The Young Fitz-Gerald and Campaign of Lord Grey
Of the family of Garrett, only two male representatives survived; Thomas’ little half-brothers, Gerald and Edward, aged respectively twelve and nine. Of these, the younger was in England in King Henry’s power, but the elder and more important remained in Ireland. Henry earnestly desired to obtain possession of him, and the boy’s own uncle, Lord Leonard Grey, tried all manner of shifts to fulfil his master’s wishes in this respect, but the young Geraldine had relatives of a different stamp and plenty of devoted adherents in his native land.*
Lord Leonard Grey’s Campaigns– In the December of 1535 Skeffington died, and Grey became Deputy. He made a spring and summer campaign in Munster against the Desmonds and the O’Briens, tvho were in open revolt, and gained considerable success. He captured Desmond’s castle of Lough Gyr, and broke down the fine bridge which O’Brien had built across the Shannon, at a place still known as ” O’Brien’s Bridge,” near Killaloe.
At this point, however, his progress was checked by a most inopportune mutiny of his soldiers, whose pay was in arrears, and who declared that without it they would do no more service. Grey had no money to give them, so nothing remained but to march back to Dublin, which he accordingly did. In the course of the autumn and winter the tide rolled back ; Desmond regained his castle and O’Brien rebuilt his bridge. The Lord Deputy’s campaign had produced no enduring result worth mentioning. Such was the usual course of events in Ireland.
In the following spring (1537) the story of the previous year was pretty accurately repeated. Grey marched out from Dublin with all his array and ” subdued ” many of the Midland chiefs. But before winter, the clans had made up for the time being their feuds and the family differences, on the continuance of which Grey had much relied, and, as the Lord Deputy had no soldiers to garrison the captured fortresses or to occupy the lands which he considered he had conquered, the expelled chiefs and their followers quietly returned home.
These failures, for as such they were counted, increased the boldness of Grey’s enemies on the Council and the frequency of their complaints to England. The King, grown tyrannical and unreasonable, would see nothing but that Ireland was a constant source of trouble and expense, from which neither revenue nor an extension of the English power resulted. He severely rebuked the Lord Deputy, though, to make all fair, he likewise rebuked his enemies.
Manus, head of the O’Donnells, was now a widower, and Lady Eleanor Mac Carthy, the aunt of young Gerald of Kildare, looking around for a protector for her nephew, of whom she had taken charge, conceived the plan of enlisting so powerful a chief on the boy’s side, by herself marrying him.
