432 
building, the result of so much inquiry and consideration, rested on a 
quicksand, instead of being founded, as I fancied, on a rock, most ve- 
nerable indeed in age and aspect, but which has sunk with it into the 
depths of darkness! 
We may feel assured Sir Walter Raleigh did not intentionally make 
the misstatement. The old Countess, most probably, told him when she 
was married; and as in 1589 she had actually been sixty years a resi- 
dent at Inchequin—a period of time which ‘‘ the oldest inhabitant’’ 
would very naturally greatly lengthen,—Sir Walter might readily as- 
sume that her jointure went back to the same reign as her marriage. 
I may notice that the Harleian MS. pedigree is a very meagre and 
imperfect document: it goes but slightly into the collateral branches, 
and is extremely deficient in the male line; it does not give the wives 
of its second, third, and fourth earls; and of Thomas, who, by marrying 
Katherine M‘Cormack, lost his earldom and estates, the Harleian record 
is only “Thomas Fitz Ji ohn, 7th Earl of Desmond, Obit. at Paris, 8. P. 
1430,” ignoring any marriage. Sir William Betham gives this expa- 
triated earl a son (Maurice), to whom the usurper of the earldom gave 
the manors of Moyallow, Kilcolman, and Broghill, which estates de- 
scended from Maurice to Raymond Fitz Gerald, of Broghill, executed for 
high treason, by Sir Henry Brouncker, in the reign of Elizabeth; and 
to Thomas the twelfth earl (the Harleian’s thirteenth), it gives only one 
wife, ‘‘ Giles Da. to Connac Oge Cartie Lo. of Muskerry,” ignoring the 
second wife, Kathrin Fitz Gerald. So that, as far as the Harleian is 
concerned, the existence even of our old Countess could never have been 
ascer tained. It is very much to be regretted that Sir William Betham’s 
original MS. has not beer published; even what I extracted has much 
valuable information which I have not seen in any other pedigree of the 
Desmond family. 
We now come to the first part of our inquiry,—Did the Old Countess 
of Desmond seek redress at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, as recorded in 
the Journal of Robert Sydney, Earl of Leycester ? 
The original MS. of the earl is at Penshurst Castle, Kent, and is be- 
lieved not to have been published; but in the British Museum’s addi- 
tional MSS. is a volume of extracts from it, made by Dr. Birch, about 
1746, and in one of these reference is made to our Countess :— 
‘*Table-Book of Robert: Sydney, second Earl of Leycester, written when 
Ambassador at Paris, about 1640, page 71. 
‘The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edw. IV.’s 
time of England, and lived till towards the end of Q. Elizabeth, so as 
she must needes be neare 140 yeares old. She had a new sett of teeth 
not long afore her death, and might have lived much longer had she not 
mett with a kinde of violent death; for she would needes climbe a nut- 
tree, to gather nuts; so falling down she hurt her thigh, which brought 
a fever, and that fever brought death. This my cosin, Walter Fitz- 
william, told me. 
“This old lady, Mr. Haniot told me, came to petition the queen, 
and, landing at Bristoll, she came on foot to London, being then so old 
