ad already won stood him then in good stead. Seizing upon the
government, he held it in the teeth of the king and Parliament for more
than a year. The news of the battle of Northampton tempted him to
England. His son, the Earl of March, had been victorious, and Henry VI,
was a prisoner. He was not destined, however, to profit by the success
of his own side. In a temporary Lancastrian triumph he was outnumbered,
and killed by the troops of Queen Margaret at Wakefield.

His Irish popularity descended to his son. A considerable number of
Irish Yorkist partisans, led by the Earl of Kildare, fought beside the
latter at the decisive and sanguinary battle of Towton, at which battle
the rival Earl of Ormond, leader of the Irish Lancastrians, was taken
prisoner, beheaded by the victors, and all his property attained, a blow
from which the Butlers were long in recovering.

No other great Irish house suffered seriously. In England the older
baronage were all but utterly swept away by the Wars of the Roses, only
a few here and there surviving its carnage. In Ireland it was not so. A
certain number of Anglo-Norman names disappear at this point from its
annals, but the greater number of those with which the reader has become
familiar continue to be found in their now long established homes. The
Desmonds and De Burghs still reigned undisputed and unchallenged over
their several remote lordships. Ulster, indeed, had long since become
wholly Irish, but within the Pale the minor barons of Norman
descent--Fingals, Gormanstons, Dunsanys, Trimbelstons and
others--remained where their Norman fathers had established themselves,
and where their descendants for the most part may be found still. The
house of Kildare had grown in strength during the temporary collapse of
its rival, and from this out for nearly a century towers high over every
other Irish house. The Duke of York was the last royal viceroy who
actually held the sword. Others, though nominated, never came over, and
in their absence the Kildares remained omnipotent, generally as
deputies, and even when that office was for a while confided to other
hands, their power was hardly diminished. Only the barren title of
Lord-Lieutenant was withheld, and was as a rule bestowed upon some royal
personage, several times upon children, once in the case of Edward IV.'s
son upon an actual infant in arms.

In 1480, Gerald, eighth Earl of Kildare, called by his own following,
Geroit Mor, or Gerald