3 - Kildare Renaissance, 1496–1522

Summary

For reasons other than those of the romantic narratives of the Great Earl ‘reigning royally’, Kildare's epithet is apt. In the context of what is here discussed, the sheer scope and significance of the Kildare project may add to established scholarship. In recent decades, the range of factors behind Kildare's prominence, his capacity in terms of manraed, estate management, distribution of patronage along with a myriad of political, social and also cultural approaches have been studied. From the mutually agreeable bond of 1496, he was in the position to comfortably fulfil the obligation to defend the Pale and the king was satisfied with the relative security and financial viability of the colony with its English institutions in reasonable order. Prompted by a ‘long tyme (of) great and haynoux discord discention and variance’, a tripartite indenture marked a calming of Geraldine- Butler tensions.

Kildare held parliament at Castledermot in 1499, augmenting the 1488 Act of Marches and Maghery with meaures for ‘thencreasinge of Englishe manners and conditions’. The political nous of the Great Earl was demonstrated in his constructive relationship with Thomas Butler, even after what had transpired in the preceding years. Writing two months before Piers Butler killed Sir James of Ormond, whose enemies by then even included James Wise of Waterford, the earl required Kildare to have his ‘landes there in fferme’. Gearóid Mór Fitzgerald did not simply manage Ormond estates but also Piers Butler himself, and Kildare's ‘good cousinage’ was an advantage to Thomas Butler distanced from Ireland at Court. Ormond's debt of gratitude stemmed from the ‘letting of the third parte of my landis in your partes’ and Pier's ‘drede’ of Kildare. Ormond accounts reflect concerns that in 1499, ‘lawes of yrlond…noyr manne holde hyes londis by eyrre wtowtte any clayme the lorde schall neuur have recouvre’. A debt of gratitude may be seen in an appeal for restitution of his prisages of wines through parliamentary grant and was exempted from absentee legislation shortly thereafter.

At Court, Kildare's agent Thomas Kent procured the co-operation of Ormond while the king's ‘poletique’ approach was similar to the policies of the late Yorkist crown.