Legacy
FitzMaurice married Katherine Burke of Muskerry, who had three children by him: two sons, Maurice and Gerald, and one daughter.
The invasion force at Smerwick was besieged and massacred in 1580 by the English. The tide turned in favour of the English, and the Second Desmond Rebellion was ended in 1583, when the Earl of Desmond and his followers had been hunted down and killed by the English and their Irish allies.
The destruction of the Desmond dynasty left much of the province of Munster open to English colonisation and was a great step in the Tudor conquest of Ireland.
FitzMaurice was one the first Irish leaders to use the Catholic cause as an explicit justification for rebellion against the crown. Hugh O'Neill may have been influenced by the FitzMauruce revolts, setting an example for his own major revolt in the 1590s. He is regarded as the man the Geraldines ought to have chosen to lead them if they were to resist the Protestant reformation.
Read more about this topic: James Fitz Maurice Fitz Gerald
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)