At this time the wardship of the heir, Nicholas Hollywood, was in the hands of Richard Delahide and Thomas Howth.
It seems hardly possible that the Lord Thomas FitzGerald could have heard of the mishap so quickly unless treachery had been employed. Be that as it may, he and a band of armed followers arrived at Artane in the early morning, being the 28th of July, and surrounded the castle while the Archbishop still slept.
Among the party were the young Vice-Deputy’s uncles, Sir James and Oliver FitzGerald, James Delahide, and about forty men.
He sent two Dublin yeomen, John Teeling and Nicholas Wafer, into the house to bring out the Archbishop. They dragged him out of bed, and brought him before the Lord Thomas “feeble for age and sickness, kneeling in his shirt and mantle, bequeathing his soul to God, his body to the traitor’s mercy.” He “besought him not to remember former injuries, but to consider his present calamity, and whatever malice he might bear to his person to respect his calling.”
It seems that the “Silken Thomas” was touched by the appeal of his helpless foe, and turning his head aside, he said, “_Beir naim an bodach_,” meaning, “Take the churl away from me,” and, no doubt, as he afterwards said, he only intended them to imprison him. His followers, however, put a different interpretation upon his order, and immediately murdered the Archbishop, who was in the fifty-eighth year of his age.
Some say he was dragged within the castle hall, and there put to death, while others say that the spot on which he was slain was hedged in and shunned as an unholy place for many years.
Lord Thomas could not have been ignorant of what had occurred, as he sent Robert Reilly the same day to Maynooth with a casket which had belonged to the murdered prelate.
Lord Offaly was excommunicated for the crime in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with great solemnity.
Shortly after this Thomas Howth, _alias_ St. Laurence, one of young Hollywood’s guardians, went to live at Artane.
This Nicholas Hollywood also died while his son Christopher was a minor, and in 1570 the wardship and marriage of the boy was granted to John Bathe, of Drumcondra. In 1585 a Charles Hollywood is referred to as being of Tartaine.