Siegecraft on the Tudor frontier: the siege of Dublin, 1534, and the crisis of the Kildare rebellion

In retrospect, the turning point in the Kildare rebellion came with the rebels’ failure to capture Dublin, and the ordnance, shot and powder in the king’s castle there, during the long siege in summer and autumn 1534, in part because, as this article argues, the city’s capture had not initially been seen as an immediate priority. Kildare kept back most of his ordnance and gunners to defend Maynooth castle, and historians have focused instead on the brief siege and capture of Maynooth by the king’s army in March. Richard Stanyhurst’s description of the rebellion, written forty years later, includes much fiction and special pleading; but Dublin was Stanyhurst’s native city, and his Chronicle provides the fullest account of the siege. It is here checked against available contemporary sources, suggesting that it is reliable.