Born, a.d. 1664. Died, 1604

TWICE threescore years and ten—the allotted space of human life—passed over the head of the Lady Katherine. popularly known as the “Old Countess of Desmond,” before she yielded up her indomitable spirit. Not only her own generation and that which followed it did she see die out, but the next, and the next to this again, she saw arise, play out their parts in life, and disappear. Yet she lived on. A wife for half a century, she became a widow at threescore and ten; but, even at this latter period, only half of her pilgrimage was accomplished. The princely race from whom she sprang passed before her eyes through strange vicissitudes. For more than a century she beheld them in almost regal magnificence and power, swaying the councils of their sovereigns, and acting as their representatives at home and abroad; and she lived to see the chief of her house an outcast and a wanderer, with a price on his head, finally hunted down like a wild beast, and his seigniories gone for ever.

Lady Katherine Fitzgerald was born in the Castle of Dromana, in the third year of Edward IV., 1464. She was a Geraldine both on her father's and mother's side, being the daughter of Sir John Fitzgerald, Lord of Decies, and of Ellen his wife, daughter of the White Knight. In 1483 she married her kinsman, Thomas, third son of Thomas, eighth Earl of Desmond, and brother of James, the ninth Earl.