This volume examines the rivalries between two of the three noble powerhouses that dominated the political landscape of late medieval and early modern Ireland: the Geraldine Kildares and the Butlers of Ormond, the third house, of course, being the Geraldine Desmonds. Kelly is to be commended for focusing on a period that hitherto has not received the attention it deserves in the historiography of medieval Ireland: the later fifteenth century. Moreover, he is in no hurry to reach the safer shores of the sixteenth century, where the primary sources, particularly those derived from central government, are comparatively more abundant.

This book is divided into an introduction and seven chapters, which are roughly chronological. The first chapter examines the White Earl of Ormond, who dominated Irish politics during the first half of the much-neglected fifteenth century and the Great Earl of Kildare later in the same century. This examination of the Kildare hegemony continues in the third chapter. The second chapter looks at the late medieval interest in Geraldus Cambrensis’s Expugnatio Hibernica, a work originally written in the late 1180s. The second half of the book devotes itself to the first half of the sixteenth century, a period marked by the Kildare Rebellion of 1534. This was a watershed moment in early modern Ireland, for it was then that aristocratic control collapsed. Each chapter is divided into sections, but regrettably, they do not have titles, which would have served as a useful aid to help readers navigate the book. More subject entries in the index would have been useful too.

The monograph examines the Kildare-Ormond rivalry using not only traditional written sources, such as government records, but also literary sources and material culture. Kelly claims that the book is based on extensive original research using hitherto unexplored evidence from literary sources. I would argue that some of his research, particularly that found in chapter 2, covers some of the same ground as research done by other scholars, such as Caoimhe Whelan and Aisling Byrne. That is not a criticism; there is a lot to be said for political historians using sources that had previously been almost exclusively used by literary historians. Kelly is also to be applauded for his extensive use of political treatises.

As evidenced by the bibliography, Kelly uses a wide range of primary sources. He claims that the historiography of the early modern period, and more specifically Henry VIII’s reign, has hitherto been dominated by the State papers and that the objective of this book is to ‘break free from the prison house of the State Paper hegemony’ (p. viii). He accuses the State papers of ‘over representing the critics of the Geraldines’ (p. 8). As much of the material contained in the State papers is correspondence from royal officials, it would hardly be surprising if these letters were negative in tone at a time when the Kildares were in rebellion against the crown.

The book is well-written, and it is laudable that Kelly used non-traditional sources, particularly literary sources, and this is especially true in chapter 4. I did not see as much evidence of the use of material culture as I expected from the book’s blurb, aside from the discussion of the earl of Kildare’s library, for example. In chapter 1, Kelly mentions that a groat and half-groat of Edward IV was struck in the mint of Trim in 1479 and that this coin featured the Fitzgerald saltire placed at either side of the royal arms (p. 39). This is a very tangible expression of the sort of power that the earls of Kildare and their ‘brand’ possessed, and I would have appreciated seeing this explored more fully. I think more could have been said about the castles constructed by the Kildares and the Ormonds too, most of which are late medieval in date. Maynooth Castle is mentioned in chapter 3, when the contents of the castle are discussed, but the imposing Kilkenny Castle barely elicits a mention, and Kilkea is not remarked on at all.

As a final note of caution, care should be taken in interpreting aristocratic motives or attitudes simply through the ownership of texts like the Expugnatio Hibernica. There is, for example, no evidence of the Ormonds having a copy of this work. Kelly states in the blurb of the book that these literary texts serve as a counterbalance to the anti-Kildare sentiment found in official sources, but are these texts truly uncritical? The jury is still out.