General Notes

Maurice Fitz Gerald; feudal Lord of Llanstephan, Wales, by inheritance; in 1167 Dermot MacMurrogh, King of Leinster, who had been deprived of his kingdom by Roderick O'Connor, King of Connaught and High King of Ireland, pledged Wexford to Maurice and his half brother Robert Fitz Stephen if they would help restore him; Maurice accordingly went to Ireland in 1169 and not only secured Wexford but, in concert with Dermot, took Dublin, from which Roderick failed to dislodge him in 1171, by which time Dermot had died; Henry II subsequently went to Ireland and made Maurice Jt Keeper of Dublin, granting him also the middle cantred (akin to a hundred, or subdivision of a county) of Ophelan in Co Kildare (approximately that part of the county centered on Naas) and that of Co Wicklow between Bray and Arklow.  [Burke's Peerage]

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Lord of Lanstephen, Wales; His brother, Bishop David, granted him the Stewardship of St. Davids hereditarily. Under Stephen [between 1136 and 1146] the sons of Gerald were hard pressed by the Welsh in their effort to dislodge the Norman interlopers from the lands they had seized. The occasion of Maurice's going to Ireland, where he and his descendants were to flourish so exceedingly, was the promise, in 1167, of Dermot MacMurrough, the dispossessed King of Leinster, to give Wexford to him and to his half-brother, Robert FitzStephen, if they would help him to regain the kingdom--a promise which he duly honoured. Preceded by FitzStephen, and accompanied by his nephew Raymond, Maurice landed at Wexford in 1169 with two ships of armed followers, and with the aid of his Norman allies Dermot recovered Dublin. The coming over of Henry II, and the political dispositions which he made, fettered the progress of the Geraldines; although at his departure [Easter 1172] the King left Maurice one of the three keepers of Dublin. After spending some time in Wales, Maurice returned to Ireland, where the Keeper, Earl Richard, Strongbow, was consolidating the Normans in the face of the Irish by making them grants of land in fee, and by arranging marriages between members of the factious families.  There is no record (e) of his marriage.  He d. 1 Sep 1176, at Wexford.  [Complete Peerage X:11-12, (transcribed by Dave Utzinger)]

(e) In the 1st edition of this work he is said to have m. a daughter of Arnulf de Montgomery abovenamed; but he can only have been a baby (if born) when Arnulf was exiled in 1102.