1534 IMPRISONMENT OF KILDARE. 365 the Barrow and west of the law," followed the ancient tribal CHAP. XIII. customs of their race, spoke a language which was unintelligible to the English, and bore names of which an Englishman complained that they belonged rather to "devouring giants" than to "Christian subjects". A sketch of the country written down at the beginning of Henry's reign described it as divided into more than sixty counties or regions "inhabited with the king's Irish enemies," and governed by more than sixty chief captains, "whereof some calleth themselves kings, some king's peers in their language, some princes, some dukes, some archdukes, that liveth only by the sword and obeyeth to no other temporal power, but only to himself that is strong". At intervals attempts were made to punish the transgressions of some of the clans thus vaguely indicated. A deputy would squeeze a fortnight's victuals out of the miserable inhabitants of the Pale, proclaim a hosting, and, accompanied by a miscellaneous rabble of kernes and galloglasses, ride across the border. He would fire some cabins, lay waste some crops, hunt some cowering tribesmen into the woods, and then the campaign would degenerate into a cattle-raid. A couple of hundred kine would reward the organiser of victory, and while the king's enemies remained unimpressed, the costs of the expedition would fall upon the poor tenantry of the Pale. It is significant of the futility of these operations that the number of shires had remained unchanged since the days of King John.2 John Alen, the master of the rolls, came to England in 1533 with a report upon the disorders of Ireland. He attributed much to Kildare, to the frequent change of deputies, to the ruinous experiment of entrusting the government of the Pale to native Irishmen; and while making some recommendations, which could not possibly be carried into effect, such as that the Scots should be expelled from Ulster and that the heir of every Irish chieftain should be sent to learn English in a borough town, he urged a course which was both practical and prudent, the appointment of a permanent English deputy. The English government was persuaded that Kildare had abused his trust, summoned him to London, and cast him into the Tower. Before leaving Ireland the great chieftain had entrusted the 1 State Papers, ii., 1-31; Letters and Papers, ii., 1366. C. Litton Falkiner, Illustrations of Irish History, pp. 103-142. XIII. CHAP. sword of office to his eldest son Thomas, a tall, handsome, impetuous young Irishman, with a rich rolling brogue, a large easy temperament, and a greater supply of wit than of judgment. A rumour was spread abroad by the enemies of the Geraldines that Kildare was executed, and that his whole family was marked out for destruction. The headstrong boy fell into the trap, solemnly renounced the ensigns of power in the monastery of St. Mary in Dublin on June 11, 1534, and declared himself to be the enemy of the king. The slender tie which bound the two kingdoms together seemed as if it might be violently severed. Dublin was besieged by the insurgents; Alen the primate, member of a hostile clan, was foully murdered on the beach near Clontarf as he attempted to escape to England. Lord Thomas-"Silken Thomas," the bard named him from the silken fringe on his helm-sent emissaries to ask aid of Paul III. and Charles V., boasted himself to be the pope's man, and promised James Butler half Ireland if he would throw the weight of the Ormond interest into the scale against England. At the same time by the death of his father in the Tower, he succeeded to the earldom of Kildare. There was no concerted national movement behind the revolt. Butler declined the bribe; the burgesses of Dublin made a stout defence; and in October, Skeffington and Sir William Brereton arrived in Ireland with a force sufficient at least to secure the capital from fresh outrage. In the following spring operations commenced in earnest. The castle of Maynooth, strongest of the Geraldine fortresses, was not proof against treachery, and with its fall the pith was taken out of the rebellion. The forces of Silken Thomas, who was hurrying to the relief of the beleaguered stronghold, melted away upon intelligence of the disaster, and soon afterwards the young leader surrendered to Lord Leonard Grey, who had arrived in Ireland July 28, as marshal to the English army. It seems certain that Grey, whose sister was the second wife of the old Earl of Kildare and consequently the stepmother of the rebel, promised that the captive's life should be spared; and the council of Ireland wrote to Henry to urge that the undertaking should be respected. But although it would not have revolted the royal conscience to execute a man who had surrendered upon terms, an immediate execution would, as Norfolk pointed out to Crom 1537 DESTRUCTION OF THE LEINSTER GERALDINES. 367 XIII. well, have been an act of impolicy. It would ruin the credit CHAP. of Grey and Butler; would prevent future surrenders; would compel Henry to proceed to a general conquest, and put a new grievance in the mouths of those who were already disaffected to the king's government. Henry accepted this view of the situation. He pacified Grey with gifts of land and money; marked out the five uncles of the young earl for destruction, and decided to postpone the execution to a more convenient hour. The zeal, energy, and craft of Lord Leonard Grey, who succeeded Skeffington as deputy on January 1, 1536, enabled him to accomplish this purpose. The fiery embers of the rebellion were stamped out. Three of the Fitzgerald uncles were invited to dine with the deputy at Kilmainham, and then perfidiously manacled; the other two were seized before they had learnt of the calamity which had overtaken their brethren. The last act of the drama was played on February 3, 1537, when Silken Thomas and his five uncles were led out to suffer the traitor's death at Tyburn. They, too, may perhaps be numbered among the martyrs of the catholic cause. CHAPTER XIV. THE FALL OF THE MONASTERIES. CHAP. WHILE Europe was digesting the strange and horrible news of XIV. the execution of Fisher and More, the king was rapidly pushing forward the reformation of the Church. The submission of the bishops had already been secured, and at a council summoned in January, 1535, they were compelled to recognise that the supreme head of the Church could make and unmake them at his pleasure, and to sign a formal deed abjuring the papal authority. There appears to have been no hesitation, and Lee, the Archbishop of York, who was suspected of lukewarmness in the king's cause, put in repeated and energetic disclaimers. Gardiner, who had shown some independence in the matter of the answer of the ordinaries, was likewise thought to be favourable to papal authority. But he was one of those statesmen who hold the view that an act of parliament discharges the conscience and is binding upon the subjects of the kingdom. In a conversation with John Mores in Lent, 1535, he said that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome began by the policy of man, and that since then clerks had applied Scripture to prove that the primacy had its beginning of God which he thought could not be truly maintained. His conscience was not perhaps completely at rest; but the sedatives which he was now applying to it were sufficient for the immediate purposes of the government. Upon the bishops lay the duty of licensing preachers to denounce the authority of the Bishop of Rome, of deleting the name of the pope from missals and prayer books, and of setting forth the king's title every Sunday and other feast-day throughout the year. In spite of the proved pliancy of the episcopate it was de 1 Letters and Papers, viii., 592. 1535 THE VICAR-GENERAL. XIV. 369 cided to entrust the execution of the main design to the hands CHAP. of laymen. The country had had much experience of episcopal visitations, and if we may judge from the writings of St. Germain there was a feeling among the laity that they were apt to be more pompous than effectual. In any case the bishops were debarred from visiting the exempt monasteries, the control of which had now been statutorily transferred from the pope to the king. Accordingly on January 21, 1535, a commission was issued to Thomas Cromwell, already chief secretary and master of the rolls, to hold, as vicar-general and vicegerent of the king in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realm, a general visitation of all the churches, monasteries, and collegiate bodies in the kingdom. The terms of the commission were extraordinary, and co-extensive with the ecclesiastical powers now claimed by the crown. The vicar-general was in fact an ecclesiastical dictator, whose office was designed not only to carry out a radical plan in a swift and comprehensive manner, but also to illustrate the principle that the authority of the bishops was derived from the crown, and that their functions might be suspended by a royal commission. With some astonishment and no little indignation the bishops learnt that their visitations were inhibited in order that the vicar-general might remodel the Church. The new constitutions, as Cromwell told Chapuys in June, would be "very different from the papistical ones"; and would doubtless afford "a true and singular mirror to all Christendom," so that "the emperor would not forbear to make the same reformation in his own country". The plan to which Cromwell was alluding comprised among other features a vigor ous assault on the monastic system. The notion that Church property was a thing too sacrosanct to be touched had never been uncontested even in the ages most conspicuous for faith. Under Edward II. twenty-three preceptories of the Templars had been dissolved, and their lands. only partly restored to religious uses. In 1410 the commons had petitioned for the confiscation of all the property of the Church. A little later the property of the alien priories, which had been more than once sequestrated during the French wars, was seized by Henry V. and partly devoted to schools and other monasteries. William of Wykeham and Chichele, Waynflete and Fisher, Alcock of Ely and Smith of Lincoln had all diverted |