This was the crowned “fiend in human shape” who sought to effect his “Reformation in Ireland,” where both the Old Irish and the Old English had united against his tyranny. The weight of his wrath fell first upon the Leinster Geraldines, whom he dreaded. He contrived to pick a quarrel with Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, who had been for many years his favorite viceroy in Ireland, and summoned him to London in hot haste, on flimsy, notoriously “trumped-up” charges of treason. He flung him into a dungeon in the Tower of London. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, son of the Earl, called “Silken Thomas,” because of the beauty of his person and the splendor of his apparel, was appointed deputy by his father, who thought his absence in England might be brief. Lord Thomas was young, brave, and rash, and, in short, the very man to fall an easy victim to the wiles of his House’s enemies. Tradition says that the false news of Earl Gerald’s execution, by order of King Henry, was spread in Dublin by one of the Butlers. The privy council, over which he usually presided, was already in session at St. Mary’s Abbey, when “Silken Thomas” heard the story. He, at once, with a large escort, proceeded to the abbey, renounced his allegiance to the English monarch, and, seizing the sword of state from the sword-bearer, threw it, with violent gesture, on the council table, “the English Thanes among.” Protests availed nothing. He rushed to arms, and for nearly two years held at bay Henry’s power. Had he but laid his plans with care and judgment, he would, no doubt, have ended the rule of England over Ireland, which, although not his primary, became his ultimate, object. In the end, his stronghold of Maynooth Castle was betrayed into the hands of the English general, Sir William Skeffington, by Lord Thomas’s foster-brother, Parez, for a sum in gold. General Skeffington paid the money on the surrender of the castle, and immediately hanged the traitor. For this act of chivalric justice, the name of that stern Englishman is still held in respect by all readers of Irish history. The loss of Maynooth depleted the strength of “Silken Thomas.” He struggled on for some time longer, but, at last, accepted the terms of Lord Deputy Gray, who offered him his life and guaranteed the safety of his five uncles—two, at least, of whom had had no hand in the outbreak. They were invited to a banquet by the Lord Deputy, and there, while drinking with their false hosts, were treacherously seized, placed in irons, and sent to England in a ship called the _Cow_. One of the uncles, hearing the name of the vessel, said: “We are lost! I have dreamed that six of us, Geraldines, would be carried to England in the belly of a cow and there lose our heads!” The augury was fulfilled. Henry VIII, with his usual disregard of terms, had them beheaded immediately after their arrival in London, at Tyburn. The old Earl of Kildare had not been executed after all, but died of a broken heart in