"This book focuses on the political and social world of Gerald Fitzgerald the 'Wizard' earl of Kildare from 1537 to 1586. Kildare's experience provides us with an important insight into the process by which the Irish elites came into conflict with the crown and its representatives in the decades after the fateful Kildare rebellion in 1534. As the case of the 'Wizard' earl suggests, however, this outcome was not inevitable. After surviving Henry VIII's efforts to capture him while in exile on the continent, Kildare went on in the reign of Edward VI to salvage his lands and return to Ireland. Under the Catholic Mary he was restored to the earldom and re-established Geraldine primacy on the Leinster borders."--BOOK JACKET.