Dublin, whence the archbishop was despatched in
hot haste to explain matters to the king.

A slight incident which took place at the end of this battle is too
characteristic to omit. "We have done one good work," observed Lord
Gormanston, one of the Lords of the Pale, confidentially to the
Lord-deputy. "And if we now do the other we shall do well," Asked by the
latter what he meant, he replied, "We have for the most part killed our
enemies, if we do the like with all the Irishmen that we have with us it
were a good deed[7]." Happily for his good fame Kildare seems to have
been able to resist the tempting suggestion, and the allies parted on
this occasion to all appearances on friendly terms.

[7] Book of Howth.

XX.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.

The battle of Knocktow was fought five years before the death of Henry
VII. Of those five years and of the earlier ones of the new reign little
of any vital importance remains to be recorded in Ireland. With the rise
of Wolsey to power however a new era set in. The great cardinal was the
sworn enemy of the Geraldines. He saw in them the most formidable
obstacle to the royal power in that country. The theory that the
Kildares were the only people who could carry on the government had by
this time become firmly established. No one in Ireland could stand
against the earl, and when the earl was out of Ireland the whole island
was in an uproar. The confusion too between Kildare in his proper
person, and Kildare as the king's Viceroy was, it must be owned, a
perennial one, and upon more than one occasion had all but brought the
government to an absolute standstill.

Geroit Mor had died in 1513 of a wound received in a campaign with the
O'Carrolls close to his own castle of Kilkea, but almost as a matter of
course his son Gerald had succeeded him as Viceroy and carried on the
government in much the same fashion; had made raids on the O'Moores and
O'Reillys and others of the "king's Irish enemies," and been rewarded
with grants upon the lands which he had captured from the rebels. The
state of the Pale was terrible. "Coyne and livery," it was declared, had
eaten up the people. The sea, too, swarmed with pirates, who descended
all but unchecked upon the coast and carried off men and women to
slavery. Many complaints were made of the deputy, and by 1520 these had
grown so loud and long that Henry resolved upon a change, and like his
predecessor determined to send an English