in the case of most Irish governors, his detractors, among whom Sir William Fitzwilliam was conspicuous, were busy at Court. They accused him, among other things, of falsifying estimates in favour of Andrew Wyse, the late Vice-Treasurer, whose accounts had been found unsatisfactory. ‘I am now in case,’ he said, ‘as the poet’s fame. I have meat to the surlip and drink to the netherlip, and can reach neither of them.’ His position made it impossible for him to economise, and no money came to pay his hungry retinue. A friendly chronicler has remarked that St. Leger, like all other Irish governors, was hated chiefly for his good deeds; like a good apple tree, which, the more fruit it bears, the more stones are thrown at it.[402]
Lord Fitzwalter (Sussex) Lord Deputy, 1556.