John Alen

Despite his grievance against the archbishop, Thomas always maintained that he had intended to spare Alen's life but that his order (delivered in Irish) to "take him away" had been misinterpreted by his followers as a command to kill him.

He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge,[1] graduated in the latter place, and spent some years in Italy, partly at Rome, for studies and for a business of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury.

He was ordained as a priest on 25 August 1499, and held various parochial benefices until 1522, about which time he attracted the attention of Cardinal Wolsey, whose helpful commissary he was in the matter of the suppression of the minor monasteries.

[2] He continued to receive ecclesiastical advancement, and assisted Wolsey in his legatine functions, among other things in the suit instituted by the cardinal against Henry VIII in May 1527, by which it was sought at first to have the marriage with Catharine of Aragon declared invalid without her knowledge.

With the rest of the English clergy he had to pay a heavy fine (1531) for violation of the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire, in recognizing the legatine authority of Wolsey, then, in the king's eyes, a heinous crime, and a reason for the cardinal's indictment.

[4] The Chancellor, Archbishop John Alen, attempted to persuade him not to commit himself to such a rash proceeding; but the young lord's harper, understanding only Irish, and seeing signs of wavering in FitzGerald's bearing, commenced to recite a poem in praise of the deeds of his ancestors, telling him at the same time that he lingered there over long.

He seems also to have been a man of methodical habits, for in the archives of the Anglican archdiocese of Dublin are still preserved two important registers made by his order, the Liber Niger, or Black Book, and the Repertorium Viride, or Green Repertory, both so called, after the custom of the age, from the colour of the binding.