In May 1528, the king's governor of Ireland, Vice-deputy Richard Nugent, third baron of Delvin, was kidnapped by the local Irish chief, O'Connor Faly, at a parley in the Meath marches, so plunging the Dublin administration into crisis.Footnote ¹ As the Dublin chronicle recorded laconically, ‘this yer the barrone of Delwyne wase deputie and he went parl[iamen]t w^th hOConno^r and so wase takyne p[r]ⁱsson[er]’.Footnote ² Delvin's imprisonment terminated abruptly an ingenious experiment by Henry VIII in his choice of governor. Among the duties delegated by the king to his governor was responsibility for ensuring the defence of his subjects against external enemies, a responsibility which was particularly important in the context of Ireland's frontier character. Delvin's capture had followed Henry's appointment of a series of short-lived and, for different reasons, unsuccessful governors. Reluctant to pay for troops to support his governor in defending subjects, the king had sought to identify a trustworthy and reliable magnate with the manraed to rule the English Pale and defend the marches unaided, so saving the costs of a garrison.Footnote ³

The usual early Tudor solution to this problem of a suitable governor had been to rely on successive earls of Kildare. As a great regional magnate with extensive lands and tenants in the English Pale, Kildare could defend the lordship at no cost to the crown, but the ninth earl had also proved less reliable than Henry VIII might have wished.Footnote ⁴ Thus in 1520, the king had replaced him with an English outsider, Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey (duke of Norfolk from 1524), who was probably also Henry's best general. Surrey was given the more honourable title of lieutenant plus a few hundred troops to consolidate his authority; but the king soon discovered that his Irish revenues were worth no more than IR£1,600 a year and that Surrey's lieutenancy was costing him around £10,000 a year. He therefore fell back on another local magnate as his deputy, Piers Butler, earl of Ormond, but Ormond proved less able to rule the English Pale from his main sphere of influence around Kilkenny and Tipperary, and his appointment also stoked the old feud with the Fitzgeralds. Thus, in 1524 the king reversed course and restored Kildare as governor: he also sent over commissioners to help resolve the differences between the two earls, exacting large recognizances from them to observe the terms of a lengthy composition agreed with the commissioners. Disturbances and disputes nonetheless broke out again almost immediately: so, in autumn 1526, the king summoned both earls to court and detained them there. A lengthy investigation followed concerning the conduct of government, the activities of the two earls and the feud between them, which extended into spring 1528.Footnote ⁵

On departing for England after Christmas 1526, Kildare had been allowed to appoint his own deputy during his absence. He had appointed as his vice-deputy his brother, Sir Thomas Fitzgerald; but the following summer the king had insisted on his replacement by Richard Nugent, third baron of Delvin. As was clarified by the response at court in summer 1528 to Irish developments, this arrangement supposedly meant that Kildare retained overall responsibility for the lordship's rule and defence, but that Delvin, as his deputy, had day-to-day charge of the conduct of government. As a minor peer resident in the English Pale's exposed western marches, Delvin enjoyed a reputation as the ‘great keye & strength’ of the Westmeath marches who was ‘euer mor true to the kinge & redy most faithfully to assist the kinges deputies’.Footnote ⁶ In fact, Delvin's appointment made him the seventh governor to serve since 1519.

From the outset, however, these arrangements for the governorship were in practice problematic, because earlier good relations between Kildare and Delvin had long since collapsed. Delvin resented the earl's land purchases and growing interference in the far west of Meath among the shire's English captains and surnames – Dalton, Delamare, Dillon, and Tyrrell – where Kildare had supposedly ‘subdued the power of the said captaines & converted [to himself] the obedienc & strength of those marches’. In the ensuing confrontation, Kildare ‘clapt [the baron] in prison, him self being depute’.Footnote ⁷ Thus, when reappointed deputy in 1524, Kildare had given an undertaking not to procure or stir any war against Delvin, Ormond, or Sir William Darcy, but this had not healed the feud.Footnote ⁸

Delvin had gone up to court in June 1526 and had been rewarded for his good service by the king in September with a generous lease of crown land – in fact, Duke Richard of York's old manor of Belgard and Fore – plus the wardship and marriage of Delvin's kinsman and neighbour, Thomas Nugent of Multifarnham, a little to the west. These grants consolidated Delvin's position as a leading landowner in Meath.Footnote ⁹ Despite his military prowess and political reliability, the king's commission to him as governor of this turbulent Tudor borderland was of itself clearly inadequate to outweigh the limitations on the baron's power and authority imposed by his modest landed holdings and a very localised manraed. Supposedly, however, Delvin's position as governor was to be greatly strengthened through the king's experiment which aimed, so Henry hoped, to harness the influence of the normal ruling magnate to bolster the power of a reliable border baron who evidently enjoyed the king's greater confidence. The fate of the experiment with Delvin as governor would, nonetheless, depend on the resolution of this conflict between the two earls which, following their summons to England, now resumed at court. Delvin took office in mid-September.

Although only a minor peer, Delvin's appointment as governor was not entirely unprecedented. His great-grandfather had twice served as deputy, in 1444–5 to James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond, and in 1448–9 to Richard, duke of York. He was one of Duke Richard's principal tenants, holding the feudal barony of Delvin of Richard's manor and liberty of Trim by four knights’ fees. The barony was later deemed to include a peerage, and both the estates and the peerage passed to Lord Delvin on the death of his father, Christopher, second baron, in 1478.Footnote ¹⁰ Delvin's ancestral barony of Delvin in the western marches of this large, sprawling shire thus constituted his main sphere of influence. It included his principal estate, the extensive manor of Castleton Delvin, which by the time of the lord's death in 1538 was worth over £40 a year: the great mill there of Milton was alone worth £15 a year, and the manor was strongly fortified with castles at Castleton and Clonyn. The barony also included the smaller manor of Addinstown, worth £25 a year.Footnote ¹¹ Immediately to the north-west of Delvin, almost on the border with O'Reilly's country, lay the large sprawling barony of Fore where, conveniently, Delvin's son, William, was prior of the Benedictine monastery of Fore, worth £175 a year.Footnote ¹² The king's generous fifty-year lease to Delvin in 1526 of Belgard and Fore for £10 annually had further augmented his properties there. His father had briefly enjoyed a life grant of the manor in 1475, then worth no more than £12 a year; but by 1541 it was valued at £43 19s. 7d. a year, so that within a few years of Delvin's death the baron's total holdings in Fore barony exceeded £72 annually.Footnote ¹³ A modest increase in the amount of land under tillage in the baronies of Delvin and Fore also points to the recent emergence of more stable political conditions there.Footnote ¹⁴ Further east, in the Pale maghery, Delvin also held the manor of Drakestown, worth £20 a year.Footnote ¹⁵

Delvin's Meath estates thus brought in a rental of around £160 a year in total. This probably made him – temporarily – the shire's wealthiest resident landowner in 1527–8, in the absence of its leading landowners – the bishop of Meath, with estates there worth £274 a year; the perpetually absentee prior of Llanthony worth £398 a year; and Kildare himself who, as deputy, remained nominally responsible for the shire's good rule and defence and whose landed income there amounted to c.£460 a year.Footnote ¹⁶ Most of Delvin's estates, moreover, were strategically located in the shire's exposed western marches, enabling him more easily to supervise defence against raids from the Irish of the midlands or robberies by the English marcher lineages. Beyond Meath, however, Lord Delvin's possessions were quite meagre, only estates in Haggardstown, Co. Louth, worth £40 yearly, and some scattered possessions across Co. Dublin, worth about the same amount and including a castle on the key in Dublin.Footnote ¹⁷ All this certainly bore out the opinion early in 1528 of the lord chancellor, Archbishop Inge of Dublin, and Chief Justice Patrick Bermingham, that Delvin ‘hathe no great londes of his owne’.Footnote ¹⁸ His estates across the English Pale were worth no more than £240 a year, which was modest enough even for a minor peer.

Disconcertingly, too, it soon became clear in Ireland that, as Kildare's deputy, the baron of Delvin could not deploy the earl's manraed and connection for defence – unlike Kildare's original deputy, his brother, Sir Thomas. In November, the council appealed to Cardinal Wolsey either for the speedy return of Kildare and Ormond who, once ‘confermed in amyte, shold neuer do … better seruice in this poor land then nowe’, or otherwise to provide for defence because ‘thEnglishrye by dyuision and lack of capitaynes was neuer sith the conquest in that debilitie and the hIrishemen’ had ‘confederate them self’ and were ‘neuer stronger in any mens days lyving’. The following February, in the face of increasing Irish raids, Chancellor Inge and Chief Justice Bermingham again appealed to Wolsey to provide for the land's defence, stressing that Delvin was ‘nat of power to defende the Englisshrie’.Footnote ¹⁹ Delvin had had some limited experience as governor of the military dimensions of his office, having served briefly, thirty years before, as chief captain of the king's forces in the aftermath of Poynings's expedition. The basis of his military reputation, and indeed his chief recommendation, was as captain of mounted spears: the baron had had command of the English cavalry at the battle of Knockdoe, and in the initial skirmishing he had slain one of the Burkes with his casting spear.Footnote ²⁰

Delvin was entitled, as temporary governor, to the traditional salary of £500 a year which may have enabled him to hire a few extra troops; but he did not receive the governor's usual grant from taxation of c.£600 a year towards defence because this had expired: ‘the subsidie may nat be hadde till it be graunted by Perliament’. Thus, Delvin simply could not afford to maintain a large retinue for defence.Footnote ²¹ The king's revenues available to him as vice-deputy were indeed ‘skante ynowe to pay the Kinges officers ther ordinarie fees’, leaving him ‘full litle to manteyn his chargies’. Delvin had little option, therefore, but to billet his troops on the country: while journeying through the Pale maghery, he quartered them for two nights and days in each township, in contravention of the Act of Marches and Maghery which had prohibited entirely the taking of coign and livery in the maghery, restricting it in the marches to landowners on their own tenants. Thus, ‘the poor people is ferr more chargid and oppressed’ by Delvin, so the chancellor and chief justice warned, ‘than they have been, thErll of Kildair being here’.Footnote ²² The council feared some serious injury from the border Irish who were leagued together: O'Connor Faly and O'Neill had both been alerted by Delvin's appointment and news of Kildare's disfavour at court.Footnote ²³

Meanwhile, Kildare remained under interrogation throughout 1527 and into spring 1528. On leaving for court, the earl had allegedly taken an oath from each member of the king's council, unbeknownst to each other, to write in his favour; and Irish chiefs on good terms with him, notably O'Neill (Kildare's nephew), O'Connor (his son-in-law), and O'Brien, had also been asked to sit still until the king's intentions became apparent. Thus, as proceedings at court dragged on, so the earl's supporters in Ireland held their hand. About All Hallowtide (1 November) 1527, it began to look as if matters would be settled to Kildare's satisfaction: some of his servants returned to Ireland to urge his friends to keep the peace until the following May in expectation of the earl's return, but this optimism proved ill-founded.Footnote ²⁴ During the winter, ‘this poor land’ suffered ‘great lostes and damages’, chiefly from raids on the Pale marches allegedly incited by Kildare's supporters ‘in the hope he should the rather come home’.Footnote ²⁵ The raids gradually escalated into O'Connor's wars, as they were later called: extending into 1529, they were reputedly instigated by Kildare's steward and receiver-general, Sir Walter Delahide; Janet Eustace, his wife; and Kildare's daughter, Alice.Footnote ²⁶ Delvin could do little to prevent these wars; and ‘the marchers opon Irishe men, perceyvyng not how to be deffended’ had ‘so patysed with the Irishe men next adjoynyng to them that the seid Irishe men do come thorow them and do hurt to others within them, and they take no hurt’.Footnote ²⁷ In response to further pleas from the council for assistance, Cardinal Wolsey did little more than write to individual Irish chiefs assuring them of the king's friendship. O'Neill responded that any injuries to the king's subjects were done in self-defence against the baron of Delvin and others, from whom he could get no redress and in order to collect the blackrent owing to him.Footnote ²⁸ Despite this, the council urged Delvin ‘rather to suffer for a tyme then to gif occasion of warr to any Hirisshman’, and particularly not O'Connor Faly for the ‘diverse robberies made on Englishemen and conveyed to his contry’.Footnote ²⁹

For his part, Delvin may have calculated that, rather than pursuing chiefs further afield, he had more chance of exacting redress for injuries from O'Connor Faly, whose lordship of Offaly lay south-west and within striking distance of his barony of Delvin. His response, against the council's advice, was to stop ‘O'Connor's wages’, the blackrent traditionally paid to O'Connor Faly. When O'Connor sought to negotiate, sending a messenger to Dublin, Delvin had the messenger arrested; but he then agreed to a parley, arranged for 12 May by Sir William Darcy's border castle of Rattin in Rathwire lordship, on the borders of Offaly. The parley went badly. Accompanied by Lord James Butler, the earl of Ossory's son and heir, and Christopher Cusack, escheator and former sheriff of Meath, Delvin brought only a small retinue and refused O'Connor's offer of a truce, with hostages in the hands of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald for all Delvin's claims against him.Footnote ³⁰

Anticipating this rejection, and mindful perhaps that Kildare had asked him to keep the peace only until St Nicholas tide (9 May), O'Connor had brought a strong force with him, planning to capture the vice-deputy if he got the chance. We get some impression of the opposing forces from the ‘Description of the power of Irishmen’ and the Palesmen's military obligation of troops for general hostings which was based on their landed income. According to the ‘Description’, O'Connor could make forty horsemen, two hundred kerne, and a ‘battle’ of galloglass (around seventy men). This would have been more than a match for the traditional twenty men-at-arms (Delvin's obligation as governor to maintain from his salary), plus his normal retinue for a hosting of around twenty horsemen for his marcher estates – one horseman for each ten marks of land – and perhaps six archers on foot – a bowman for each £20 of landed income there. For hostings, Delvin was also charged with finding thirty kerne from his two baronies (his share of the 120 kerne quartered on the eight marcher baronies). These presumably were not with him at the parley, but Christopher Cusack perhaps brought a company of bowmen from his estates in Skreen barony. In the ensuing mêlée, all the footmen were killed. The horsemen fared a little better: some were wounded, some captured along with Delvin and Cusack, but the rest escaped, including Lord Butler.Footnote ³¹

On receiving the news, Lord Chancellor Inge, now in command in the governor's absence, summoned the council and wrote both to Sir Walter Delahide and Walter Wellesley, prior of Great Connell, asking them to speak with O'Connor and enclosing letters to the chief. In separate letters to the king, Cardinal Wolsey, and the duke of Norfolk, the council appealed for urgent assistance, reporting that they had meanwhile appointed Sir Thomas Fitzgerald as captain general for defence. Fearing that Sir Thomas's re-appointment might appear to repugn at the king's pleasure, they justified it as being ‘compelled’ on them because ‘the Garrantynes be next to the defense of this parties, and thErlle of Osserie is so ferr from us that the contrey mought be sore dammaiged bifore his commyng hither’.Footnote ³² Even so, Fitzgerald permitted ‘O'Connor and his adherents to invade, rob and destroy divers of the … king's subjects … in the English Pale’, as he later admitted, ‘by reason of certain intelligence had with O'Connor, contrary to his allegiance’.Footnote ³³ The council's letter to Norfolk also enclosed the prior's reply to Archbishop Inge: the prior had brought the abbot of Clonard with him, and reported from Ballybogan on the confines of Offaly that he had presented the archbishop's letters to O'Connor, and explained their purport to him. O'Connor believed he could overrun the English Pale without resistance, demanded that his wages be paid at regular terms, and now refused to make peace or a truce without the agreement of O'Carroll (married to Kildare's daughter, Cecily) and other chiefs. The prior was afraid that he would burn Athboy, Mullingar, and Trim. Sir Walter Delahide's response was even less reassuring.Footnote ³⁴

Meanwhile, Lord Butler had also been sent back through Offaly, on the chief's safe conduct, to negotiate: he found Delvin closely confined at O'Connor's house. He was only allowed to speak to him openly in Irish so that their conversation could be understood. O'Connor replied that he would never consent to peace unless he had his wages, Delvin's ransom, and the bond of the king's subjects never to be revenged on him; but Butler managed to persuade the chief's brother, Cahir Roe O'Connor, to accompany him to the earl of Ossory who in turn, with great difficulty, persuaded O'Carroll, O'More, MacGillapatrick, O'Meagher, and Cahir Roe to withdraw their support from O'Connor if the latter remained obdurate and refused to release Delvin.Footnote ³⁵

The matter of Delvin's capture and a replacement governor now became a delicate issue for Henry VIII. Hitherto, having summoned Kildare and Ossory to court, the king had shown no great urgency in resolving their feud or investigating Kildare's conduct of government, despite persistent warnings from the council of Delvin's inadequacy as vice-deputy. Appeals to Wolsey for the land's defence likewise drew little response. In February 1528, however, a settlement was agreed, through Wolsey's mediation, of the previous succession dispute concerning the earldom of Ormond, whereby Piers Butler relinquished his claim to the earldom but was created earl of Ossory instead with many of the Ormond estates. He was then licensed to return home.Footnote ³⁶

After receiving letters from Ossory about Delvin's capture, the king's initial response was to order Wolsey, at his discretion, to draw up a commission as deputy either for Ossory or Lord Butler.Footnote ³⁷ Meanwhile, the council, unaware of this, had appealed to the duke of Norfolk, past governor and absentee lord of lands in south Leinster, hoping that the duke's experience and familiarity with Irish conditions might coax a more adequate response from the king. Norfolk had recently leased his Irish estates to Ossory, but Sir Walter Delahide was thought unlikely to authorise Sir Thomas Fitzgerald to surrender possession without a direct instruction from Kildare. On hearing of the council's plight, however, the duke warned Wolsey candidly that if the king's subjects were ‘over ron, brenned, and spoyled of their corne, catall, and goodes’, the land should not be recovered without ‘a right gret charge to the Kynges Highnes’; and when the king would finally ‘sende powre to ponyshe the rebelles’, there would be no ‘vitell wherwith to maynteyne’ his army, thus forcing the king ‘to begyn a new conquest, as King Henry the II^th dyd’.Footnote ³⁸

A fortnight later came Norfolk's more considered response. The duke humbly besought Wolsey, ‘now in thys time of gret nede, so to loke upon the poure londe of Irlonde that it take not more hurt this yere’ than in any year ‘sith the furst conquest’; considering also ‘the gret weknes aswell of gode capytaynes off the Inglishere, as lak of men of war’, and the ‘gret discension’ between the magnates, with ‘the Irishemen never so strong as now’. The duke saw ‘no remedy, theKyng not sendyng thErle of Kyldare thider, but only to contynew his brother in auctorite for this somer’, helping him either ‘with 3 or 400 Inglishe men … and gode capytaynes with them’, or else sending ‘some gode sum of mony’ both ‘to wage men’ there and to distribute to Irishmen to take the deputy's part or at least to ‘syt styll without doing hurt’. Then he warned that, if any proposal were made to make Ossory or Lord James Butler deputy, ‘in no wise to condessende theronto’: if they ‘had the rewle, being so fer off as they be’, and also at war with the rebel earl of Desmond and O'Brien, they would be unable to ‘deffende the 4 shires, nor skante their owne contre’; and when coming into the English Pale, they ‘must come strong, and shall spende so moche in the countre that they shall do more hurt far then gode’. Finally, he added, ‘because I know the experience of the premyssis, I am so bold playnle to advertise your Grace of myn opinion, where with I humble beseche your Grace to be content’.Footnote ³⁹

The duke's advice was the last thing the king wanted to hear. But Wolsey was further swayed by advice from the prior of Kilmainham, then in England, that Lord James Butler or ‘some other of good power’ should be ‘subrogate in lieu of the deputy prisoner’ and raids made to destroy the corn of the wild Irish.Footnote ⁴⁰ He drew up a despatch accordingly, sending two servants to the king with a ‘memoriall’ of ‘certaine considerations’ moving him thus ‘to make the expedition of Irland’. The memorial tried very diplomatically and deferentially to justify Butler's appointment as vice-deputy to the earl of Kildare, in effect to repeat the experiment with Delvin. ‘Nowe is no tyme convenyente’ to discharge Kildare, he observed, for if he were ‘clerely excludid from his office’, his kin and servants might overrun the English Pale and destroy the harvest in revenge; whereas if they could be contained ‘by dulce and faire meanes, and somme hope’ of Kildare's return, they would hold back. Also, Kildare ‘standethe onerate as yet as the Kinges Deputie’, so that any ‘great hurte of the Englishery’ might be laid to his charge. Butler, moreover, was the king's servant, could be instructed not to act without the council's advice, and would better defend the land, to which such profits as ‘Kildare had for the tyme of his presence there shulde nowe bee converted’. ‘Pleasaunte letters’ should also be sent to Ossory, the lords of the king's council, O'Donnell, and others to assist Butler, and ‘sharpe letters’ written to O'Connor for the release of Kildare's deputy, ‘takene by fraud and undir coloure of frendly commynycation’. If, however, Kildare should be discharged ‘and a nother Deputie now furthewith newly made there’, then Wolsey thought Ossory was the more meet.Footnote ⁴¹

The cardinal received a sharp rebuke for his pains: the king ‘in no wes lykes the instroxons’, and thinks Kildare ‘goeth fraudelently about to colour that the king shuld thinke that His Grace couthe not be served there but oonly by hym’. As for Butler, ‘alle the nobelle mene schalle desdayne to se so yong a mane there govenor’. His father should be deputy, and the profits of the king's wards, farms and royalties taken from Kildare and given to Ossory.Footnote ⁴² Ossory was accordingly reappointed deputy on 4 August, just a day after Archbishop Inge died of the ‘sore swettinge sek nys’ which had broken out in Dublin in late July.Footnote ⁴³ Ossory was initially unaware of all this: Delvin remained a prisoner; the council had not dared to re-elect Sir Thomas Fitzgerald as governor; and its president, the chancellor, residual head of the administration in the governor's absence, was now dead. It is unclear who actually had charge of the king's government during these weeks.

A long delay followed as Ossory was forced to divide his army, leaving part in Munster to defend his lands against Desmond, before eventually coming up to Dublin. The results were then much as Norfolk had predicted. Kildare's kinsmen and followers may well have had news of the king's appointment of Ossory and Kildare's discharge before Ossory himself did. Meyler Fay of Rathangan, Kildare's servant, viewed the return alone of his daughter, Alice, to Ireland in early August as a ‘prevy token’ ‘touching his expedition in England’, that the earl was ‘not at his pleasour to come home’. Alice rode straight to O'Connor's house. Soon after, O'Connor made new ‘invasions, roodes, and hostilities’, combining with Kildare's kinsmen and followers to raid the English Pale in Ossory's absence. He then lay in wait to intercept the deputy and his son on their arrival.Footnote ⁴⁴ Ossory finally reached the Pale in October and, as the Dublin chronicle recorded with evident distaste,

In 1536, the act of attainder against the earl of Kildare retrospectively attainted Kildare from July 1528 for having ‘commanded his daughter, Alice Fitzgerald, wife to the baron of Slane, to repair into’ Ireland and ‘in his name to will all his brethren, O'Neill, O'Connor and all other his friends, servants and allies to levy … war against our said sovereign lord's deputy and subjects … against his duty of allegiance’, whereupon they ‘made insurrection … by invasion and burning, killing, murdering, and robbing his true obedient subjects’. Alice and Meyler Fay both received pardons for treason in 1529.Footnote ⁴⁶

To maintain a strong retinue, Ossory was forced to spend the country, imposing coign and livery ‘for fower dayes and nyghtes in one place, whiche was never seen before’. And almost his first act as deputy was to renew the council's request for an army of Northumberland spears (‘light fote men, apte to take payn and labours’ like the marchers of Scotland).Footnote ⁴⁷ As for Delvin, O'Connor met the king's ‘sharp letters’ for his release with studied insolence. Interrupting the messenger's translation of the signet letter's formal opening phrase, ‘the Kynges Grace dyd gret hym well’, O'Connor asked derisively, ‘what Kyng?’ ‘The Kyng of England’, came the reply, to which O'Connor answered ‘with pompe, that he trustid, if he moght lyve on yer, to se Irland in that case, that the Kyng schold have no juridiction or intromyttyng there with, and that ther schold be no more name of the Kyng of Ingland in Irland then of the Kyng of Spayne.’Footnote ⁴⁸ During the autumn, Ossory made little progress towards restoring peace in the Pale, finding that detaching Cahir Roe O'Connor from his chief did little to discourage O'Connor's continuing raids or to secure Delvin's release. In late January, however, Ossory's agreement with Sir Thomas Fitzgerald brought further pressure to bear on O'Connor: Fitzgerald sought the king's pardon for having allowed O'Connor to raid the English Pale and now undertook ‘to the best of his power [to] prevent any hurt, damage or prejudice being done to … the king's subjects’.Footnote ⁴⁹ By then, the defence of Meath was an urgent priority, ‘in consideracione quod maxima pars dicti comitatus est vastata, depredata & desolata nonnullis spoliacionibus depredacionibus & cremacionibus per ipsum nunc O Congho^r & complices suos anno instante facto n^cnon diversis alijs injurijs ligeis nostris in eodem comitatu commorantis illatis’.Footnote ⁵⁰ When it finally came, however, the agreement with O'Connor appeared little short of a capitulation. The agreement – to restore O'Connor's wages, to levy them as formerly throughout Meath, and for the deputy to conclude whatever peace with O'Connor he thought most convenient – was taken at a council meeting in Dublin on 25 February with the lords spiritual and temporal of Meath also present: it was recorded on the commissions appointing collectors of subsidy for each of the shire's eighteen baronies and enrolled on the exchequer memoranda roll, along with the council's original minute: ‘It is agreyd by the Deputy & Councell that o Conghors wages shall be levyed upon the plowlandes of Meth by Comissions in maner & forme as it hath bin used to be levied in times past. And further that the s^d Deputy shall conclude what peace w^th o Congho^r that he shall think most convenient.’Footnote ⁵¹ In return for the restoration of O'Connor's wages, the chief agreed to release Delvin, and peace was finally restored to the unfortunate shire of Meath.

As for the governorship, the king finally relented in summer 1529, accepting that Ossory had neither the landed income nor the manraed to defend the English Pale unaided. With Ossory's discharge, however, the king was back to where he had started, fumbling from one expedient to another in pursuit of an effective and reliable governor. He began by appointing as titular lieutenant his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond, with a triumvirate of leading officials (a ‘secret council’) acting as his deputy, but still without significant financial support. Six brief governorships followed between 1529 and 1534, including, ironically, the council's election as justiciar of the unfortunate Lord Delvin again, at the height of the Kildare rebellion. Only after the rebellion did the king finally hit on an effective solution to his problems: the vast increase in crown lands – confiscated from the church, English absentees, and the Kildare rebels – now held out prospects (illusory, as it proved) that his Irish revenues might stretch to cover the additional costs of an English-born governor and the few hundred troops he finally authorised for defence.Footnote ⁵²

In brief, we may say that at no time did Henry VIII show less concern for his Irish lordship than in the years 1526–8. In the absence of the two most powerful magnates who were best able to organise its defence, the English Pale was left almost uniquely weak and vulnerable to every minor assault by the border chiefs. And without additional troops or money from England, the authority of the Dublin government sank to its lowest point. Had Henry VIIII been more conscientious in attending to his kingly duties for the defence of his subjects in Ireland, many of the misfortunes which had befallen the English Pale over the previous ten years might well have been avoided.