Knight of Glin

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The Knight of Glin, is a hereditary title in the Fitzgeralds of Limerick since the early 14th century. The family is a branch of the Norman FitzGerald or Geraldines, Earls of Desmond, who were granted extensive lands in County Limerick by the English Crown by way of conquest.

The Desmond family were descended from Maurice FitzGerald, a companion-in-arms of Strongbow, the Norman conqueror of Ireland. Maurice was the son of Gerald of Windsor and his wife the Welsh Princess Nesta.

The family name "Fitzgerald" comes from the (Norman) French "Fils du Gerald", i.e "Son of Gerald".

According to one legend, in the early 1600's under Elizabeth I, England set about enforcing loyalty in the western parts of Ireland. When one of her ships came up to the Knight of Glin's castle on the Shannon, a fierce battle ensued. The ship's captain managed to capture one of the Knight's sons and sent the Knight a message that he should surrender or else the son would be put in one of the ship's cannons and fired against the castle wall. The Knight reportedly sent the reply, "Fire away, there's plenty more where he came from!"

Apparently the Knights eventually swore loyalty to the English crown and became Protestant. None of the surrounding populace followed suit; they remained Roman Catholic - a division which remains to this day in the village of Glin.

The "Old Castle" of Glin, the scene of the above battle, is a ruin. The tower still stands with a historic plaque in place. After the destruction of the old castle, the Knights built the "New Castle", a beautiful Georgian mansion, on the banks of the Shannon about a mile west of the old site. The current Knight still lives there (as well as in Dublin and London).

A footnote to the history of the Knights: following the war of independence and during the ensuing Civil War, in the early 1920's, IRA soldiers, from nearby North Kerry came to the Knight to tell him that no one whose title to land came from the English Crown could keep their land. The Knight immediately produced a document in Latin, supposedly from the Duke of Normandy, indicating that his title did not originate from the English Crown at all. The baffled IRA men left the Knight with his properties, which he holds to this day. Another version of the incident relates how the then Knight who was invalided and confined to a wheelchair, refused to leave the mansion when ordered to do so, as they intended to set it alight. He insisted on staying, they left and thankfully the mansion still stands.

The current Knight is Desmond Fitzgerald, father to three daughters.