Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond (c. 1533 – 1583), also counted as 15th or 16th,[a] owned large part of the Irish province of Munster.

In 1541 his father had agreed, as one of the terms of his Surrender and regrant submission to Henry VIII, to send young Gerald to be educated in England.

The effect of this marriage was a temporary cessation of hostility between the Desmonds and her son, Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond.

Despite a decree issued by Sussex in August 1560 regulating the matters in dispute between Ormond and the FitzGeralds, outlaws from both sides continued to plunder the other.

On 8 February 1565, only a bit more than a month after his 1st wife's death, the two sides fought the private Battle of Affane on the Blackwater river.

Here Ormond's brother, Sir Edmund Butler of Cloughgrenan, hit Desmond in the right hip with a pistol shot, cracking his thigh-bone and throwing him from his horse.

Lords Ormond and Desmond were called to London where they promised to keep the peace, being allowed to return to Ireland early in 1566, where a royal commission was appointed to settle the matters in dispute between them.

Most of the Geraldines were subjugated by Humphrey Gilbert, but FitzMaurice remained in arms, and in 1571 Sir John Perrot undertook to reduce him.

Perrot hunted him down, and at last on 23 February 1573 he made formal submission at Kilmallock, lying prostrate on the floor of the church by way of proving his sincerity.

Edward FitzGerald, brother of the Earl of Kildare, and lieutenant of the queen's pensioners in London, was sent to remonstrate with Desmond, but accomplished nothing.

Essex met the Earl near Waterford in July, and Bourchier was surrendered, but Desmond refused the other demands made in the Queen's name.

[23] On 18 July 1574 the Geraldine chiefs signed a 'Combination' promising to support the Earl unconditionally; shortly afterwards Ormond and the lord deputy, William Fitzwilliam, marched on Munster, and put Desmond's garrison at Derrinlaur Castle to the sword.

Desmond submitted at Cork on 2 September, handing over his estates to trustees: Sir Henry Sidney visited Munster in 1575, and affairs seemed to promise an early restoration of order.

[23] But FitzMaurice had fled to Brittany, France, in the company of other leading Geraldines, John Fitzedmund Fitzgerald, seneschal of Imokilly, who had held Ballymartyr against Sidney in 1567, and Edmund Fitzgibbon, the son of the White Knight who had been attainted in 1571.

The sack of Youghal and Kinsale by the Geraldines was speedily followed by attacks by Ormond and Pelham acting in concert with Admiral William Winter.