tition
which can walk hand in hand with any depth of crime, when that
superstition is provided with a talisman which will wash away the stains
of guilt. The love of fighting was inherent, at the same time, in the
Celtic nature. And such a people, when invited to indulge their humour
in the cause or the church, were an army of insurrection ready made to
the hands of the popes, the value of which their Holinesses were not
slow to learn, as they have not been quick to forget.[324]

Henry was aware of the correspondence of Desmond with the emperor. He,
perhaps, also expected that the fiction might be retorted upon him (as
it actually was) which had been invented to justify the first conquest
of the island. If Ireland was a fief of the pope, the same power which
had made a present of it to Henry II. might as justly take it away from
Henry VIII.; and the peril of his position roused him at length to an
effort. It was an effort still clogged by fatality, and less than the
emergency required: but it was a beginning, and it was something.

[Sidenote: February. Kildare a third time called to England.]

[Sidenote: Kildare is sent to the Tower.]

[Sidenote: Lord Thomas Fitzgerald vice-deputy.]

In February, 1534, a month before Clement pronounced his sentence, the
Earl of Kildare was required, for the third and last time, to appear and
answer for his offences; and a third time he ventured to obey. But
England had become a changed world in the four years which had passed
since his last presence there, and the brazen face and fluent lips were
to serve him no more. On his arrival in London he was sent to the Tower,
and discovered that he had overstepped his limits at last.[325] He was
now shrewd enough to see that, if a revolt was contemplated, no time was
to be lost. He must play his last card, or his influence was gone for
ever. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, his eldest son, who in his boyhood had
resided in England,[326] had been left as vice-deputy in his father's
absence. The earl before his departure had taken precautions to place
the fortresses of the pale, with the arms and ammunition belonging to
the government, in the hands of dependents whom he could absolutely
trust. No sooner was his arrest known than, in compliance with secret
instructions which had been left with them, or were sent from England,
his friends determined upon rebellion.[327]

[Sidenote: June. The emperor sends an agent to the Earl of Desmond.]

The opportu