It was not placed there by a grieving son or a civic body, but by a widow, Ellen FitzGerald, who outlived her third husband by twenty years and apparently made sure the record of that marriage, and of the families behind it, would not be easily forgotten.

Ellen was the daughter of Gerald, the fifteenth Earl of Desmond, and her husband Edmond Dunboyne died in 1640. The monument she commissioned bears his coat-of-arms impaled with hers, the heraldic term for two coats placed side by side on a single shield to represent a marriage. The arms are quartered, meaning divided into four sections, each carrying a different charge: the first and fourth quarters show the Dunboyne branch of the Butler family's device, a chief indented with three golden scallop shells; the second quarter carries three covered cups; and the third displays the arms of Petyt, a fesse, or horizontal stripe, across the field. The shield is supported by a lion gardant and a horse, and is topped by a tilting helm with mantling, the decorative flourish of stylised cloth that frames a heraldic helmet. Below the shield, a scroll carries the motto TIMOR DOMINI FONS VITAE, a phrase drawn from the Book of Proverbs meaning "the fear of the Lord is the fountain of life". Ellen herself died in 1660, and the monument has remained in place ever since, resting on a plain ledge above the arch, detailed and deliberate, in a corner of the abbey that most visitors to Fethard pass without stopping.