Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/448

428 dissensions, and weaving a Catholic confederacy. The union promised well throughout the island; and Desmond's exertions were ably seconded by a sister of the late Earl of Kildare. Lady Eleanor Fitzgerald had been the wife of McCarty Reagh, of Minister. In the fastnesses of the Cork mountains she had given a shelter to her nephew Gerald, Lord Thomas's brother, and now titular earl. Her husband dying, she resolved to gain over another powerful clan to the common cause, by giving her hand to the chief of the O'Donnells. The marriage was regarded as the sacrament of the general reconciliation. It was arranged at a conference which her son the McCarty, the Earl of Desmond, and Lord Gerald held with ambassadors from O'Neil. When the meeting was over, Lady Eleanor began, without delay, her progress to the north to her future husband, and, taking her nephew with her, she paid a visit first to O'Brien in Thomond. Thence she went into Galway to the Bourkes, and so through Sligo to O'Donnell's own country. O'Neil, who had married her sister, joined her there; and thus the interests of the young Gerald were adopted by a coalition of all the great Irish leaders. A body-guard of four-and-twenty men was assigned to him, as a security against attempts at assassination; and the chiefs took an oath never to rest till they had restored him to his rank and estates. This was the opportunity which Lord Leonard Grey had chosen to play into the hands of the Geraldines of the Pale, to put