Графиня Десмонд: Долгожительница Ирландии

the Countess of Desmond
Katherine FitzGerald (Irish: Caitríona Nic Gearailt), Countess of Desmond (c. 1504 – 1604) was a noblewoman of the Anglo Norman FitzGerald dynasty in Ireland. English writers of the Tudor period, including Sir Walter Raleigh, helped popularise "the old Countess of Desmond" as a nickname for her, due to her longevity. One estimate placed her age at death in excess of 120 years. Another ranged as high as 140. Most likely she lived to about 100. A recent biography of the countess suggested that Katherine was at least 90 when she died.

Lady Desmond was the daughter of Sir John FitzGerald, second Lord of Decies in Waterford, and Ellen Fitzgibbon. She was probably born at Dromana, in County Waterford. In 1529, she married, becoming the second wife of Thomas FitzGerald, 11th Earl of Desmond (1454–1534), "her cousin german once removed", and a man some fifty years her senior. (His previous wife had been Síle Ní Chormaic, daughter of Cormac Láidir Mac Cárthaigh, builder of Blarney Castle.) The couple had a single daughter, also named Katherine, and she remained a widow following the death of her husband in 1534. In later life, Lady Desmond was party to a property dispute typical of late Tudor Ireland (1485–1603). Her husband had granted her a life tenancy in Inchiquin Castle, about 5 miles southwest of the town of Youghal, in Munster. Upon the Countess Desmond's death the castle was to revert to the line of the Earls of Desmond. In 1575, she passed title to the castle and lands in trust, by deed, to the incumbent earl, Gerald FitzGerald, who then passed it in trust to his dependants. (The Earl, who was in rebellion against the Crown, wished to avoid confiscation of his lands by placing them in the legal guardianship of others.) The estate of Inchiquin was described at the time as "the castle and towne of Inchiquaine, with arable land called the six free plowelands in Inchiquaine, together with mores, meadowes, pastures, groves, woodds, mill places, with their watercourses, rivers, streams, with their weares and fisheryes". There are two portraits of Lady Desmond whose provenance is provisionally confirmed and a third whose authenticity is less well settled.

Raleigh, in his History of the World, maintained that Lady Desmond married in the time of King Edward IV (1461–1483), making her at least 135 years old at the time of her death. She was said to have danced with King Richard III, then Duke of Gloucester. In fact, she could not have been married earlier than 1505, as her husband's first wife, Síle (Anglicised as "Gilis" in the State papers), daughter of the lord of Muskerry, was still alive in that year. The tradition that she died at age 140 was recounted in Fynes Moryson's Itinerary and Sir Francis Bacon's History of Life. Harington, writing in 1605, referred to a man who lived longer than 140 years, and to a woman, "and she a countess," who lived longer than 120. If Katherine FitzGerald married in her early twenties, this latter description would match her. Historian Ian Mortimer asserted that her age was about 100, making her a rare although not unique centenarian of the Elizabethan age. Both Raleigh (1614) and Fynes Moryson (1613) refer to her as someone already deceased.