policy of his viceroy, and denounced the greed and incompetence of the ‘needy men sent from England without knowledge of Ireland.’ But the new justiciar, Ralph D'Ufford, persevered in the new policy. Desmond absented himself therefore from the parliament of June 1345 at Dublin. Ufford treated this as a declaration of war (Clyn, p. 31). He invaded his territories, and captured his castles of Iniskilty and Castleisland, where he hanged the leaders of the garrison. Many of the other nobles abandoned Desmond in alarm. The Earl of Kildare was imprisoned. Desmond's estates were declared forfeited. The grandees who had been his sureties in 1333 were ruined by Ufford's insisting on their forfeiture. Ufford died on Palm Sunday 1346, but all that Desmond got by his death was a respite and a safe-conduct. In August John Maurice was made seneschal of Clonmel, Decies, Dungarvan, and other lands formerly belonging to Desmond (Cal. Rot. Pat. Hib. 20 Edw. III, p. 51). In September 1346 he sailed from Youghal with his wife and two sons to answer his accusers or to prosecute his complaints in England. He surrendered himself to the king, and was retained for some time in prison. In 1347 he was present at the siege of Calais (Clyn, p. 34). In 1349 he was finally released from his difficulties (Cal. Rot. Pat. 23 Edw. III, p. 158), received back his lands, and was restored to the king's favour. In 1348 Ralph, lord Stafford, and others had bound themselves by heavy penalties as his sureties (Fœdera, iii. 154). He never ventured again on his old course of contumacy.
In 1355 Desmond was taken under the king's special protection (ib. iii. 300), the forfeits of his manucaptors of 1333 were restored (ib. iii. 306), and he himself was appointed viceroy of Ireland on 8 July, in succession to Thomas Rokesby. He remained in office until his death on 25 Jan. 1356 (Ann. Hib. MS. Laud, p. 392; Obits and Martyrology of Christ Church, p. 61, Irish Arch. Soc.; Gilbert, Viceroys, p. 21, places his death in July), ‘not without great sorrow of his followers and all lovers of peace.’ He was buried in the choir of the church of the Dominicans at Dublin, but his body was afterwards transferred to the general burying-place of his race, the church of the same order at Tralee. He is described as ‘a good man and just, who hanged even his own kinsfolk for theft,’ and ‘well castigated the Irish.’ He was the foremost Irish noble of his time, and the spokesman of the Anglo-Irish party which aspired to practical independence.
Desmond is said to have been married thrice. His first wife, Catherine de Burgh (d. 1331), was the mother of Maurice and John, who became in succession earls of Desmond. An elder son, named Nicholas, was deprived of his inheritance as an idiot (Fœdera, iii. 433). His second wife is described as Eleanor, daughter of Nicholas Fitzmaurice, lord of Kerry. Her real name was Evelina (Cal. Rot. Claus. 32 Edw. III, p. 67). She was the mother of Gerald Fitzgerald [q. v.], the fourth earl, called ‘Gerald the poet’ (Lodge, Peerage of Ireland, i. 64, ed. Archdall). His third wife is said to have been Margaret, daughter of O'Brien, prince of Thomond.
[A valuable communication from Mr. T. A. Archer has been utilised for this article. The Annals of Ireland from the 15th Century, Laudian MS., published in Gilbert's Cartularies, &c., of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, vol. ii., forms the ‘chief authority for the history of the English settlement,’ and copious in their accounts of Desmond. See also Grace's Annales Hiberniæ (Irish Archæol. Soc.); Clyn's Annals of Ireland (Irish Archæol. Soc.); Sweetman's Calendar and Documents relating to Ireland; Rymer's Fœdera; Liber Munerum Hiberniæ; Lynch's Feudal Dignities of Ireland; Gilbert's Viceroys of Ireland; Graves's Unpublished Geraldine Documents; Book of Howth; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, vol. i.]
FITZURSE, REGINALD (fl. 1170), one of the murderers of St. Thomas of Canterbury, was the eldest son of Richard Fitzurse, on whose death about 1168 he inherited the manor of Williton, Somersetshire (Collinson, iii. 487); he also held the manor of Barham,Kent (Hasted, iii. 536), and lands in Northamptonshire (Liber Niger, p. 216). He is sometimes called a baron, for he held of the king in chief. He was one of the four knights who were stirred up by the hasty words of Henry II to plot the archbishop's death. They left Bures, near Bayeux, where the king then was, and proceeded, it is said, by different routes to England, all meeting at Saltwood, then held by Ranulf de Broc, on 28 Dec. 1170. The next day they set out with a few men, and having gathered reinforcements, especially from the abbot of St. Augustine's, at whose house they halted, they entered the archbishop's hall after dinner, probably about 3 p.m., and demanded to see him. Reginald told him that he bore a message from the king, and took the most prominent and offensive part in the interview which ensued (Fitzstephen, Becket, iii. 123, Vita anon.,ib. iv. 71). He had been one of Thomas's tenants or men while he was chancellor; the archbishop reminded him of this; the reminder increased his anger, and he called on all who were on the king's side
