In spite of the unusual prudence displayed by him on this occasion, Kildare was, in 1497, removed from the deputyship, which was for a time vested in Walter Fitzsimons, Archbishop of Dublin, a declared enemy of the Geraldines.  Sir James Ormond who represented his brother, the earl, was appointed Lord Treasurer in place of the Baron of Portlester, Kildare’s uncle, who had held the office for thirty-eight years.  Fresh quarrels thereupon broke out between the Butlers and the rival house, and each harassed the lands of the other in the usual approved style.  A meeting was at last arranged to take place in St. Patrick’s Cathedral between the two leaders, but a riot breaking out Sir James barred himself up in alarm in the Chapter House.  Kildare arriving at the door with offers of peace, a hole had to be cut to enable the two to communicate.  Sir James fearing treachery declined to put out his hand, whereupon Kildare boldly thrust in his, and the rivals shook hands.  The door was then opened; they embraced, and for a while peace was patched up.  The door, with the hole still in it, was extant up to the other day.

The quarrels between these two great houses were interminable, and kept the whole Pale and the greater part of Ireland in eternal hot water.  Their war-cries of “Crom-a-Boo” and “Butler-a-Boo” filled the very air, and had to be solemnly prohibited a few years later by special Act of Parliament.  By 1494 the complaints against Kildare had grown so loud and so long that the king resolved upon a new experiment, that of sending over an Englishman to fill the post, and Sir Edward Poynings was pitched upon as the most suitable for the purpose.

He arrived accompanied by a force of a thousand men-at-arms, and five or six English lawyers, who were appointed to fill the places of chancellor, treasurer, and other offices from which the present occupiers, most of whom had been concerned either in the Warbeck or Simnel rising, were to be ejected.

It was at a parliament summoned at Drogheda, whither this new deputy had gone to quell a northern rising, that the famous statute known as Poynings’ Act was passed, long a rock of offence, and even still a prominent feature in Irish political controversy.

Many of the statutes passed by this Parliament—­such as the one just mentioned forbidding war cries, others forbidding the levying of private forces, forbidding the “country’s curse” Coyne and livery, and other habitual exactions were undoubtedly necessary and called for by the circumstances of the case.  The only ones now remembered however are the following.  First, that no parliament should be summoned by the deputy’s authority without the king’s special license for that purpose.  Secondly, that all English statutes should henceforward be regarded as binding upon Ireland; and thirdly, that all Acts referring to Ireland must be submitted first to the king and Privy Council, and that, when returned by them, the Irish Parliament should have no power to modify them further.  This, as will be seen, practically reduced the latter to a mere court for registering laws already passed elsewhere, passed too often without the smallest regard to the special requirements of the country.  A condition of subserviency from which it only escaped again for a short time during the palmy days of the eighteenth century.