Well might he doubt it, for in no one particular could they be identified: _e.g._ the lady buried at Sligo made her will in 1636, and survived to 1656,--a date long beyond the latest assigned for the demise of "the old Countess." Sir Walter Raleigh expressly says, "the old Countess had _held her jointure from all the Earls of Desmond since the time of Edward IV._," a description which could not apply to the widow of a person who did not die until 1583, in the reign of Elizabeth. There are many other _impossibilities_ in the case, discussed by Walpole, into which it is unnecessary to follow him. Walpole then reverts to the issue of Thomas, the sixth Earl of Desmond, who was compelled to surrender his earldom, A.D. 1418, for making an "inferior marriage;" and conjectures that "the old Countess" might have been the wife of a grandson of his born 1452, or thereabouts, who would be, as Walpole states, "a titular earl:" but this absurd supposition is met by the fact of our "old Countess" enjoying a jointure from all the earls _de facto_ in another line; a provision which the widow of an adverse claimant to the earldom could hardly have made good. Walpole's last conjecture, following the suggestion of Smith's _History of Cork_, fixes on the widow of Thomas (_the twelfth earl_, according to the careful pedigree of Sir William Betham, though Smith erroneously calls him the thirteenth earl), and asserts the identity of the "old Countess" with a _second_ wife, called "Catherine Fitzgerald of Dromana" (the Dacres branch of the Geraldines): for this assertion Smith, in a footnote, quotes "the Russel MSS.," and Walpole calls this "the most positive evidence we have." Of the MSS. referred to, I can find no further trace, and this "positive evidence" is weakened by the silence of Lodge's _Peerage_ as to any second marriage of the earl in question, while, on the contrary, he gives many probabilities against it. Thomas (moyle, or bald), twelfth earl, succeeded to his nephew, James, the eleventh earl, in 1529, being then in extreme age, and died in five years after; he was the second brother of James, ninth earl, murdered in 1587--whose widow I affirm the old Countess to have been. Let us not lose sight of the fact, that the "old Countess," by general consent, was married in the reign of Edward IV., who died 1483. And I would ask, what probability is there that a younger brother would be already married to a _second wife_, in the lifetime of his elder brother, who is described as murdered "while flourishing in wealth and power at the age of twenty-nine years?" The supposition carries improbability on the face of it; none of the genealogies mention this second marriage at all; and Dr. Smith, whose county histories I have had particular occasion to examine, was, though a diligent collector of _reports_, no antiquarian authority to rely on. Above all, it is to be remembered, that Sir Walter Raleigh