Incredible though it may seem, there are several contemporary accounts supporting the Old Countess’s major claim to fame – that she lived until she was about 140 years of age.
Katherine was probably born in Dromana Castle, County Waterford, the daughter of Sir John FitzGerald, lord of Decies. She became the wife of Thomas Maol FitzGerald (who was to become the twelfth earl of Desmond in 1529, when he was in his seventies), around 1483. At her wedding, which took place in London, the bride danced with the future King Richard III. Her wedding gift from her husband was the castle at Inchiquin, County Cork.
When her husband died an old man c.1534, his aged widow was allowed to live on at Inchiquin Castle until her own death, when the estate would revert to the earl’s heirs. Since Katherine was already pretty elderly, the heirs expected to come into their inheritance sooner rather than later, but forty years on, in the mid-1570s, they were still waiting. Katherine finally signed over the land to Garrett FitzGerald, the fifteenth and last earl of Desmond, who later lost it to English settlers in the failed Desmond rebellion of 1583.
In 1589 Sir Walter Raleigh obtained the land as part of the plantation of Munster, and recorded that the Old Countess was still resident in the castle. He allowed her to remain, expecting, not unreasonably, that she would soon die, but in the event she saw him off. He sold the estate to Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, who was determined not to make the mistake of his chivalrous predecessor and promptly tried to evict the Old Countess.
Katherine had no choice but to take the problem directly to the court of James I. In 1604 she and her daughter – who was then over ninety years old – made the long and dangerous journey from Youghal, County Cork, via Bristol, to London. According to Sir Robert Sydney, second earl of Leicester, the Countess made the journey from Bristol on foot while her daughter rode in a ‘little cart’. In yet another story, the Old Countess carried the ailing daughter on her back until the cart was obtained! Either way, they were desperately poor and the king seems to have taken pity on them. He paid for the Old Countess’s expenses in London, and even had her portrait painted while she was there. Then the Old Countess was allowed to return home and take up residence once again at Inchiquin.
Not long after her return, the apparently indestructible Countess finally met her end. Sir Robert Sydney’s account claims she was up tree, picking either cherries or nuts, when she fell off her ladder. She broke her hip and died shortly afterwards. She is probably buried at the site of the Franciscan Friary in Youghal, next to her husband who had died some eighty years earlier.