Earl of Desmond

Summary of history of the title[edit]

The Munster Desmonds were a cadet (junior) branch of the powerful FitzGerald dynasty who came to Ireland from Wales as part of the 12th century Anglo-Norman invasion. Over the following centuries, the FitzGeralds famously assimilated themselves in Ireland, and, in the late 16th century Tudor conquest of Ireland, they took arms against the Protestant English Crown in the Desmond Rebellions. As a result, the family's estates were confiscated, the earl beheaded and the title suppressed.


The English government imprisoned James FitzGerald, the eldest son of the last earl, in the Tower of London for decades. However, in 1600, during the Nine Years War, in an attempt to pacify the people of Munster, James was freed and title recreated for him though without right of inheritance. The people of Munster refused to accept the new Earl - a Protestant - and James died a year later in obscurity.


The third creation was in 1619 for Richard Preston, a favourite of James I: Preston had married the daughter and heiress of the 10th Earl of Ormond, neighbour, relative and enemy of the Munster Desmonds. Preston died without male heir and - before Preston's death - James I decided the Desmond title should be subsequently awarded to George Feilding, a nephew of another of the King's favourites. The idea was that George would marry Preston's daughter Elizabeth and thereby inherit lands in Ireland.


Charles I confirmed George Feilding as Earl of Desmond on Preston's death in 1628 (the fourth creation) but George never got to marry the independent-minded Elizabeth. Since 1675 the title, shorn of its traditional Irish estate, has been held by Feilding's descendants as a secondary title to that of the Earl of Denbigh.^[2][3]