eer in the Tower of
London "for thought and pain."[370] He was attainted by the parliament
which sat in the autumn, and lay under sentence of death when death came
unbidden to spare the executioner his labour.

[Sidenote: Death of the Earl of Kildare.]

[Sidenote: March 14. Skeffington takes the field. Siege of Maynooth
Castle.]

Meantime, the spring opened at last, and affairs further improved.
Skeffington's health continued weak; but with the advance of the season
he was able to take the field; and on the 14th of March he appeared
under the walls of Maynooth. This castle was the strongest in the
possession of the Geraldines. Vast labour had been recently expended on
its fortifications, for which the king's subjects had been forced to
pay. It was defended by the ordnance from Dublin, and held by a small
but adequate garrison. It was thought to be impregnable, and in the
earlier stages of the science of gunnery it might possibly have defied
the ordinary methods of attack. Nay, with a retrospective confidence in
the strength of its defences, the Irish historians have been unable to
believe that it could have been fairly taken; they insist that it
resisted the efforts of the besiegers, and was on the point of being
saved by Fitzgerald,[371] when it was delivered to the English commander
by treachery. A despatch to the king, which was written from the spot,
and signed by the deputy and all the members of the Irish council,
leaves but little remaining of this romance.

[Sidenote: The walls are bombarded.]

[Sidenote: March 23. The castle is stormed.]

[Sidenote: Thirty-seven prisoners taken.]

An authentic account of an attack by cannon on a fortified place at that
era, will scarcely fail to be interesting. The castle, says this
document, was so strongly defended both with men and ordnance, "as the
like had not been seen in Ireland since the Conquest." The garrison
consisted of a hundred men, of which sixty were gunners. On the third
day of the siege the English batteries opened on the north-west side of
the donjon, and destroying the battlements, buried the cannon on that
part of the wall under the ruins. The siege lines were then moved "to
the north side of the base court of the castle, at the north-east end
whereof there was a new-made, very strong, and fast bulwark, well
garrisoned with men and ordnance." Here a continual fire was sustained
for five days, "on that wise that a breach and entry was made there."
W