One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

The Duke of Leinster is prepared to take his proper place in public life, and has recently been appointed master of the horse to the Earl of Aberdeen, lord lieutenant of Ireland. His acceptance of this post indicates that he is a liberal in politics and a home ruler; and, indeed, the tendency of his education has been in that direction. His tutors and trustees are all home rulers and liberals. He is in training for the viceregal throne of Ireland, which so many of his ancestors have occupied, and that is his ambition. If Ireland should be granted autonomy under the plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone twenty-five years ago and demanded as their ultimatum by the Irish national party, the Duke of Leinster will be the most available candidate for lord lieutenant, and for many reasons his selection would be agreeable to those most interested on both sides of St. George’s Channel. His advent in politics is an event of great importance, and therefore will be watched with anxiety.

The mansion at Maynooth is an immense building of more than two hundred rooms, sumptuously furnished. There are fourteen drawing-rooms, and the banqueting hall will seat three hundred people. The library contains one of the largest and most valuable collections of books in Ireland, and the pictures are of great value as well as artistic interest.

The Leinster coat of arms is a monkey stantant with plain collar and chained; motto, “Crom-a-boo” (“To Victory”). This is the only coat of arms, I am told, that has ever borne a monkey in the design, and it was adopted by John Fitzthomas Fitzgerald in 1316 for romantic reasons. While an infant he was in the castle of Woodstock, now owned by the Duke of Marlborough, which caught fire. In the confusion the child was forgotten, and when the family and servants remembered him and started a search they found the nursery in ruins. But on one of the towers was a gigantic ape, a pet of the family, carefully holding the young earl in its arms. The animal, with extraordinary intelligence, had crawled through the smoke, rescued the baby and carried it to the top of the tower. When he grew to manhood the earl discarded the family coat of arms and adopted a monkey for his crest, which has been retained to this day, and wherever you find a tomb of a Fitzgerald you will see the figure of a monkey at the feet of the effigy or under the inscription.

Fitzthomas Fitzgerald, the child thus miraculously saved, was the hero of many romances and adventures, and for his eminent services to the crown King Edward II. created him the first Earl of Kildare, May 14, 1316. He was the ancestor of the famous earls, dukes, and marquesses of Ormonde and the earls, dukes, and marquesses of Desmond, although those branches of the family afterward became the rivals and the foes of the Kildares. The Duke of Leinster, by reason of the marriages of his ancestors and collateral members of the family, is related to almost every noble in the kingdom.

The Fitzgeralds are descended from the Gherardini family of Florence, one of whom passed over into Normandy in the tenth century and thence to England, where he became a favorite of Edward the Confessor, and was appointed castellan of Windsor and warden of the forests of the king. In 1078 he is mentioned in Doomsday Book as the owner of enormous areas of land in England and Wales. In 1168 Maurice Fitzgerald, whose name was anglicized and who was the father of the Irish branch of the family, accompanied Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow, in the invasion of Ireland and was granted large estates. He died at Wexford in 1177 and was buried in the Abbey of the Grey Friars outside the walls of that town. One of his sons became Baron of Offlay, another became Baron of Nass, and Thomas, the third, was the ancestor of the earls of Desmond. The next earl was a man of great piety. In 1216 he introduced into Ireland the Order of the Franciscans and built them an abbey at Youghal. In 1229 he induced the Dominicans to send a band of missionaries and built them an abbey at Adair. And his son was equally devoted to the church.

The castle at Maynooth, which for several centuries was one of the largest and strongest in Ireland, was built by Gerald, the fifth earl, in 1427, whose second son was the founder of the house of Ormonde and was created earl of that name.

For sixteen generations the earls of Kildare were the most active men in Ireland, and the history of their adventures would fill a book as big as a dictionary. There was always “something doing” wherever they went; they were on all sides of all questions and were sometimes fighting each other as fiercely as the family foes. They led rebellions against their sovereign, have suffered imprisonment, and have been executed at Tyburn and the Tower. They have been the boldest and most powerful defenders of British authority in Ireland and several times have saved the island to the British throne. More lords lieutenants have come from the Kildares than from any other family, and among the long list of earls have been some splendid characters.

The eighth earl subdued all the native chieftains and made them submit to English authority. An early historian describes him as “A mightie man of stature, full of honoure and courage, who has bin Lord Deputie and Lord Justice of Ireland three and thirtie yeares. He was in government milde, to his enemies stearne, he was open and playne; hardley able to rule himself, but could well rule others; in anger he was sharp and short, being easily displeased and easily appeased.”

Thomas Gerald, the twelfth earl, having incurred the enmity of Cardinal Wolsey, was called to England and committed to the Tower for treason. When he left Ireland he intrusted his official authority and responsibilities to his son and heir, familiarly known as “Silken Thomas,” because of the gorgeous trappings of his retinue. The boy was then but twenty-one, bold, brave, patriotic, and generous, and became the victim of a plot devised by agents of Cardinal Wolsey, who spread a report that his father had been beheaded in the Tower. The impetuous young lord left the Castle of Maynooth, rode into Dublin, and, entering the chamber where the council sat, openly renounced his allegiance to the King of England, gave his reasons and laid mace and sword, the symbols of office, upon the table. Archbishop Cromer, the lord chancellor, besought him to reconsider, explaining that the rumor from London might be false, and the young earl was about to yield when the voice of the family bard, who had followed him to Dublin, was heard through the window singing the death song of the Kildares. “Silken Thomas” seized his sword, summoned the Geraldines, the family clan, which was the mightiest and most numerous in Ireland, assaulted the castle, and soon involved the entire country in a desperate revolution. When the old earl heard the news in his cell in the Tower he sent a message to Henry VIII. asking pardon for the rashness of his son and then died of a broken heart.

All Ireland was in flames; three-fourths of Kildare County and the greater part of Meath was burned; thousands of innocent people died of starvation and thousands in battle before the rebellion was suppressed. Finally Kildare, who was then but twenty-four, surrendered upon a promise that he should receive full pardon when he arrived in London and renewed his allegiance personally to the king. This pledge was shamefully violated. Henry VIII. refused to receive him, and sent him to the Tower, where for eighteen months he lay neglected and in great misery. He wrote an old servant asking money for clothes, saying: “I have gone shirtless and barefoot and bare-legged divers times, and so I should have done still but that poor prisoners of their gentleness hath sometimes given me old hosen and shirts and shoes.”