Note 23 — PREFACE.

This youth was the only son of the Earl of Desmond, already mentioned. He had been detained a prisoner in the Tower from his infancy as a pledge for his father’s loyalty. He was afterwards sent to Ireland as a state engine to play off against another Geraldine who had made claims to the forfeited Palatinate; but after he had fretted his hour on the bloody stage of his own country, he was brought back to England, and lingering at court for a few months in hopeless despondency, he died in the prime of his youth, of a broken heart.—See Pacata Hibernia.