Qualla: Raymond FitzGerald

Raymond FitzGerald: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AFBorchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. He won his first Irish battle with cows. In May 1170, Raymond FitzGerald - nicknamed Le Gros, "the Large," because he was visibly stout - had landed at Baginbun Head on the Hook Peninsula with about a hundred Cambro-Norman knights and infantry. The local Irish and Hiberno-Norse defenders besieged him in his earthworks. His cousin Gerald of Wales put the enemy numbers at three thousand. Raymond, vastly outnumbered, did the unexpected thing his men had been least trained for: he rounded up a herd of cattle his foragers had taken, and drove them at the oncoming line. The stampede broke the formation. Approximately a thousand of the combined Gaelic and Hiberno-Norse force were either killed or captured. The Norman invasion of Ireland had its first famous victory.

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Image: AFBorchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Raymond FitzGerald: Welsh Beginnings

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dermot, CC BY-SA 2.5. Raymond was a grandson of Princess Nest ferch Rhys, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the last independent Prince of South Wales. His father, William FitzGerald, was Lord of Carew - one of the Cambro-Norman warlords whose Welsh-Norman families had spent generations carving up the Welsh...

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Image: Dermot | CC BY-SA 2.5

Raymond FitzGerald: Soldier, Not Statesman

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Typhoon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Raymond was Strongbow's second in command for the operations that followed. He had the chief share in the capture of Waterford that summer, and in the successful assault on Dublin shortly afterwards. Strongbow sent him to Aquitaine to formally hand over his Irish conquests to Hen...

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Image: Typhoon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Raymond FitzGerald: Recalled, Married, Reinstated

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit さえぼー, CC0. Three years later, in 1174, the conquest was in trouble. A general Irish rebellion against Strongbow had erupted, and the Norman position was wobbling. Raymond agreed to return - on condition that the marriage to Basilia was now offered. He sailed back with about 450 men and brok...

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Image: さえぼー | CC0

Raymond FitzGerald: What Gerald of Wales Saw

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nicholas Hilliard, Public domain. His cousin Gerald of Wales - the most prolific writer of his era - left a physical description of Raymond that survives almost word for word. "Very stout, and a little above the middle height; his hair was yellow and curly, and he had large, grey round eyes. His nose was rather p...

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Image: Nicholas Hilliard | Public domain

Raymond FitzGerald: A Quiet Death and a Lost Grave

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nobody is sure when Raymond died. He was certainly alive in 1185 when John of England came to Ireland; Gerald of Wales finished his Expugnatio Hibernica in 1189 without recording the death of his famous cousin. Basilia remarried sometime between 1198 and 1201, which gives the lat...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0