in good part, afterwards cost this Earl Thomas his head. For during some bitter altercation with his Queen, the King said to her:-" Had I hearkened to my cousin Desmond's advice, I should have humbled thy proud spirit."

"What advice?" said she.

"It matters not now," said he.

"But it does matter, and I must know it: dare that Irish rebel interfere, and make mischief betwixt man and wife, and they, too, his rightful sovereigns! What was it?"

She pressed him so hard, that he told her all, for he deemed his friend Desmond, who was then the Deputy of Ireland, safe from her hands. But in the course of time she obtained his removal, and had my Lord of Worcester-a friend of her own-appointed in his place; who, on his arrival, arraigned the Earls of Desmond and Kildare of "alliance, fosterage, et alterage avecq les Irois enemies du Roy comme en donnant a eux chevaulx et harneis et armors et supportant eux envers les foilax sujects du Roy."

Finding him guilty of treason on all these counts, they brought the order for beheading him to the King, who refused to sign it; but the Queen, who hated Desmond as bitterly as Herodias did John the Baptistand with far better reason-obtained the signet by stealth, and placed it with her own fair hand on the paper, and sent it to Worcester, who instantly acted on it, as he laid claim to some of the Earl's estates. Desmond's

brother, and his five sons-when they heard of the Earl's death-all rose in rebellion.

When Edward IV. was made acquainted with the treachery, he became so enraged with the Queen, that she had to leave the court, and fly to a place of safety. Worcester was shortly after beheaded himself. Kildare boldly repaired to Edward, who received him kindly, and had his attainder reversed.

The Earl of Ormond thus describes the effect of the murder of this Earl-for we can call it nothing elseupon his followers:-"They have such a cankered malicious rebellion rooted in them, evyr sithens the putting to execution of one Thomas, Erle of Desmond, at Drogheda, that they ben as far separated from the knowledge of any duty of allegiance that a subject oght to owe his prince, as a Turke is to believe Christianity. Thei blaspheme the king, and have their ears and eies open every day gaping to have assistance in this open rebellion out of Spain." It must be borne in mind, that allegiance to the King demanded a belief of Protestantism, which they hated as much as they did Mahommedanism.

James, the Ninth Earl of Desmond, was murdered in 1487. He was set upon and slain by his own followers, in Rathkeale, in the County of Limerick. They were instigated to this barbarity by John, the Earl's brother. The murderers were all expelled by Maurice, the Earl's

son.

Maurice, the Tenth Earl, died in the year 1520, after a reign of thirty-one years.

Sir Thomas, the Twelfth Earl, died in 1534. He was famous as the husband of the "Old Countess of Desmond," who lived to the age of one hundred and forty-five years. Some would make her one hundred and sixty-two, or three. "I knew the old Countess," says Sir Walter Raleigh-in his History of the World"who lived in the year 1589, and many years since, and who was married in Edward IV.'s time; and held her jointure from all the Earls of Desmond, since then; and, that this is true, all the noblemen and gentlemen in Munster can witness."

If she was married, even at the early age of fifteen, in the last year of Edward IV.; and if she died in 1612, about two years before the publication of the History of World; she must have been no less than one hundred and forty-five years of age—that is, the same age as Old Parr.

There is a story current that she danced with Richard III. And she always affirmed that "he was the handsomest man in the room, except his brother, Edward; and he was very well made." A writer in the Quarterly Review,* to whom I am indebted for most of my information respecting this old countess says, "A certain Sir Walter St. John, and a certain old Lady Dacre, were said to have conversed with our ultra-venerable Countess; and from her oral declaration to have handed down this judicium, in refutation of the spretæ injuria formæ of the

* See a Review on "An Inquiry into the Person and Age of the Long-lived Countess of Desmond. By the Hon. Horace Walpole, Strawberry-Hill, 1758."

calumniated prince," the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III.

The death of this famous old lady is ascribed to an accident:-"She might have lived much longer, had she not mett with a kind of violent death, for shee must needs climb a nutt-tree, to gather nutts; soe falling down, shee hurt her thigh, which brought on fever, and that brought death."

But tradition, and merry poets, assert that it was not from a nut, but from a "cherry-tree" in Sir Walter Raleigh's garden in Youghal, that she fell; having been tempted, like her mother Eve, by the beautiful fruit.

"And as old

As the Countess of Desmond, of whom I've been told
That she lived so much more than a hundred and ten,
And was killed by a fall from a cherry-tree then!
What a frisky old girl!"

Mr. Herbert, of Mucross Abbey, near Killarney, has in his possession a portrait of the old Countess, stated to have been executed during her final visit to London. The following appears to have been painted on the back of the picture, the time the likeness was taken::"Catherine, Countess of Desmond, as she appeared at ye court of our Sovreign Lord, King James, in this present year, A.D. 1614; and in ye 140th yeare of her age. Thither she came from Bristol, to seek relief, ye house of Desmond having been ruined by attainder. She was married in ye reigne of King Edward IV. and in ye course of her long pilgrimage, renewed her teeth twice.* Her

* The writer has been credibly informed of a Major Atkins, near Mallow, who renewed his teeth after he was ninety.

principal residence is at Inchiquin, in Munster, whither she undauntedlie proposeth (her purpose accomplished) incontinentlie to return: LAUS DEO."

Sir Thomas, the husband of the old Countess, was celebrated by the bards as "The Victorious." "In nine battles he won the palm." He engaged to make war against Henry VIII. as soon as a French army should land. He promised, on his own account, to send an army of ten thousand foot, and four hundred horse into the field. In a government despatch, it is reported of him:— "Albeit his years requireth quietness and rest, yet intendeth he as much trouble as ever did any of his nation."

He commanded the horse under the Lord Lieutenant, in a battle with the Irish under O'Brien, in 1510.

In a battle at Mourne, he lost eighteen banners of gallowglasses,* each standard followed by eighty men; and twenty-four banners of horse, each banner having from twenty to fifty men. He lost in all about two thousand of his best men, without reckoning his "light-armed skipping kernes." This battle was fought September, 1520. The historian of the Geraldines observes, that "this defeat was the first dimming of his glory." The same authority afterwards records it, as a subject for gratulation, that the Earl, on that occasion, slew his wife's father with his own hand. This was before he was Earl, and the man whom he slew was not the father of his "reigning wife," for on attaining the title in 1529, he made a grant in perpetuity of the

* The gallowglasses were the heavy-armed soldiers; the kerne, the lightarmed.

VOL. I.

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