Talbot's retirement from Dublin enabled the king to remove a dangerous person, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, from his court, but although the duke's commission as viceroy was executed in 1447, he did not see fit to leave England until 1449, landing at Howth, near Dublin, on {51} July 6. His deputy, Richard Nugent, met him and the duchess, a remarkable woman, who was one of the Earl of Westmorland's twenty-two children, and was the most beautiful of them all. Denied the throne for herself, she became the mother of two kings--Edward IV. and Richard III.--and it was her counsels which shaped her husband's destiny in Ireland. As befitting a prince of the blood royal, the duke made a triumphal entry into Dublin, and, guided by his wife, wisely conciliated the native chiefs and the leaders of the Anglo-Irish. They gave many banquets and entertainments in Dublin Castle, at which Irish and English mingled, quarrels being forgotten in the presence of the woman who was known as 'The Rose of Raby.' And when on October 21, 1449, she gave birth in Dublin Castle to her ninth child, George, afterwards Duke of Clarence, she diplomatically invited the Earls of Desmond and Ormonde to stand as sponsors. The object of the duke and duchess was, of course, to gain adherents in Ireland for the coming conflict between the rival claimants to the throne of England. For hundreds of years Ireland had been looked upon as a source of income to the Kings of England; the viceroyalty was a place of profit, and most of the profits went into the king's treasury. Richard had many followers in England, and they were well aware of the fact that his viceroyalty was merely a pretext for exiling him, but they made good use of the misfortune, continually noising it abroad that the Duke of York was accomplishing wonders in {52} Ireland, that his statesmanship, diplomacy, and valour proved indisputably that when the time came he would make an admirable king of both countries. The disadvantage of a policy of conciliation, however, was the lack of revenues. Taxes could only be levied by force, and the viceroy deprecated that. He pawned his jewels manfully, and borrowed from his friends in England, France, and Ireland. Twice he wrote to the king asking for supplies, but that monarch had no intention of disguising the exile by lavishing money upon him, and the duke was compelled to return to England. This was in 1450, and for the next nine years he was absent from the country, his deputies in turn being the Archbishop of Armagh, 1454, Edmund Fitz-Eustace, 1454, and Thomas Fitz-Gerald, Earl of Kildare, who acted from 1455 to 1459. The duke's first choice was Sir James le Botiller, who was created Earl of Wiltshire before he succeeded his father in the Earldom of Ormonde, but this nobleman resided chiefly in England, and eventually became a Lancastrian. [Sidenote: Independence of its Parliament]