Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/216

196 to their enemies, however inconstant in their engagements, uncertain, untrue in ordinary obligations, they were without rivals in the world in their passionate attachments among themselves; and of all the chiefs who fell from Fitzgerald's banner, and hastened with submission to the English deputy, there was perhaps not one who, though steeped in the blood of a hundred murders, would not have been torn limb from limb rather than have listened to a temptation to betray him.

At length, after a narrow escape from a surprise, from which he rescued himself only by the connivance of the Irish kerne who were with the party sent to take him, the young earl, as he now called himself, weary of his wandering life, and when no Spaniards came, seeing that his cause was for the present hopeless, offered to surrender. It was by this time August, and Lord Leonard Grey, his father's brother-in-law, was present with the army. To him he wrote from O'Connor's Castle, in King's County, apologizing for what he had done, desiring pardon 'for his life and lands,' and begging his kinsman to interest himself in his behalf. If he could obtain his forgiveness, he promised to deserve it. If it was refused, he said that he 'must shift for himself the best that he could.'

In reply to this overture, Grey suggested an interview. The appointment of so near a relative of the Kildares to high office in Ireland, had been determined, we may be sure, by the Geraldine influence in the