CHAPTER II 1763-1781 Birth and Parentage-The Race of the FitzGeralds-Features L ORD EDWARD FITZGERALD, fifth son and twelfth child of the twentieth Earl of Kildare and first Duke of Leinster, was born in London on October 15th, 1763. The period during which his short life was to be passed-not thirty-five years in all-was a stormy one for Ireland. It was a time when the brooding resentment over the wrongs of centuries was gathering to a head, and sullen submission was being exchanged for fierce and passionate resistance; a time when injuries were inflicted in the name of religion; when tyranny was begetting violence, and oppression brutality; and when men, despairing of justice, were taking the vindication of their rights, as well as vengeance for their wrongs, into their own hands. The story has been told often enough, now from one point of view, now from another; and it is not intended to offer a further repetition of it here, except in so far as it may be necessary for the purposes of purely personal narrative. Nor does it come within the compass of the present work to dwell otherwise than briefly upon the race from which the subject of it sprang. To give a consecutive account, however incomplete, of the Geraldines, of their dogged resistance to English rule, their forced submissions, and their renewed revolts, would be, it has been said, to epitomise the history of their entire nation-a nation whose annals, unconnected and episodical," are like the scenes of a tragedy whose author had much imagination but no art"-and would occupy more space than can be afforded here. It is with a certain "Dominus Otho" that the story begins; who, said to have been one of the Gherardini of Florence, passed into England by way of Normandy, and is found holding the rank of "honorary Baron there in the reign of Edward the Confessor. The descendants of Lord Otho did not remain for long rooted on the eastern side of St. George's Channel. About the year 1169-before Strongbow had made good his footing in Ireland-two half-brothers, Maurice FitzGerald and Robert FitzStephen, crossed over, on the invitation of the King of Leinster, to help him against his foes, were invested by him with the lordship of Wexford, and so were established on Irish soil.1 For a certain time it would seem that the tradition 1 From this Maurice not only the Earls of Kildare, but their kinsmen the Earls of Desmond traced their descent. of loyalty to the English throne was, though intermittently, observed by the Geraldines, their services rendered to Edward III. in his contest with the Bruce having been such as to be rewarded, in the year 1316, with the earldom of Kildare. But as years went by and the original connection with England grew more remote, they proved less and less submissive vassals of the Crown; and though frequently holding high office in Ireland, they are constantly found suffering imprisonment or disgrace, for offences real or imputed, and acccused, on one occasion at least, of " alliance, fosterage, and alterage with the King's Irish enemies," from whom, however, they continued to the end to be held distinct. As early as the fourteenth century a General Assembly was called together at Kilkenny by Maurice, Earl of Kildare, and others, in opposition to the Parliament summoned to meet in Dublin, Earl Maurice suffering a subsequent term of imprisonment; and under the Tudor kings the Earls of Kildare continued to display the same features of turbulence and insubordination; open revolt alternating with perfunctory acts of submission which plainly bore the character of mere provisional concessions to necessity. The history of Earl Gerald, in particular, dating from 1477, might almost be taken as typical of the relations existing between the English kings and their "cousins the Earls of Kildare." Invested with the office of Deputy, he persisted in retaining it, in spite of dismissal; and, calling together a Parliament, was confirmed by it in his post. It was this same Gerald, too, who headed the Irish nobles in their attempt to place Simnel upon the throne; and when the enterprise had ended in disaster, and letters had been sent to England to demand a pardon, the nature of his submission is sufficiently indicated by the petition presented to the King's envoy by the citizens of Waterford, who, fearing lest vengeance might be wreaked upon them by the pardoned man in consequence of their refusal to join in the rebellion, entreated that they might be exempted from his jurisdiction as Deputy. Two years later, summoned to meet the King, the great Irish nobles, Kildare at their head, repaired to Greenwich; when Henry VII., telling them goodhumouredly that "they would at last crown apes, should he be long absent," entertained them at a banquet at which the ex-King Simnel played the part of butler. Again the scene shifts. Five years more and the banqueting-hall is replaced by the council-chamber; where Earl Gerald, an attainted man, is undergoing his trial, one of the offences of which he stands accused relating to the burning of Cashel Cathedral, in consequence of a feud with the Archbishop, now present in person to prove the charge. By my troth," answered the Earl, "I would never have done it, but I thought the Bishop was in it." The King laughed, pleased, it would seem, with the bold retort; and when the Bishop of Meath, also present, exclaimed that all Ireland could not rule this man, "Then he shall rule all Ireland," was Henry's rejoinder. He kept his word. Earl Gerald went home a free man, restored to all his honours, and Lord Deputy besides. His successor, another Gerald, held hostage in England for his father's good faith, had been present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, apparently in favour with Henry VIII. Summoned from Ireland, however, later on, to answer charges preferred against him, he found a lodging in the Tower; and a report gaining currency that his execution was to follow, his son Thomas, not more than twenty years old-a young man, according to the chronicler, of considerable personal attraction and "not devoid of wit, were it not, as it fell out in the end, that a fool had the keeping thereof "-promptly resigned the Vice-deputyship, with which he had been entrusted in his father's absence; and, joined by two of his uncles, headed an insurrection. The folly, if such it were, of Lord Thomas cost his family dear. Not only, if the explanation given of his death is to be credited, did his father die of grief in his prison and find a foreign grave in the Tower, but five of his uncles, after the thorough and wholesale fashion of the day, were included in the sentence passed upon him; and this though Holinshed declares that three of the number were known to have been opposed to his design. "But the enemies of their house," adds the historian, "incensed the King sore against it, persuading him that he should |