It is not the most comfortable thing to encounter in a quiet ruin, but it is precisely the kind of funerary imagery that serious collectors of early modern stonework travel some distance to see. The Latin motto carved into the inscription, COMES VIRTVTIS INVIDIA, meaning roughly "envy is the companion of virtue", adds a certain defiant edge to what is otherwise a conventional act of commemoration.

The tomb was erected in memory of Thomas FitzGerald, Esquire, who died in 1630, and was commissioned by his widow, Joan FitzGerald, also recorded as Bourke, her maiden name carried alongside her married one in the old style. The side panels of the chest are decorated with the coats of arms of the FitzGeralds and the FitzHaryes, pointing to the web of Munster Anglo-Norman families whose fortunes were already becoming complicated by the early seventeenth century. The monument is described in detail in the Urban Survey of County Limerick, compiled by Bradley and others in 1989, and was also noted by the architectural historian Helen Roe in 1969. A chest tomb, for those unfamiliar with the form, is a raised rectangular stone box supporting a flat slab, the mensa, on which effigies or inscriptions are laid; they were a common prestige format for gentry burials from the medieval period onward.

Kilmallock itself sits in south County Limerick and retains a remarkable concentration of medieval fabric, including town walls and the collegiate church of SS Peter and Paul, where this tomb stands. The church is a roofless ruin but is generally accessible, and the tomb is visible in the north aisle without any special arrangement. The carving on the side panels rewards close inspection, particularly the heraldic detail, and the cadaver figure on the mensa is small enough that it is easily overlooked on a casual pass through.