The reference to “my young master” is evidently to Lady Kildare’s baby,
whose birth—and the fact that it was a boy—was the event of the moment
in the Cork household: indeed, the old Earl had a bet on with Sir James
Erskine, on the subject. In November 1635 the tomb had been re-erected
where it now stands, in the south side of the Choir, and outwardly,
at least, after a long struggle, the matter was ended. Lord Cork knew
nothing of that sneer in Wentworth’s letter to Laud about the marchpanes
and the banqueting stuffs; and when Wentworth arrived at the Earl’s
house one evening in December 1635—he was rather fond of dropping in
unexpectedly—and joined the Earl and his family at supper, the diary
records that the Lord Deputy “very nobly and neighbourlyke satt down
and took part of my super without any addicon.” But between July 1633
and that December evening of 1635, many things had happened in the Cork
family.
The captain of the _Ninth Whelp_ had been obliged to report that Lewis,
my Lord Kynalmeaky, had run badly into debt at Bristol. Dungarvan had
been recalled, and sent to England with his tutor, about “thaffair”
of his marriage with Mrs. Elizabeth Clifford. George Goring had been
assisted with money to buy a troop of horse; and “our colonel”—and poor
Lettice after him—had sailed for the Netherlands, and soon settled at The
Hague. Little Peggie, her prospective jointure and husband provided, had
been put meanwhile, with Mary, under the care of Sir Randall and Lady
Clayton at Cork; and Mr. Perkins, the London tailor, had sent the Earl
his new Parliament robes of brocaded satin and cloth of gold. Dorothy
Loftus’s first baby had been born at Rathfarnham, and Katherine Jones’s
first baby at Athlone Castle. Both were girls; hence, that wager of the
Earl’s that his daughter Kildare’s next baby would be a boy. The Earl of
Kildare, with his dice and cards, had been causing everybody anxiety; and
there was a quarrel about family property going on between the Digby and
Offaley family and the “Faerie Earle.” Wentworth had interfered, and in
the autumn of 1634 Kildare, having taking offence, had “stolen privately
on shipboard,” leaving his wife and children and a household of about
sixty persons “without means or monies.” The delinquent was very soon to
come home again; but late in 1634 the old Earl had broken up the Kildare
establishment and settled his daughter and her children in his own newly
built house at Maynooth, riding there with her, and dining with her “for
the first time in the new parlour”, and sending her two fat oxen “to
begin her housekeeping there.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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