The Munster Geraldines were exterminated, except for a few collateral families—the Knight of Kerry, the Knight of Glin, and some other chiefs whose titles still survive. But the great House of Desmond vanished forever from history, when Garret Fitzgerald, the last earl, after all his kinsmen had fallen in the struggle, was betrayed and murdered by a mercenary wretch, named Moriarty, in a peasant’s hut in Kerry, not far from Castle Island. The assassin and his brutal confederates decapitated the remains and sent the poor old head to Elizabeth, in London, who caused it to be spiked over the “traitor’s gate” of the Tower. So ended the Geraldine revolt, which raged in Munster from 1578 to 1584, until all that fair land was a desert and a sepulchre. The bravest battle fought during its continuance was that of Glendalough, in the summer of 1580. This was on the soil of Leinster, and the victory was won by the heroic Clan O’Byrne, of Wicklow, led by the redoubtable chief, Fiach MacHugh. The English, who were led by Lord De Grey in person, suffered a total rout, and the Lord Deputy, at the head of the few terrified survivors, fled in disgrace to Dublin, leaving behind him the dead bodies of four of his bravest and ablest captains—Audley, Cosby, Carew, and Moore. “Carew and Audley deep had sworn the Irish foe to tame, But thundering on their dying ear his shout of victory came; And burns with shame De Grey’s knit brow and throbs with rage his eye, To see his best, in wildest rout, from Erin’s clansmen fly.”