the Tower of London. During their absence, fitz Maurice became captain general of County Desmond with the warrant of the Earl. This meant he had authority over the soldiers retained in the service of the Desmond FitzGeralds. This was arranged by Eleanor Butler, Countess of Desmond who had arrested fitz Maurice. 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. Having seized 200 head of cattle and wasted the country, he was confronted by Lixnaw himself on the way home and utterly defeated. 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. In 1569 the lord deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, was informed by fitz Maurice that he had assembled the people of Desmond to tell them that the lord deputy was unable to procure the release of the captive earl, who would be executed or perpetually imprisoned, and that the people should proclaim a new earl or captain: with one voice, the people were said to have cried out for fitz Maurice to be captain. The earl's wife, Eleanor Butler, wrote to her husband in November that fitz Maurice was seeking to bring the earl into further disrepute and to usurp his inheritance, "by the example of his father". To reassert Geraldine authority, fitz Maurice then launched what would become known as the first of the Desmond Rebellions. Southern Ireland erupted into a general rebellion, owing in part to attempts at establishing plantations. In June 1569, fitz Maurice and the Earl of Clancarty (MacCarthy Mor) invaded Kerrycurrihy, spoiled the inhabitants, took the castle-abbey of Tracton, hanged the garrison, and refused to depart without the surrender to them of the custody of Lady St Leger and Lady Grenville, the wives of the principal English colonists. Fitz Maurice then joined in league with the turbulent brothers of the earl of Ormond, and entered a bond with Conor O'Brien, 3rd Earl of Thomond, and John Burke, son of the Earl of Clanricard. 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. By September 1569, Sidney had broken the