(From Hartyr’s Synopsis, p. 251)

F. NICHOLAS FITZGERALD, to escape from the cruel persecution, fled to a wood, and lay concealed there. 

He was seized in his monastic habit, taken in chains to the city of Dublin, and condemned by the Viceroy, who was never sated with the blood of Catholics, to be hanged, and while half-alive to be quartered. 

He endured that manner of death courageously for the Catholic faith, wearing his religious habit.

The faithful, influenced by pious devotion, preserved the clothes and blood of the courageous martyr, dividing them into small portions as relics in the year of Christ’s birth 1581, in the month of September. 

His father Maurice Fitzgerald, and his mother, Margaret FitzRedmond, obtained, as a very great favour, that the four quarters of their beloved son, when cut asunder, should be given to them for burial in the tomb of his ancestors in the church of the Nuns of the Order of St. Brigid, in Kildare. 

Our glorious martyr was descended from the noble race of the Geraldines.1

There is a tombstone close by the vestry door of the cathedral of Kildare which bears the names of the parents of Nicholas Fitzgerald.2

If the original position of this stone was ascertained, it would determine the place where the martyr was buried.

1 Thomas, 2nd son of Thomas, 7th Earl of Kildare, settled at Lackagh, midway between Kildare and Monasterevan

2 The inscription is given in Comerford’s Dioceses of Kildare arid Leighlin, ii.29

Please pray for final perseverance for all of us!
May the martyrs of old inspire us all.