James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald - First Desmond Rebellion

First Desmond Rebellion

During the first of the Desmond Rebellions in 1569, Fitzgerald was besieged in Ballymartyr by the lord deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, and having taken casualties he fled with his company through a bog which was hard by the walls of the town. He held out with his fellow rebel, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald in the woods of Aherlow till February 1573, when he submitted with Fitzmaurice to the President of Munster, Sir John Perrot, and was granted his pardon in the church of Kilmallock. In March 1575 he accompanied Fitzmaurice and the White Knight, Edmund Fitzgibbon, on the La Arganys to St Malo Brittany, where they were received by the governor; he returned in July of the same year. On the 16th of November 1576 he complained to Lord Justice Sir William Drury that Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, was coshering 60 horse and 100 horseboys on his territory.