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Updated: June 21, 2025
While that century was passing over their heads, an occasional intercourse, not without its pleasing incidents, was maintained between the races. In the first year of the twelfth, Arnulph de Montgomery, Earl of Chester, obtained a daughter of Murkertach O'Brien in marriage; the proxy on the occasion being Gerald, son of the Constable of Windsor, and ancestor of the Geraldines.
The neglect of his predecessors, the quarrels between the English colonists, especially between the Geraldines and the Butlers, and the anxiety of both parties to ally themselves with the Irish princes, had prevented the permanent conquest of the country.
Richard de Burgh, called from his ruddy complexion "the Red Earl" of Ulster, nobly bred in the court of Henry III. of England, had attained man's age about the period when the de Lacys, the Geraldines, de Clares, and other great Anglo-Irish, families, either through the fortune of war or failure of issue, were deprived of most of their natural leaders.
Afterwards, by consent of her royal paramour, she married Gerald, constable of Pembroke, by whom she had Maurice Fitzgerald, the common ancestor of the Kildare and Desmond Geraldines.
Owing to the civil war that raged in England during the latter portion of the fifteenth century the English colonists were left entirely without support, and being divided among themselves, the Geraldines favouring the House of York, and the Ormonds, the House of Lancaster, they were almost powerless to resist the encroachments of the native princes.
The policy of the Geraldines was to secure the government for themselves by making it impossible for any other person to govern; and the appointment of their rival was a signal for the revolt of the entire clan, both in Leinster and Munster.
O'Brien soon recaptured the positions he had lost; O'Connor of Offaly took the field once more, and the unfortunate Deputy, harassed by his enemies on the privy council and blamed by the king for his failure to get possession of the hope of the Geraldines, found himself in the greatest difficulties.
So with the Papal benediction gladdening his heart, and a most earnest exhortation from the Holy Father to the Catholics of Ireland to follow his banner, this noblest of all the Catholic Geraldines departed from Rome, to try again the hazard of war in his own country. This was in the spring of the year 1579.
Richard de Burgh, called from his ruddy complexion "the Red Earl" of Ulster, nobly bred in the court of Henry III. of England, had attained man's age about the period when the de Lacys, the Geraldines, de Clares, and other great Anglo-Irish, families, either through the fortune of war or failure of issue, were deprived of most of their natural leaders.
As it was, the rebellion was suppressed; O'More of Leix, O'Carroll of Ely, O'Connor of Offaly, and the other Irish adherents of the Geraldines were reduced to submission, and thereby the work of conquest was well begun. In 1536, as a reward for the services he had rendered and in the hope that he would carry the work of subjugation to a successful conclusion, Leonard Grey was appointed Deputy.
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