Sir James Keating.—Nor did order and loyalty flourish conspicuously at the very seat of government. Unseemly broils between the chief officials, and faction fights between the followers of different parties were frequent.

The authority of the Crown was more than once defied by its own representatives, and their example was followed by others. When Lord Grey was sent over by the King to supersede the Earl of Kildare as Lord Deputy (1478) he was refused admission to Dublin Castle by its Constable, Sir James Keating, who garrisoned the Castle, and held it for two years. Keating was also Prior of Kilmainham, an important military ” hospital” of the Knights of St. John beside Dublin.

When deprived of this rank in 1482 he imprisoned his successor, and kept possession of the ” hospital.” Although the King excepted Keating from the general pardon to the adherents of Simnel (1488) , yet the intractable Prior held defiant possession of the ” hospital ” for another three years.
Anti-Irish Decrees.—Reduced to this condition of impotence, the Crown officials could only display a futile malevolence by further anti-Irish enactments.

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 Above : Illustration Picture Of Sir Edward Poynings

Above : Painting Of King Henry VII