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172 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
brought against him were that he used the King’s ordnance to fortify his castle at Maynooth, and that, when directed by the King to arrest the Earl of Desmond, he had permitted the latter to evade arrest. In 1530 he was again liberated and sent home to Ireland to rule the country jointly with Sir William Skeffington. Before the year was over Skeffington was re- called and Gearóid Og was once more the sole ruler of Ireland. But his travails were far from over and early in 1534, he received another summons requiring him to proceed to London to answer ‘certain charges’ made against him. He was also ordered to appoint a substitute for whose administration he should be responsible.
In February 1534, Gearóid, already a sick man, suffering the after-effects of a wound, as his father had done, proceeded to London, where he was immediately charged with the many offences listed by his detractors, incarcerated in the Tower and denied leave to return. But before departing, he obeyed the royal order and named his eldest son, Tomás, Lord Of- faly, generally known as Tomás an tSíoda-‘Silken Thomas,’ on account of the splendour of his clothes, as Vice-Deputy.
Eschewing political subtlety, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald was a hot-tempered, headstrong, though valiant young man, not yet twenty-one years of age, and the office he now filled required much more prudence and tact than the inexperienced youth possessed. Conse- quently, when a report was spread by the enemies of the House of Kildare that Gearóid Og had been executed in London, Lord Thomas recklessly declared open rebellion. Added to this, another report surfaced which claimed that Sir William Skeffington, who in a breach of the King’s word, was re-appointed Deputy in Ireland, had been commissioned to arrest Thomas and a number of his relatives and send them in chains to England for execution. In dramatic fashion, Thomas rode to the Council Chamber, St. Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, and publicly renounced his allegiance to Henry denouncing him as a heretic and appealing to all Irishmen to abandon their loyalty to the King. It is told that the impetuous young man then flung down the Sword of State before the Council, and declared, “I am no longer the King’s servant, but his foe.” ‘Thus began,’ as one contemporary chronicler commented ‘The Rebellion of Silken Thomas.’
Almost immediately a number of the neighbouring Irish chieftains flocked to the Geraldine standard, and while they did not openly support him, it’s known that Thomas also acquired the moral support of the influential though remoter chiefs like O’Neill and O’Donnell.
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