nity was well chosen. The government of Ireland was in
disorder. Skeffington was designed for Kildare's successor, but he was
not yet appointed; nor was he to cross the Channel till he had collected
a strong body of troops, which was necessarily a work of time. The
conditional excommunication of the king was then freshly published; and
counsels, there is reason to think, were guiding the Irish movement,
which had originated in a less distempered brain than that of an Irish
chieftain. Rumours were flying in the southern counties in the middle of
June that a Spanish invasion might be immediately looked for, and the
emperor's chaplain was with the Earl of Desmond. His mission, it was
said, was to prepare the way for an imperial army; and Desmond himself
was fortifying Dungarvan, the port at which an invading force could most
conveniently land.[328] There is, therefore, a strong probability that
Charles V., who had undertaken to execute the papal sentence in the
course of the summer, was looking for the most vulnerable point at which
to strike; and, not venturing to invade England, was encouraging an
Irish rebellion, with a view to following up his success if the
commencement proved auspicious.[329]

[Sidenote: Lord Thomas Fitzgerald proclaims Henry accursed, and calls on
the country to rise.]

[Sidenote: June 11. He appears before the council in St. Mary's abbey,
and declares formal war.]

Simultaneously with the arrival of these unwelcome news, the English
government were informed by letters from Dublin, that Lord Thomas
Fitzgerald had thrown off his allegiance, and had committed infinite
murders, burnings, and robbings in the English pale; making "his avaunt
and boast that he was of the pope's sect and band, and that him he would
serve, against the king and all his partakers; that the King of England
was accursed, and as many as took his part."[330] The signal for the
explosion was given with a theatrical bravado suited to the novel
dignity of the cause. Never before had an Irish massacre been graced by
a papal sanction, and it was necessary to mark the occasion by unusual
form. The young lord, Silken Thomas, as he was called, was twenty-one
years old, an accomplished Irish cavalier. He was vice-deputy, or so he
considered himself: and unwilling to tarnish the honour of his loyal
house by any action which could be interpreted into treachery, he
commenced with a formal surrender of his office, and a declaration of
war.