FITZGERALD, Lord Edward (1763-1798), one of the leaders of the Society of United Irishmen, was a younger son of the first duke of Leinster, and was born at Carton Castle, near Dublin, October 15, 1763. At ten years of age he lost his father, and, his mother marrying again, the family soon after settled in France. Lord Edward was carefully educated by his stepfather, Mr Ogilvie, chiefly with a view to the profession of a soldier. Returning to England in 1779 he entered the English army, and in 1781 he sailed with his regiment for America, where he soon obtained the appointment of aide-de-camp on the staff of Lord Rawdon. He served in the war with no little reputation for personal courage, readiness of resource, and humane feeling. He was severely wounded at the battle of Eutaw Springs. After the surrender of York Town he joined the staff of General O’Hara at St Lucia, and the same year (1783) returned to Ireland. He was soon returned as member for Athy to the Irish parliament; but the high hopes which he had cherished of serving his country faded away at the spectacle of political corruption and suppression of all genuine representation by the penal laws against Roman Catholics. In 1787 he set out for a visit to the south of Europe, went afterwards to America, and in 1790 returned to England, and soon resumed his seat in the Irish parliament. The French Revolution had broken out, aud Lord Edward was one of those ardent spirits that welcomed with enthusiasm the promise of its first days. In 1792 he was attracted to Paris, and made the acquaintance of the most famous leaders of the Revolution. Having publicly renounced his title of nobility and avowed his sympathy with the republicans, he was dismissed, with other officers, from the English army. It was during this visit ...to Paris that he was introduced to the lady then known as “Pamela,” the daughter of Madame de Genlis, by the duke of Orleans ( “Égalité ”). In December 1792 they were married at Tournay, and returned to Ireland in January 1793. After a period of singular happiness spent in a country home, his sympathies with the struggles of his countrymen led him out to the troubled arena of politics. He joined in 1796 the society of United Irishmen, was sent to France to negotiate a treaty with the Directory for a French invasion of Ireland, and urged on with the utmost zeal the preparations for an Irish insurrection. But the scheme was betrayed, several of the leaders were arrested, and Fitzgerald concealed himself in a house at Dublin, still continuing to direct the movement. A price was set on his head, the place of his retreat was discovered, and after a severe struggle he was captured by police officers (May 19, 1798) and committed to prison. There he died on the 4th of June, of the wounds which he had received; a bill of attainder was immediately passed against him, and his estates were confiscated; but the attainder was at a later time reversed. His widow married Mr Pitcairn, American consul at Hamburg; but the union was an unhappy one, and ended in a separation by mutual consent. Lady Fitzgerald henceforward lived in retirement at Montauban till 1830, when she removed to Paris, Louis Philippe, the associate of her childhood, having become king of the French. He, however, refused to see her, and she died poor in 1831. An interesting narrative of The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, by Thomas Moore, was published in 1831, in 2 vols. 8vo. A cheap reprint in 1 vol. was issued in 1875.
FITZGERALD, Lord Thomas (d. 1536), was vicedeputy of Ireland for his father, Gerald, ninth earl of Kildare, in ∙ the reign of Henry VIII. He appears to have accompanied his father to London early in 1534, on occasion of the third summons of the earl to answer grave charges of maladministration as lord deputy. But after the earl’s committal to the Tower he was sent back to Ireland to take the place of vice-deputy in his father’s absence, with secret instructions to raise a rebellion against the English Government. He was at this time hardly of age, and his amiable manners and accomplishments had procured for him the appellation of “Silken Thomas.” He was, however, of a high spirit and fiery temper, and fiercely resented the English rule. As soon as he arrived in Ireland, he cleared the way by formally surrendering his office and the sword of state, and then openly proclaimed a rebellion. He obtained possession of Dublin city before the end of July, and formed the siege of the castle, into which the English governor had withdrawn. Archbishop Alleu, the primate who had been appointed by Henry VIII. to keep watch over Kildare and to report his proceedings, sought safety in flight and sailed for England. But the ship was run aground, and the archbishop was seized by the young Lord Thomas and massacred in his presence with his English chaplains and attendants. This murder was reported by a special messenger from Fitzgerald to the pope and the emperor, the former being asked for absolution if necessary, and the latter for assistance. Sentence of excommunication was pronounced on Fitzgerald for this murder of the archbishop. In August Fitzgerald was forced to relinquish the siege of Dublin Castle, and hasten to defend or recover his own domains which the earl of Ormond had invaded. He tried in vain to seduce Ormond from his allegiance, but obtained a truce, of which he took treacherous advantage to attack him. He then again besieged Dublin, which had closed its gates against him. On October 14, in consequence of Ormond’s renewed invasion of Kildare, he was compelled to raise the siege. Three days later the English army landed at Dublin, and was enthusiastically welcomed. Fitzgerald withdrew into the country; but taking advantage of the inactivity of Skeffington, the new deputy, he approached Dublin again and burnt two villages near the city (November). The old earl had been attainted, and he died in the Tower soon after hearing of his son’s rebellion and excommunication. The deathblow to the rebellion was at length given by Skeffington, who in March 1535 stormed the castle of Maynooth, the chief stronghold of the “Geraldines.” Lord Thomas, who had now succeeded his father, but did not assume the title, retreated into Thomond, intending to sail for Spain and plead with the emperor. This scheme he relinquished, and after leading a wandering life for some months, with a price set upon his head, he surrendered without definite conditions to Lord Leonard Grey (August), and was at once conducted by him to England. He was committed to the Tower with his five uncles; and the six Geraldines w ere hung at Tyburn as traitors (February 3, 1536). An act of attainder was passed against the earl of Kildare, Lord Thomas, and others, in 1537; but the family estates were restored by Edward VI., and tho attainder was repealed by Queen Elizabeth. Moore has pointed out, in his Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, some remarkable points of resemblance between his story and that of his ancestor, Lord Thomas.
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FITZHERBERT, Sir Anthony, an eminent English lawyer, was born at Norbury. 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 Le graunde abridgement, a digest of important legal cases written in Old French, first printed in 1524; 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' and the Book of Husbandry, 1523, the first published work on agriculture in the English language.
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FITZROY, Robert (1805-1865), a vice-admiral in the English navy, distinguished as a hydrographer and meteorologist, was born at Ampton Hall, Suffolk, July 5, 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 October 1819, andon the 7thSeptember 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 commauder-in-chicf on the South American station; and on the melancholy death of Commander Stokes of the “Beagle,” 13th November 1828, was promoted to the vacant command. The “Beagle,” a small brig of about 210 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 small-pox 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 December 1831, carrying as a supernumerary Mr Charles Darwin, to whose experience, then gained, the study of natural history has been so deeply indebted. After an absence of nearly five years, end 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 2d October 1836. In 1834 Fitzroy had been advanced to the rank of captain, and was now fur 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,” 1826-30, and of the “Beagle,” 1831-36, with a third volume by Mr Darwin—a book familiarly known as a record of scientific travel. Of Fitzroy’s work as a surveyor it is superfluous to speak. Though carried on under circumstances of great difficulty, with scanty means, and with an outfit that was semi-officially denounced as “shabby,” the results have long been before the world stamped with the approval of the nautical profession, and more especially of Sir Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer to the Admiralty, who, in a report to the House of Commons, 10th Feburary 1848, wrote 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.”
In 1841 Fitzroy unsuccessfully contested the borough of Ipswich, and in the following year was returned to parliament ns 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, the 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 be 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 though, in the rapid march of modern science, this book must be considered as now in some measure obsolete, it is still worthy of careful attention and exact study, not only from the professed meteorologist, but from any one who wishes to have an intelligent appreciation of that question of everyday interest, the weather. 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 α few months afterwards. 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, it may be feared, 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 bodily and mental, 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 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 (1857-65); and occasional papers in the journal of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Royal United Service Institution.
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FITZSTEPHEN, William, an English historian, was a native of London, and died in 1191. Becoming a monk of Canterbury, he had very confidential relations with Thomas à Becket. Shortly after the death of Thomas he wrote his life in Latin, a work which bears internal evidence of greater impartiality and truthfulness than most of the archbishop’s biographies, and is besides of interest as containing a long description of the city of London. There is a manuscript copy of the work in the British Museum.
A translation of the description of London was inserted by Stowe in his Survey of London, and in 1772 Dr Pegge published a new and more correct edition, in Latin and English, accompanied with notes and an essay on the author. A corrected version, with a translation, was also inserted in the edition of Stowe’s Survey published in 1843.
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