Extending the English Pale: Berminghams’ Country,and the Rise of Sir William Bermingham,Baron of Carbury (c.1485–1548)

Across early modern Europe, border regions and frontier societies are an increasingly popular subject of historical inquiry, commonly conceptualised as Frontier and Border Studies which emphasises their relationship with political neighbours in another polity across a boundary line. ¹ This paradigm also has clear relevance to Ireland, especially the most familiar and best documented example, the English Pale around Dublin bordered by a military frontier defending the English parts from Irish chiefs beyond. In border regions elsewhere, a major focus is on cross-border interaction in culture and identity between two nations, especially on the two-way character of acculturation. In Ireland, however, interaction between English and Irish has increasingly been described in terms of a special kind of one-way movement, labelled ‘gaelicisation’. ² This controversial concept – coined a few years before the present interest in Frontier and Border Studies, and replacing the Tudor term, ‘degeneracy’ – supposedly described a phenomenon whereby Ireland's English Pale and community declined and ‘degenerated’, losing their Englishness to become Gaelic in culture and identity. A different form of ‘gaelicisation’ described the influx of Irish immigrants into the Pale region, allegedly undermining its English culture and identity. Far less has been written about the countervailing pressures to ‘gaelicisation’ in border society which saw the assimilation by native Irish of English culture and identity or the extension of ‘English ground’ into Gaelic parts. Most recently, detailed studies by Dr. Sparky Booker, considered below, have instead elaborated on the Pale's supposed ‘gaelicisation’, marginalising its English culture and identity, and reviving the myth of a shrinking, increasingly ‘gaelicised’ Pale. ³

This essay will address these sweeping claims about ‘gaelicisation’ and a shrinking Pale through a case study looking at developments around Berminghams’ country, a Pale district in north-west Kildare, and the career of William Bermingham, captain of his nation. Country and captain have both featured in traditional accounts by proponents of ‘gaelicisation’, depicting Berminghams’ country as among the most important ‘gaelicised territories’ which by 1534 ‘lay entirely within the Gaelic polity’ and became, after Bermingham's death in 1548, ‘the first independent Gaelicised lordship … to be suppressed by the government in the reconquest of the sixteenth century’. ⁴ Talk of its suppression and reconquest, however, overlooks William Bermingham's earlier assimilation into the Pale community as the best documented example of its early Tudor expansion and Carbury's inclusion as the English Pale's single, most extensive addition. Walter Bermingham, lord of Carbury, had in the 1340s served as Ireland's chief governor, but the Berminghams’ west Kildare estates were overrun by O’Connor Faly and this English lineage was later castigated as ‘English rebels’. ⁵ As we shall see, their recovery to the ranks of loyal English lieges owed much to the Kildare earls, but their chief captain escaped the earls’ tutelage after the 1534 rebellion. Sir William Bermingham later won distinction as a military captain and was then ennobled by Henry VIII as 1st baron of Carbury, the first and only captain of an English lineage to receive a Tudor peerage.

Ultimately, the early Tudor Pale's expansion was the work of its ruling magnate, successive Kildare earls, who pursued two different strategies. The first, illustrated by the Berminghams, was to reintegrate those English lineages and their territories which had earlier passed beyond the reach of late medieval English government. Other lineages reintegrated (but not discussed here) included the Harolds and Walshmen in south Dublin and Dillons and Daltons in Westmeath. Along frontiers in Kildare, however, the earls’ favoured strategy was piecemeal conquest of lands earlier overrun by Irish chiefs, including western Carbury and Rathangan conquered from O’Connor Faly, as discussed below. Here, more strenuous attempts to reshape the cultural balance followed. English manors and tillage farming were restored, earthworks and towerhouses constructed for defence, and Irish tenants were recruited to work the land. The lead tenants’ culture and identity were then refashioned to match their new status as English subjects in an English Pale: they were ‘sworn English’, integrated into English local government, sometimes serving on juries or as baronial collectors of subsidy, and performing military service with English longbows. ⁶

Conquest, Improving English Ground, and Restoring English Rule

In Robert Cowley's discourse about 1526 on Ireland's ‘evil state’ and ‘the remedies’, the prolific composer of anti-Kildare reform tracts stumbled across an apparent paradox in early Tudor Kildare's cultural balance. Alongside his trenchant critique of the 9th-earl's government, Cowley noted his many conquests extending the English Pale, notwithstanding the shire's increasing Irish population, language, habit, and customs which allegedly undermined its English culture. In ‘Kildare, named one of the 4 obeisant shires in the English Pale, … may be heard [not] one word of English spoken but all Irish’, so claimed Cowley improbably, noting also ‘Irish habit and tonsures … and Irish garments’. Cowley later listed the earls’ conquests from Irish chiefs, beginning by ‘banishing … the Tooles from Fercullen’ east of Kildare ‘expulsed by force of the sword’, ‘the “Fferture” taken from the Byrnes’; and further south ‘Clonmore, the Fassagh of Bantry and Old Ross taken from MacMurrough’. In the south-west, Carlow, Kilkea, and Athy were

taken from the Mores; Rathangan and Keshboyne taken from O’Connor, and now very late … the barony of Rebane taken from O’More where … Kildare hath built a manor called Woodstock. All [were long] in Irishmen's hands and by … Kildare and his father by reason of the king's authority plucked and taken. ⁷

These conquests extended well beyond Kildare, but significantly included Rathangan and Keshboyne in Berminghams’ country, in which Cowley's interest was fleeting. He moved smartly on to highlight the land's ‘decay … increase of Irishmen, and enfeebling of the king's subjects’, before outlining his ‘remedies to reform the land’ and ‘subdue Irishmen’. Modern historians have mostly followed Cowley's preferences, ignoring English expansion in Kildare, while lingering over the shire's well-documented ‘increase of Irishmen’. ⁸ English expansion and increase of Irishmen were closely connected, however, in ways hitherto unexplored. The Pale's economic recovery had everywhere created a labour shortage, but in Kildare, these trends were accentuated by the Pale's incorporation of extensive conquest land which fuelled the demand for Irish labourers.

Territorially, the Berminghams inhabited a chiefly pastoral district along the Pale's western frontiers. Walter Bermingham, lord of Carbury, had in the 1340s been chief governor of Ireland. The Berminghams split into separate branches, with several cadet lines under the captain of the nation. From 1367, they were usually described as ‘English rebels’, alternating between alliance with the neighbouring O’Connor Faly chief to the south-west in plundering Meath and alliance with the English of Meath against O’Connor. Raids by Berminghams and O’Connors in the mid-1470s, for instance, wrought destruction on the estates of Moyfenrath's leading lord, Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester. ⁹ Under Henry VI, William Bermingham emerged as lord of Carbury, holding ‘Brigard’ [Derryart] and Carrick by knight service. Balymony, also in western Carbury, was held by another military tenant, Walter Delahide, whose family later served the Kildare earls. By 1465, when John Bermingham of Carbury was chief of his nation and patron of Irish learning, ‘Bermingham's Carrick’ was held separately by Piers Bermingham of the Carrick, while three Walshmen had small freeholds in Carbury. In eastern Carbury, Lord Carbury's Bermingham ancestor held lands around Dunfierth by knight service. ¹⁰ The Kildare earls remained overlords of half Carbury barony and, with the Berminghams, claimed lands further west in Offaly and Tethmoy that were long since overrun by O’Connor. The Kildare Rental recorded these various feudal tenures, and the money owing for the commuted military service, but listed ‘O Connor is countre of Offaly’ quite separately under ‘Th’erll of Kyldaris duties upon Irisshmen’. ¹¹ Berminghams’ country was nonetheless a significant addition to the English Pale after the four shires were first so designated by statute in 1495. ¹² In south Dublin and Westmeath the lands of other English lineages also provided significant Pale extensions, but only William Bermingham, captain of Berminghams’ country, leading landowner and erstwhile ‘English rebel’, was important enough to warrant his belated creation in 1541 as baron of Carbury. ¹³

The Kildare earls’ numerous conquests had meanwhile consolidated the Pale's territorial expansion elsewhere, as Robert Cowley observed, typically adding a parish or so from neighbouring Irish chiefs. ¹⁴ Rathangan was among the earliest examples, recovered from O’Connor Faly, probably in 1459. ¹⁵ Much depended on land use capability to improve these conquests, whether prime arable land as at Rathangan, or steep mountain pasture like the Fertire. Predictably, however, the conquests were mostly of tillage land which Kildare then organised into manors geared to more labour-intensive cereal cultivation: with towers built to support the tenants, husbandmen brought in to work the manor could organise their own defence against minor Irish raids. ¹⁶ Cumulatively, the additional land brought in by this piecemeal recovery of parishes and manors was significant, particularly along the Barrow valley and the Leinster mountains’ north-western foothills. Reducing Berminghams’ country was, by contrast, less a conquest. Nevertheless, it marked the Pale frontiers’ most striking advance westwards before four new baronies were created on lands of English lineages nearer Athlone on Co. Westmeath's erection as the Pale's fifth ‘obedient’ shire in 1542. ¹⁷

Reintegrating Berminghams’ Country into the English Pale

Difficulties in defending Berminghams’ country in the fifteenth century partly reflected land use and population levels. Extensive bog, open pasture, and a sparse population left western Carbury open to O’Connor's raids across the River Boyne. In 1654 the Civil Survey recorded that much of north-west Kildare was bog and ‘unprofitable’ because of poor soils, including 45 per cent of the land in Carbury. Carbury's arable land was ‘good for all sorts of graine’, but the pasture was ‘low and wette grounde’, and Carbury's southern reaches soon gave way to the sparsely populated Bog of Allen. ¹⁸ Local conditions thus made it hard for the Berminghams, unsupported, to organise a defended frontier against O’Connor. Carbury castle was destroyed in 1475. By then conditions were improving, but relations with the Kildare earls were guarded. In 1462, parliament ordered a tower built in the march, or borderland, of O’Connor's country at Kinnefad ford, north of Carbury, then ‘much the most convenient road that O’Conghor has’ into Meath. This probably entailed rebuilding an earlier Bermingham castle, the costs being met by a local subsidy of £40 levied throughout Meath. The shire's four adjoining baronies plus Carbury also transported materials for construction, finding meat and drink for the masons and workmen, thus implying that Carbury was not then contributory to subsidies. ¹⁹ A baronial extent of ploughlands of cultivated land was, however, drawn up c.1481 for Kildare including Carbury, assessing the shire's fourteen baronies at 118½ ploughlands altogether, with Carbury assessed at only seven ploughlands. Kildare's overall assessment was perhaps relatively heavy because made two or three years after the other three shires when the tillage revival was more advanced, but Carbury's assessment reflected lower levels of tillage in Berminghams’ country. ²⁰ By 1483, the Great Earl of Kildare was buying up land titles in Carbury. ²¹ Shortly before, Kildare also built a tower on land conquered from O’Connor in the march's ‘extreme frontier’ at Keshboyne (or Kishawanny), across the River Boyne from the chief's Edenderry stronghold, both to resist O’Connor's raids into Meath and as a bridle ‘in chastisement and punishment of the Bermynghames’, presumably for alliance with O’Connor Faly. ²²

The Act of Marches and Maghery in 1488 regulated the billeting of troops for defence by fixing the boundary between the English marches and the maghery, so incidentally also providing statutory confirmation of Carbury's marcher location. In the marches, landlords were permitted to quarter troops on their own tenants by a quasi-Gaelic custom called coign and livery: in the maghery, the English heartland as defined by the act, coign and livery was prohibited. ²³ The Kildare maghery included only two north-eastern baronies, Salt and Naas, both assessed at twenty ploughlands, but this statutory boundary was nonetheless important in determining the militia service owed for the governor's hostings. Maghery landowners contributed footmen to accompany the governor on hostings, an able archer ‘well appointed … for everie xx^tie libr[e] [£20] … they may dispende yerely’: marcher gentry were to ‘sende an horseman well appointed … for everie ten marckes’ yearly. In 1518, when ‘cessing of the horsmen’ owed by Kildare landowners for hostings was entered in the Kildare Rental, 46½ horsemen were listed, including from ‘Bremychams contre: 3 horsmen & a halffe’. Carbury also supplied four-and-a-half carts for each hosting. ²⁴ The same year, Thomas Netterville, chief justice of the liberty of Kildare, held sessions at Castle Carbury, the manor of Sir Walter Delahide, the earl's receiver-general and surveyor, and his eyes and ears there. ²⁵ Clearly, the Pale marches then included Berminghams’ country. This had not been so in spring 1496 when the Poynings’ regime deployed ‘in holdinge’ twenty horse and twenty foot of Walshmen and Harolds, the south Dublin lineages, but similar arrangements were not made for Berminghams’ country. ²⁶ Undertreasurer Hattecliffe's accounts showed no subsidy actually levied for Carbury, despite estimates of subsidy due, but among ‘small farms’ for collection by Kildare's sheriff was 40s. for a messuage and ploughland escheated in Brekeran, Carbury. ²⁷

The major development under Poynings was the important statute of 1495 entitled, ‘Diches to be made aboute the Inglishe pale’, which reflected the region's gradual expansion since c.1460 and its first recorded description as a Pale. The statute marked the final stage in consolidating a ‘hard border’ by erecting earthen ramparts and ditches around the marches of ‘the iiii [obedient] shires’, their traditional name. In early 1496, leading Kildare landlords were commissioned to have the statute proclaimed across the shire and oversee implementation. ²⁸ The earthworks may well have included the extended rampart and ditch to inhibit O’Connor's raids constructed from Fertullagh through Farbill and Moyfenrath baronies to the River Boyne in Carbury and the Meath county boundary, part of a system of public works across Kildare instituted by the Great Earl. ²⁹ A reform treatise had in 1515 urged that in the other three shires all villages and towns within six miles of the Irish should be ditched and hedged strongly ‘after the maner of … Kildare’. Under the 9th earl, townships with a plough provided a cart for a week ‘to cary stones to the castels on the borders’, a labourer for another week ‘to cast diches and fastnes’ there, while an axeman laboured for two or four days ‘to cutte passages upon the borders of Irishmen’, with the shire's ‘gentylmen and horsemen’ on hand ‘to defende them’. This ‘cesse of the werkes’, entered in the Kildare Rental, specified the labourers’ place of assembly, with labourers from Carbury, Clane, and Connell baronies assembling at Rathangan. ³⁰

The restoration of English common law and parliamentary taxation completed Carbury's integration into the Pale. The shire's erection c.1514 as a feudal liberty under the 9th earl had probably been instrumental in consolidating the public works programme. Perhaps with the previously-noted liberty sessions at Carbury in mind, Kildare's critic, Robert Cowley, complained that the earl exercised a jurisdiction ‘farre above … any lib^rtie, conv^rting to him self … the kinges iurisdiction, regall customes, excheates & forfeitures’, and not obeying ‘the kinges writ of sub pena, private seale, the deputies or counsailes comandementes’. ³¹ The restoration of parliamentary taxation was reflected in the appointment as subsidy collector for Carbury in 1520–21 of Conly Makkygan, even though disorders across the shire following Kildare's replacement as governor by the earl of Surrey meant that subsidy owing from Carbury (£7 13s 4d) went uncollected. Still, levels of tillage across Carbury, which determined the barony's contribution to taxation, had by then risen sharply to 11½ ploughlands by extent, and twelve ploughlands in 1533, amongst the highest assessments of Pale marcher baronies. ³² In 1524, Redmund Bermingham of Longwood was Carbury's subsidy collector; in 1533, two more Irishmen, Thady Okylleghan of Moyville and Thady Ohonne of Carryke, were joint collectors; while in 1534, the collector was William Bermingham of Dunfierth himself. Apart from collectors for Salt barony, and in 1533 for Ikeathy, the remaining dozen collectors appointed for Kildare baronies in 1533 and 1534 all had Irish names. ³³ Kildare's higher proportion of Irish collectors than other Pale shires again suggests that its increasing Irish population reflected enhanced opportunities there for agricultural employment, as indeed their common description as ‘Irish earthtillers’ might suggest. Carbury's increasingly English appearance nonetheless matched the extension of English manorialism across Berminghams’ country, reflecting its integration into the expanding English Pale.

The expectation that Berminghams’ country was now amenable to royal government was confirmed by William Bermingham's appearance in chancery in 1524 with forty-two Pale marchers giving recognisances for good conduct. The forty ‘Englyshe marchors’ included Sir Walter Delahide, bound over in 100 marks; but slightly different conditions were imposed on the three ‘Iryshe marchers’, Bermingham and two more heads of English lineages. Bermingham was bound over in £40 to support the king's officers, sheriff, coroners, and escheators, not allowing the king's enemies ‘to passe and repasse’ through ‘his countrey’. He should not allow his family or servants to take ‘coyne ne lyverye of any other mannes tenauntes’ in Berminghams’ country, while ensuring they had ‘sufficient horssemen and kernne [unarmoured Irish foot soldiers] contynually resident’ to defend their lands in line with established obligations for horsemen. He should ‘bring no holdeing of horssemen, nether kernne, into his countrey’ except by the deputy and council's agreement, nor permit such Irish exactions as ‘coddeis, ne coshers’. ³⁴ Finally, Bermingham should appear personally before the deputy or council on command and answer for extortions and oppressions by his family and servants or bring them ‘to be justyfied by the lawe’, excepting two rebel Bermingham heads, William fitz Walter and John fitz William. ³⁵ The Kildare Rental listing horse and harness given to local lords suggests that c.1524 William Bermingham – now captain of his nation, but first appearing in the listings in 1513 during his predecessor's captaincy – oversaw three more politically influential Bermingham heads, Meyler Bermingham, Nicholas ‘Caoch’ Bermingham, and Redmund Bermingham of Longwood. ³⁶

A key development in Carbury's integration into the Pale was its new standing defences, notably the towers screening the barony from O’Connor's raiding. Kishawanny castle was a major fortification guarding Sir Walter Delahide's township on the Boyne, ‘being the frontures of … OChonor’. Further north, Kinnefad castle commanded another ford over the Boyne, while to the west towers bordering Carbury at Tecroghan and Castlejordan likewise barred O’Connor's entry into Meath. ³⁷ A mile south of Carbury, the Great Earl had built Ballinure tower, an outpost of Rathangan ‘in extrema parte anglicane patrie super costeras Offalye’ [in the outermost part of the English country on the shores of Offalye], guarding another key pass into the English Pale, ‘prohibens O Cconour et aliis ferocibus Hibernicis patriam illam depredare’ [restraining O Cconour and other wild Irish from plundering that country]. In 1517, the 9th earl granted Ballinure tower and 145 acres arable by knight service to his trusty servant, Meyler Fay (alias Milerus Offey or Milo Offaye), horseman, paying 4d annually for every horse and cow pasturing on lands there. Fay's appointment in 1524 as subsidy collector for Offaly and the king's pardon in 1529 for offences in England and Ireland, presumably during Fay's brief sojourn at court with Kildare, not only suggests his English identity but also provides some indication of a collector's status. ³⁸ These towers defending ‘marches of danger’ along Berminghams’ country's contested western frontier all eventually succumbed to O’Connor's raids: Ballinure about 1522, Kishawanny during the 1534 rebellion, and Castlejordan in 1540. Kinnefad's rebuilt tower was also razed. Henry VIII's order in 1540 for building a new tower at Kinnefad and restoring the other three reflected the council's advice that they guarded ‘the onely passages where [O’Connor] muste entier within your Pale’, now including Carbury and Rathangan. These fortifications should stop ‘hym and all the Yrishemen behind hym from invading your Pale with any horsemen’. ³⁹

How the Irish Became English

To consolidate peace and security in Carbury and discourage casual Irish raids, the manors were rebuilt with fortified villages of manorial tenants supplying the labour to extend tillage and armed with English longbows for defence. They included Ballina and Carbury manors on the estate earlier built up by the 9th earl's key officer in Berminghams’ country, Sir Walter Delahide. An extent in 1540 valued them as worth £39 annually, a recent reduction of £9 after O’Connor's continuing raids on Carbury. Carbury's wealthy rectory was worth 40 marks annually. The extent jury returned that Ballina castle was in good repair, but Carbury castle, nearer O’Connor's frontier, was now very ruinous, needing repairs costing 100 marks. Significant numbers of Irish tenants worked the two manors’ extensive tillage (260 acres in Carbury, 447 acres in Ballina), with pasture and some underwood. Each manor had five ploughs, and by custom each plough owed three boondays reaping corn and found four men to cut turf. Five cottagers also dwelled rent-free at Carbury but gave four boondays’ labour in autumn, finding five men to cut turf. Each farmer or cottager having seven sheep gave one sheep annually, price 10d. Those with seven pigs gave a pig at Martinmas, price 8d. In Adamstone, Thomastone, and Carbury townships, prime arable land commanded 20d. per acre, plus one gallon of ale and ten cakes of bread, a high rent for marchland bearing coign and livery. These customary services resembled those at Ballyboggan priory, essentially an extension of Berminghams’ country under its prior, Thomas Bermingham, and extended by the Carbury jury the day after the previous extent. Increased tillage levels in Carbury, exceeding the five-ploughland increase since 1481 in the barony's subsidy assessment, reflected in part Delahide's emulation of the 9th earl's estate improvement policies. ⁴⁰

With English husbandmen unavailable, ‘poor Irish earthtillers’ attracted by grants of English law supplied the additional labour to restore cereal cultivation in the marches. Legally, this practice probably originated in legislation of 1465 which afforded Irishmen in the four shires an opportunity to become English by culture and identity. One statute, noting ‘the great number of Irishmen who exceed greatly the English’, required Irishmen aged between sixteen and sixty, dwelling with Englishmen and speaking English, to have English longbows in ‘augmentation of the king's liegemen’. Another ordered Irishmen dwelling among Englishmen in the four shires sworn the king's liegeman before the governor within one year, adopting English dress and surname (town, colour, or occupation). Anticipating a strong response, an additional clause extended this ‘swearing English’ to those Lord Deputy Desmond ‘will assign … for the multitude … to be sworn’, perhaps permitting the two resident ex-governors, Kildare and Portlester, to take these oaths in Kildare. The English surname clause was probably honoured more in the breach, but in 1479 Portlester's servants included Cormoke Smyth, smith, and fferoll Carter, workman. His Harristown tenants included four Irish yeomen, while the now rising status of Irish in English society was exemplified by ‘Tibbot Odownyll of Ballysax, gentleman’ residing nearby. As ruling magnates, the Kildare earls needed Irish labourers for their rebuilt manors on lands conquered from neighbouring chiefs: the legislation answered these needs well. ⁴¹

Irish tenants, once ‘sworn English’, became liable for military and jury service. By statute, husbandmen with goods valued at £10 wielded the distinctively English longbow, with regular musters by barony. ⁴² Juror listings for the 1540–41 extents of crown land offer an indication of tenants’ ethnicity. Dr. Booker has recently examined Kildare juries to determine whether the Kildare earls provided opportunities unavailable elsewhere for Irish tenants, but her methodology differs from that here, reaching different conclusions. ⁴³ Juries commonly extended from the one location on the same day adjoining parcels of crown land. Particularly for minor properties, the clerk frequently recorded only higher status jurors, often English, omitting others; but by comparing juror listings for different estates on the same day and location, the full jury can often be reconstituted. The jury empanelled at Carbury to extend Delahide's two manors and neighbouring crown possessions reveals nineteen jurors, ‘true and lawful men of the … county’. ⁴⁴ The extents often named lead tenants, while other tenants appeared as jurors but not in actual extents. Thus, between tenants and jurors, the manorial tenantry's ethnicity may often be gauged.

For Carbury, their names disclose eleven ethnic Irish jurors and eight English (including two Berminghams, and four Walshmen), but all true and lawful men, and apparently well-established tenants. The extent itself named twelve tenants of Carbury manor, six also serving as jurors. Four of these six juror-tenants were English by name, and five of the six non-juror tenants were Irish, the exception being Henry Cowley, the manor's recently appointed farmer and constable. On lands recovered from O’Connor in Kilmore and Kishawanny on the Boyne, however, all seven named tenants had Irish names (including Henry O’Connor, and another juror), as had two more Kilmore jurors not named as tenants. Further east in Berminghams’ country's heartland, the tenantry and jurors were mostly English. Clearly, on conquest land Irish tenants attracted from elsewhere were more likely, although conceivably Henry and Arthur O’Connor, jurors, had survived from the O’Connor Faly clan. On Ballina manor, where John Ley was farmer and constable, William and Peter Bermingham were the only jurors among twelve named tenants, eight with Irish names. The partial retention on juries of the barony's remaining English thus points to Carbury's relative demographic stability during its recent assimilation into the Pale. ⁴⁵

Carbury also contrasted with neighbouring Rathangan where the earls’ influence was more direct, providing greater opportunities for Irish tenants, perhaps a higher status, more work, and participation in English local government. Following its recovery from O’Connor, Rathangan lay deserted, without tenants or buildings; but Kildare soon rebuilt the manor with very substantial fortifications, including Ballinure tower, its frontier defences coordinated with Carbury. In 1540, Rathangan was protected by a stone castle, adequately repaired, ‘scitum in finibus patrie Anglicane in Hibernia super limites patrie de Offalye ubi O Cconour … commorat’ [sited in the marches of the English country in Ireland on the borders of Offalye where O Cconour … lingers]. In Rathangan's outlying townships, two horsemen received grants by military service of supporting towerhouses with 205 acres arable, plus pasture: Meyler Fay guarded the pass into the Pale at Ballinure, as noted earlier, while Magnus O Coyne likewise held Caryk Everely. Land here was especially suitable for tillage. Cornelius O Gormoyle and seven more tenants worked another 200 acres arable, mainly wheat and oats, paying £10 yearly plus services, and bearing the lord's horsemen, kerne, and galloglass for the country's defence in return for 260 acres pasture, commons, and turbary rent free. Ten cottagers also owed customary services, with another 400 acres of arable cultivated in surrounding townships. Rathangan's recovery thus confirmed the 9th earl's reputation as ‘the gretest improver of his landis in this land’, boasting a dovecot, a garden, 60 acres demesne land, and a watermill farmed in 1518 for an impressive 240 pecks of wheat and malt annually. ⁴⁶

Rathangan manor's extensive improvement also consolidated its increasingly English appearance, as did the vast extension of tillage. Offaly barony's subsidy assessment rose steeply from nine to 14¾ ploughlands between 1481 and 1533. Its subsidy collectors also included a sprinkling of Irishmen: Cowroll McDermot in 1520–21; Donogh McConoghor of Marteneston and Maurice Obeghan of Rathmoke in 1533. Worth over £38 a year in 1537, Rathangan manor was extended at £41 annually in 1540. ⁴⁷ Of Rathangan's extent jury, fifteen jurors ‘proborum et legalium hominum’ can be identified. Over half were Rathangan tenants, the others mostly from townships elsewhere in Offaly barony. All but two jurors had Irish names, a much higher proportion than Carbury, but among tenants in the actual extent the only juror named was William FitzThomas, vicar of Rathangan: the earl had also been patron of Rathangan's modest rectory, worth £12 6s 8d annually. ⁴⁸ Thus, in 70 years, successive earls had built up a populous, thriving manor on uninhabited lands recovered from O’Connor.

The key difference between Rathangan's overwhelmingly Irish tenantry and jurors and the ethnic balance between English and Irish of nearby Carbury's population was that Rathangan's tenantry were immigrants post-1459 into land previously waste, whereas local English had remained in the Bermingham heartland. Dr. Booker's recent study of Kildare juries concluded nonetheless that the ‘presence of a major Kildare manor or castle’, such as Rathangan, hardly ‘made much difference to the status of the Irish’ there, but that ‘whether the settlement was within the Pale’ is what mattered. Neither district was ‘outside the Pale boundary’, as claimed: Berminghams’ country was a more recent Pale addition, where the earls’ direct influence was less and English jurors and tenants more numerous. Nevertheless, it would be hard to imagine that the earls were not responsible for Rathangan's overwhelmingly Irish manorial tenantry and jurors. Exceptionally, Dermott O Dyn even headed an extent jury at nearby Milltown, so underlining this Irishman's rising status. ⁴⁹

From Marcher Captain to Tudor Service Noble: Sir William Bermingham, Lord Carbury

By the 1520s, William Bermingham's status as Carbury's leading gentleman was under serious pressure from Kildare's officer, Sir William Delahide, following the revival and ongoing expansion of English culture and ‘civility’.

Delahide's principal seat was at Moyclare nearby in Meath, but he enjoyed better relations with Kildare gentry. The earl's inveterate critic, Robert Cowley, offered some insight into this challenge in another report in late 1533. Discussing the militia service owed in ‘the iiij obedient shires, termed th English Pale’, Cowley argued that the Pale's strength ‘consisteth in the marches’, especially Dalton, Delamare, Dillon, and Tyrrell, ‘captaines of their contreys & nations’ in Meath, ‘w^th diuerse oth^r gentlemen & marchers’ elsewhere, Bermingham, Harold, and Walshmen. Whenever needed for defence ‘or oth^r exploit’, these captains formerly supported the governor ‘w^th a band of horsemen & footmen, & … togeth^r made a goodly company’, but as governor the Kildare earls had since purchased many ‘lands of those contreys & placed their sonnes, bretherne, … & follow^rs there’ and had ‘in maner’ – so Cowley claimed with customary exaggeration – ‘subdued & extinguished all the march captaines’ and ‘conv^rted the[ir] obedienc & strength’ to themselves. ⁵⁰ Alongside Delahide, Kildare had inserted into Carbury his brother, Walter, with three townships worth c.£4 annually. ⁵¹ Cowley also demeaned the combat-value of the maghery's inhabitants who were mostly ‘no redy men of warr’ for hostings, ‘neith^r to spoile nor burne a contrey or to resist an invasion aft^r the maner of the lande’, but footmen, few, ‘& to small purpose’. ⁵²

Then in 1534, Bermingham's prospects were transformed by the unlikely insurrection of the 9th earl's son and heir, Thomas Fitzgerald, Lord Offaly. In the revolt's aftermath, an English-born governor and garrison replaced Ireland's ruling magnate, prompting a radical overhaul of traditional arrangements for the Pale's rule and defence and Fitzgerald's attainder with leading supporters. In Berminghams’ country, the fall of the Carbury gentry (Delahide, Peter and Richard Walsh, and Walter Fitzgerald – all Kildare clients) and the liberty of Kildare's suppression also transformed local government. As rebellion raged across the Pale, Bermingham initially went to ground. The king's officers reported that Delahide's wife, Dame Janet Eustace, was ‘chief counsailour and stirrer of this inordinate rebellion’, with Delahide and their sons, James and John. The king's army ‘scomfited the traditour’ in Berminghams’ country ‘and had him in chase’, but Fitzgerald ‘fled … into Delahides castel of Balyna, and ther was rescued’. ⁵³ Balina soon surrendered. Sir Walter and Dame Janet were arrested at Moyclare, lodged in Dublin castle, and charged with complicity in their sons’ revolt; but Dame Janet, imprisoned in duress for a year, refused to incriminate her husband, dying in Dublin castle soon after the couple's trial and acquittal. ⁵⁴ After James Delahide's attainder, a special statute in 1536, ‘Thacte of Delahide lands in Carbrie’, secured the king immediate possession of Sir Walter's estates. Bermingham's loyalty during the revolt stood out, however, and his initial reward was custody of Delahide and Fitzgerald's estates. ⁵⁵

In July 1537, pending the king's commissioners’ arrival, Robert Cowley eagerly proffered further advice about Ireland's reformation. He recommended that ‘holdes and garrisons … in places of daungier’, many uninhabited ‘nowe desolate in ruyne’, should be granted for rent to ‘marchers, men of warre, having good retynues’, with ‘estate of inheritaunce therin’. This should fortify the Englishry, increasing ‘the kinges revenues, and obedyencye’, especially ‘certain piles bordering upon OConors cuntrey, whiche were … Kildares and Delahides’ and ‘a great defence of the marches’, but now mostly waste. Predictably, Cowley recommended the Butlers and Lord Delvin as ‘moste worthie’ for ‘suche … marches of daunger’ but also, surprisingly, William Bermingham – no longer seen as Kildare's man, or an unreliable marcher captain – keeping a small garrison ‘at Portlester, and the Brymedghams with theme’ ⁵⁶

Conflicting comments about Bermingham, now stepping into Kildare's shoes, greeted the commissioners’ arrival in September 1537. The Kildare gentleman, David Sutton's ‘book’ was hostile, denying that any Kildare lord now ‘set coyne and liuery upon eny other manes ten^ants’, but then describing Bermingham's Irish impositions:

Brymycham useth almaner exaccons worse then … Kyldare, [with] coyne & liuery … upon the kings lands as upon other gentylmens lands, and almaner works upon the ten^ants upon their owne charges.

Bermingham was essentially applying the earl's public works programme to forfeited land in his custody. He ‘causeth the ten^ants to give xvi q^artes to the gallon’ whether of ale or butter ‘in paieng hym his vitailes or mets’, and ‘a gallon of butter upon every cowe in his lordship’. He ‘made it for a lawe’ throughout Carbury that no-one should bring anything to market ‘but onely to his wif, and she to make the price’. He also harboured thieves, keeping ‘the Connors’ as ‘better spies in this countrey’ than those ‘borne here’. ⁵⁷ By contrast, John Alen's ‘book’ extolled Bermingham's activity, but lamented taking Irishmen, ‘our natural enymyes, to our tenauntes and erthetyllers’, on his recently acquired estates around Celbridge and St Wolstan's priory, being ‘driven’ thereto by ‘scar[ce]nes of thEngli[s]h blodde’ here. He also recommended Bermingham for a peerage: Offaly's ‘hither parte … untyll Tower Trowan’, once ‘inhabytid with the Brymmyniames’, should be restored, with Bermingham made ‘lorde therof’ in perpetuity. ⁵⁸

By then, Bermingham was in high favour with the incoming governor, Lord Leonard Grey. Now recognised as one of Kildare's two best captains, Bermingham led companies of the king's army in raiding the Irishry, commanding 100 spears against Turlough O’Reilly in late 1537. By 1538, Grey's lease of Ballyboggan priory, following its superior, Thomas Bermingham's surrender and pensioning, provided another reason to support him. Bermingham accompanied Grey's viceregal progress with six horsemen to Limerick and O’Brien's bridge in summer 1538, receiving chiefs’ submissions and razing castles, returning from Galway to Maynooth via Tyrrell's country. From there, on Grey's orders, Bermingham attacked Turlough Boy O’Reilly, then at peace, where Tyrrell's captain was slain. When the king's council examined him afterwards about an unauthorised raid, Bermingham showed Grey's letters for his discharge. Subsequently, a knighthood enhanced his reputation. ⁵⁹ Much later, the new governor, Sir Anthony St Leger, re-examined Bermingham, John Darcy and Thomas Tyrrell about Grey's viceregal progress, appending to their confession that Bermingham had, as best he could, subscribed his name: S[ir] W[illiam] B[ermingham]. ⁶⁰

Grey's military activities nonetheless sparked growing unrest among Irish chiefs, fearing conquest. The Ulster chiefs’ invasion of the Pale maghery underlined the Pale's continuing crisis of lordship since 1534. Henry VIII's response was three new peerages for leading Pale gentry, Oliver Plunkett, Edmund Butler, and William Bermingham, also advancing Thomas Eustace, Lord Kilcullen, as Viscount Baltinglass. ⁶¹ The king expected new Tudor service nobles like Bermingham, to be conspicuously loyal, of exemplary conduct, and devoted crown servants. In the Pale's prevailing conditions service meant, above all, military service. The insurrection had offered Bermingham little opportunity to display loyalty, beyond distancing himself from Delahide and the rebel leadership; but afterwards he quickly adapted, exploiting new opportunities and winning recognition as leading Pale captain. Knowing the king's intentions, the Irish council recommended that, to support his new dignity, Bermingham should receive ex-monastic lands worth £20 from Ballyboggan and Clonard, then in his custody. ⁶² These two houses had been valued at over £31 after deductions including Thomas Bermingham's £5 annual pension, but O’Connor's recent raids had further reduced Ballyboggan's value by £37. Thus, when created baron of Carbury in 1541, Bermingham's entailed knight-service grant of Ballyboggan and Clonard for £4 3s 4d annual rent, was distinctly generous. ⁶³ After Bermingham's death, his young son Edward, 2nd baron of Carbury (1548–50), died without male heir, so extinguishing the peerage, but Bermingham's Dunfierth estates passed to Edward's cousin, Walter, so preserving the lineage's earlier status. ⁶⁴

The particulars of Carbury's early Tudor recovery strikingly illustrate Kildare's twin strategy for extending the Pale. English lineages were reintegrated, conquest land improved. Kildare rebuilt and fortified English manors, recruiting Irish ‘earthtillers’ who were ‘sworn English’ to work and defend them. These men were integrated into English local government and performed military service wielding English longbows. Certainly, their English culture and identity was questionable, but English culture was a capacious concept, its various Tudor guises sometimes going unrecognised. Like Robert Cowley, modern historians have overlooked this revival, painting English expansion as ‘gaelicisation’ in a shrinking Pale which allegedly ‘encompassed only a small corner of north-eastern Kildare’ and ‘ended near Trim’. ⁶⁵ Paradoxically, Kildare's growing population of ‘earthtillers’ reflected the earls’ success in enlarging the Pale, their conquests extending opportunities for erstwhile Irishmen ‘sworn English’.

In the later fourteenth century, after Berminghams’ country had passed beyond government control, the Berminghams had remained in situ in their Carbury heartland, as did English lineages in south Dublin and Westmeath. The critical point in Carbury's recovery into the Pale was the Berminghams’ English identity, not their ‘gaelicisation’. Established procedures existed whereby Irishmen could be ‘sworn English’, acquiring English law, but no amount of ‘gaelicisation’ could bring the Berminghams ‘within the Gaelic polity’: this modern concept never created a single Gaedhil. In a marcher society, Bermingham's use of Irish custom, as outlined in David Sutton's ‘book’, was unremarkable, but confident claims of ‘high levels of gaelicization’ are a big step from this. ⁶⁶ The Tudor term, ‘degeneracy’, a decline from English ‘civility’, is more ambiguous and more sparingly invoked, but it usefully sidesteps fruitless debate about how much Irish custom amounted to ‘gaelicisation’. The Berminghams, whether degenerate or not, were always seen as English. The Pale's extension across Berminghams’ country restored English rule and law, confirming the Berminghams as loyal English subjects where, before, they had been English rebels. Surrounding districts overrun by O’Connor, including Kishawanny, were treated as conquest land, subject to expropriation. English law and identity saved the Berminghams from expropriation, the penalty Kildare would otherwise surely have visited on them. English lineages elsewhere had similar experiences; ⁶⁷ but uniquely, Bermingham's loyalty, service, and broader estates were rewarded by a Tudor peerage.