Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/446

426 gained increasing influence over him. He ceased to hold communications with the council, and selected a private circle of advisers from the partisans and relations of the Earl of Kildare. Gerald Mac Gerald, who had been a prominent leader in the rebellion, was appointed marshal of the army; and Geraldine marauders, who had been in prison, were let loose from their cages, and returned to their old habits. Kildare's two sons-in-law, O'Connor and O'Carroll, were received into favour; and Grey's Irish tendencies had developed themselves so rapidly, that at the Midsummer of 1538, four months after St Leger had left Dublin, Lord James Butler wrote, 'My Lord Deputy is the Earl of Kildare newly born again, not only in destroying of those that always had served the King's Majesty, but in maintaining the whole sect, band, and alliance of the said Earl, after so vehement and cruel a sort as hath not been seen.' The frontier fortresses which had been built for the defence of Kilkenny were taken out of the hands of the Earl of Ormond, and bestowed on O'Carroll. The family retainers of the Butlers could not appear in Dublin streets without danger of being insulted. 'If all Ireland,' Lord Butler said, 'should devise to enfeeble the Englishry of this land, and by a mean under-colour of indifferency to strengthen the Irishry, they would not imagine more earnester ways than my Lord Deputy now doth.' Desmond, through his connivance, was stronger than ever in the south.