Offaly is proclaimed a traitor.
Driven from Dublin, Offaly threatened Drogheda with some 400 horse, but Skeffington, with unwonted energy, marched the whole distance in one day, and the rebels did not venture to attack him. The Geraldine chief was proclaimed traitor at the market-cross, and the gentlemen of Louth and Meath, finding that there was again something in the shape of a government, came in fast to the Lord-Deputy. Meanwhile Ossory and St. Loo were at work in the south, and agreed to meet Skeffington at Kildare’s castle of Kilkea. The Earl and the English knight kept their appointment, but the Deputy was again ill, and without artillery nothing could be done. Ossory had enough to do to keep the O’Mores and Kavanaghs in check, but he gained one important ally in the person of Sir Thomas Eustace, of Baltinglass, who brought forty of his kinsmen and left hostages in the Earl’s hands. Eustace kept his word, and received a peerage for his services, an honour forfeited in Elizabeth’s time for a rebellion, which, if one of the most foolish, was also one of the least selfish of the many recorded in Irish annals.[138]
The rebellion continues.
During the greater part of the winter Offaly ranged up and down the Pale, not sparing the Kildare estates, which he was not likely ever to enjoy in peace. On one occasion he came into collision with Brereton near Trim, and lost 150 men; but when a garrison of forty men were left in the town he had no difficulty in recapturing it, and a garrison of twenty men failed to hold Kildare against him. His following was reduced to 100 horse and 300 kerne, who had scarcely a dozen muskets among them; but with this band he wandered where he pleased, even to the walls of Dublin. Skeffington again fell sick, and the army was detained doing nothing in Dublin; he could not, according to Sir John Alen, do anything himself, and he would not let anyone else have the credit. A truce for three weeks was concluded with the rebel, and after the New Year some of the troops were allowed to leave the capital. Sir Rice Maunsell with 500 men occupied Trim—Brereton and Salisbury lay at Newcastle; and preparations were made for assuming the offensive as soon as the Lord-Deputy should be able to mount a horse. But there was great want of money, and the ill-paid soldiers took little interest in any service which did not bring them profit. They took it on themselves to find men guilty of treason and to seize their goods, ‘whereas,’ as Alen grimly suggested, ‘the King might have them by another mean.’ Munitions of war were as scarce as money, and the bows which were sent from Ludlow Castle snapped when the archers tried to bend them.[139]
The Archbishop’s murderers are excommunicated.
Death of Kildare.
In the meantime the ecclesiastics who administered the vacant see of Dublin pronounced sentence of excommunication in its most tremendous form against the murderers of the Archbishop. Offaly himself, his uncles John and Oliver, Captain Rookes, James Delahide, and Teeling and Wafer, who seem to have been the actual murderers, were mentioned by name. Leprosy and madness, hunger and thirst were invoked upon them in this life, and eternal damnation in the life to come. No house was to shelter them, no church to give them sanctuary, no kind Christian to bestow on them a morsel of bread when starving, nor a cup of cold water when dying of thirst, on pain of being considered accessories to their crime and accursed like them. They were to be partakers with Pharaoh and Nero, Herod and Judas, Dathan and Abiram; and stones were cast towards their dwellings, as by Moses when he called down Divine wrath upon the last named. It is said that a copy of this curse was cruelly shown to the old Earl in the Tower, and that the shock snapped the enfeebled thread which still bound him to life. The fate of the seven excommunicated persons was nearly as bad as the most vindictive priest could wish. The three Geraldines were hanged at Tyburn, Rookes was hanged at Dublin, Teeling and Wafer died at Maynooth of a horrible disease, James Delahide escaped to Spain and gave the Government some further trouble, but he died an exile in Scotland.[140]
The new Earl seeks help from Emperor and Pope,
The new Earl—for Earl he was in spite of Stanihurst’s statement to the contrary—took advantage of the breathing space allowed him by the Deputy’s inaction to cast about for allies. He sent Dominick Power to the Emperor, armed with gifts, and with documents going to prove that Ireland was a fief of the Holy See and that it was forfeited on account of Henry’s heresy. Kildare was ready to hold the country of Pope or Emperor and to pay tribute, in consideration of being protected against the English schismatics. Twelve hawks and fourteen hobbies, or Irish palfreys, were thought suitable presents for the second Charlemagne.[141]
and from the Irish.