18. Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr. 1540-1543.—In 1540 Henry married a fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Norfolk, who was her uncle, gained the upper hand at court, and was supported by Gardiner (see p. [382]), now Bishop of Winchester, who was strongly opposed to all further ecclesiastical innovations. Those who denied the king's supremacy were sent to the gallows, those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation to the stake. In 1541 the old Countess of Salisbury, the mother of Cardinal Pole, and the daughter of the brother of Edward IV., was executed in the belief that she had favoured an abortive conspiracy. Before the end of 1540 Henry discovered that his young wife had, before her marriage, been guilty of incontinency, and in 1542 she was beheaded. In 1543 Henry married a sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who actually survived him.
19. Ireland. 1534.—Henry's masterful rule had made him many enemies abroad as well as at home, and he was therefore constantly exposed to the risk of an attack from the Continent. In the face of such danger he could no longer allow Ireland to remain as disorganised as it had been in his father's reign and in the early years of his own, lest Ireland should become the stepping-stone to an invasion of England. In Ireland the Celtic chiefs maintained their independence, carrying on destructive wars with one another, both they and their followers being inspired with a high spirit of tribal patriotism, but without the slightest idea of national union. The Anglo-Norman lords ruling a Celtic population were quite as quarrelsome and even more oppressive than the Celtic chiefs, whilst the inhabitants of the English Pale (see p. 265), ruled over by what was only in name a civilised government, were subjected alike to the oppressive exactions of the authorities at Dublin and to the plundering of the so-called 'Irish enemies,' from whom these authorities were unable to protect them. The most powerful of the Anglo-Norman lords was still the Earl of Kildare (see p. 347), who, whenever he bore the title of Lord Deputy, unblushingly used the king's name in wreaking vengeance on his private enemies.
20. The Geraldine Rebellion. 1534-1535.—In 1534 Henry summoned Kildare to England and threw him into the Tower. On a rumour of Kildare's death his son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald—Silken Thomas, as he was called in Ireland—rose against the king. The Geraldines, as the Fitzgeralds were sometimes called, had often frightened kings by rebelling, but this time they failed in their object. In 1535 the Lord Deputy Skeffington brought heavy guns and battered down the walls of the great Geraldine castle at Maynooth. One by one all the males of Kildare's family, with the exception of two boys, were captured and put to death.
King Henry VIII.: from a picture belonging to the Earl of Warwick.
21. Lord Leonard Grey. 1536-1539.—Lord Leonard Grey became Lord Deputy in 1536. The Irish Parliament which met in that year was still only a Parliament of the English Pale, but its acts showed that Henry intended, if possible, to rule all Ireland. On the one hand the royal supremacy was declared. On the other hand an Act was passed which showed how little was, in those days, understood of the difficulties standing in the way of the assimilation of two peoples at different stages of civilisation. The native Irish were ordered to be exactly as the English. They were to use the English language, to adopt the English dress, and to cut their hair after the English fashion. It was to be in the Church as it was to be in the State. No one was to receive any ecclesiastical preferment who did not speak English. Such laws naturally could not be put in force, but they served as indications of the spirit of the Government. Even more obnoxious was the conduct of the Archbishop of Dublin, George Browne, a mere creature of Henry and Cromwell. The assertion of the royal supremacy, indeed, if it had stood alone, would have made little difference in the church-life of Ireland. Browne, however, persisted, in obedience to orders from England, in destroying relics and images which were regarded by the whole population with the deepest reverence. The doubting spirit of the Renascence found no echo in Ireland, because that country was far behind England in education and culture. It would have been of less consequence if these unwise proceedings had been confined to the English Pale. Lord Leonard Grey was, however, a stern warrior, and carried his arms successfully amongst the Irish tribes. When he left Ireland in 1539 a large part of the Celtic population had been compelled to submit to Henry, and that population was even less prepared than were the inhabitants of the Pale for violent alterations of religious ceremonial.