Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/131

Fitzgerald of the 'ordinances for the reformation of Ireland' in Munster, and in token of the renunciation of the privilege claimed by his ancestors of not being obliged to attend the great councils of the realm, he took his seat in a parliament held at Dublin. In June 1542 he visited England, where, being admitted to the presence of the king, he was by him graciously received, his title acknowledged, and the king himself wrote to the Irish council 'that the Earl of Desmond hath here submitted himself in so honest, lowly, and humble a sort towards us, as we have conceived a very great hope that he will prove a man of great honour, truth, and good service.' Nor did he, during the rest of his life, fail to justify this opinion. On 9 July 1543 he obtained a grant of the crown lease of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, 'for his better supporting at his repair' to parliament. By Edward VI he was created lord treasurer on the death of the Earl of Ormonde (patent 29 March 1547), and on 15 Oct., when thanking him for his services in repressing disorders in Munster, the king offered to make a companion of his son. During the government of Bellingham he was suspected of treasonable designs, and having refused a peremptory order to appear in Dublin, the deputy swooped down upon him unexpectedly in the dead of winter, 1548, and carried him off prisoner. He was soon released and continued in office by Mary. In the summer of 1558 he was attacked by a serious illness, and died at Askeaton on Thursday 27 Oct. He was buried in the abbey of the White Friars, Tralee. 'The loss of this good man was woful to his country ; for there was no need to watch cattle, or close doors from Dun-caoin, in Kerry, to the green bordered meeting of the three waters, on the confines of the province of Eochaidh, the son of Lachta and Leinster' (Annals of the Four Masters). He married four times : first, Joan Roche, daughter of Maurice, lord Fermoy, and his own grandniece, for which reason she was put away, and her son, Thomas Roe (father of James Fitzthomas Fitzgerald, the Sugan Earl [q. v.]), known as Sir Thomas of Desmond, disinherited ; secondly, More, daughter of Sir Maolrony McShane O'Carroll, lord of Ely O'Carroll, by whom he had Gerald, his heir, also John and four daughters she died in 1548 ; thirdly, Catherine, second daughter of Piers, earl of Ormonde, and widow of Richard, lord Power she died at Askeaton, 17 March 1553; and fourthly, Ellen, daughter of Donald MacCormac, MacCarthy Môr, by whom he had a son, Sir James-Sussex Fitzgerald, and a daughter, Elinor. [State Papers, Hen. VIII, vols. ii. and iii. ; Lodge's Peerage (Archdall); Ware's Annales; Stanihurst's Chronicle; Cal. Carew MSS. vol i.; Hamilton's Cal. vol. i.; Liber Hiberniæ, ii. 41; O'Clery's Book of Pedigrees, Kilkenny Arch. Soc. Journal, 1881, p. 413.]  FITZGERALD, JAMES , thirteenth (d. 1540), was the son of Maurice Fitzthomas, only son and heir-apparent of Thomas, twelfth earl of Desmond, and Joan, daughter of John Fitzgibbon, the White Knight. Immediately on the death of his grandfather, Thomas, twelfth earl, in 1534, the succession was disputed by John Fitzthomas, brother of the twelfth earl, and fourth son of Thomas, eighth earl [q. v.] on the ground of the invalidity of the marriage of Maurice Fitzthomas with the daughter of the White Knight. Whether it was so or not was never determined, but John Fitzthomas having taken forcible possession remained earl de facto during his life, and after his death in 1536 the earldom was seized by his son James, fourteenth earl [q. v.], the title being cleared by the 'accidental' death of James Fitzmaurice, thirteenth earl de jure, at the hand of Maurice à totane, brother of the fourteenth earl. Lodge, who correctly describes James Fitzmaurice as thirteenth earl, incorrectly states that he was succeeded by his uncle, John Fitzthomas, which was impossible, John having died in 1536. This alteration makes Lodge's fifteenth and sixteenth earls, fourteenth and fifteenth respectively (cp. Unpublished Geraldine Documents, edited by Hayman and Graves, pt. ii. pp. 103-17). James Fitzmaurice, thirteenth earl, being in England at the time of his grandfather's death was, at the suggestion of the Irish council, who had their own purposes to serve (State Papers, Hen. VIII, iii. 106), allowed to return home, being 'sufficiently furnished with all things fitting and necessary for such a journey and enterprise' by the bounty of the king. Landing at Cork, he was proceeding through the territory of Lord Roche, when he was waylaid and slain by Sir Maurice of Desmond on 19 March 1540 (ib. p. 195). He married Mary, daughter of his great-uncle, Cormoc Og MacCarthy, but had no male issue (, Peerage, Archdall). She remarried Daniel O'Sullivan Mor, and died in 1548. [Authorities cited above.]

FITZGERALD, JAMES (d. 1579), 'arch traitor,' was the second son of Maurice Fitzjohn à totane, i. e. of the burnings, and Julia, second daughter of Dermot O'Mulryan of Sulloghade, co. Tipperary, nephew of James, fourteenth, and cousin of