Desmond,

Desmond, EARLS OF, a line formerly all-powerful in the south-west of Ireland, numbered fifteen of the title, dating from 1329, and ended with that Fitzgerald who rebelled against Elizabeth's government, sacked Youghal by night and murdered the people, and was proclaimed a traitor in 1579. He escaped the fate of the Spanish garrison at Smerwick (1580), and carried on the struggle for some time; but driven at last from his strongholds, he wandered about for over two years, and was finally killed, in 1583, in a cabin in the Kerry mountains, where his hiding-place had been betrayed to the English.