[14] In July 1568, fitz Maurice entered Clanmaurice, the territory of Thomas Fitzmaurice, 16th Baron Kerry and lord of Lixnaw, to levy tribute and assert the Desmond overlordship.
At the end of 1568, the absent Earl of Desmond granted Sir Warham St Leger a lease of the barony of Kerricurrihy, which cast fitz Maurice's inheritance into confusion.
He wrote to the mayor and corporation of Cork in July ordering the abolition of the new heresy of Protestantism, at a time when he appears to have been taking instruction from Irish Jesuits.
[citation needed] By September 1569, Sidney had broken the back of the rebellion and left Sir Humphrey Gilbert behind to suppress fitz Maurice, who sought refuge in the woods of Aherlow, south of Tipperary.
After Gilbert's departure fitz Maurice raised a new force in February 1570 and by a surprise night attack on 2 March, took Kilmallock and after hanging the chief townsmen at the market cross, plundered its wealth and burned the town.
After a second and successful siege by Perrot of the Geraldine stronghold of Castlemaine, fitz Maurice sued for pardon, which was granted in February 1573, after he prostrated himself in Kilmallock church with the president's sword point next to his heart.
In March 1575 he and his family, along with the Geraldine Seneschal of Imokilly, James Fitzedmund Fitzgerald, and the White Knight, Edmund Fitzgibbon, sailed on the La Arganys for St Malo, Brittany,[20] where they were received by the governor.
He had several interviews with Catherine de' Medici in Paris, offering to help make Henry III of France king of Ireland,[21] and was granted a pension of 5,000 crowns in 1576.
However, Stukley decided to lend his troops and support to King Sebastian's expedition to Morocco, where he died at the Battle of Alcacer Quibir on 4 August 1578.
[25] Following the diversion of Stukley to Morocco, fitz Maurice set out with the nuncio, Nicholas Sanders, and Matthew de Oviedo from Ferrol in Galicia, Spain on 17 June 1579 with a few troops on his vessel and three Spanish shallops.
The battle was won, but close to the scene his injuries overcame him; he made his will and ordered his friends to cut off and hide his head after death, so his enemies might not have it for a trophy.
Upon his death, a kinsman ordered the decapitation and then wrapped the head in cloth; an attempt was made to conceal his body under a tree, but it was discovered by a hunter and brought to the town of Kilmallock.