ABSTRACT
THE death of 'The Great Earl of Kildare' does not end a period but rather falls in its heyday, for the Geraldine 'all-but-kingship' of Ireland was to last over twenty years after him. Dividing lines are notoriously hard to draw in history. This is particularly so in Irish history, and in fact the fall of the house of Kildare in 1534 was only a prelude to the Reconquest of Ireland which it took the whole Tudor age to accomplish. The ruin of the house of Desmond had to be brought about in 1583, and that of the house of O'Neill in 1603, before the Conquest of Ireland, feudal and chiefly, Gaelic and 'Old English', was finally achieved.
