Fitzgerald

The FitzGeralds, known in Ireland as the Geraldines, descended from Gerald de Windsor and Nest ferch Rhys, a Welsh princess. Their son Maurice FitzGerald crossed to Ireland with the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169 and helped take Wexford, Waterford and Dublin.

The family split into two great branches: the Kildare line, created earls of Kildare in 1316, and the Desmond line in Munster, later earls of Desmond. Both grew so deeply Gaelicised that contemporaries called them more Irish than the Irish themselves, and Gerald, third earl of Desmond, composed verse in Irish.

Silken Thomas of Kildare rose in 1534 and was executed in 1537. The Desmond Rebellions of 1569 to 1583 ended with the killing of the fourteenth earl and the Plantation of Munster; the Kildare branch was restored and became dukes of Leinster in 1766.