LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD JAMES, EARL of Kildare (Duke of LEINSTER) EMILY, COUNTESS OF KILDARE (Duchess of Leinster) LIFE OF LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD CHAPTER I Dublin and the Geraldines--St. Werburgh's Church-Lord N EAR the east gate-formerly the gate of St. Mary Les Dames-of the city of Dublin stand a group of buildings notable indeed. Near by is the Castle, with all its historical and political associations, past and present. A stone's throw removed is the sombre edifice whose foundation dates from the days of faith when, "about the year of our Lord 1038, the Danish Prince of Dublin gave to Donat, Bishop of that see, a place to erect a church to the honour of the Holy Trinity." So the Black Book of Christchurch records the first gift to the famous Priory of the Trinity, now known as Christchurch Cathedral. Again, in close proximity to the priory (where in 1562 the monument of another alien, this time of Norman blood, Earl Strongbow, was broken and repaired) the City Hall has replaced, by a double secularisation, Cork House, on the consecrated ground where once stood the Convent and Church of St. Mary Les Dames; while, last of the group, at an almost equal distance from the Castle on the farther side, the modern Church of St. Werburgh, with its eighteenth-century, pseudo-classic frontage, its railed-in pavement and gaslit portico, remains to tell that once an Anglo-Norman foundation imported from over the sea the name and fame of Saint Werberga, sometime-in those remote ages when blood-royalty and sainthood went hand-in-handPrincess of East Anglia and Abbess, as her mother and grandmother before her, of the Monastery of Ely. Close neighbours, these three religious houses shared with the Castle many a memory of past days; and amongst these memories is ever and again recurrent the name of Ireland's foster-sons, the Geraldines. To them she gave true birthrights. With her traditions, her stones, her sepulchres, and her dust, their race is associated beyond possibility of severance. In the Castle FitzGerald after FitzGerald ruled, whether as the King's Deputy or despite of him. In the Castle, too, one after another lay imprisoned. In the Priory close at hand was entombed Maurice FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare, dead in 1390-once a prisoner in the Castle, afterwards Deputy there. Little more than a century later, in the choir of the same church, St. Mary's Chapel was built by another Earl Gerald, who, dying the following year, 1513, bequeathed "his best gown of gold and purple to make dresses for the priests," already endowed by him with vestments of cloth-of-gold, a yearly commemoration, with other spiritual privileges, being accorded to the donor and doubtless observed for many a year. In the Priory, not a score of years earlier, this same Gerald must have borne a leading part in the ceremony when our Lady's statue in the adjacent Convent-church of St. Mary Les Dames lending her crown for the occasion-the poor puppet-king, Lambert Simnel, "well faced and princely shaped, and of no very evil nature," was crowned, with feasting and triumphing and mighty shouts and cries; and, the pageant ended, was borne "on tall men's shoulders," and doubtless accompanied by the FitzGerald brothers-Deputy and Chancellor at the time-his chief supporters, to the King's Castle. In the Priory, again, the rebel nobles, Kildare at their head, received the royal pardon under the Great Seal, the oath of allegiance taken by the Earl upon a Host consecrated by the English chaplain, lest even in this solemnity deception might be practised and the pledge rendered a nullity. Scenes like this, with their vivid mediævalism, will recur no more in the quarter of the city where Christchurch, the King's Castle, and the City Hall recall or obscure the remembrance of the past. The Priory, with its vestments of purple and gold, is become the cathedral church of a faith which has discarded purple and gold-and much else beside. St. Mary Les Dames is dispossessed, not only of her crown, but of her nuns, her convent, her chapel, and her worshippers; and her parish, as far back as the sixteenth century, was incorporated with that of St. Werberga. But St. Werburgh's Church-even the St. Werburgh's of to-day, with its Corinthian columns and classic portico, has still one tradition to hand on : a tradition which links the chivalries of the past, chivalries armoured and helmed, lance in rest and banners flying, with the chivalries of new centuries of hope and aspiration and sacrifice, hope with no coloured visions, aspiration shorn of glamour, sacrifice without its ritual of palm and crown. For beneath the chancel of the church dedicated to the Anglian saint lies Edward FitzGerald; while without, in a piece of burying-ground belonging to his family, by a coincidence as strange as that which placed Lord Castlereagh's monument near that of Grattan in Westminster, is the tomb of Charles Henry Sirr, from whose hand Lord Edward received the wound of which he died. Ireland gives to her sons many gifts and great; and, giving much, she requires from them also much. To the Geraldines of old she gave her loves, her hates, her blood, and her soul, receiving from them in return fair chapels, loyalty to her faith, devotion to her nationality. To Edward FitzGerald she gave her last gift-a dream; and he, for her gift-greater love hath no man than this-laid down his life. |