a man, when England had
become Protestant as a nation, that she would have shown more
consideration for the Celtic race. But the additional cruelties with
which the Irish were visited, for refusing to discard their faith at the
bidding of a profligate king, are simply matters of history.

Henry succeeded his father in the year 1509. The Earl of Kildare was
continued in his office as Deputy; but the King's minister, Wolsey,
virtually ruled the nation, until the youthful monarch had attained his
majority; and he appears to have devoted himself with considerable zeal
to Irish affairs. He attempted to attach some of the Irish chieftains to
the English interest, and seems in some degree to have succeeded. Hugh
O'Donnell, Lord of Tir-Connell, was hospitably entertained at Windsor,
as he passed through England on his pilgrimage to Rome. It is said that
O'Donnell subsequently prevented James IV. of Scotland from undertaking
his intended expedition to Ireland; and, in 1521, we find him described
by the then Lord Deputy as the best disposed of all the Irish chieftains
"to fall into English order."

Gerald, the ninth and last Catholic Earl of Kildare, succeeded his
father as Lord Deputy in 1513. But the hereditary foes of his family
were soon actively employed in working his ruin; and even his sister,
who had married into that family, proved not the least formidable of his
enemies. He was summoned to London; but either the charges against him
could not be proved, or it was deemed expedient to defer them, for we
find him attending Henry for four years, and forming one of his retinue
at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Kildare was permitted to return to
Dublin again in 1523, but he was tracked by Wolsey's implacable hatred
to his doom.[381] In 1533 he was confined in the Tower for the third
time. The charges against him were warmly urged by his enemies. Two of
his sisters were married to native chieftains; and he was accused of
playing fast and loose with the English as a baron of the Pale--with the
Irish as a warm ally.[382] Two English nobles had been appointed to
assist him, or rather to act the spy upon his movements, at different
times. One of these, Sir Thomas Skeffington, became his most dangerous
enemy.

In 1515 an elaborate report on the state of Ireland was prepared by the
royal command. It gives a tolerably clear idea of the military and
political condition of the country. According to this account, the only
counties r