VOLUME X SLICE IV Finland to Fleury, André (continued 6)

(E. O.*)

FIT, a word with several meanings. (1) A portion or division of a poem, a canto, in this sense often spelled “fytte.” (2) A sudden but temporary seizure or attack of illness, particularly one with convulsive paroxysms accompanied by unconsciousness, especially an attack of apoplexy or epilepsy, but also applied to a transitory attack of gout, of coughing, fainting, &c., also of an outburst of tears, of merriment or of temper. In a transferred sense, the word is also used of any temporary or irregular periods of action or inaction, and hence in such expressions as “by fits and starts.” (3) As an adjective, meaning suitable, proper, becoming, often with the idea of having necessary qualifications for a specific purpose, “a fit and proper person”; and also as prepared for, or in a good condition for, any enterprise. The verb “to fit” is thus used intransitively and transitively, to be adapted for, to suit, particularly to be of the right measurement or shape, of a dress, of parts of a mechanism, &c., and to make or render a thing in such a condition. Hence the word is used as a substantive.

The etymology of the word is difficult; the word may be one in origin, or may be a homonymous term, one in sound and spelling but with different origin in each different meaning. In Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary (ed. 1898) (1) and (2) are connected and derived from the root of “foot,” which appears in Lat. pes, pedis. The evolution of the word is: step, a part of a poem, a struggle, a seizure. (3) A word of Scandinavian origin, with the idea of “knitted together” (cf. Ice. fitja, to knit together, Goth, fetjan, to adorn); the ultimate origin is a Teutonic root meaning to seize (cf. “fetch”). The New English Dictionary suggests that this last root may be the origin of all the words, and that the underlying meaning is junction, meeting; the early use of “fit” (2) is that of conflict. It is also pointed out that the meanings of “fit,” suitable, proper, have been modified by “feat,” which comes through Fr. fait, from Lat. factum, facere, to do, make.

FITCH, JOHN (1743-1798), American pioneer of steam navigation, was born at Windsor, Connecticut, on the 21st of January 1743. He was the son of a farmer, and received the usual common school education. At the age of seventeen he went to sea, but he discontinued his sailor life after a few voyages and became successively a clockmaker, a brassfounder and a silversmith. During the War of Independence he was a sutler to the American troops, and amassed in that way a considerable sum of money, with which he bought land in Virginia. He was appointed deputy-surveyor for Kentucky in 1780, and when returning to Philadelphia in the following year he was captured by the Indians, but shortly afterwards regained his liberty. About this time he began an exploration of the north-western regions, with the view of preparing a map of the district; and while sailing on the great western rivers, the idea occurred to him that they might be navigated by steam. He endeavoured by the sale of his map to find money for the carrying out of his projects, but was unsuccessful. He next applied for assistance to the legislatures of different states, but though each reported in favourable terms of his invention, none of them would agree to grant him any pecuniary assistance. He was successful, however, in 1786, in forming a company for the prosecution of his enterprise, and shortly afterwards a steam-packet of his invention was launched on the Delaware. His claim to be the inventor of steam-navigation was disputed by James Rumsey of Virginia, but Fitch obtained exclusive rights in steam-navigation in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, while a similar privilege was granted to Rumsey in Virginia, Maryland and New York. A steam-boat built by Fitch conveyed passengers for hire on the Delaware in the summer of 1790, but the undertaking was a losing one, and led to the dissolution of the company. In 1793 he endeavoured to introduce his invention into France, but met with no success. On his return to America he found his property overrun by squatters, and reaping from his invention nothing but disappointment and poverty, he committed suicide at Bardstown, Kentucky, on the 2nd of July 1798.

He left behind him a record of his adventures and misfortunes, “inscribed to his children and future posterity”; and from this a biography was compiled by Thompson Westcott (Philadelphia, 1857.)

FITCH, SIR JOSHUA GIRLING (1824-1903), English educationist, second son of Thomas Fitch, of a Colchester family, was born in Southwark, London, in 1824. His parents were poor but intellectually inclined, and at an early age Fitch started work as an assistant master in the British and Foreign School Society’s elementary school in the Borough Road, founded by Thomas Lancaster. But he continued to educate himself by assiduous reading and attending classes at University College; he was made headmaster of another school at Kingsland; and in 1850 he took his B.A. degree at London University, proceeding MA. two years later. In 1852 he was appointed by the British and Foreign School Society to a tutorship at their Training College in the Borough Road, soon becoming vice-principal and in 1856 principal. He had previously done some occasional teaching there, and he was thoroughly imbued with the Lancasterian system. In 1863 he was appointed a government inspector of schools for the York district, from which, after intervals in which he was detached for work as an assistant commissioner (1865-1867) on the Schools Inquiry Commission, as special commissioner (1869), and as an assistant commissioner under the Endowed Schools Act (1870-1877), he was transferred in 1877 to East Lambeth. In 1883 he was made a chief inspector, to superintend the eastern counties, and in 1885 chief inspector of training colleges, a post he held till he retired in 1894. In the course of an extraordinarily active career, he acquired a unique acquaintance with all branches of education, and became a recognized authority on the subject, his official reports, lectures and books having a great influence on the development of education in England. He was a strong advocate and supporter of the movement for the higher education of women, and he was constantly looked to for counsel and direction on every sort of educational subject; his wide knowledge, safe judgment and amiable character made his co-operation of exceptional value, and after he retired from official life his services were in active request in inquiries and on boards and committees. In 1896 he was knighted; and besides receiving such academic distinctions as the LL.D. degree from St Andrews University, he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour in 1889. He was a constant contributor to the leading reviews; he published an important series of Lectures on Teaching (1881), Educational Aims and Methods, Notes on American Schools and Colleges (1887), and an authoritative criticism of Thomas and Matthew Arnold, and their Influence on English Education (see also the article on Arnold, Matthew) in 1901; and he wrote the article on Education in the supplementary volumes (10th edition) of this encyclopaedia (1902). He died on the 14th of July 1903 in London. A civil list pension was given to his widow, whom, as Miss Emma Wilks, he had married in 1856.

See also Sir Joshua Fitch, by the Rev. A.L. Lilley (1906),

FITCH, RALPH (fl. 1583-1606), London merchant, one of the earliest English travellers and traders in Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India proper and Indo-China. In January 1583 he embarked in the “Tiger” for Tripoli and Aleppo in Syria (see Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I. sc. 3), together with J. Newberie, J. Eldred and two other merchants or employees of the Levant Company. From Aleppo he reached the Euphrates, descended the river from Bir to Fallujah, crossed southern Mesopotamia to Bagdad, and dropped down the Tigris to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to trade, while Fitch and the rest sailed down the Persian Gulf to Ormuz, where they were arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation, as they believed) and sent prisoners to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa (September to October). Through the sureties procured by two Jesuits (one being Thomas Stevens, formerly of New College, Oxford, the first Englishman known to have reached India by the Cape route in 1579) Fitch and his friends regained their liberty, and escaping from Goa (April 1584) travelled through the heart of India to the court of the Great Mogul Akbar, then probably at Agra. In September 1585 Newberie left on his return journey overland via Lahore (he disappeared, being presumably murdered, in the Punjab), while Fitch descended the Jumna and the Ganges, visiting Benares, Patna, Kuch Behar, Hugli, Chittagong, &c. (1585-1586), and pushed on by sea to Pegu and Burma. Here he visited the Rangoon region, ascended the Irawadi some distance, acquired a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even penetrated to the Siamese Shan states (1586-1587). Early in 1588 he visited Malacca; in the autumn of this year he began his homeward travels, first to Bengal; then round the Indian coast, touching at Cochin and Goa, to Ormuz; next up the Persian Gulf to Basra and up the Tigris to Mosul (Nineveh); finally via Urfa, Bir on the Euphrates, Aleppo and Tripoli, to the Mediterranean. He reappeared in London on the 29th of April 1591. His experience was greatly valued by the founders of the East India Company, who specially consulted him on Indian affairs (e.g. 2nd of October 1600; 29th of January 1601; 31st of December 1606).

See Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1599), vol. ii. part i. pp. 245-271, esp. 250-268; Linschoten, Voyages (Itineraris), part i. ch. xcii. (vol. ii. pp. 158-169, &c., Hakluyt Soc. edition); Stevens and Birdwood, Court Records of the East India Company 1599-1603 (1886), esp. pp. 26, 123; State Papers, East Indies, &c., 1513-1616 (1862), No. 36; Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels (1808-1814), ix. 406-425.

FITCHBURG, a city and one of the county-seats of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated, at an altitude varying from about 433 ft. to about 550 ft., about 23 m. N. of Worcester and about 45 m. W.N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1880) 12,429; (1890) 22,037; (1900) 31,531, of whom 10,917 were foreign-born, including 4063 French Canadians, 836 English Canadians, 2306 Irish and 963 Finns; (1910 census) 37,826. Fitchburg is traversed by the N. branch of the Nashua river, and is served by the Boston & Maine, and the New York, New Haven & Hartford railways, and by three interurban electric lines. The city area (27.7 sq.m.) is well watered, and is very uneven, with hill spurs running in all directions, affording picturesque scenery. The court house and the post office (in a park presented by the citizens) are the principal public buildings. Fitchburg is the seat of a state normal school (1895), with model and training schools; has a free public library (1859; in the Wallace library and art building), the Burbank hospital, the Fitchburg home for old ladies, and an extensive system of parks, in one of which is a fine fountain, designed by Herbert Adams. Fitchburg has large mercantile and financial interests, but manufacturing is the principal industry. The principal manufactures are paper and wood pulp, cotton and woollen goods, yarn and silk, machinery, saws, horn goods, and bicycles and firearms (the Iver Johnson Arms and Cycle Works being located here). In 1905 the city’s total factory product was valued at $15,390,507, of which $3,019,118 was the value of the paper and wood pulp product, $2,910,572 was the value of the cotton goods, and $1,202,421 was the value of the foundry and machine shop products. The municipality owns and operates its (gravity) water works system. Fitchburg was included in Lunenburg until 1764, when it was incorporated as a township and was named in honour of John Fitch, a citizen who did much to secure incorporation; it was chartered as a city in 1872.

See W.A. Emerson, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Past and Present (Fitchburg, 1887).

FITTIG, RUDOLF (1835- ), German chemist, was born at Hamburg on the 6th of December 1835. He studied chemistry at Göttingen, graduating as Ph.D. with a dissertation on acetone in 1858. He subsequently held several appointments at Göttingen, being privat docent (1860), and extraordinary professor (1870). In 1870 he obtained the chair at Tübingen, and in 1876 that at Strassburg, where the laboratories were erected from his designs. Fittig’s researches are entirely in organic chemistry, and cover an exceptionally wide field. The aldehydes and ketones provided material for his earlier work. He observed that aldehydes and ketones may suffer reduction in neutral, alkaline, and sometimes acid solution to secondary and tertiary glycols, substances which he named pinacones; and also that certain pinacones when distilled with dilute sulphuric acid gave compounds, which he named pinacolines. The unsaturated acids, also received much attention, and he discovered the internal anhydrides of oxyacids, termed lactones. In 1863 he introduced the reaction known by his name. In 1855 Adolph Wurtz had shown that when sodium acted upon alkyl iodides, the alkyl residues combined to form more complex hydrocarbons; Fittig developed this method by showing that a mixture of an aromatic and alkyl haloid, under similar treatment, yielded homologues of benzene. His investigations on Perkin’s reaction led him to an explanation of its mechanism which appeared to be more in accordance with the facts. The question, however, is one of much difficulty, and the exact course of the reaction appears to await solution. These researches incidentally solved the constitution of coumarin, the odoriferous principle of woodruff. Fittig and Erdmann’s observation that phenyl isocrotonic acid readily yielded α-naphthol by loss of water was of much importance, since it afforded valuable evidence as to the constitution of naphthalene. They also investigated certain hydrocarbons occurring in the high boiling point fraction of the coal tar distillate and solved the constitution of phenanthrene. We also owe much of our knowledge of the alkaloid piperine to Fittig, who in collaboration with Ira Remsen established its constitution in 1871. Fittig has published two widely used text-books; he edited several editions of Wohler’s Grundriss der organischen Chemie (11th ed., 1887) and wrote an Unorganische Chemie (1st ed., 1872; 3rd, 1882). His researches have been recognized by many scientific societies and institutions, the Royal Society awarding him the Davy medal in 1906.

FITTON, MARY (c. 1578-1647), identified by some writers with the “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets, was the daughter of Sir Edward Fitton of Gawsworth, Cheshire, and was baptized on the 24th of June 1578. Her elder sister, Anne, married John Newdigate in 1587, in her fourteenth year. About 1595 Mary Fitton became maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. Her father recommended her to the care of Sir William Knollys, comptroller of the queen’s household, who promised to defend the “innocent lamb” from the “wolfish cruelty and fox-like subtlety of the tame beasts of this place.” Sir William was fifty and already married, but he soon became suitor to Mary Fitton, in hope of the speedy death of the actual Lady Knollys, and appears to have received considerable encouragement. There is no hint in her authenticated biography that she was acquainted with Shakespeare. William Kemp, who was a clown in Shakespeare’s company, dedicated his Nine Daies Wonder to Mistress Anne (perhaps an error for Mary) Fitton, “Maid of Honour to Elizabeth”; and there is a sonnet addressed to her in an anonymous volume, A Woman’s Woorth defended against all the Men in the World (1599). In 1600 Mary Fitton led a dance in court festivities at which William Herbert, later earl of Pembroke, is known to have been present; and shortly afterwards she became his mistress. In February 1601 Pembroke was sent to the Fleet in connexion with this affair, but Mary Fitton, whose child died soon after its birth, appears to have simply been dismissed from court. Mary Fitton seems to have gone to her sister, Lady Newdigate, at Arbury. A second scandal has been fixed on Mary Fitton by George Ormerod, author of History of Cheshire, in a MS. quoted by Mr. T. Tyler (Academy, 27th Sept. 1884). Ormerod asserted, on the strength of the MSS. of Sir Peter Leycester, that she had two illegitimate daughters by Sir Richard Leveson, the friend and correspondent of her sister Anne. He also gives the name of her first husband as Captain Logher, and her second as Captain Polwhele, by whom she had a son and daughter. Polwhele died in 1609 or 1610, about three years after his marriage. But Ormerod was mistaken in the order of Mary Fitton’s husbands, for her second husband, Logher, died in 1636. Her own will, which was proved in 1647, gives her name as “Mary Lougher.” In Gawsworth church there is a painted monument of the Fittons, in which Anne and Mary are represented kneeling behind their mother. It is stated that from what remains of the colouring Mary was a dark woman, which is of course essential to her identification with the lady of the sonnets, but in the portraits at Arbury described by Lady Newdigate-Newdegate in her Gossip from a Muniment Room (1897) she has brown hair and grey eyes.

The identity of the Arbury portrait with Mary Fitton was challenged by Mr Tyler and by Dr Furnivall. For an answer to their remarks see an appendix by C.G.O. Bridgeman in the 2nd edition of Lady Newdigate-Newdegate’s book.

The suggestion that Mary Fitton should be regarded as the false mistress of Shakespeare’s sonnets rests on a very thin chain of reasoning, and by no means follows on the acceptance of the theory that William Herbert was the addressee of the sonnets, though it of course fails with the rejection of that supposition. Mr William Archer (Fortnightly Review, December 1897) found some support for Mary Fitton’s identification with the “dark lady” in the fact that Sir William Knollys was also her suitor, thus numbering three “Wills” among her admirers. This supplies a definite interpretation, whether right or wrong, to the initial lines of Sonnet 135:—

“Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’ And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in overplus.”

Arguments in favour of her adoption into the Shakespeare circle will be found in Mr Thomas Tyler’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1890, pp. 73-92), and in the same writer’s Herbert-Fitton Theory of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1898).

FITTON, WILLIAM HENRY (1780-1861), British geologist was born in Dublin in January 1780. Educated at Trinity College, in that city, he gained the senior scholarship in 1798, and graduated in the following year. At this time he began to take interest in geology and to form a collection of fossils. Having adopted the medical profession he proceeded in 1808 to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Robert Jameson, and thenceforth his interest in natural history and especially in geology steadily increased. He removed to London in 1809, where he further studied medicine and chemistry. In 1811 he brought before the Geological Society of London a description of the geological structure of the vicinity of Dublin, with an account of some rare minerals found in Ireland. He took a medical practice at Northampton in 1812, and for some years the duties of his profession engrossed his time. He was admitted M.D. at Cambridge in 1816. In 1820, having married a lady of means, he settled in London, and devoted himself to the science of geology with such assiduity and thoroughness that he soon became a leading authority, and in the end, as Murchison said, “one of the British worthies who have raised modern geology to its present advanced position.” His “Observations on some of the Strata between the Chalk and the Oxford Oolite, in the South-east of England” (Trans. Geol. Soc. ser. 2, vol. iv.) embodied a series of researches extending from 1824 to 1836, and form the classic memoir familiarly known as Fitton’s “Strata below the Chalk.” In this great work he established the true succession and relations of the Upper and Lower Greensand, and of the Wealden and Purbeck formations, and elaborated their detailed structure. He had been elected F.R.S. in 1815, and he was president of the Geological Society of London 1827-1829. His house then became a meeting place for scientific workers, and during his presidency he held a conversazione open on Sunday evenings to all fellows of the Geological Society. From 1817 to 1841 he contributed to the Edinburgh Review many admirable essays on the progress of geological science; he also wrote “Notes on the Progress of Geology in England” for the Philosophical Magazine (1832-1833). His only independent publication was A Geological Sketch of the Vicinity of Hastings (1833). He was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1852. He died in London on the 13th of May 1861.

Obituary by R.I. Murchison in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xviii., 1862, p. xxx.

FITZBALL, EDWARD (1792-1873), English dramatist, whose real patronymic was Ball, was born at Burwell, Cambridgeshire, in 1792. His father was a well-to-do farmer, and Fitzball, after receiving his schooling at Newmarket, was apprenticed to a Norwich printer in 1809. He produced some dramatic pieces at the local theatre, and eventually the marked success of his Innkeeper of Abbeville, or The Ostler and the Robber (1820), together with the friendly acceptance of one of his pieces at the Surrey theatre by Thomas Dibdin, induced him to settle in London. During the next twenty-five years he produced a great number of plays, most of which were highly successful. He had a special talent for nautical drama. His Floating Beacon (Surrey theatre, 19th of April 1824) ran for 140 nights, and his Pilot (Adelphi, 1825) for 200 nights. His greatest triumph in melodrama was perhaps Jonathan Bradford, or the Murder at the Roadside Inn (Surrey theatre, 12th of June 1833). He was at one time stock dramatist and reader of plays at Covent Garden, and afterwards at Drury Lane. He had a considerable reputation as a song-writer and as a librettist in opera. The last years of his life were spent in retirement at Chatham, where he died on the 27th of October 1873.

His autobiography, Thirty-Five Years of a Dramatic Author’s Life (2 vol., 1859), is a naïve record of his career. Numbers of his plays are printed in Cumberland’s Minor British Theatre, Dick’s Standard Plays and Lacy’s Acting Edition of Plays.

FITZGERALD, the name of an historic Irish house, which descends from Walter, son of Other, who at the time of the Domesday Survey (1086) was castellan of Windsor and a tenant-in-chief in five counties. From his eldest son William, known as “de Windsor,” descended the Windsors of Stanwell, of whom Andrew Windsor was created Lord Windsor of Stanwell (a Domesday possession of the house) by Henry VIII., which barony is now vested in the earl of Plymouth, his descendant in the female line. Of Walter’s younger sons, Robert was given by Henry I. the barony of Little Easton, Essex; Maurice obtained the stewardship (dapiferatus) of the great Suffolk abbey of Bury St Edmunds; Reinald the stewardship to Henry I.’s queen, Adeliza; and Gerald (also a dapifer) became the ancestor of the FitzGeralds. As constable and captain of the castle that Arnulf de Montgomery raised at Pembroke, Gerald strengthened his position in Wales by marrying Nesta, sister of Griffith, prince of South Wales, who bore to him famous children, “by whom the southern coast of Wales was saved for the English and the bulwarks of Ireland stormed.” Of these sons William, the eldest, was succeeded by his son Odo, who was known as “de Carew,” from the fortress of that name at the neck of the Pembroke peninsula, the eldest son Gerald having been slain by the Welsh. The descendants of Odo held Carew and the manor of Moulsford, Berks, and some of them acquired lands in Ireland. But the wild claims of Sir Peter Carew, under Queen Elizabeth, to vast Irish estates, including half of “the kingdom of Cork,” were based on a fictitious pedigree. Odo de Carew’s brothers, Reimund “Fitz William” (known as “Le Gros”) and Griffin “Fitz William,” took an active part in the conquest of Ireland.

Returning to Gerald and Nesta, their son David “Fitz Gerald” became bishop of St David’s (1147-1176), and their daughter Angharat mother of Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambrensis, q.v.), the well-known historian and the eulogist of his mother’s family. A third son, Maurice, obtained from his brother the stewardship (dapiferatus) of St David’s, c. 1174, and having landed in Ireland in 1169, on the invitation of King Dermod, founded the fortunes of his house there, receiving lands at Wexford, where he died and was buried in 1176. His eventual territory, however, was the great barony of the Naas in Ophaley (now in Kildare), which Strongbow granted him with Wicklow Castle; but his sons were forced to give up the latter. His eldest son William succeeded him as baron of the Naas and steward of St David’s, but William’s granddaughter carried the Naas to the Butlers and so to the Loundreses. Gerald, a younger son of Maurice, who obtained lands in Ophaley, was father of Maurice “Fitz Gerald,” who held the great office of justiciar of Ireland from 1232 to 1245. In 1234 he fought and defeated his overlord, the earl marshal, Richard, earl of Pembroke, and he also fought for his king against the Irish, the Welsh, and in Gascony, dying in 1257. He held Maynooth Castle, the seat of his descendants.

Much confusion follows in the family history, owing to the justiciar leaving a grandson Maurice (son of his eldest son Gerald) and a younger son Maurice, of whom the latter was justiciar for a year in 1272, while the former, as heir male and head of the race, inherited the Ophaley lands, which he is said to have bequeathed at his death (1287) to John “Fitz Thomas,” whose fighting life was crowned by a grant of the castle and town of Kildare, and of the earldom of Kildare to him and the heirs male of his body (May 14th, 1316), Dying shortly after, he was succeeded by his son Thomas, son-in-law of Richard (de Burgh) the “red earl” of Ulster, who received the hereditary shrievalty of Kildare in 1317, and was twice (1320, 1327) justiciar of Ireland for a year. His younger son Maurice “Fitz Thomas,” 4th earl (1331-1390), was frequently appointed justiciar, and was great-grandfather of Thomas, the 7th earl (1427-1477), who between 1455 and 1475 was repeatedly in charge of the government of Ireland as “deputy,” and who founded the “brotherhood of St George” for the defence of the English Pale. He was also made lord chancellor of Ireland in 1463. His son Gerald, the 8th earl (1477-1513), called “More” (the Great), was deputy governor of Ireland from 1481 for most of the rest of his life, though imprisoned in the Tower two years (1494-1496) on suspicion as a Yorkist. He was mortally wounded while fighting the Irish as “deputy.” Gerald, the 9th earl (1513-1534), followed in his father’s steps as deputy, fighting the Irish, till the enmity of the earl of Ormonde, the hereditary rival of his house, brought about his deposition in 1520. In spite of temporary restorations he finally died a prisoner in the Tower.

In his anger at his rival’s successes the 9th earl had been led, it was suspected, into treason, and while he was a prisoner in England his son Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, “Silken Thomas,” broke out into open revolt (1534), and declared war on the government; his followers slew the archbishop of Dublin and laid siege to Dublin Castle. Meanwhile he made overtures to the native Irish, to the pope and to the emperor; but the Butlers took up arms against him, an English army laid siege to his castle of Maynooth, and, though its fall was followed by a long struggle in the field, the earl, deserted by O’Conor, had eventually to surrender himself to the king’s deputy. He was sent to the Tower, where he was subsequently joined by his five uncles, arrested as his accomplices. They were all six executed as traitors in February 1537, and acts of attainder completed the ruin of the family.

But the earl’s half-brother, Gerald (whose sister Elizabeth was the earl of Surrey’s “fair Geraldine”), a mere boy, had been carried off, and, after many adventures at home and abroad, returned to England after Henry VIII.’s death, and to propitiate the Irish was restored to his estates by Edward VI. (1552). Having served Mary in Wyat’s rebellion, he was created by her earl of Kildare and Lord Offaley, on the 13th of May 1554, but the old earldom (though the contrary is alleged) remained under attainder. Although he conformed to the Protestant religion under Elizabeth and served against the Munster rebels and their Spanish allies, he was imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of treason in 1583. But the acts attainting his family had been repealed in 1569, and the old earldom was thus regained. In 1585 he was succeeded by his son Henry (“of the Battleaxes”), who was mortally wounded when fighting the Tyrone rebels in 1597. On the death of his brother in 1599 the earldom passed to their cousin Gerald, whose claim to the estates was opposed by Lettice, Lady Digby, the heir-general. She obtained the ancestral castle of Geashill with its territory and was recognized in 1620 as Lady Offaley for life. George, the 16th earl (1620-1660), had his castle of Maynooth pillaged by the Roman Catholics in 1642, and after its subsequent occupation by them in 1646 it was finally abandoned by the family.

The history of the earls after the Restoration was uneventful, save for the re-acquisition in 1739 of Carton, which thenceforth became the seat of the family, until James the 20th earl (1722-1773), who obtained a viscounty of Great Britain in 1747, built Leinster House in Dublin, and formed a powerful party in the Irish parliament. In 1756 he was made lord deputy; in 1760 he raised the royal Irish regiment of artillery; and in 1766 he received the dukedom of Leinster, which remained the only Irish dukedom till that of Abercorn was created in 1868. His wealth and connexions secured him a commanding position. Of his younger children one son was created Lord Lecale; another was the well-known rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald; another was the ancestor of Lord De Ros; and a daughter was created Baroness Rayleigh. William Robert, the 2nd duke (1749-1804), was a cordial supporter of the Union, and received nearly £30,000 for the loss of his borough influence. In 1883 the family was still holding over 70,000 acres in Co. Kildare; but, after a tenure of nearly 750 years, arrangements were made to sell them to the tenants under the recent Land Purchase Acts. In 1893 Maurice Fitzgerald (b. 1887) succeeded his father Gerald, the 5th duke (1851-1893), as 6th duke of Leinster.

The other great Fitzgerald line was that of the earls of Desmond, who were undoubtedly of the same stock and claimed descent from Maurice, the founder of the family in Ireland, through a younger son Thomas. It would seem that Maurice, grandson of Thomas, was father of Thomas “Fitz Maurice” Nappagh (“of the ape”), justice of Ireland in 1295, who obtained a grant of the territory of “Decies and Desmond” in 1292, and died in 1298. His son Maurice Fitz Thomas or Fitzgerald, inheriting vast estates in Munster, and strengthening his position by marrying a daughter of Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster, was created earl of Desmond (i.e. south Munster) on the 22nd of August 1329, and Kerry was made a palatine liberty for him. The greatest Irish noble of his day, he led the Anglo-Irish party against the English representatives of the king, and was attacked as the king’s enemy by the viceroy in 1345. He surrendered in England to the king and was imprisoned, but eventually regained favour, and was even made viceroy himself in 1355. He died, however, the following year. Two of his sons succeeded in turn, Gerald, the 3rd earl (1359-1398), being appointed justiciar (i.e. viceroy) in 1367, despite his adopting his father’s policy which the crown still wished to thwart. But he was superseded two years later, and defeated and captured by the native king of Thomond shortly after. Yet his sympathies were distinctly Irish. The remote position of Desmond in the south-west of Ireland tended to make the succession irregular on native lines, and a younger son succeeded as 6th or 7th earl about 1422. His son Thomas, the next earl (1462-1467), governed Ireland as deputy from 1463 to 1467, and upheld the endangered English rule by stubborn conflict with the Irish. Yet Tiptoft, who superseded him, procured his attainder with that of the earl of Kildare, on the charge of alliance with the Irish, and he was beheaded on the 14th of February 1468, his followers in Munster avenging his death by invading the Pale. His younger son Maurice, earl from 1487 to 1520, was one of Perkin Warbeck’s Irish supporters, and besieged Waterford on his behalf. His son James (1520-1529) was proclaimed a rebel and traitor for conspiring with the French king and with the emperor. At his death the succession reverted to his uncle Thomas (1529-1534), then an old man, at whose death there was a contest between his younger brother Sir John “of Desmond” and his grandson James, a court page of Henry VIII. Old Sir John secured possession till his death (1536), when his son James succeeded de facto, and de jure on the rightful earl being murdered by the usurper’s younger brother in 1540. Intermarriage with Irish chieftains had by this time classed the earls among them, but although this James looked to their support before 1540, he thenceforth played so prudent a part that in spite of the efforts of the Butlers, the hereditary foes of his race, he escaped the fate of the Kildare branch and kept Munster quiet and in order for the English till his death in 1558. His four marriages produced a disputed succession and a break-up of the family. His eldest son Thomas “Roe” (the Red) was disinherited, and failed to obtain the earldom, which was confirmed by Elizabeth to his half-brother Gerald “the rebel earl” (1558-1582), but Gerald had other enemies in his uncle Maurice (the murderer of 1540) and his son especially, the famous James “Fitz Maurice” Fitz Gerald. Gerald’s turbulence and his strife with the Butlers led to his detention in England (1562-1564) and again in 1565-1566. In 1567 Sidney imprisoned him in Dublin Castle, whence, with his brother, Sir John “of Desmond,” he was sent to England and the Tower, and not allowed to return to Ireland till 1573. Meanwhile the above James, in spite of the protests of Thomas “Roe,” had usurped his position in his absence and induced the natives to choose him as “captain” or chieftain of Desmond. He formed a strong Irish Catholic party and broke into revolt in 1569. Suppressed by Sidney, he rebelled again, till crushed by Perrot in 1573. As Earl Gerald on his return would not join James in revolt, the latter withdrew to France. But Gerald himself, after some trimming, rose in rebellion (July 1574), though he soon submitted to the queen’s forces. On the continent James Fitz Maurice offered the crown of Ireland in succession to France and to Spain, and finally to the nephew of Pope Gregory XIII. With the papal nuncio and a few troops he landed at Dingle in Kerry (June 1579) and called on the earls of Kildare and Desmond to join him, but the latter assured the English government of his loyalty, and James was killed in a skirmish. Yet Desmond was viewed with suspicion and finally forced, by being proclaimed as a traitor (Nov. 1st, 1579), into a miserable rebellion. His castles were soon captured, and he was hunted as a fugitive, till surprised and beheaded on the 11th of November 1583, after long wanderings, his head being fixed on London Bridge. His ruin is attributable to his restless turbulence and lack of settled policy. The vast estates of the earls, estimated at 600,000 acres, were forfeited by act of parliament.

But the influence of his mighty house was still great among the Irish. The disinherited Thomas “Roe” left a son James “Fitz Thomas,” who, succeeding him in 1595 and finding that the territory of the earls would never be restored, assumed the earldom and joined O’Neill’s rebellion in 1598, at the head of 8000 of his men. Long sheltered from capture by the fidelity of the peasantry, he was eventually seized (1601) by his kinsman the White Knight, Edmund Fitz Gibbon, whose sister-in-law he had married, and sent to the Tower. The “sugan” (sham) earl lingered there obscurely as “James M’Thomas” till his death. In consequence of his rebellion and the devotion of the Irish to his race, James, son of Gerald “the rebel earl,” who had remained in the Tower since his father’s death (1583), was restored as earl of Desmond and sent over to Munster in 1600, but he, known as “the queen’s earl,” could, as a Protestant, do nothing, and he died unmarried in 1601. The “sugan” earl’s brother John, who had joined in his rebellion, escaped into Spain, and left a son Gerald, who appears to have assumed the title and was known as the Conde de Desmond. He was killed in the service of the emperor Ferdinand in 1632. The common origin of the earls of Desmond and of Kildare had never been forgotten, and intermarriage had cemented the bond. Just before his death the exile wrote as “Desmond alias Gerratt Fitz Gerald” to his “Most Noble Cosen” the earl of Kildare, that “wee must not be oblivious of the true amity and love that was inviolably observed betweene our antenates and elders.”

There can be no doubt that the house of Fitzmaurice was also of this stock, although their actual origin, in the 12th century, is doubtful. From a very early date they were feudal lords of Kerry, and their dignity was recognized as a peerage by Henry VII. in 1489. The isolated position of their territory (“Clanmaurice”) threw them even more among the Irish than the earls of Desmond, and they often adopted the native form of their name, “MacMorrish.” Under Elizabeth the lords of Kerry narrowly escaped sharing the ruin of the earls. The conduct of Thomas in the rebellion of James “Fitz Maurice” was suspicious, and his sons joined in that of the earl of Desmond, while he himself was a rebel in 1582. Patrick, his successor (1590-1600), was captured in rebellion (1587), and when free, joined the revolt of 1598, as did his son and heir Thomas, who continued in the field till he obtained pardon and restoration in 1603, though suspect till his death in 1630. His grandson withdrew to France with James II., but the next peer became a supporter of the Whig cause, married the eventual heiress of Sir William Petty, and was created earl of Kerry in 1723. From him descend the family of Petty-Fitzmaurice, who obtained the marquessate of Lansdowne (q.v.) in 1818, and still hold among their titles the feudal barony of Kerry together with vast estates in that county.

From the three sons by a second wife of one of the earls of Desmond’s ancestors, descended the hereditary White Knights, Knights of Glin and Knights of Kerry, these feudal dignities having, it is said, been bestowed upon them by their father, as Lord of Decies and Desmond. Glin Castle, county Limerick, is still the seat of the (Fitzgerald) Knight of Glin. Valencia Island is now the seat of the Knights of Kerry, who received a baronetcy in 1880.

Authorities.—Calendars of Irish documents and state papers and Carew papers; Gilbert’s Viceroys of Ireland; Lord Kildare’s Earls of Kildare; G.E. C[okayne]’s Complete Peerage; Haymond Graves, Unpublished Geraldine Documents; Annals of the Four Masters; Calendar of the duke of Leinster’s MSS. in 9th Report on Historical MSS., part ii.; Ware’s Annals; J.H. Round’s “Origin of the Fitzgeralds” and “Origin of the Carews” in the Ancestor; his “Earldom of Kildare and Barony of Offaley” in Genealogist, ix., and “Barons of the Naas” in Genealogist, xv.; and his “Decies and Desmond” in Eng. Hist. Rev. xviii.

(J. H. R.)

FITZGERALD, EDWARD (1809-1883), English writer, the poet of Omar Khayyám, was born as Edward Purcell, at Bredfield House, in Suffolk, on the 31st of March 1809. His father, John Purcell, who had married a Miss FitzGerald, assumed in 1818 the name and arms of his wife’s family. From 1816 to 1821 the FitzGeralds lived at St Germain and at Paris, but in the latter year Edward was sent to school at Bury St Edmunds. In 1826 he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where, some two years later, he became acquainted with Thackeray and W.H. Thompson. With Tennyson, “a sort of Hyperion,” his intimacy began about 1835. In 1830 he went to live in Paris, but in 1831 was in a farm-house on the battlefield of Naseby. He adopted no profession, and lived a perfectly stationary and rustic life, presently moving into his native county of Suffolk, and never again leaving it for more than a week or two. Until 1835 the FitzGeralds lived at Wherstead; from that year until 1853 the poet resided at Boulge, near Woodbridge; until 1860 at Farlingay Hall; until 1873 in the town of Woodbridge; and then until his death at his own house hard by, called Little Grange.

During most of this time FitzGerald gave his thoughts almost without interruption to his flowers, to music and to literature. He allowed friends like Tennyson and Thackeray, however, to push on far before him, and long showed no disposition to emulate their activity. In 1851 he published his first book, Euphranor, a Platonic dialogue, born of memories of the old happy life at Cambridge. In 1852 appeared Polonius, a collection of “saws and modern instances,” some of them his own, the rest borrowed from the less familiar English classics. FitzGerald began the study of Spanish poetry in 1850, when he was with Professor E.B. Cowell at Elmsett and that of Persian in Oxford in 1853. In the latter year he issued Six Dramas of Calderon, freely translated. He now turned to Oriental studies, and in 1856 he anonymously published a version of the Salámán and Absál of Jámi in Miltonic verse. In March 1857 the name with which he has been so closely identified first occurs in FitzGerald’s correspondence—“Hafiz and Omar Khayyám ring like true metal.” On the 15th of January 1859 a little anonymous pamphlet was published as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. In the world at large, and in the circle of FitzGerald’s particular friends, the poem seems at first to have attracted no attention. The publisher allowed it to gravitate to the fourpenny or even (as he afterwards boasted) to the penny box on the bookstalls. But in 1860 Rossetti discovered it, and Swinburne and Lord Houghton quickly followed. The Rubáiyát became slowly famous, but it was not until 1868 that FitzGerald was encouraged to print a second and greatly revised edition. Meanwhile he had produced in 1865 a version of the Agamemnon, and two more plays from Calderon. In 1880-1881 he issued privately translations of the two Oedipus tragedies; his last publication was Readings in Crabbe, 1882. He left in manuscript a version of Attar’s Mantic-Uttair under the title of The Bird Parliament.

From 1861 onwards FitzGerald’s greatest interest had centred in the sea. In June 1863 he bought a yacht, “The Scandal,” and in 1867 he became part-owner of a herring-lugger, the “Meum and Tuum.” For some years, till 1871, he spent the months from June to October mainly in “knocking about somewhere outside of Lowestoft.” In this way, and among his books and flowers, FitzGerald gradually became an old man. On the 14th of June 1883 he passed away painlessly in his sleep. He was “an idle fellow, but one whose friendships were more like loves.” In 1885 a stimulus was given to the steady advance of his fame by the fact that Tennyson dedicated his Tiresias to FitzGerald’s memory, in some touching reminiscent verses to “Old Fitz.” This was but the signal for that universal appreciation of Omar Khayyám in his English dress, which has been one of the curious literary phenomena of recent years. The melody of FitzGerald’s verse is so exquisite, the thoughts he rearranges and strings together are so profound, and the general atmosphere of poetry in which he steeps his version is so pure, that no surprise need be expressed at the universal favour which the poem has met with among critical readers. But its popularity has gone much deeper than this; it is now probably better known to the general public than any single poem of its class published since the year 1860, and its admirers have almost transcended common sense in the extravagance of their laudation. FitzGerald married, in middle life, Lucy, the daughter of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Of FitzGerald as a man practically nothing was known until, in 1889, Mr W. Aldis Wright, his intimate friend and literary executor, published his Letters and Literary Remains in three volumes. This was followed in 1895 by the Letters to Fanny Kemble. These letters constitute a fresh bid for immortality, since they discovered that FitzGerald was a witty, picturesque and sympathetic letter-writer. One of the most unobtrusive authors who ever lived, FitzGerald has, nevertheless, by the force of his extraordinary individuality, gradually influenced the whole face of English belles-lettres, in particular as it was manifested between 1890 and 1900.

The Works of Edward FitzGerald appeared in 1887. See also a chronological list of FitzGerald’s works (Caxton Club, Chicago, 1899); notes for a bibliography by Col. W.F. Prideaux, in Notes and Queries (9th series, vol. vi.), published separately in 1901; Letters and Literary Remains (ed. W. Aldis Wright, 1902-1903); and the Life of Edward FitzGerald, by Thomas Wright (1904), which contains a bibliography (vol. ii. pp. 241-243) and a list of sources (vol. i. pp. xvi.-xvii.). The volume on FitzGerald in the “English Men of Letters” series is by A.C. Benson. The FitzGerald centenary was celebrated in March 1909. See the Centenary Celebrations Souvenir (Ipswich, 1909) and The Times for March 25, 1909.

(E. G.)

FITZGERALD, LORD EDWARD (1763-1798), Irish conspirator, fifth son of James, 1st duke of Leinster, by his wife Emilia Mary, daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd duke of Richmond, was born at Carton House, near Dublin, on the 15th of October 1763. In 1773 the duke of Leinster died, and his widow soon afterwards married William Ogilvie, who superintended Lord Edward’s early education. Joining the army in 1779, Lord Edward served with credit in America on the staff of Lord Rawdon (afterwards marquess of Hastings), and at the battle of Eutaw Springs (8th of September 1781) he was severely wounded, his life being saved by a negro named Tony, whom Lord Edward retained in his service till the end of his life. In 1783 Fitzgerald returned to Ireland, where his brother, the duke of Leinster, had procured his election to the Irish parliament as member for Athy. In parliament he acted with the small Opposition group led by Grattan (q.v.), but took no prominent part in debate. After spending a short time at Woolwich to complete his military education, he made a tour through Spain in 1787; and then, dejected by unrequited love for his cousin Georgina Lennox (afterwards Lady Bathurst), he sailed for New Brunswick to join the 54th regiment with the rank of major. The love-sick mood and romantic temperament of the young Irishman found congenial soil in the wild surroundings of unexplored Canadian forests, and the enthusiasm thus engendered for the “natural” life of savagery may have been already fortified by study of Rousseau’s writings, for which at a later period Lord Edward expressed his admiration. In February 1789, guided by compass, he traversed the country, practically unknown to white men, from Frederickstown to Quebec, falling in with Indians by the way, with whom he fraternized; and in a subsequent expedition he was formally adopted at Detroit by the Bear tribe of Hurons as one of their chiefs, and made his way down the Mississippi to New Orleans, whence he returned to England.

Finding that his brother had procured his election for the county of Kildare, and desiring to maintain political independence, Lord Edward refused the command of an expedition against Cadiz offered him by Pitt, and devoted himself for the next few years to the pleasures of society and his parliamentary duties. He was on terms of intimacy with his relative C.J. Fox, with R.B. Sheridan and other leading Whigs. According to Thomas Moore, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was the only one of the numerous suitors of Sheridan’s first wife whose attentions were received with favour; and it is certain that, whatever may have been its limits, a warm mutual affection subsisted between the two. His Whig connexions combined with his transatlantic experiences to predispose Lord Edward to sympathize with the doctrines of the French Revolution, which he embraced with ardour when he visited Paris in October 1792. He lodged with Thomas Paine, and listened to the debates in the Convention. At a convivial gathering on the 18th of November he supported a toast to “the speedy abolition of all hereditary titles and feudal distinctions,” and gave proof of his zeal by expressly repudiating his own title—a performance for which he was dismissed from the army. While in Paris Fitzgerald became enamoured of a young girl whom he chanced to see at the theatre, and who is said to have had a striking likeness to Mrs Sheridan. Procuring an introduction he discovered her to be a protégée of Madame de Sillery, comtesse de Genlis. The parentage of the girl, whose name was Pamela (?1776-1831), is uncertain; but although there is some evidence to support the story of Madame de Genlis that Pamela was born in Newfoundland of parents called Seymour or Sims, the common belief that she was the daughter of Madame de Genlis herself by Philippe (Égalité), duke of Orleans, was probably well founded. On the 27th of December 1792 Fitzgerald and Pamela were married at Tournay, one of the witnesses being Louis Philippe, afterwards king of the French; and in January 1793 the couple reached Dublin.

Discontent in Ireland was now rapidly becoming dangerous, and was finding a focus in the Society of the United Irishmen, and in the Catholic Committee, an organization formed a few years previously, chiefly under the direction of Lord Kenmare, to watch the interests of the Catholics. French revolutionary doctrines had become ominously popular, and no one sympathized with them more warmly than Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who, fresh from the gallery of the Convention in Paris, returned to his seat in the Irish parliament and threw himself actively into the work of opposition. Within a week of his arrival he denounced in the House of Commons a government proclamation, which Grattan had approved, in language so violent that he was ordered into custody and required to apologize at the bar of the House. As early as 1794 the government had information that placed Lord Edward under suspicion; but it was not till 1796 that he joined the United Irishmen, whose aim after the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795 was avowedly the establishment of an independent Irish republic. In May 1796 Theobald Wolfe Tone was in Paris endeavouring to obtain French assistance for an insurrection in Ireland. In the same month Fitzgerald and his friend Arthur O’Connor proceeded to Hamburg, where they opened negotiations with the Directory through Reinhard, French minister to the Hanseatic towns. The duke of York, meeting Pamela at Devonshire House on her way through London with her husband, had told her that “all was known” about his plans, and advised her to persuade him not to go abroad. The proceedings of the conspirators at Hamburg were made known to the government in London by an informer, Samuel Turner. Pamela was entrusted with all her husband’s secrets and took an active part in furthering his designs; and she appears to have fully deserved the confidence placed in her, though there is reason to suppose that at times she counselled prudence. The result of the Hamburg negotiations was Hoche’s abortive expedition to Bantry Bay in December 1796. In September 1797 the government learnt from the informer MacNally that Lord Edward was among those directing the conspiracy of the United Irishmen, which was now quickly maturing. He was specially concerned with the military organization, in which he held the post of colonel of the Kildare regiment and head of the military committee. He had papers showing that 280,000 men were ready to rise. They possessed some arms, but the supply was insufficient, and the leaders were hoping for a French invasion to make good the deficiency and to give support to a popular uprising. But French help proving dilatory and uncertain, the rebel leaders in Ireland were divided in opinion as to the expediency of taking the field without waiting for foreign aid. Lord Edward was among the advocates of the bolder course. His opinions and his proposals for action were alike violent. He was on intimate terms with apologists for assassination; there is some evidence that he favoured a project for the massacre of the Irish peers while in procession to the House of Lords for the trial of Lord Kingston in May 1798. It was probably abhorrence of such measures that converted Thomas Reynolds from a conspirator to an informer; at all events, by him and several others the authorities were kept posted in what was going on, though lack of evidence producible in court delayed the arrest of the ringleaders. But on the 12th of March 1798 Reynolds’ information led to the seizure of a number of conspirators at the house of Oliver Bond. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, warned by Reynolds, was not among them. The government were anxious to save him from the consequences of his own folly, and Lord Clare said to a member of his family, “for God’s sake get this young man out of the country; the ports shall be thrown open, and no hindrance whatever offered.” Fitzgerald with chivalrous recklessness refused to desert others who could not escape, and whom he had himself led into danger. On the 30th of March a proclamation establishing martial law and authorizing the military to act without orders from the civil magistrate, which was acted upon with revolting cruelty in several parts of the country, precipitated the crisis.

The government had now no choice but to secure if possible the person of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose social position more than his abilities made him the most important factor in the conspiracy. On the 11th of May a reward of £1000 was offered for his apprehension. The 23rd of May was the date fixed for the general rising. Since the arrest at Bond’s, Fitzgerald had been in hiding, latterly at the house of one Murphy, a feather dealer, in Thomas Street, Dublin. He twice visited his wife in disguise; was himself visited by his stepfather, Ogilvie, and generally observed less caution than his situation required. The conspiracy was honeycombed with treachery, and it was long a matter of dispute to whose information the government were indebted for Fitzgerald’s arrest; but it is no longer open to doubt that the secret of his hiding place was disclosed by a Catholic barrister named Magan, to whom the stipulated reward was ultimately paid through Francis Higgins, another informer. On the 19th of May Major Swan and a Mr. Ryan proceeded to Murphy’s house with Major H.C. Sirr and a few soldiers. Lord Edward was discovered in bed. A desperate scuffle took place, Ryan being mortally wounded by Fitzgerald with a dagger, while Lord Edward himself was only secured after Sirr had disabled him with a pistol bullet in the shoulder. He was conveyed to Newgate gaol, where by the kindness of Lord Clare he was visited by two of his relatives, and where he died of his wound on the 4th of June 1798. An Act of Attainder (repealed in 1819) was passed, confiscating his property; and his wife—against whom the government probably possessed sufficient evidence to secure a conviction for treason—was compelled to leave the country before her husband had actually expired.

Pamela, who was scarcely less celebrated than Lord Edward himself, and whose remarkable beauty made a lasting impression on Robert Southey, repaired to Hamburg, where in 1800 she married J. Pitcairn, the American consul. Since her marriage with Lord Edward she had been greatly beloved and esteemed by the whole Fitzgerald family; and although after her second marriage her intimacy with them ceased, there is no sufficient evidence for the tales that represented her subsequent conduct as open to grave censure. She remained to the last passionately devoted to the memory of her first husband; and she died in Paris in November 1831. A portrait of Pamela is in the Louvre. She had three children by Lord Edward Fitzgerald: Edward Fox (1794-1863); Pamela, afterwards wife of General Sir Guy Campbell; and Lucy Louisa, who married Captain Lyon, R.N.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald was of small stature and handsome features. His character and career have been made the subject of eulogies much beyond their merits. He had, indeed, a winning personality, and a warm, affectionate and generous nature, which made him greatly beloved by his family and friends; he was humorous, light-hearted, sympathetic, adventurous. But he was entirely without the weightier qualities requisite for such a part as he undertook to play in public affairs. Hotheaded and impulsive, he lacked judgment. He was as conspicuously deficient in the statesmanship as he was in the oratorical genius of such men as Flood, Plunket or Grattan. One of his associates in conspiracy described him as “weak and not fit to command a sergeant’s guard, but very zealous.” Reinhard, who considered Arthur O’Connor “a far abler man,” accurately read the character of Lord Edward Fitzgerald as that of a young man “incapable of falsehood or perfidy, frank, energetic, and likely to be a useful and devoted instrument; but with no experience or extraordinary talent, and entirely unfit to be chief of a great party or leader in a difficult enterprise.”

See Thomas Moore, Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (2 vols., London, 1832), also a revised edition entitled The Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, edited with supplementary particulars by Martin MacDermott (London, 1897); R.R. Madden, The United Irishmen (7 vols., Dublin, 1842-1846); C.H. Teeling, Personal Narrative of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Belfast, 1832); W.J. Fitzpatrick, The Sham Squire, The Rebellion of Ireland and the Informers of 1798 (Dublin, 1866), and Secret Service under Pitt (London, 1892); J.A. Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 vols., London, 1872-1874); W.E.H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vols. vii. and viii. (London, 1896); Thomas Reynolds the younger, The Life of Thomas Reynolds (London, 1839); The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, edited by the countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale (London, 1901); Ida A. Taylor, The Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (London, 1903), which gives a prejudiced and distorted picture of Pamela. For particulars of Pamela, and especially as to the question of her parentage, see Gerald Campbell, Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald (London, 1904); Memoirs of Madame de Genlis (London, 1825); Georgette Ducrest, Chroniques populaires (Paris, 1855); Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of R.B. Sheridan (London, 1825).

(R. J. M.)

FITZGERALD, RAYMOND, or Redmond (d. ca. 1182), surnamed Le Gros, was the son of William Fitzgerald and brother of Odo de Carew. He was sent by Strongbow to Ireland in 1170, and landed at Dundunnolf, near Waterford, where he was besieged in his entrenchments by the combined Irish and Ostmen, whom he repulsed. He was Strongbow’s second in command, and had the chief share in the capture of Waterford and in the successful assault on Dublin. He was sent to Aquitaine to hand over Strongbow’s conquests to Henry II., but was back in Dublin in July 1171, when he led one of the sallies from the town. Strongbow offended him later by refusing him the marriage of his sister Basilea, widow of Robert de Quenci, constable of Leinster. Raymond then retired to Wales, and Hervey de Mountmaurice became constable in his place. At the outbreak of a general rebellion against the earl in 1174 Raymond returned with his uncle Meiler Fitz Henry, after receiving a promise of marriage with Basilea. Reinstated as constable he secured a series of successes, and with the fall of Limerick in October 1175 order was restored. Mountmaurice meanwhile obtained Raymond’s recall on the ground that his power threatened the royal authority, but the constable was delayed by a fresh outbreak at Limerick, the earl’s troops refusing to march without him. On the death of Strongbow he was acting governor until the arrival of William Fitz Aldhelm, to whom he handed over the royal fortresses. He was deprived of his estates near Dublin and Wexford, but the Geraldines secured the recall of Fitz Aldhelm early in 1183, and regained their power and influence. In 1182 he relieved his uncle Robert Fitzstephen, who was besieged in Cork. The date of his death, sometimes stated to be 1182, is not known.

FITZGERALD, LORD THOMAS (10th earl of Kildare), (1513-1537), the eldest son of Gerald Fitzgerald, 9th earl of Kildare, was born in London in 1513. He spent much of his youth in England, but in 1534 when his father was for the third time summoned to England to answer for his maladministration as lord deputy of Ireland, Thomas, at the council held at Drogheda, in February was made vice-deputy. In June the Ormond faction spread a report in Ireland that the earl had been executed in the Tower, and that his son’s life was to be attempted. Inflamed with rage at this apparent treachery, Thomas rode at the head of his retainers1 into Dublin, and before the council for Ireland (the 11th of June 1534) formally renounced his allegiance to the king and proclaimed a rebellion. His enemies, including Archbishop John Allen (of Dublin), who had been set by Henry VIII. to watch Fitzgerald, took refuge in Dublin Castle. In attempting to escape to England, Allen was taken by the rebels, and on the 28th of July 1534, was murdered by Fitzgerald’s servants in his presence, but whether actually by his orders is uncertain. In any case he sent to the pope for absolution, but was solemnly excommunicated by the Irish Church. Leaving part of his army (with the consent of the citizens) to besiege Dublin Castle, Fitzgerald himself went against Piers Butler, earl of Ossory, and succeeded at first in making a truce with him. But the citizens of Dublin now rose against him, Ossory invaded Kildare, and the approach of an English army forced Fitzgerald to raise the siege. Part of the English army landed on the 17th of October, the rest a week later, but taking advantage of the inactivity of the new lord deputy, Sir William Skeffington, Fitzgerald from his stronghold at Maynooth ravaged Kildare and Meath throughout the winter. He had now succeeded to the earldom of Kildare, his father having died in the Tower on the 13th of December 1534, but he does not seem to have been known by that title. In March Skeffington stormed the castle, the stronghold of the Geraldines, which was defended, and some said betrayed, by Christopher Parese, Fitzgerald’s foster-brother. It fell on the 23rd of March 1535, and most of the garrison were put to the sword. This proved the final blow to the rebellion. The news of what is known as the “pardon of Maynooth” reached Fitzgerald as he was returning from levying fresh troops in Offaley; his men fell away from him, and he retreated to Thomond, intending to sail for Spain. Changing his mind he spent the next few months in raids against the English and their allies, but his party gradually deserting him, on the 18th of August 1535 he surrendered himself to Lord Leonard Grey (d. 1541). It seems likely that he made some conditions, but what they were is very uncertain. He was taken to England and placed in the Tower. In February 1536 his five uncles were also, some of them with great injustice, seized and brought to England. The six Geraldines were hanged at Tyburn on the 3rd of February 1537. Acts of attainder against them and Gerald the 9th earl were passed by both the Irish and English parliaments; but the family estates were restored by Edward VI. to Gerald, 11th earl of Kildare (stepbrother of Thomas), and the attainder was repealed by Queen Elizabeth. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald married Frances, youngest daughter of Sir Adrian Fortescue, but had no children.

Bibliography.—Richard Stanihurst, Chronicles of Ireland (vol. ii. of Holinshed’s Chronicles); Sir James Ware, Rerum Hibernicarum annales (Dublin, 1664); The Earls of Kildare, by C.W. Fitzgerald, duke of Leinster (3rd ed., 1858); Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (3 vols., 1885, vol. i. passim); Calendar State Papers, Hen. VIII., Irish; G. E. C.’s Peerage; John Lodge, Peerage of Ireland, ed. M. Archdall (1789), vol. i.

1 Fitzgerald was known by the sobriquet of “Silken Thomas,” either from the silken fringes on his helmet, or from his distinguished manners.

FITZHERBERT, SIR ANTHONY (1470-1538), English jurist, was born at Norbury, Derbyshire. After studying at Oxford, he was called to the English bar, and in 1523 became justice of the Court of Common Pleas, the duties of which office he continued to discharge till within a short time of his death in 1538. As a judge he left behind him a high reputation for fairness and integrity, and his legal learning is sufficiently attested by his published works.

He is the author of La Graunde Abridgement, a digest of important legal cases written in Old French, first printed in 1514; The Office and Authority of Justices of the Peace, first printed in 1538 (last ed. 1794); the New Natura Brevium (1534, last ed. 1794), with a commentary ascribed to Sir Matthew Hale. To Fitzherbert are sometimes attributed the Book of Husbandry (1523), the first published work on agriculture in the English language, and the Book of Surveying and Improvements (1523) (see Agriculture).

FITZHERBERT, THOMAS (1552-1640), English Jesuit, was the eldest son and heir of William Fitzherbert of Swynnerton in Staffordshire, and grandson of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, judge of the common pleas. He was educated at Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he was imprisoned for recusancy. On his release he went to London, where he was a member of the association of young men founded in 1580 to assist the Jesuits Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons. In 1582 he withdrew to the continent, where he was active in the cause of Mary, queen of Scots. He married in this year Dorothy, daughter of Edward East of Bledlow in Buckinghamshire. After the death of his wife (1588) he went to Spain, where on the recommendation of the duke of Feria he received a pension from the king. He continued his intrigues against the English government, and in 1598 he was charged with complicity in a plot to poison Queen Elizabeth. After this he was for a short while in the service of the duke of Feria at Milan, then went to Rome, where he was ordained priest (1601-1602) and became agent for the English clergy. He was unpopular with them, however, owing to his subserviency to the Jesuits, and resigned the agency in 1607 owing to the remonstrances of the English arch-priest George Birkhead. In 1613 he joined the Society of Jesus, and was appointed superior of the English mission at Brussels in 1616, and in 1618 rector of the English college at Rome. He held this post to within a year of his death, which occurred at Rome on the 7th of August (O.S.) 1640.

Father Fitzherbert, who is described as “a person of excellent parts, a notable politician, and of graceful behaviour and generous spirit,” wrote many controversial works, a list of which is given in the article on him by Mr Thompson Cooper in the Dictionary of National Biography, together with authorities for his life.

FITZ NEAL or (Fitz Nigel), RICHARD (d. 1198), treasurer of Henry II. and Richard I. of England, and bishop of London, belonged to a great administrative family whose fortunes were closely linked with those of Henry I., Henry II. and Richard I. The founder of the family was Roger, bishop of Salisbury, the great minister of Henry I. Before the death of that sovereign (1135) the care of the treasury passed from Roger to his nephew, Nigel, bishop of Ely (d. 1169), who held that office until the whole family were disgraced by Stephen (1139). Becoming a partisan of the empress, Nigel reaped his reward at the accession of her son, Henry II., who made him at first chancellor and then treasurer. Nigel’s son, Richard, who was born before his father’s elevation to the episcopate (1133), succeeded to the office of treasurer in 1158, and held it continuously for forty years. His name appears in the lists of itinerant justices for 1179 and 1194, but these are the only occasions on which he exercised that office. Before 1184 he became dean of Lincoln, and was in that year presented by the chapter of Lincoln among three select candidates for the vacant see. The king passed him over in favour of Hugh of Avalon, having resolved on this occasion to make a disinterested appointment. Richard I., however, rewarded the treasurer’s services with the see of London (1189).

Richard Fitz Neal is best remembered as an author. He lacked the broad statesmanship of his father and great-uncle; he avoided any connexion with political parties; he is only once mentioned as taking part in a debate of the Great Council (1193), and then spoke, in his character as a bishop, to support a royal demand for a special aid. But his work De necessariis observantiis Scaccarii dialogus, commonly called the Dialogus de Scaccario, is of unique interest to the historian. It is an account, in two books, of the procedure followed by the exchequer in the author’s time. Richard handles his subject with the more enthusiasm because, as he explains, the “course” of the exchequer was largely the creation of his own family. When read in connexion with the Pipe Rolls the Dialogus furnishes a most faithful and detailed picture of English fiscal arrangements under Henry II. The speakers in the dialogue are Richard himself and an anonymous pupil. The latter puts leading questions which Richard answers in elaborate fashion. The date of the conversation is given in the prologue as 1176-1177. This probably marks the date at which the book was begun; it was not completed before 1178 or 1179. Soon after the author’s death we find it already recognized as the standard manual for exchequer officials. It was frequently transcribed and has been used by English antiquarians of every period. Hence it is the more necessary to insist that the historical statements which the treatise contains are sometimes demonstrably erroneous; the author appears to have relied excessively upon oral tradition. But, as the work is only known to us through transcripts, it is possible that some of the blunders which it now contains are due to the misdirected zeal of editors. Richard Fitz Neal also compiled in his earlier years a register or chronicle of contemporary affairs, arranged in three parallel columns. This was preserved in the exchequer at the time when he wrote the Dialogus, but has since disappeared. Stubbs’ conjectural identification of this Liber tricolumnis with the first part of the Gesta Henrici (formerly attributed to Benedictus Abbas) is now abandoned as untenable.

See Madox’s edition in his History of the Exchequer (1769); and that of A. Hughes, C.G. Crump and C. Johnson (Oxford, 1902). F. Liebermann’s Einleitung in den Dialogus de Scaccario (Göttingen, 1875) contains the fullest account of the author.

(H. W. C. D.)

FITZ-OSBERN, ROGER (fl. 1070), succeeded to the earldom of Hereford and the English estate of William Fitz-Osbern in 1071. He did not keep on good terms with William the Conqueror, and in 1075, disregarding the king’s prohibition, married his sister Emma to Ralph Guader, earl of Norfolk, at the famous bridal of Norwich. Immediately afterwards the two earls rebelled. But Roger, who was to bring his force from the west to join the earl of Norfolk, was held in check at the Severn by the Worcestershire fyrd which the English bishop Wulfstan brought into the field against him. On the collapse of his confederate’s rising, Roger was tried before the Great Council, deprived of his lands and earldom, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; but he was released, with other political prisoners, at the death of William I. in 1087.

FITZ-OSBERN, WILLIAM, Earl of Hereford (d. 1071), was an intimate friend of William the Conqueror, and the principal agent in preparing for the invasion of England. He received the earldom of Hereford with the special duty of pushing into Wales. During William’s absence in 1067, Fitz-Osbern was left as his deputy in central England, to guard it from the Welsh on one side, and the Danes on the other. He also acted as William’s lieutenant during the rebellions of 1069. In 1070 William sent him to assist Queen Matilda in the government of Normandy. But Richilde, widow of Baldwin VI. of Flanders, having offered to marry him if he would protect her son Arnulf against Robert the Frisian, Fitz-Osbern accepted the proposal and joined Richilde in Flanders. He was killed, fighting against Robert, at Cassel in 1071.

See Freeman, Norman Conquest, vols. iii. and iv.; Sir James Ramsay, Foundations of England, vol. ii.

FITZ OSBERT, WILLIAM (d. 1196), was a Londoner of good position who had served in the Third Crusade, and on his return took up the cause of the poorer citizens against the magnates who monopolized the government of London and assessed the taxes, as he alleged, with gross partiality. It is affirmed that he entered on this course of action through a quarrel with his elder brother who had refused him money. But this appears to be mere scandal; the chronicler Roger of Hoveden gives Fitz Osbert a high character, and he was implicitly trusted by the poorer citizens. He attempted to procure redress for them from the king; but the city magistrates persuaded the justiciar Hubert Walter that Fitz Osbert and his followers meditated plundering the houses of the rich. Troops were sent to seize the demagogue. He was smoked out of the sanctuary of St Mary le Bow, in which he had taken refuge, and summarily dragged to execution at Tyburn.

FITZ PETER, GEOFFREY (d. 1213), earl of Essex and chief justiciar of England, began his official career in the later years of Henry II., whom he served as a sheriff, a justice itinerant and a justice of the forest. During Richard’s absence on Crusade he was one of the five justices of the king’s court who stood next in authority to the regent, Longchamp. It was at this time (1190) that Fitz Peter succeeded to the earldom of Essex, in the right of his wife, who was descended from the famous Geoffrey de Mandeville. In attempting to assert his hereditary rights over Walden priory Fitz Peter came into conflict with Longchamp, and revenged himself by taking an active part in the baronial agitation through which the regent was expelled from his office. The king, however, forgave Fitz Peter for his share in these proceedings; and, though refusing to give him formal investiture of the Essex earldom, appointed him justiciar in succession to Hubert Walter (1198). In this capacity Fitz Peter continued his predecessor’s policy of encouraging foreign trade and the development of the towns; many of the latter received, during his administration, charters of self-government. He was continued in his office by John, who found him a useful instrument and described him in an official letter as “indispensable to the king and kingdom.” He proved himself an able instrument of extortion, and profited to no small extent by the spoliation of church lands in the period of the interdict. But he was too closely connected with the baronage to be altogether trusted by the king. The contemporary Histoire des ducs describes Fitz Peter as living in constant dread of disgrace and confiscation. In the last years of his life he endeavoured to act as a mediator between the king and the opposition. It was by his mouth that the king promised to the nation the laws of Henry I. (at the council of St Albans, August 4th, 1213). But Fitz Peter died a few weeks later (Oct. 2), and his great office passed to Peter des Roches, one of the unpopular foreign favourites. Fitz Peter was neither a far-sighted nor a disinterested statesman; but he was the ablest pupil of Hubert Walter, and maintained the traditions of the great bureaucracy which the first and second Henries had founded.

See the original authorities specified for the reigns of Richard I. and John. Also Miss K. Norgate’s Angevin England, vol. ii. (1887), and John Lackland (1902); A. Ballard in English Historical Review, xiv. p. 93; H.W.C. Davis’ England under the Normans and Angevins (1905).

(H. W. C. D.)

FITZROY, ROBERT (1805-1865), English, vice-admiral, distinguished as a hydrographer and meteorologist, was born at Ampton Hall, Suffolk, on the 5th of July 1805, being a grandson, on the father’s side, of the third duke of Grafton, and on the mother’s, of the first marquis of Londonderry. He entered the navy from the Royal Naval College, then a school for cadets, on the 19th of October 1819, and on the 7th of September 1824 was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. After serving in the “Thetis” frigate in the Mediterranean and on the coast of South America, under the command of Sir John Phillimore and Captain Bingham, he was in August 1828 appointed to the “Ganges,” as flag-lieutenant to Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Otway, the commander-in-chief on the South American station; and on the death of Commander Stokes of the “Beagle,” on the 13th of November 1828, was promoted to the vacant command. The “Beagle,” a small brig of about 240 tons, was then, and had been for the two previous years, employed on the survey of the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, under the orders of Commander King in the “Adventure,” and, together with the “Adventure,” returned to England in the autumn of 1830. Fitzroy had brought home with him four Fuegians, one of whom died of smallpox a few weeks after arriving in England; to the others he endeavoured, with but slight success, to impart a rudimentary knowledge of religion and of some useful handicrafts; and, as he had pledged himself to restore them to their native country, he was making preparations in the summer of the following year to carry them back in a merchant ship bound to Valparaiso, when he received his reappointment to the “Beagle,” to continue the survey of the same wild coasts. The “Beagle” sailed from Plymouth on the 27th of December 1831, carrying as a supernumerary Charles Darwin, the afterwards famous naturalist. After an absence of nearly five years, and having, in addition to the survey of the Straits of Magellan and a great part of the coast of South America, run a chronometric line round the world, thus fixing the longitude of many secondary meridians with sufficient exactness for all the purposes of ordinary navigation, the “Beagle” anchored at Falmouth on the 2nd of October 1836. In 1835 Fitzroy had been advanced to the rank of captain and was now for the next few years principally employed in reducing and discussing his numerous observations. In 1837 he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society; and in 1839 he published, in two thick 8vo volumes, the narrative of the voyage of the “Adventure” and “Beagle,” 1826-1830, and of the “Beagle,” 1831-1836, with a third volume by Darwin—a book familiarly known as a record of scientific travel. Of Fitzroy’s work as a surveyor, carried on under circumstances of great difficulty, with scanty means, and with an outfit that was semi-officially denounced as “shabby,” Sir Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer to the Admiralty, wrote, in a report to the House of Commons, 10th of February 1848, that “from the equator to Cape Horn, and from thence round to the river Plata on the eastern side of America, all that is immediately wanted has been already achieved by the splendid survey of Captain Robert Fitzroy.” This was written before steamships made the Straits of Magellan a high-road to the Pacific. The survey that was sufficient then became afterwards very far from sufficient.

In 1841 Fitzroy unsuccessfully contested the borough of Ipswich, and in the following year was returned to parliament as member for Durham. About the same time he accepted the post of conservator of the Mersey, and in his double capacity obtained leave to bring in a bill for improving the condition and efficiency of officers in the mercantile marine. This was not proceeded with at the time, but gave rise to the “voluntary certificate” instituted by the Board of Trade in 1845, and furnished some important clauses to the Mercantile Marine Act of 1850.

Early in 1843 Fitzroy was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of New Zealand, then recently established as a colony. He arrived in his government in December, whilst the excitement about the Wairau massacre was still fresh, and the questions relating to the purchase of land from the natives were in a very unsatisfactory state. The early settlers were greedy and unscrupulous; Fitzroy, on the other hand, had made no secret of his partiality for the aborigines. Between such discordant elements agreement was impossible: the settlers insulted the governor; the governor did not conciliate the settlers, who denounced his policy as adverse to their interests, as unjust and illegal; colonial feeling against him ran very high; petition after petition for his recall was sent home, and the government was compelled to yield to the pressure brought to bear on it. Fitzroy was relieved by Sir George Grey in November 1845.

In September 1848 he was appointed acting superintendent of the dockyard at Woolwich, and in the following March to the command of the “Arrogant,” one of the early screw frigates which had been fitted out under his supervision, and with which it was desired to carry out a series of experiments and trials. When these were finished he applied to be superseded, on account at once of his health and of his private affairs. In February 1850 he was accordingly placed on half-pay; nor did he ever serve again, although advanced in due course by seniority to the ranks of rear-and vice-admiral on the retired list (1857, 1863). In 1851 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1854, after serving for a few months as private secretary to his uncle, Lord Hardinge, then commander-in-chief of the army, he was appointed to the meteorological department of the Board of Trade, with, in the first instance, the peculiar title of “Meteorological Statist.”

From the date of his joining the “Beagle” in 1828 he had paid very great attention to the different phenomena foreboding or accompanying change of weather, and his narratives of the voyages of the “Adventure” and “Beagle” are full of interesting and valuable details concerning these. Accordingly, when in 1854 Lord Wrottesley, the president of the Royal Society, was asked by the Board of Trade to recommend a chief for its newly forming meteorological department, he, almost without hesitation, nominated Fitzroy, whose name and career became from that time identified with the progress of practical meteorology. His Weather Book, published in 1863, embodies in broad outline his views, far in advance of those then generally held; and in spite of the rapid march of modern science, it is still worthy of careful attention and exact study. His storm warnings, in their origin, indeed, liable to a charge of empiricism, were gradually developed on a more scientific basis, and gave a high percentage of correct results. They were continued for eighteen months after his death by the assistants he had trained, and though stopped when the department was transferred to the management of a committee of the Royal Society, they were resumed a few months afterwards; and under the successive direction of Dr R.H. Scott and Dr W.N. Shaw, have been developed into what we now know them. But though it is perhaps by these storm warnings that Fitzroy’s name has been most generally known, seafaring men owe him a deeper debt of gratitude, not only for his labours in reducing to a more practical form the somewhat complicated wind charts of Captain Maury, but also for his great exertions in connexion with the life-boat association. Into this work, in its many ramifications, he threw himself with the energy of an excitable temperament, already strained by his long and anxious service in the Straits of Magellan. His last years were fully and to an excessive degree occupied by it; his health, both of body and mind, threatened to give way; but he refused to take the rest that was prescribed. In a fit of mental aberration he put an end to his existence on the 30th of April 1865.

Besides his works already named mention may be made of Remarks on New Zealand (1846); Sailing Directions for South America (1848); his official reports to the Board of Trade (1857-1865); and occasional papers in the journal of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Royal United Service Institution.

(J. K. L.)

FITZROY, a city of Bourke county, Victoria, Australia, 2 m. by rail N.E. of and suburban to Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 31,610. It is a prosperous manufacturing town, well served with tramways and containing many fine residences.

FITZ STEPHEN, ROBERT (fl. 1150), son of Nesta, a Welsh princess and former mistress of Henry I., by Stephen, constable of Cardigan, whom Robert succeeded in that office, took service with Dermot of Leinster when that king visited England (1167), In 1169 Robert led the vanguard of Dermot’s Anglo-Welsh auxiliaries to Ireland, and captured Wexford, which he was then allowed to hold jointly with Maurice Fitz Gerald. Taken prisoner by the Irish in 1171, he was by them surrendered to Henry II., who appointed him lieutenant of the justiciar of Ireland, Hugh de Lacy. Robert rendered good service in the troubles of 1173, and was rewarded by receiving, jointly with Miles Cogan, a grant of Cork (1177). He had difficulty in maintaining his position and was nearly overwhelmed by a rising of Desmond in 1182. The date of his death is uncertain.

FITZ STEPHEN, WILLIAM (d. c. 1190), biographer of Thomas Becket and royal justice, was a Londoner by origin. He entered Becket’s service at some date between 1154 and 1162. The chancellor employed Fitz Stephen in legal work, made him sub-deacon of his chapel and treated him as a confidant. Fitz Stephen appeared with Becket at the council of Northampton (1164) when the disgrace of the archbishop was published to the world; but he did not follow Becket into exile. He joined Becket’s household again in 1170, and was a spectator of the tragedy in Canterbury cathedral. To his pen we owe the most valuable among the extant biographies of his patron. Though he writes as a partisan he gives a precise account of the differences between Becket and the king. This biography contains a description of London which is our chief authority for the social life of the city in the 12th century. Despite his connexion with Becket, William subsequently obtained substantial preferment from the king. He was sheriff of Gloucestershire from 1171 to 1190, and a royal justice in the years 1176-1180 and 1189-1190.

See his “Vita S. Thomae” in J.C. Robertson’s Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. iii. (Rolls series, 1877). Sir T.D. Hardy, in his Catalogue of Materials, ii. 330 (Rolls series, 1865), discusses the manuscripts of this biography and its value. W.H. Hutton, St Thomas of Canterbury, pp. 272-274 (1889), gives an account of the author.

(H. W. C. D.)

FITZ THEDMAR, ARNOLD (d. 1274), London chronicler and merchant, was born in London on the 9th of August 1201. Both his parents were of German extraction. The family of his mother migrated to England from Cologne in the reign of Henry II.; his father, Thedmar by name, was a citizen of Bremen who had been attracted to London by the privileges which the Plantagenets conferred upon the Teutonic Hanse. Arnold succeeded in time to his father’s wealth and position. He held an honourable position among the Hanse traders, and became their “alderman.” He was also, as he tells us himself, alderman of a London ward and an active partisan in municipal politics. In the Barons’ War he took the royal side against the populace and the mayor Thomas Fitz Thomas. The popular party planned, in 1265, to try him for his life before the folk-moot, but he was saved by the news of the battle of Evesham which arrived on the very day appointed for the trial. Even after the king’s triumph Arnold suffered from the malice of his enemies, who contrived that he should be unfairly assessed for the tallages imposed upon the city. He appealed for help to Henry III., and again to Edward I., with the result that his liability was diminished. In 1270 he was one of the four citizens to whose keeping the muniments of the city were entrusted. To this circumstance we probably owe the compilation of his chronicle. Chronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum, which begins at the year 1188 and is continued to 1274. From 1239 onwards this work is a mine of curious information. Though municipal in its outlook, it is valuable for the general history of the kingdom, owing to the important part which London played in the agitation against the misrule of Henry III. We have the king’s word for the fact that Arnold was a consistent royalist; but this is apparent from the whole tenor of the chronicle. Arnold was by no means blind to the faults of Henry’s government, but preferred an autocracy to the mob-rule which Simon de Montfort countenanced in London. Arnold died in 1274; the last fact recorded of him is that, in this year, he joined in a successful appeal to the king against the illegal grants which had been made by the mayor, Walter Hervey.

The Chronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum, with the other contents of Arnold’s common-place book, were edited for the Camden Society by T. Stapleton (1846), under the title Liber de Antiquis Legibus. Our knowledge of Arnold’s life comes from the Chronica and his own biographical notes. Extracts, with valuable notes, are edited in G.H. Pertz’s Mon. Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. xxviii. See also J.M. Lappenberg’s Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg, 1851).

(H. W. C. D)

FITZWALTER, ROBERT (d. 1235), leader of the baronial opposition against King John of England, belonged to the official aristocracy created by Henry I. and Henry II. He served John in the Norman wars, and was taken prisoner by Philip of France, and forced to pay a heavy ransom. He was implicated in the baronial conspiracy of 1212. According to his own statement the king had attempted to seduce his eldest daughter; but Robert’s account of his grievances varied from time to time. The truth seems to be that he was irritated by the suspicion with which John regarded the new baronage. Fitzwalter escaped a trial by flying to France. He was outlawed, but returned under a special amnesty after John’s reconciliation with the pope. He continued, however, to take the lead in the baronial agitation against the king, and upon the outbreak of hostilities was elected “marshal of the army of God and Holy Church” (1215). To his influence in London it was due that his party obtained the support of the city and used it as their base of operations. The famous clause of Magna Carta (§ 39) prohibiting sentences of exile, except as the result of a lawful trial, refers more particularly to his case. He was one of the twenty-five appointed to enforce the promises of Magna Carta; and his aggressive attitude was one of the causes which contributed to the recrudescence of civil war (1215). His incompetent leadership made it necessary for the rebels to invoke the help of France. He was one of the envoys who invited Louis to England, and was the first of the barons to do homage when the prince entered London. Though slighted by the French as a traitor to his natural lord, he served Louis with fidelity until captured at the battle of Lincoln (May 1217). Released on the conclusion of peace he joined the Damietta crusade of 1219, but returned at an early date to make his peace with the regency. The remainder of his career was uneventful; he died peacefully in 1235.

See the list of chronicles for the reign of John. The Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre (ed. F. Michel, Paris, 1840) gives the fullest account of his quarrel with the king. Miss K. Norgate’s John Lackland (1902), W. McKechnie’s Magna Carta (1905), and Stubbs’s Constitutional History, vol. i. ch. xii. (1897), should also be consulted.

FITZWILLIAM, SIR WILLIAM (1526-1599), lord deputy of Ireland, was the eldest son of Sir William Fitzwilliam (d. 1576) of Milton, Northamptonshire, where he was born, and grandson of another Sir William Fitzwilliam (d. 1534), alderman and sheriff of London, who was also treasurer and chamberlain to Cardinal Wolsey, and who purchased Milton in 1506. On his mother’s side Fitzwilliam was related to John Russell, 1st earl of Bedford, a circumstance to which he owed his introduction to Edward VI. In 1559 he became vice-treasurer of Ireland and a member of the Irish House of Commons; and between this date and 1571 he was (during the absences of Thomas Radclyffe, earl of Sussex, and of his successor, Sir Henry Sidney) five times lord justice of Ireland. In 1571 Fitzwilliam himself was appointed lord deputy, but like Elizabeth’s other servants he received little or no money, and his period of government was marked by continuous penury and its attendant evils, inefficiency, mutiny and general lawlessness. Moreover, the deputy quarrelled with the lord president of Connaught, Sir Edward Fitton (1527-1579), but he compelled the earl of Desmond to submit in 1574. He disliked the expedition of Walter Devereux, earl of Essex; he had a further quarrel with Fitton, and after a serious illness he was allowed to resign his office. Returning to England in 1575 he was governor of Fotheringhay Castle at the time of Mary Stuart’s execution. In 1588 Fitzwilliam was again in Ireland as lord deputy, and although old and ill he displayed great activity in leading expeditions, and found time to quarrel with Sir Richard Bingham (1528-1599), the new president of Connaught. In 1594 he finally left Ireland, and five years later he died at Milton. From Fitzwilliam, whose wife was Anne, daughter of Sir William Sidney, were descended the barons and earls Fitzwilliam.

See R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, vol. ii. (1885).

FITZWILLIAM, WILLIAM WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM, 2nd Earl (1748-1833), English statesman, was the son of the 1st earl (peerage of the United Kingdom), who died in 1756. The English family of Fitzwilliam claimed descent from a natural son of William the Conqueror, and among its earlier members were a Sir William Fitzwilliam (1460-1534), sheriff of London, who in 1506 acquired the family seat of Milton Manor in Northamptonshire, and his grandson Sir William Fitzwilliam (see above). The latter’s grandson was made an Irish baron in 1620; and in later generations the Irish titles of Viscount Milton and Earl Fitzwilliam (1716) and the English titles of Baron Milton (1742) and Viscount Milton and Earl Fitzwilliam (1746), were added. These were all in the English house of the Fitzwilliams of Milton Manor. They were distinct from the Irish Fitzwilliams of Meryon, who descended from a member of the English family who went to Ireland with Prince John at the end of the 12th century, and whose titles of Baron and Viscount Fitzwilliam died out with the 8th viscount in 1833; the best known of these was Richard, 7th viscount (1745-1816), who left the Fitzwilliam library and a fund for creating the Fitzwilliam Museum to Cambridge University.