438 
them shall first happen after the death of the said Lady Cattelyn, old 
Countess Dowager of Desmond, and after the end of the said year of 
our said Lord God, which shall be one thousand five hundred and ten, 
 &e., &c. And yielding and paying from and after the decease of the 
said Countess, and after the end of the said year of our said Lord God, 
which shall be one thousand five hundred fourscore and thirteen, the 
yearly rent of £10, of lawful English money, at the said two feasts, 
&c., &c., the first payment thereof to begin at either of the said feasts, 
which of them shall first happen, after the death of the said Countess, 
and after the end of the said year of our Lord God which shall be, one 
thousand five hundred fourscore and thirteen, &c., &c. And the said 
Robert Reve for himself, &c., &c., doth covenant, &c., with the said 
Sir Walter Ralegh, &c., by these presents, to find from time to time, 
after the decease of the said Countess, and after the end of the said year 
of our Lord God, which shall be one thousand five hundred fourscore 
and thirteen, a light horseman and furniture serviceable, to serve the 
said Sir Walter Ralegh and his heirs, in the affairs of the Crown of Eng- 
land, or otherwise in defence of the country, against private or public 
enemies.” 
Those who so far accept Lord Leycester’s gossip, that the Countess 
was driven to England, but, on their own authority, place the event in 
a different reign from their historian, account for the necessity of her 
appearing personally at the English court, by assuming that her right of 
jointure was disturbed by Earl Garrett’s attainder; that Sir Walter Ra- 
leigh generously allowed her to remain in the receipt of it, but that she 
was ousted from her residence and rents by Mr. Boyle (subsequently the 
celebrated Earl of Cork), when he purchased Sir Walter Raleigh’s Irish 
estates ; and that as she had come into the jointure in 1534, the English 
government passed her rights over, as considering them long extinct. 
The latter supposition has no ground to stand on; for, as the ‘‘ Quar- 
terly” shows us, the English government only became acquainted in 
1589 that a Countess of Desmond, but not the rebel’s wife, had the lien 
of a jointure on the forfeited estates. Its legality was admitted; and as 
Queen Elizabeth died March 24, 1603, in whose reign the Earl of Ley- 
cester states that the Countess went over—and I must repeat that the earl 
is the only authority there is that she ever left her castle of Inchiquin— 
the period in which the event, had it happened, could have occurred, was 
only fourteen years; during which time neither Elizabeth nor her minis- 
ters would have lost their recollection of her admitted legal right of join- 
ture, connected as it was with such an important affair as the escheated 
Desmond estates, of which Fynes Moryson, at part i., book i., chap. 1, 
pages 4 and 5, gives the granting away to undertakers of 237,672 acres, 
reserving a yearly rent to the crown of £2,272 18s. 6d.; and the resto- 
ration to others of 336,956 acres; the whole forfeited by the earl and 
his confederates being 574,628 English acres. And with this acquiescence 
of Queen Elizabeth’s government to the legal right of the old Countess 
Dowager to her jointure on the forfeited Desmond estates, I cannot sup- 
