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save yourselves from us as from open enemies. I am no longer Henry Tudor's deputy-I am his foe. I have more mind to conquer than to govern-to meet him in the field than to serve him in office. And now, my lords, if all the hearts in England and Ireland, that have cause thereto, do but join in this quarrel, as I look that they will, then shall the world shortly be made sensible of the tyranny, cruelty, falsehood, and heresy, for which the age to come. may well count this base king among the ancient traitors of most abominable and hateful memory.

"Croom aboo!' cried Neale Roe O'Kennedy, Lord Thomas's bard, who had pressed into the body of the hall at the head of the Irish soldiery. He was conspicuous over all by his height and the splendor of his native costume. His legs and arms were bare; the sleeves of his yellow cothone, parting above the elbow, fell in voluminous folds almost to the ground, whilst its skirts, girded at the loins, covered him to the knee. Over this he wore a short jacket of crimson, the sleeves just covering the shoulders, richly wrought and embroidered, and drawn round the waist by a broad belt, set with precious stones and fastened with a massive golden buckle. His laced and fringed mantle was thrown back, but kept from falling by a silver brooch, as broad as a man's palm, which glittered on his breast. He stretched out his hand, the gold bracelets rattling as they slid back on the thickness of his arm, and exclaimed in Irish :

"Who is the young lion of the plains of Liffey, that affrights the men of council, and the ruler of the Saxon, with his noble voice?

"Who is the quickened ember of Kildare, that would consume the enemies of his people, and the false churls of the cruel race of clan-London?

"It is the son of Gerald-the top branch of the oak of Offaly!

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It is Thomas of the silken mantle-Ard-Righ Eireann!' Righ Tomas go bragh!' shouted the soldiery; and many of the young lord's Anglo-Irish friends responded—ʻ Long live King Thomas!' but the chancellor, archbishop Cromer, who had listened to his insane avowal with undisguised distress

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and who had already been seen to wring his hand, and even to shed tears as the misguided nobleman and his friends thus madly invoked their own destruction, came down from his seat, and earnestly grasping the young lord by the hand, addressed him:

"Good my lord,' he cried, while his venerable figure and known attachment to the house of Kildare, attested as it was by such visible evidences of concern, commanded for a time the attention of all present. Good my lord, suffer me to use the privilege of an old man's speech with you, before you finally give up this ensign of your authority and pledge of your allegiance.'"

The archbishop reasoned and pleaded at much length and with deep emotion; but he urged and prayed in vain.

"My Lord Chancellor,' replied Thomas, 'I came not here to take advice, but to give you to understand what I purpose to do. As loyalty would have me know my prince, so duty compels me to reverence my father. I thank you heartily for your counsel; but it is now too late. As to my fortune, I will take it as God sends it, and rather choose to die with valor and liberty, than live under King Henry in bondage and villainy. Therefore, my lord, I thank you again for the concern you take in my welfare, and since you will not receive this sword out of my hand, I can but cast it from me, even as here I cast off and renounce all duty and allegiance to your master.

"So saying, he flung the sword of state upon the council table. The blade started a hand's breadth out of its sheath, from the violence with which it was dashed out of his hands. He then, in the midst of a tumult of acclamation from his followers and cries of horror and pity from the lords and prelates around, tore off his robes of office and cast them at his feet. Stripped thus of his ensigns of dignity, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald stood up, amid the wreck of his fair fortune, an armed and avowed rebel, equipped in complete mail, before the representatives of England and Ireland. The cheering from his adherents was loud and enthusiastic, and those without replied with cries of fierce exultation.

The gallant but hapless Geraldine was now fully launched.

on his wild and desperate enterprise. There is no doubt that, had it partaken less of a hasty burst of passionate impetuosity, had it been more deliberately planned and organized, the revolt of Silken Thomas might have wrested the Anglo-Irish colony from Henry's authority. As it was, it shook the Anglo-Irish power to its base, and at one time seemed irresistible in its progress to success. But, however the ties of blood, kindred, and clanship might draw men to the side of Lord Thomas; most persons outside the Geraldine party soon saw the fate that surely awaited such a desperate venture, and saw too that it had all been the result of a subtle plot of the Ormond faction to ruin their powerful rivals. Moreover, in due time the truth leaked out that the old earl had not been beheaded at all, but was alive a prisoner in London. Lord Thomas now saw the gulf of ruin into which he had been precipitated, and knew now that his acts would only seal the doom or else break the heart of that father, the news of whose murder had driven him into this desperate course. But it was all too late to turn back. He would see the hopeless struggle through to the bitter end.

One of his first acts was to besiege Dublin city while another wing of his army devastated the possessions and reduced the castles of Ormond. Alan, the Archbishop of Dublin, a prominent enemy of the Geraldines, fled from the city by ship. The vessel, however, was driven ashore on Clontarf, and the archbishop sought refuge in the village of Artane. News of this fact was quickly carried into the Geraldine camp at Dublin; and before day's-dawn Lord Thomas and his uncles, John and Oliver, with an armed party, reached Artane, and dragged the archbishop from his bed. The unhappy prelate pleaded hard for his life; but the elder Geraldines, who were men of savage passion, barbarously murdered him as he knelt at their feet. This foul deed ruined any prospect of success which their cause might have had. It excited universal horror, and drew down upon its perpetrators, and all who should aid or shelter them, the terrible sentence of excommunication. This sentence was exhibited to the hapless earl of Kildare in his dungeon in London tower, and it is

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