FAMILY BACKGROUND
The FitzGeralds of Desmond traced their descent from Maurice FitzGerald, son of Gerald of Windsor and the Welsh princess Nest. The original Norman conquests were confined to the eastern parts of Ireland, and the Anglo-Norman lordship as created by Henry II was based on a clear division of authority between this area and the rest of the country, which remained under Gaelic rule. But Maurice and others pushed on westwards, taking for themselves landholdings surrounded by Gaelic lordships. This was the origin of the earldom of Desmond (Irish Deas Mumhan meaning South Munster), a vast patrimony spread over the counties of Cork, Kerry and Limerick.
Whilst maintaining their Norman identity and allegiance to the King of England, the earls of Desmond survived and prospered by adopting a mixture of English and Gaelic customs. In order to maintain the huge numbers of fighting men they needed to protect their borders, they extracted from their tenants every sort of exaction available, including coyne and livery, a term which encompassed various rights to hospitality enjoyed by Gaelic lords but which mostly came to refer to the tenants’ obligation to provide free billeting and provisions for his soldiers. In 1367, the Statute of Kilkenny made it high treason for anyone of Anglo-Norman descent to fraternise with the Gaelic Irish or adopt Gaelic ways, but this law was so draconian that it quickly became a dead letter and was never enforced outside the small area that remained under sole English control.
SON AND HEIR
Thomas was the eldest son of James, 6th Earl of Desmond (b.c.1386), and his wife Mary, one of the Burkes of Clanricarde, a branch of the de Burghs that was Gaelic in its ways though not in its pedigree. His birth year is often given as c.1425, but this seems to be a surmise based on the assumption that Ellice Barry (see below) was his first wife, and he is more likely to have been born c.1410-1420. He was to have three siblings: his younger brother Garrett (Gerald) and their sisters Anora (Honora) and Joan. Thomas’s first appearance in the records comes in 1429, when his father and the White Earl of Ormond sealed a contract agreeing to Thomas’ marriage to Ormond’s elder daughter Anne. Thomas was immediately to join the household of Anne’s mother, the Countess Joan Beauchamp, so there is a strong possibility that he was in London the following year when the Countess died there; what arrangements would have been made for the couple after that is a matter for conjecture as Thomas’s own mother was to die in 1435.
It is generally assumed that Anne Butler died before she and Thomas could become man and wife and that Thomas did not finally wed until 1455, when he obtained a papal dispensation to marry his young first cousin once removed, Ellice, daughter of William Lord Barry, in order to bring to an end a violent dispute between their two fathers. What has been overlooked is that this dispensation also refers to two relationships of affinity, which could only mean that at least one of the parties had declared a prior sexual union with a relative of the other. The conclusion seems inescapable that Thomas was a widower. Had Anne Butler lived to exchange vows and consummate the union? It is difficult to be sure as there is some confusion regarding the details of these impediments.
By the time of Thomas’ marriage to Ellice Barry, his elder sister Anora had for nine years been the wife of Thomas FitzMaurice, Lord Kerry. The younger sister, Joan, had recently married Thomas FitzGerald aka FitzMaurice, 7th Earl of Kildare, who had annulled his marriage to his first wife, Doireann O’More of Leix, in order to wed her, causing a minor war in the process. Thomas’s younger brother, Garrett, had been endowed by their father with the lordship of the Decies in County Waterford. Of Thomas’ own career up to this point nothing has come down, but he was to emerge from this obscurity as ‘the most illustrious of his own nation in Ireland in his time in his comeliness and stature, for his hospitality and chivalry, his charity and humanity to the poor and the indigent of the Lord, his bounteousness in bestowing jewels and riches on the laity, the clergy and the poets . . . .’ After the Duke of York’s flight to Ireland in October 1459 Thomas extended the fugitive king’s lieutenant his ‘manyfold notable service and kyndnesse . . . to his gret jeopardies and charges. . . ’. It would have been towards the end of York’s stay in Ireland that the Countess Ellice applied to the Pope for a licence or ‘indult’ to have a portable altar. Grants of such indults are often indicative of a planned journey and couples usually requested them jointly, so this one is intriguing.
VICTOR OF PILTOWN
Irish annals place the death of James, 6th Earl of Desmond, variously in 1462 or 1463, but it was in early August 1462 that King Edward first recognised Thomas as the new earl of Desmond, simultaneously appointing him to the stewardship of his Mortimer patrimony in Meath. Thomas took over the reins of lordship at a difficult time, just after the appointment of the twelve-year-old Clarence as King’s Lieutenant of Ireland, when the late Anne Butler’s brother John, the new earl of Ormond and enemy of the Yorkist king, was making a determined bid not only to make good his claim to his Irish lands but to push his boundaries into areas claimed by the Desmonds. As the summer progressed, the Butlers and their allies gained the upper hand, taking Waterford and capturing Thomas’ younger brother, Garrett. Initially, the resistance to the Butler attacks was led by Sir Roland FitzEustace of Castlemartin, County Kildare, fresh from a visit to England where he had been created Lord Portlester and appointed as Clarence’s Deputy, but his efforts were soon eclipsed by those of the new earl of Desmond.
Thomas won a great victory over the Butler army at Piltown, north of Waterford, capturing Edmund MacRichard Butler. By the end of the summer, peace had been restored, the Earl of Ormond was in hiding, Garrett FitzGerald and Edmund MacRichard Butler were both released, and Thomas of Desmond had two new books in his library courtesy of Edmund MacRichard’s ransom. By the end of the year Ormond had been attainted by the Irish parliament and Desmond’s reputation stood high, but his stewardship of the King’s lands in the loyal county of Meath had excited the jealousy of its new bishop, William Shirwood, a Yorkshireman who had studied in Bologna and had been appointed to the see of Meath by direct papal provision, never having (so far as is known) visited Ireland before.
DEPUTY LIEUTENANT
Although he would have heard his father talk about Irish matters, Edward IV had never set foot in the country and he was still very politically inexperienced so would have been reliant on the opinions of others in forming his Irish policy. So far he would have heard nothing but praise of Desmond and so, on 1 April 1463, he had Clarence appoint the Earl to succeed Portlester as his deputy. For Desmond, this was a great honour but also a huge challenge because the size and population of the area controlled by the English Crown had so dwindled that its revenues were woefully inadequate to the task.
According to the account later sent to King Edward by the Irish parliament, the force that Desmond now set about gathering was provided ‘at his own proper cost’ by his kinsmen and allies and he had at all times been ‘guiding and ruling himself with all your true liege people according unto your laws. . . .’, but according to a complaint made to the King by one James Dokeray, a former mayor of Drogheda and ally of Bishop Shirwood, Desmond ‘extorted coyne and livery from the king’s faithful subjects and inhabitants in the county of Meath and was advised, ruled and governed by the king’s great traitors and rebels’. It is impossible not to sympathise with the inhabitants of Meath if they had indeed suddenly found themselves playing host to an army of Gaelic-Irish professional soldiers, but the army that Desmond was raising against the Butlers would surely have been mustered largely beyond the Pale and it is odd that Dokeray set off on his mission to the King within a very few weeks of the news of Desmond’s appointment. Nevertheless, doubts had now been sown in Edward’s mind.
Thomas led his great army (rather improbably claimed to be 20,000
strong) into Ormond’s territory, where they did more than enough damage to prevent Sir John Butler from causing any further trouble that year, but it was not until 7 August that King Edward finally granted him £500 towards the cost of the campaign. Meanwhile, ‘the commons of [the King’s] county of Meath to the number of 5,000 made insurrection and rising against the said deputy, him to have slain at the first taking upon him th’office of the Deputy Lieutenancy of this your said land.’ Five thousand men would be an impressive showing but is probably also an exaggeration. The bottom line is that Desmond’s force outnumbered them four to one, so he was able ‘without any hurt of any person’ to persuade the rebels to submit, take an oath of allegiance to Edward IV and swear ‘never to offend against [his] laws in time coming’.
Thomas then called a parliament. The Irish parliament had, over the years, been attended by fewer and fewer representatives from outside the Pale, but Desmond’s appointment temporarily reversed this trend, and the resulting more broad-based assembly took such novel measures as exempting the country’s four main southern towns from the prohibition against trade with the Gaelic Irish, and even granted licence for the foundation of a university in Drogheda. It also commanded Dokeray to surrender himself to answer a charge of having slandered the Deputy to the King. Rather than submit, however, Dokeray again complained to Edward, who then wrote to Desmond ordering the charge to be dropped.
Edward was not yet prepared to replace Thomas, but he did decide to insert a counterweight to his power by granting the hard-line Lord Constable of England, John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, a life appointment of the vacant post of Chancellor of Ireland, to be held on the same terms as enjoyed by a previous Irish Chancellor, Sir William Welles. It seems that Edward must have sought to enlist Desmond’s support for this intervention by sending him an advance draft of Tiptoft’s letter of appointment (a sensible move since kings had long disputed with lieutenants and their deputies which of them had the right to appoint the Irish officers of state); but Desmond evidently did not approve of this move, and so whilst the King was in Northampton dictating a warrant to the Keeper of the Privy Seal to initiate the issuing of Tiptoft’s patent, Desmond, in Limerick, was granting an identical life appointment to his brother-in-law ‘Thomas fitz Maurice, Earl of Kildare, of the office of chancellor or keeper of the Great Seal, to hold and occupy the said office by himself or sufficient deputy with such fees and salary as William Welles kt, used to receive’. The meaning of the King’s attempt to insinuate Tiptoft and Bishop Shirwood into the Irish government was not lost on the lords of the Irish parliament, who responded by penning Edward a letter impressing on him the great service that Desmond had done for him. This letter may have had some influence with Edward as he does not seem to have attempted to override Kildare’s appointment.
A fresh summer saw renewed trouble in Ireland, and Thomas found himself again fighting on the same two fronts. Bishop Shirwood’s men killed nine of Desmond’s in an incident in County Dublin. Meanwhile, Desmond was making another attempt to capture Sir John Butler, and this time succeeded in banishing him from Ireland. His success was such that ‘O’Donnell [Red Hugh I], MacWilliam Burke, and many of the Irish and English of Ireland repaired to Dublin to meet [him] . . . and entered into a league of friendship and fealty with him.’ The accepted interpretation of what happened next is that, when King Edward came to hear of the armed conflict between Desmond and Bishop Shirwood, he summoned them both to court to explain themselves; that they both came, and that there Desmond charmed the King. I repeat this tale with a caveat because all our sources for it are very late: viz the Memorandum to the King’s Council by one of Thomas’ sixteenth-century descendants; the early-17th-century Annals of the Four Masters, compiled for the O’Donnells from old records; and the slightly later compilation of annals made by Dualtach Mac Fhirbisigh. According to the Four Masters, Thomas returned to Ireland ‘bringing great presents from the King.’ These presents may have included the cloths of scarlet and other deep dyes, velvet and bonnets provided for Desmond by the Great Wardrobe sometime between 1462 and early 1465, almost certainly accompanied by a gold livery collar. But there is also a good chance that this ‘livery’ had been sent over to the Earl in 1463 after his appointment as Deputy.
But if we accept 1464 as the year of Desmond’s fabled visit to the King, then he is unlikely to have set off before the Butler threat had been finally quashed, or at least until the Butlers were sufficiently weakened for him to be able to trust his captains to finish the job without him. His arrival at court, and success in winning Edward’s heart, is usually linked to a grant made to him on 25 August 1464, but it is worth remembering that Edward had made a grant to Thomas every August since 1462 and that in early to mid August, when according to this interpretation Thomas would have been leaving Ireland, Sir John Ormond was not yet defeated. If, however, Thomas had waited until John Ormond had fled Ireland, he would have reached a grateful king just in time for the Great Council at Reading at which Edward announced to its astonished members the news of his secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.
REPLACEMENT
On whatever terms King Edward may have parted company with the Earl of Desmond in the autumn of 1464, on the following 6 May he sealed indentures with the Earl of Worcester appointing the latter as Clarence’s deputy lieutenant for a term of six years, supported by a retinue of 400 archers whom he was to muster at either Chester, Bristol or Beaumaris on 14 June. On 18 May terms of payment for Tiptoft and his archers over the six-year term were sent to the Exchequer, with authorization for immediate payment of the first year’s wages. All was still going to plan on 5 June, when artillery and writs of passage were ordered for the new Deputy. But this is the last that is heard of either Tiptoft’s voyage to Ireland or his deputyship in 1465. Desmond continued to style himself Deputy Lieutenant and presided over the parliament that sat from August to November. Yet this parliament was perhaps controlled by the Palesmen since it passed legislation very much at odds with the Earl’s former policies, for instance compelling the Gaelic Irish who lived in the four loyal counties to use English surnames and dress, and making it lawful to kill any thief on the spot unless he had with him at least one man of good name dressed in the English style. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that Desmond had recovered the deputyship in name only.
As the Annals of the Four Masters record, in 1466 the English of Meath and other counties in Leinster led an army into County Offaly against Conn O’Connor Faly, where they were defeated in battle. The Annals record that the O’Connors took prisoner an earl (unnamed), together with the young Christopher Plunkett, Lord Killeen, the Prior of Trim and many other prominent members of the English army. Having been stripped of their armour, these were brought by Conn’s brother Tadhg, who was the earl’s cliamhain (rendered in the standard translation as ‘brother-in-law’), to the O’Connor stronghold of Castle Carbury whence they were eventually rescued by ‘the English of Dublin’.
This hapless earl has until fairly recently been assumed to have been Desmond, leading to some puzzlement as to why Tadhg O’Connor is said to have been his brother-in-law and causing a recent writer on the subject (Peter Spring, The Ricardian, 2022) to interpret the relationship as that of foster-brother. Not so. A cliamhain is a relative by marriage, most often a son-in-law; the recognised terms for foster-brother would be comhalta or deartháir comhaltais. According to Emmett O’Byrne’s article on Tadhg O’Connor’s father, An Calbach, in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, Tadhg’s wife Margaret was a daughter of the 7th Earl of Kildare (presumably by Doireann O’More); ergo Kildare was the earl who was captured by the O’Connors. Indeed, the Four Masters has another tale altogether to tell of Desmond’s troubles that summer.
Far away in the West, Desmond’s lands were under attack. John of Ormond’s erstwhile brother-in-law, Tadhg O’Brien, King of Thomond, crossed the Shannon with a large army, plundered the Irish of South and West Munster, and seized the lands of the Clan-William Burkes and other territory in County Limerick. In order to obtain O’Brien’s agreement to return home, Desmond was forced to acknowledge his possession of the whole of County Limerick and agree to pay him a tribute of 60 marks a year. The result of these defeats was to convince King Edward that Shirwood was right: Desmond had to go.
On the following 30 April (1467), King Edward issued Clarence with fresh indentures as Lieutenant of Ireland which included Worcester as his named deputy. Initially, Tiptoft’s mission was rather ominously described in official documents as the repression of rebels in Ireland (ominously because at this period kings of England did not claim the Gaelic Irish as their subjects and so only the English of Ireland were ever described as rebels). Political developments may have taken place over the summer, however, because by July Tiptoft’s mission was being identified merely as ‘the safe custody, defence and victualling of that land’ and Desmond continued to style himself Deputy Lieutenant right up until the moment of Worcester’s landing in October. Shortly before he sailed, John Tiptoft hastily married without royal licence the widow of a tenant-in-chief, Dame Elizabeth Corbet, who sailed with him to Dublin.
DOWNFALL AND DEATH
‘An English Justiciar arrived in Ireland, and Thomas Earl of Desmond was removed, an occurrence which wrought the ruin of Ireland’ (The Annals of the Four Masters)
Once Tiptoft was in Ireland, Bishop Shirwood would finally have been able to take up the post of Chancellor and aid him in his mission. Initially, however, there was no sign of personal reprisals against Desmond. Indeed, he safely attended the parliamentary session over at Dublin in December which commanded numerous men accused of a variety of ‘oppressions’ to surrender before 4 March under pain of attainder; this list was shocking enough, including such prominent individuals as Edward Plunkett of Balrath, a close relation of lords Killeen and Dunsany, but it did not directly attack Desmond or those closest to him.
According to a well informed account copied in the late 16th century, by the time parliament was prorogued for Christmas Desmond’s allies were already suspicious of the Earl of Worcester’s intentions, but Tiptoft wooed Thomas, inviting him to stay with him at Naas in County Meath where he entertained him lavishly and spoke him fair, and so against his friends’ advice Desmond duly attended the second session of the parliament, which convened on 4 February in the Dominican friary at Drogheda.
For the first few days, parliamentary business seems to have resumed normally, and on Monday 8 February the earls of Desmond and Kildare even stood with Bishop Shirwood to witness a grant. Then, on Friday, out came a Bill of Attainder that denounced Desmond, Kildare, Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester – all of them former Deputies – and Edward Plunkett of ‘horrible treasons and felonies’. Desmond, Kildare and Plunkett were accused of ‘alliance [and] fosterage . . . with the Irish enemies of the king, as in giving them horses and harness and arms, and supporting them against the king’s faithful subjects’, whilst Portlester was said to have urged Desmond to make himself king of Ireland. Desmond, Kildare and Plunkett were arrested; Portlester was not found. Kildare was removed to custody in Dublin. Plunkett, a lord’s son, is said to have been flogged though the streets of Drogheda ‘like a villain or a scoundrel.’ All weekend Desmond remained in custody in Drogheda, expecting that each day would be his last. On Monday, 15 February, he was taken out to face the block: ‘. . . he raised up his eyes to Heaven, then that splendid, generous, wise and powerful lord was beheaded.’
Quite early sources mention the execution of two boys by Tiptoft earlier on the same day, one aged about thirteen. These were to be identified in Tudor times as the Earl’s own sons, but as Peter Spring has shown, this is almost certainly not the case. To Spring’s arguments I would just add that Thomas and Ellice cannot have had a son as old as thirteen and that, of their seven children who outlived their father, the eldest boy was named James for his paternal grandfather as would have been traditional for the firstborn.
Thomas Earl of Desmond’s mortal remains were brought to Tralee, where they were ‘interred in the burial-place of his predecessors and ancestors with great honour and veneration’.
There are two commonly held positions on the reason for Desmond’s execution, both influenced by sixteenth-century claims. The first is that the real reason for his death was his unprecedented imposition of coyne and livery within the Pale, whilst the second is that Tiptoft was obeying a secret instruction from Elizabeth Woodville, who had discovered that Desmond had told the King she was too lowly to be his wife.
The first position is ultimately based on Dokeray’s complaint about Desmond’s imposition of coyne and livery within the Pale, but it is greatly reinforced by Tudor commentaries that identify Desmond as the first man to have broken the Statute of Kilkenny in this particular way, and his father as the first person of English heritage to have imposed the practice anywhere in Ireland. These claims formed part of a Tudor drive against coyne and livery; they have rarely been questioned but for all that do not appear to be correct. The use of coyne and livery by the English settlers must predate the Statute of Kilkenny – otherwise why would Duke Lionel have attempted to stamp it out? Outside the Pale, the Geraldines seem to have been relying on the practice for time out of mind; the earls of Ormond also relied on it, albeit to a lesser extent. The Great Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, when as plain Sir John Talbot he had been struggling to make ends meet as Lieutenant of Ireland to Henry V, had also been accused by the Irish parliament of having exacted coyne and livery within the Pale (County Louth is specified) but no charge was brought against him as a result. So this exaction would have not been an adequate explanation for Desmond’s execution even if it been one of the crimes for which he had been condemned. But coyne and livery were not so much as mentioned in the Act of Attainder.
What, then, about the accusations that were included in the Act? As regards fosterage and alliance, there is no extant evidence of any such activity amongst Thomas’ direct family. His mother was Anglo-Norman. His wife was Anglo-Norman. His siblings had married into the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. As shown above, claims that Tadhg O’Connor Faly was either his brother-in-law or his foster-brother are spurious. This accusation was more likely aimed at the other accused Earl Thomas, the 7th Earl of Kildare. His father, known as John Cam (Crooked John), had never been recognised as Earl and had made Gaelic marriages for several of his children. Although the 7th Earl had put aside his Gaelic wife in order to marry one of Desmond’s sisters, he continued to support the children he had had by Doireann O’More.
This brings us neatly to the next charge – that of alliance with Irish enemies and supporting them against the King’s faithful subjects. Since there is no evidence whatsoever of either Desmond or Kildare having teamed up with hostile Irish clans to attack peaceful colonists, it seems more likely that the Palesmen who drew up these charges may have been referring to such things as Desmond’s pact with the O’Donnell (similar to agreements with Gaelic leaders made by Richard Duke of York in 1449) and his use of Gaelic troops to over-awe the malcontents of Meath in 1464; and to Desmond and Kildare’s rather uncharacteristic respective defeats by O’Brien and O’Connor in 1466. Kildare’s men had submitted to O’Connor on the battlefield and been stripped of their armour; their horses would surely have been taken as well. Perhaps the loyal MPs of the Pale suspected these surrenders to have been nothing more than hostile alliances in disguise and the surrender of horses and armour to have been willing gifts.
Finally, that Portlester and Desmond could have even dreamed of trying to make Desmond king of Ireland without considerable additional support seems highly implausible; indeed, this charge seems nothing more than a watered-down version of a similar allegation that had been made in the 1330s against the rebel 1st Earl of Desmond and his powerful following of disaffected Anglo-Irish magnates. Though found by a jury, the charge against the 1st Earl had led to nothing worse for him than temporary forfeiture and imprisonment.
But problems with the official charges do not make the Elizabeth Woodville story reliable. It did not surface until the mid-16th century, and then in a document full of historical inaccuracies. Peter Spring has done an excellent job of reviewing the evidence for this tale. To his work I would only add that there is no plausible route whereby Desmond’s family could have discovered that the Queen had used the King’s seal to authorise Tiptoft to proceed in this manner; and there is evidence that several lords expressed disquiet when Edward revealed his marriage to the Great Council and yet we see no campaign by the Queen against them. If some wild speculation could be allowed at this point, is it possible that Desmond might have angered Tiptoft by some incautious remark over dinner at Naas about his new, furtively-married wife Elizabeth, and that this story had, over generations of retelling in the family, become fused with the tale of Earl Thomas’ visit to court?
So, if not for coyne and livery or insulting a proud queen, then why did Desmond die? Perhaps simply because his unpopularity with certain elements in the Pale was exploited by two very ruthless enemies, both of whom were Englishmen who may have lacked an appreciation of the difference between some of the contents of the Irish Statute rolls and the delicately balanced realities of life in the lordship. In other words Desmond was, as Richard III afterwards expressed it, ‘extorciously slayne and murdred by colour of the lawes within Irland by certain persones than having the governaunce and rule there. . . ’.
AFTERSHOCKS
‘Pity and distress filled all Ireland and every place from Rome westwards in which these tidings were heard.’
There is no indication that the news of Desmond’s execution had displeased King Edward. He continued to support the Earl of Worcester as Deputy Lieutenant with troops and money, retrospectively licensed his marriage and sent over a christening gift for his new baby. He was only recalled to England at the start of 1470 because Edward needed his particular brand of services at home.
But, far from cowing his own rivals and the King’s enemies, Tiptoft’s execution of Desmond unleashed a whirlwind. Thomas’s younger brother, Garrett of Decies, descended on Meath and Westmeath with the fabled family army of 20,000 gallowglass, and burned and laid waste. Aided by the powerful MacMurrough, he went on to burn much of Leinster. Whilst Tiptoft and Shirwood were distracted by this emergency, Lord Portlester swept down into Dublin, rescued the Earl of Kildare and took him home to Kildare Castle. The O’Connors of Offaly now sided with Kildare. Tiptoft had no option but to pardon Kildare and Portlester but the warfare continued. Then Garrett FitzGerald descended on the O’Briens, whilst in Ulster the O’Neills rebelled against the King’s Seneschal. The lords of Tiptoft’s parliament now wrote to King Edward in alarm.
To his credit, Edward had the sense to realise that some sort of concession was needed and recognised Thomas’ eldest son, James, as 8th Earl of Desmond in spite of his father’s attainder. Even this was a small sop because James was only nine years old and so quite unable to lead the family. Also, his uncle Garrett, emboldened by his new-found power, claimed the earldom for himself, declaring Thomas and Ellice’s marriage to be invalid and their offspring bastards on the grounds that the impediments of affinity rehearsed in their dispensation were incorrect.
Thomas’s countess was not, however, to be so easily defeated. In support of her son’s claim, she gathered allies around her including her father Lord Barry, her brother John, and the Green Knight of Kerry. One branch of the MacCarthys supported Garrett whilst another fought for Ellice and her son. Initially, Garrett succeeded in overrunning the Barry lands. But at the end of the year the desperate Tiptoft sent out special commissioners to offer peace terms to the rebels, and soon afterwards Garrett’s petition to the Pope for the annulment of Thomas’s marriage to Ellice was referred for judgement to the local bishop who seems to have rejected it. Ellice found herself a powerful new husband, Maurice FitzGibbon, the 6th White Knight, by whom she went on to have a further two children. Garrett was eventually defeated, and died in some obscurity in 1477.
But the damage done to English interests by Desmond’s execution can scarcely be exaggerated. When James, 8th Earl of Desmond, came of age he refused all enticements, remaining on his own lands, speaking Irish, wearing Irish dress and ignoring summonses to the Irish parliament. King Edward’s abortive bid to rid Anglo-Ireland of its overmighty subjects succeeded only in leaving the earls of Kildare without any peers, soon so powerful that no one else could rule Ireland in the King’s name.
In 1484 Richard III reached out to James of Desmond, sending him the traditional gift of clothing and livery collar, encouraging him to take legal action against those who had brought about his father’s death and offering to make him a great marriage if he would return to the English fold. But James married an O’Brien and stayed where he was. His low-key, slightly sulky, attitude frustrated some of his own family, and when he was murdered in 1487 his youngest brother John was widely suspected of complicity. Since James had had only daughters, he was succeeded as 9th Earl of Desmond by his next brother, Maurice who, together with his stepfather the White Knight, went on to lend his support to ‘Perkin Warbeck’.
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