Among the many acts of severity practised against his nobles by Henry VIII, few are more remarkable than the terrible persecution suffered by Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, and his unhappy family. This nobleman, whose second wife, Lady Elizabeth Grey, was a daughter of the Marquis of Dorset, and first cousin to the king, was for some time favored at court, and had been made Lord Deputy of Ireland; but the country being much disturbed, he was summoned to answer for this before the king in council, and proceeded to London, leaving his eldest son to administer the Irish affairs in his absence.

But on reaching the court, Fitzgerald was committed to the Tower; and his son, exasperated by a false report of his father’s being beheaded, broke into open rebellion. Succeeding for a short time, but afterwards reduced to difficulty, Thomas Fitzgerald received a promise of[46] pardon; and confiding in this, he surrendered himself to Lord Leonard Grey, brother of his step-mother, the Countess of Kildare. His five uncles, who had taken part with him in the rebellion, also submitted, and the whole six were conveyed to London; but in spite of the remonstrances of Lord Leonard Grey, who declared his honor pledged for their safety, they were all hanged at Tyburn.

The Earl, worn down by these heavy sorrows, died in the Tower; an attainder was issued against him (after his death), and his lands and goods declared forfeited to the crown. Not content with this cruel injustice, the king sought by all means to get into his power the young heir of this unhappy house, Gerald Fitzgerald, then not more than twelve years old; but his evil designs were frustrated by the zeal and affection of the martyred earl’s foster-brother, a priest named Leverous, to whom the boy had been confided for education. When this good man received notice that the brother and uncles of his ward had been sent to England, he became fearful for the young Gerald’s safety; the child was then lying ill of the small-pox, but intrusting the care of his nursling to no arm less zealous than his own, he wrapped him up warmly, and as carefully as he could, and carried him by night to the house of his sister, where he was nursed in concealment[47] till quite recovered. But, justly judging that the child would not be safe with any one known to be connected, however humbly, with his own family, the good priest removed him successively into the territories of two or three different Irish chieftains, by whom he was sheltered for nearly twelve months; after this he contrived to place the boy in the protection of his aunt, the Lady Eleanor, widow of a chieftain named Macarty Reagh. Now this lady had been long sought in marriage by O’Donnel, lord of Tyrconnel, whom she had hitherto refused; but hoping to secure an efficient protector for her nephew, she now consented to an immediate marriage, and taking Gerald with her to her new home in Donegal, she hoped he would here remain in safety.

The devoted Leverous had refused to leave his charge even in care so seemingly unexceptionable as this; and the king, having ordered a large reward to be offered for the boy, O’Donnel was soon discovered by this watchful guardian to be meditating the baseness of delivering the orphan into Henry’s hands. Seeking the Lady Eleanor, Leverous unfolded this intended villany, and causing Gerald to assume a sufficient disguise, his aunt gave him what money she could gather in haste, and shipped him at once with his tutor and another old servant of his father’s, in a vessel bound to[48] St. Malo, in Brittany. The safety of the boy thus secured, she n............