merciless galloglasses and crafty, rug-headed kernes, whose manners, as well as swords and battle-axes, were admitted into the castles they defended. The eighth Iarl Garrett, "the Great Earl," as the Güel called him, who is declared to have been "a mightie man of stature, and full of honor and corage," half of whose years were passed as viceroy, and who received the high distinction of the Garter, is described by a plain-spoken contemporary chronicler, Lord Howth, as a man "rudely brought up according to the usage of his country." In fact, he was altogether a rough diamond and customer. Though he held the sword of state during thirty-three years, he seems to have acquired little of court graces. Indeed, his life resembled that of a rude Border Warden rather than of a lord-lieutenant of the present day, one of whose duties consists in saluting the débutantes presented to him, and the other in entertaining them with court balls. Iarl Garrett was very differently occupied, constantly riding about the country, attended by a few horsemen, hunting out cattle-stealers, taking, perhaps, as much delight in chasing a robber as some men do in pursuing a fox. When game of that sort was not on foot, he occupied himself in superintending the erection and repair of fortalices throughout the marches, and in directing the opening of passes through the forests that skirted the English Pale. Necessarily and nationally, his manners were as rough as his mode of life. The anecdotes of the jocular freedoms that passed between his excellency and his troopers are such as might have been told of the merest wild chieftain who lived on terms of fraternity and equality with his clansmen. When cited by Henry VII. before the council, he treated his sovereign with the same frank familiarity he was wont to show his men. On this occasion, one of the accusations against him was his having burnt the cathedral of Cashel in consequence of a feud with the archbishop, and many witnesses were ready to prove the fact: but, contrary to their expectation, he not only avowed it, but swore, "By my troth, I would not have burnt it, but that I thought the bishop was in it." The prelate that had escaped this hot vengeance being present, the king laughed heartily, and was so favourably impressed with the candour of his viceroy, that on another of the earl's accusers exclaiming, "All Ireland cannot rule this man!" he at once rejoined, "Then he shall rule all Ireland;" and, pleased with his own jest, which crowned the jocularity by which the shrewd Irish lord had diverted the council from seriously entertaining the charges against him, sent him home to rule the land again. Yet with this craftiness, Iarl Garrett had much simplicity of character, evident in his warm temper, easily appeased and converted into genial humour, and in his reckless daring in battle, and his thoughtless contempt of power higher than his own, all which were the attributes of a Gaelic king, insubmissive to superiors, but readily stooping to equal terms with his clansmen, whose traits and his were such as are admirably epitomised as those of the Irish military of our own day: -Tameless, frank, and free, In kindness warm, and fierce in danger known, A lively picture of the life of a bordering Anglo-Irish lord is given by Stanihurst, who was once a retainer in Maynooth Castle, in the retort he ascribes to Kildare the Ninth, when Wolsey, before the council, taunted him as being "King of Kildare." "As for any kingdom," was the reply, "my lord cardinal, I would you and I exchanged kingdoms for a single month. I sleep in a cabin, when you lie soft on a bed of down; and I serve under the cope of heaven, when you are served under a canopy. I drink water out of my iron skull-cap, when you drink wine out of golden cups. My courser is trained to the battle-field, when your jennet is taught to amble. When you are begraced, and crouched, and knelt unto, I find small grace from our Irish borderers unless I cut them short by the knee." The chronicler continues: "The cardinal, perceiving that Kildare was no babe, rose in a fume from the council-table, and committed the earl to the Tower." Such stormy scenes, when Kildare defended himself from his foes, were often lit up with flashes of Irish wit. Robert Cowley, progenitor of the Duke of Wellington, and one of the earl's principal accusers, once pretending to weep at the continued incarceration he was instrumental in bringing on the earl, Kildare exclaimed, "He is like a plover-taker setting his snares and then looking for his prey. The wind makes his eyes water, but whatever plovers he taketh, he nippeth their brains out with his thumb, notwithstanding his tears of contemplation." This simile was so true, that "a plover-taker" became a cant term for a traitor-trapper. This earl married, for his second wife, a daughter of Grey, Marquis of Dorset, an alliance that brought him in close relationship to Henry VIII., a monarch who, however, set little upon ties, whether formed by or through matrimony. Kildare inherited his father's boldness of speech, and more, his determination to retain the rule of all Ireland-a determination as clearly visible in various means recorded in his " Rentall Boke" as in the printed state correspondence of his time. He was even more ambitious than his father, whom he far surpassed in polish of speech and manner; and, as a devout professor of the old religion, was so vehement an opposer of the Reformation that his opposition caused the temporary fall of his ancient house. If the treasonable evidence on which he was condemned was not fabricated, he was far from content to be either mere King of Kildare or to hold the viceroyalty as an heritage. Of his overweening power there are many curious details, one of which suffices to give an idea of the awe in which he was held throughout the length and breadth of the land he was accused of aspiring to hold as king: "If Kildare," said his accuser (Cowley), "loses but a cow or a horse of his own, two hundred men can rescue the prey from even the uttermost edge of Ireland!" In fact, it was no trifle to take a prey, however small, from such a potentate. Ten times that number of troops could not have recovered it from the grasp of an O'Neill or O'Connor had the banner they marched under been other than Kildare's, or their slogan other than "Crom-aboo!" The fiercest and most ferocious O'Flaherty of Connemara did not dare protect a thief who had failed to respect the property of M'Garrett-More; and refreshments were everywhere placed so abundantly before the little band sent out in search of a lost horse or so, that their mission cost nothing to their master, and proved a pleasurable excursion rather than a service of danger to them. As to that magical motto, or war-cry, "Crom-aboo!" it was a slogan derived from a strong castle of the Geraldine clan, the name of which, anciently, when their lord-chief resided there, was the trysting call announcing the place of assemblage for defensive or offensive war. The adjunct aboo, common to all Erse slogans, seems to have been a mere shout, as in "bug-aboo!" So dangerous to the peace of Ireland-ever a country full of factions-had this family cry proved, that its use was rendered illegal by a special statute passed after the attempts of Warbeck and Simnel, those walking spirits of the House of York, were laid, or defeated. Despite the act of parliament, these earls still retained their call of power; inscribing it even on the furniture of their houses, such as on the stone table, made in 1533, now in the Duke of Leinster's hall, and on encaustic tiles, with which they paved their favourite monasteries, such as those of Bective Abbey, ornamented with the earl's arms, and the initials "G," for himself, and "E" for his wife, Lady Elizabeth Grey, and with, also, this reverential but very determined motto, “Si Dieu plet, crom abo." There was less treason in this than in the fact that some of the coinage issued during the reigns of Edward IV. and Henry VII. contained on either side of the royal arms a smaller shield, bearing the arms of the Earl of Kildare, then lord-deputy. The popular impression was that the whole Geraldine family (the earl, his five brothers, and his eldest son, having all suffered) were done to death by the sinister practices of Cardinal Wolsey. Even in London the story of the ruined Irish house commanded such interest as to be introduced and acted upon the stage in "The Tragedy of the Life and Death of Wolsey." The immortal dramatist of the age writes of Our young author seems not to have met with a little ancestral anecdote we have lit upon in the course of our reading, and which is so characteristic of the times when "the prentice boys" of London encountered youthful sprigs of nobility and the Master Shallows of good Queen Bess's days and nights, in their nocturnal rambles, that we offer it for insertion in a fourth edition of the noble marquis's work. A gossiping letter-writer of 1584 tells a correspondent, on the 18th of June of that year, what would now be reported, of any similar occurrence, in the columns of the morning papers, under the head of "Police Intelligence:" "On Sondaie, at night, my Lord Fitzgerald, with a number of gentilmen with hym, at Moore-gate, met a tall young fellow, being a prentice, and strook him upon the face with his hatt. Whereupon my lord and his companie were glad to take a house, and did scarcelie escape without great danger. The sheriff came, and fetched him to his house, where he lodged; and imprisoned one Cotton, that procured my lord to misuse the prentice."* The same night another prentice was put in the cage in Aldersgatestreet, upon which the place of incarceration was destroyed by a mob of * Wright's Elizabeth, II. 229. flat-capped friends. These were the times when the Robert Shallows used to skirmish with the watch, with "Hem boys!" as their word of recognition in the night, which they closed by sleeping out in the fields around the old rural church of St. George. The youthful Irishman, who led a milder street row than Lord Barrymore and other of his compatriots subsequently were notorious for, was then but two-and-twenty; he became the twelfth Kildare, and was afterwards known in his native country as Henry of the Battle-Axes," weapons more formidable than the one he used against the "Jen Vin" of the prentices who so bravely drove him and his rufflers out of the street. 66 Some of the young bloods of this Geraldine breed seem, indeed, to have been the sort of colts that break halter. The reader may, perhaps, complain that we have not fulfilled any promise of showing how high birth heralds high deeds. If he will turn to the volume we have now reviewed, he will find much to admire, though somewhat to the contrary, since it is well known that history, and all its materials, treat more of ill than of good actions. Nor could it be otherwise, since vices come much more under observation than virtues. The energetic wife of Bassanio declares, How far that little candle throws its beams! Yet the illumination went not very far, and was soon out, leaving not a single flicker. It is a truism that the good done by men is often interred with their bones, while the evil lives after them in records of the strongest, and, therefore, the marked effects of human passions. Let us cull, however, from Lord Kildare's book a few good notices anent his quieter and worthiest progenitors. The nineteenth earl, whom the irascible and insolent Dean of St. Patrick's offended, is said "to have been one of the most pious gentlemen of the age, but extremely formal and delicate, insomuch, that when he was married to Lady Mary O'Brien, one of the most shining beauties then in the world, he would not take off his wedding gloves to embrace her." A contemporary versifier has, in these indifferent couplets, celebrated the earl's bounty: Instead of duns to crowd his door, It is surrounded by the poor. My lord takes care to see them serv'd, And saves some thousands from being starv'd. Nor does he think himself too great, Each morning on the poor to wait; And, though his charity ne'er eeases, Let us quote some more verses from this rude attempt to draw an uncommon portraiture, but one that is difficult to delineate : Kildare's a precedent for lords To keep their honour and their words; His morals make him still more great, Add such a lustre to a grace As suits his ancient noble race. His son, the first duke, raised to a dukedom principally on account of his eminent character, was truly excellent, publicly and privately. Like his ancestor, who expired a prisoner in the Tower of London, and who was, as his very enemies allowed, "the greatest improver of his lands in this land," the duke gave an example on the most useful point of progress that could have been shown in Ireland, by introducing the English system of estate management, and expending large sums in building farm-houses, and in consolidating farms. Altogether, the marquis's volume is an unpretending but admirable memorial of his time-honoured race. We have already descanted on the use of such labours, which became apparent and popular after the great luminary of Abbotsford shed his bright light on the domestic annals of his country, in beams so brilliant that we view interiors of Scottish life, whether high or humble, almost as well as we could by means of some retrospective stereoscope, and regard the scenes of home-life so exhibited with interest and even affection. A MONTH IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN. HAD Macbeth been able to put his celebrated question, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? to Dr. Latham or Sir James Clarke, the answer would have been a prescription, not from the Pharmacopoeia, but from "Murray" and "Bradshaw." Whether the symptoms appeared to point to a professional failure, a speculative misfortune, or a disappointment in love, it is equally certain that change of scene would have been the treatment recommended: in what direction and to what extent would have been specified by the usual cabalistic signs employed by the "Railway Guide," and regulated by the time of year and magnitude of the disorder. "Coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt," is a very good proverb, but, like all proverbs, it may be pressed too far. Many, no doubt, carry their sorrows abroad with them, and, worse still, bring them back again; but then they bring back also a stronger and healthier frame, and if they have not managed to get rid of their burdens, at least they have learnt to bear them more cheerfully. And though, perhaps, too little attention is paid to the beauties of one's own country, yet there are at times advantages in a more complete absence for which no convenience can compensate. The loss of comforts we have long been accustomed to, as well as the enjoyment of luxuries we knew not of, all tend to restore the equilibrium of the spirits, by diluting our main grievance with the petty |
