He married (1) Joan, daughter and heiress of James, eleventh earl of Desmond, widow of James, ninth earl of Ormonde, and mother of his rival, Thomas, tenth earl; (2) Eleanor, daughter of Edmund Butler, lord Dunboyne, by whom he had James, called 'the Queen's Earl' [q. v.], Thomas, and five daughters.
Sir John of Desmond, who had immediately on his landing joined Fitzmaurice, signalising his adhesion by the murder of Captain Henry Davells at Tralee, became, on the death of Fitzmaurice and till the accession of the earl, head of the rebel army. Sharing with his brother in the vicissitudes of the war, he was in December 1581, after having been wounded on several occasions, entrapped by Captain Zouche in the neighbourhood of Castlelyons. His body was sent to Cork and 'was hanged in chaynes ouer the citty gates, where it hanged up for 3 or foure yeares togeather as a spectacle to all the beholders to looke on, vntill at length a greate storme of wynd blew it off, but the head was sent to Dublin, and there fastened to a pole and set over the castle wall.'
[The chief authorities are Hamilton's Calendar of State Papers, vols. i. and ii.; Collins's Sydney State Papers, vol. i.; Calendar of Carew MSS. vols. i. and ii.; O'Daly's Initium, incrementa, et exitus familiæ Geraldinorum; O'Sullevan's Historiæ Catholicæ Iberniæ Compendium; Annals of the Four Masters; Annals of Loch Cé; Morrin's Calendar of Patent Rolls, vols. i. and ii.; Unpublished Geraldine Documents, ed. Hayman and Graves; Thomas Churchyard's A Scourge for Rebels; Bishop Carleton's A Thankful Remembrance of God's Mercy; Kerry Mag. vol. i., where, under the title 'Antiquities of Tralee,' will be found a most excellent discussion on that part of Desmond's life which relates to his rebellion, said to be by the late Archdeacon Rowan; Cox's Hibernica Anglicana, vol. i.; Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, vol. ii.]
FITZGERALD, GERALD, eleventh Earl of Kildare (1525–1585), was son of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth earl of Kildare [q. v.], by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset. In 1537 Gerald's father was executed for high treason and attainted, with forfeiture of title and estates. Mainly through the exertions of his tutor, Thomas Leverous, subsequently bishop of Kildare, Gerald was conveyed to France, whence he went to Rome, where he was received by his relative, Cardinal Pole. He subsequently took part with knights of Rhodes in expeditions against the Moors, and entered the service of Cosmo de' Medici at Florence. After the death of Henry VIII Gerald came to England, and married Mabel, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, knight of the Garter. Edward VI, in 1552, restored to him some of his paternal estates. In 1554 he served against Sir Thomas Wyatt. Queen Mary conferred upon Gerald the earldom of Kildare, with possessions of his father, which, under the attainder, had been confiscated. The original grant for the re-establishment of the earldom is in the possession of the Duke of Leinster, now the chief representative of the earls of Kildare. The document has, with autographs of the eleventh earl, been reproduced in the fourth part of 'Facsimiles of National MSS. of Ireland.' Gerald conformed to the protestant religion early in the reign of Elizabeth. He sat in parliament in Ireland in 1559. The attainder of his family was annulled by statute in 1568. In 1577 he attended before the privy council in England in relation to complaints made concerning the assessment imposed upon landholders in Ireland. He took an active part in the warfare against hostile Irish and the Spaniards who had landed in Munster. In 1582, on suspicion of treason, the earl's estates were placed under sequestration, and he, his son Henry, and his son-in-law Lord Delvin, were imprisoned in the Tower of London. After examinations before the lord chancellor of England and other judges, the earl was released from the Tower on giving a bond for 2,000l., in June 1583, to remain within twenty miles of London and not to come within three miles of her majesty's court. In the following year the queen granted him permission to wait upon her, and to return to Ireland, where he sat in the parliament at Dublin in April 1585. He died in London on 16 Nov. following, and was interred at Kildare. He is stated by contemporaries to have been an expert horseman, valiant, small of stature, slender of person, very courteous, but hard and angry at times, a great gatherer of money, and addicted to gambling.
[Archives of the Duke of Leinster; Patent and Statute Rolls; State Papers, Public Record Office, London; Carew MSS., Lambeth; Carte Papers, Bodleian Library; The Earls of Kildare, 1862; Report of Hist. MSS. Commission, 1883.]
FITZGERALD, JAMES Fitzjohn, fourteenth Earl of Desmond (d. 1558), second son of Sir John Desmond [see Fitzgerald, James Fitzmaurice, thirteenth earl], de facto thirteenth earl of Desmond, and More, daughter of Donogh O'Brien of Carrigogunnell, co. Limerick, lord of Pobble O'Brien, immediately on the death of his grandfather in June 1536 assumed the position and title of Earl of Desmond, and in order to support it
