Christmas was kept at Lismore, and the last two days of the old year at
Castle Lyons, where the Earl’s son-in-law, Barrymore, feasted them most
liberally. He could scarcely have done less, after that eighteen-months’
visit to the Earl’s town house in Dublin. And so this year ended.
With the New Year 1635 came the Claytons from Cork, bringing Mary and
little Peggie on a visit to their father. A week or two later the
Earl went back alone to Dublin for the last session of Parliament,
leaving Dungarvan and his wife to keep house at Lismore; and the four
boys—Kynalmeaky, Broghill, Frank and little Robyn—were all left under the
charge of their tutor, Mr. Wilkinson, who was also the Earl’s chaplain.
It was a severe winter: the very day after the Earl set out from Lismore
there began to fall at Clonmell “the greatest snow that ever any man
now living did see in Ireland.” The House of Lismore must have stood,
very white and quiet, looking down over the precipice into the swirling
Blackwater below it. All about it, white and silent too, lay the gardens
and orchards, the fishponds and park lands, and the wooded wildernesses;
and the mountains beyond were hidden in falling snows. The roads could
not have been easy riding between Clonmell and Dublin, but the Earl and
his servants reached Dublin in safety, and he sent back by Dungarvan’s
man “two new books of Logick” for the versatile Kynalmeaky’s further
education.
Kildare had come back to Dublin also, and not too soon; for he and his
young wife were to make up their differences over a little grave. Early
in March their eldest little girl died under the Earl’s roof in Dublin;
and a few days later Lady Kildare’s boy was born—the “young master” of
Wentworth’s vindictive letter to Laud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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