understanding that his life was to be spared.  Lord Leonard was his near relative, and therefore no doubt willing, as far as was compatible with safety to himself, to do the best he could for his kinsman.  Whether a promise was formally given, or whether as was afterwards asserted “comfortable words were spoken to Thomas to allure him to yield” the situation was considered too grave for any mere fanciful consideration of honour to stand in the way.  Lord Thomas was not executed upon the spot, but he was thrown into prison, and a year later with five of his uncles, two of whom at least had had no share whatever in the raising, he was hanged at Tyburn.  Of all the great house of the Leinster Geraldines only a boy of twelve years old survived this hecatomb.

[Illustration:  FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH.]

XXI.

THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.

In spite of his feeble health and feebler energies, Sir William Skeffington was continued Lord-deputy until his death, which took place not many months after the fall of Maynooth—­“A good man of war, but not quick enough for Ireland”—­seems to have been the verdict of his contemporaries upon him.  He was succeeded by Lord Leonard Grey, against whom no such charge could be made.  His energy seems to have been immense.  He loved, we are told, to be “ever in the saddle.”  Such was the rapidity of his movements, and such the terror they inspired that for a while a sort of awe-struck tranquillity prevailed.  He overran Cork; broke down the castles of the Barrys and Munster Geraldines; destroyed the famous bridge over the Shannon across which the O’Briens of Clare had been in the habit of descending from time immemorial upon the Pale, and after these various achievements returned triumphantly to Dublin.

His Geraldine connection proved however his ruin.  He was accused of favouring the adherents of their fallen house, and even of conniving at the escape of its last legitimate heir; of playing “Bo Peep” with him, as Stanihurst, the historian puts it.  Ormond and the deputy were never friends, and Ormond had won—­not undeservedly—­great weight in the councils of Henry.  “My Lord-deputy,” Lord Butler, Ormond’s son had declared, “is the Earl of Kildare born over again.”  Luttrell, on the other hand, declared that “Ormond hated Grey worse than he had hated Kildare.”  All agreed that Lord Leonard was difficult to work with.  He seems to have been a well-intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keen soldier, but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough for his place.  He was accused of treasonable practices, and a list of formidable charges made against him.  At his own request he was summoned to court to answer these.  To a good many he pleaded guilty—­half in contempt as it would seem—­and threw himself upon the mercy of the king.  No mercy however followed.  Like many another “well-meaning English official” of the period, his life ended upon the scaffold.