The death of Joan Fitzgerald, countess of Ormond, Ossory and Desmond, at Askeaton, County Limerick, on 2 January 1565 represented more than the demise of one of the most politically influential and wealthy women in late sixteenth-century Ireland; it also heralded the collapse of the peace between her husband and her son that she had brokered and maintained in her native province of Munster during the previous decade. In the generation before Joan, her mother-in-law Countess Margaret Fitzgerald, wife of Piers Butler, eighth earl of Ormond, also held a key position within the Ormond dynasty and among the small coterie of influential aristocratic women in late medieval Ireland. The two women operated in very different spheres: Joan was active in political circles in Munster, Dublin and London and was a personal confidante of Queen Elizabeth I, whereas Margaret concentrated her energies on stabilising and strengthening the Ormond dynasty as well as modernising the patrimony. Yet, in different ways, each played a very significant role in determining the fortunes of the family and of the earldom. Joan and Margaret were, of course, outstanding though not exceptional among their peers in terms of the influence and control they exerted; for that reason, they are familiar figures in modern histories of late medieval and early modern Ireland. Less visibly influential but equally deserving of attention are the other nineteen Ormond women featured in this book, each of whom left a distinctive mark on the family and the earldom during the period c.1450–1660. As will become evident, their ambitions, achievements, activities and failures were no different than those of their contemporaries in England, their life cycles and lifestyles in many ways also mirroring those of their counterparts on the Continent.

Throughout the period under review when Ireland was a colonial society consisting of three distinct groupings – Gaelic Irish, Old English, and the English court or crown administration centred on Dublin Castle – the family unit was of paramount importance in holding this complex lattice together, ‘with familial alliances in effect holding the balance of power and spanning the island’.