The Geraldines, who had been suffered under the preceding reign to govern Ireland in the name of the Crown, were quick to discover that the Crown would no longer stoop to be their tool.

Their head, the Earl of Kildare, was called to England and thrown into the Tower.

The great house resolved to frighten England again into a conviction of its helplessness; and a rising of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald in 1534 followed the usual fashion of Irish revolts.

A murder of the Archbishop of Dublin, a capture of the city, a repulse before its castle, a harrying of the Pale, ended in a sudden disappearance of the rebels among the bogs and forests of the border on the advance of the English forces.

It had been usual to meet such an onset as this by a raid of the same character, by a corresponding failure before the castle of the rebellious noble, and a retreat like his own which served as a preliminary to negotiations and a compromise.