Henry the Eighth and Ireland

The rule of the Earl of Kildare marked the turning point in favor of English ascendancy in Ireland. There were to be many and terrible struggles before the English power established full sway over the heroic and patriotic clans throughout the island; but, from the time of Kildare, the chiefs of the ancient families gradually lost more and more their hold upon the country. Thenceforth, victory was to attend the effort of the English to subdue Ireland. When Henry the Seventh died (1509), leaving the throne to his despotic son, Henry the Eighth, the new king was even more firmly resolved than his father had been to fasten the yoke of English government upon the Irish. But, at first, Henry the Eighth was disposed to try mild measures. He declared that, while the power of the crown should be strictly maintained in Ireland, he would also endeavor to win the native chiefs, by bestowing royal favors upon them, and securing them in their domains, and thus gain their allegiance.

But soon a grave obstacle in the way of the fulfillment of Henry's plans arose, in the conduct of the more than ever formidable family of Kildare. The great earl had left a son, Gerald, who was appointed lord-deputy in his place. This new Earl of Kildare was hot-headed and insubordinate. The king could not rely upon his loyalty; and, before he had long been in authority in Ireland, Kildare was charged by his rivals, the family of Ormond, with high treason. Three times was Kildare summoned to England to answer this charge, and three times was he deposed from the lord-deputyship. At last he was thrown into the Tower of London. His son Thomas, a youth of twenty, who, from the elegance of his attire, was called "Silken Thomas," was acting in Ireland, in his place, as vice-deputy. For purposes of his own, Henry caused a rumor to be spread in Ireland that Kildare had been beheaded. This aroused Thomas to a frenzy of grief and rage. Entering the council chamber in St. Mary's abbey, Dublin, at the head of a hundred and forty retainers, he threw his sword of office violently upon the council table, and declared that he renounced his allegiance to the English king.

'SILKEN THOMAS' RENOUNCING HIS ALLEGIANCE TO THE KING.

A struggle forthwith broke out between the impetuous young scion of Kildare and Henry's adherents in Ireland. Henry, prompted by his great minister, Cardinal Wolsey, grimly made up his mind to crush once and for all the power of the restless and untrustworthy Geraldines of Kildare. Thomas of Kildare, on the other hand, declared war to the bitter end against the English. He besieged Dublin, but in vain. He seized the long-time enemy of his house, the archbishop of Cashel, and caused him to be murdered. He appealed to the O'Connors, the O'Mores, and other chiefs, to come to his aid. But the fiery young Geraldine soon met with a fatal check. The castle of Maynooth, supposed to be proof against every assault, was garrisoned by Irish soldiers. It was now vigorously besieged by a well-disciplined English force under Skeffington.

Gunpowder had recently come into use, and the English were armed with guns and artillery. The Irish had still only their ancient weapons,—swords and spears. The result was that the English cannon soon made a breach in the fortress of Maynooth, and that once impregnable stronghold was taken. Young Thomas saw that all was lost, and surrendered his person to the mercies of the English monarch. Henry promised to pardon him; but, as soon as he reached London, Thomas was thrown into the Tower of London, where his father, the Earl of Kildare, had recently died of a broken heart. The extinction of the Geraldines of Kildare was now sternly resolved upon, and this end was to be attained by treachery. The new lord-deputy of Ireland was Lord Leonard Gray, who had married a sister of the late Earl of Kildare. Five of the earl's brothers were living in Ireland. Three of them were loyal to the English crown. Yet it was determined to get rid of them all.

Gray invited his five brothers-in-law to a great banquet, seized them as they sat at table, and caused them to be sent as prisoners to London. The next year all five of the Geraldine brothers and Thomas, their nephew, were hanged, on the charge of high treason, on Tyburn Hill. A younger son of the late earl, however, escaped the fate of his brother and uncles, and in after years was restored to the earldom of Kildare. The effect in Ireland of the execution of the Geraldines was to. greatly increase and extend the power of the crown. Gray was a vigorous ruler, and lost no time in following up his advantage. He successively subdued O'Connor, the Geraldines of Munster, and finally O'Neil. He captured Athlone, the great stronghold of Connaught, and reduced the Burkes to inaction, if not to submission (1535).

Meanwhile, the great movement of religious reformation had begun in England. Henry the Eighth, bent on divorcing his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and marrying Anne Boleyn, had had a rupture with the pope of Rome, who forbade the divorce; and had declared himself to be the only head of the church and clergy in England. He had followed up this bold course by suppressing a large number of monasteries, and taking possession of their houses and lands for the crown. He adopted the same policy towards the Irish monasteries, which he had no fair excuse for doing. The Irish priests and monks had not, like many of those in England, become corrupt, immoral, and neglectful of their pious duties. They still zealously sustained religion and fostered learning. Schools were held within the monastery walls. The monks lodged travelers, were active in charities, and often acted as mediators between rival and quarrelsome chiefs. Their influence among the people was the best and most hopeful feature of Irish life.

But these facts had no influence upon the despotic Henry. Gray, the lord-deputy of Ireland, summoned an Irish Parliament, and demanded that it, too, should declare the English king the supreme head of the church. His demand was strenuously resisted by the bishops and abbots, and by many of the lords; and they succeeded in preventing the declaration from being made (1537). Gray now took an arbitrary course. He caused Parliament to exclude the proctors from the upper House. Henry was then declared the sole head of the Irish Church. More than four hundred monasteries and abbeys were suppressed, and their properties were confiscated to the English crown. If the abbot of one of the suppressed monasteries resisted, he was thrown into prison. The edict was carried out by force. Those abbots and monks who peacefully submitted to it and went quietly away, were granted small sums of money, and, in some cases, annual stipends.

Thus Gray, during the two years of his severe and energetic rule, had not only subdued the Irish Parliament, but the church also, to the power of the crown. Ireland had not been so tranquil, as now, for many generations. Never had she so felt the iron hand of the oppressing race. The English Pale had been enlarged; and its English occupants had been strengthened so that they no longer paid tributes, for their safety's sake, to the outlying Irish clans. Many of the native chiefs had given up the lands that they might be given back to them by the king, in return for their sworn loyalty to the crown; and such chiefs were protected by the lord-deputy and accepted the English instead of the old Brehon law. They could thereby sell their land, compel the tenants to pay rent for it, and bequeath it to their children. The land was no longer, as formerly, the common property of the tribe.

Having thus imposed his authority on the English settlers and on a number of the Irish chiefs, and asserted his ability to maintain his dominion in the land, Henry the Eighth entered upon a course of conciliation. Many of the greater native princes and chiefs still held aloof. St. Leger, who succeeded Gray as lord-deputy, undertook the task of winning them over. In no long time, the king had secured the allegiance of the O'Mores, the O'Connors, the O'Melaghlins, the O'Carrolls, the O'Tooles, and other chiefs of eastern Ireland. he had also conciliated the Earl of Desmond, the head of the Munster branch of the Geraldines, and McWilliam, Earl of Clanricarde,—two great English lords who had been hostile. St. Leger called Parliament together, in which, for the first time in the history of Ireland, English lords and Irish chiefs sat side by side. This Parliament confirmed Henry as the sole head of the Church, and recognized him as "king of Ireland." Before that time, the English kings had always been known as "lords of Ireland."

These acts were followed by a series of brilliant festivities in Dublin. The hilltops glowed with bonfires; the cannon roared from the castle; an amnesty of all prisoners was proclaimed. Henry hastened to bind more closely the allegiance of the chiefs who had come in, by grants of land; and some of the chiefs went to London to witness and be impressed by the splendors of Henry's royal court. Dazzled by these things, some of the princes, who had hitherto held proudly aloof, gave in their submission. Of these the chief were O'Brien, who received his reward by being created Earl of Thomond; O'Donnel of Ulster; and even the haughty O'Neil, who accepted from the king the title of Earl of Tyrone. Henry followed up these submissions by suppressing the monasteries in the districts thus added to his dominion, seizing the church lands, and bestowing them upon the newly conciliated chiefs. He also caused large sums of money to be paid to them, and gave to each loyal chief a house in Dublin, that "they might suck in civility with the air of the court."

After the death of Henry the Eighth (1547), the protector Somerset controlled the affairs of England during the minority of the boy king, Edward the Sixth. He went much farther than Henry had done in trying to force the English people away from their ancient faith; and the same rigorous methods which he employed in England, he applied to Ireland for the same purpose. Not content with the suppression of the monasteries, and the seizing and dividing-up of their lands, Somerset, aided by Cranmer, sought to compel the Irish church to use the new Protestant liturgy, instead of the old Catholic one. The archbishop of Armagh, however, who was at the head of the Irish church, and almost all the priesthood, refused to accept it; while five of the Anglo-Irish bishops submitted. Meanwhile the people, outraged by the violence committed upon the ancient relics,—upon the shrines and tombs, and the abbeys of their-church,—by the soldiers of the lord-deputy, resisted, wherever they could, the imposition of the new faith.

The accession of Mary, a Catholic, to the throne of England, was the signal for a pause in the attempt to revolutionize the Irish church. The bishops who had refused to accept the new liturgy were recalled from exile; those who had accepted it were turned out of their sees, and fled for safety; and the young Earl of Kildare, who had stood stoutly by the ancient faith, was restored to his title and domains.

The Protestant prayer-book was forbidden, and mass was once more said in Ireland's venerable cathedrals. The people were allowed to worship according to the faith to which they clung. The church lands, indeed, which had been taken away, and given to Englishmen, were not restored to their former possessors. On the contrary, Mary continued the practice of granting such lands to her courtiers and favorites. But, for a brief period, the Anglo-Irish and the native clans were allowed to worship according to the old religion in peace.