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Fitzwilliam
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Fitzwilliam

the king, and succouring the poor, and how he was twice compelled to quit England and encounter sea perils from the Orkneys to Barbary. The story is preserved in a single manuscript in French in the British Museum (Reg. 12, c. xii.), first printed privately by Sir T. Duffus Hardy, and then published as 'Histoire de Foulques Fitz-Warin, par Francisque Michel,' Paris, 1840, large 8vo, and with an English translation and notes by Thomas Wright for the Warton Club in 1855. It is included by L. Moland and C. d'Héricault in 'Nouvelles Francises en prose du xive siecle,' Paris, 1858, 12mo. The text and a new translation are given in J. Stevenson's edition of 'Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon' (Rolls Series, 1875). The manuscript was transcribed before 1320, and is evidently paraphrased from an earlier record written before the end of the thirteenth century in octosyllabic verses, some of which remain unaltered. An English version in alliterative verse was seen by Leland, who reproduces 'Thinges excerptid owte of an old Englisch boke yn Ryme of the Gestes of Guarine' (Collectanea, 1774, i. 230-7). Pierre de Langtoft of Bridlington (Cottonian MS. Julius A. v.), writing probably before 1320, refers to the romance, and Robert de Brunne, writing about the same period, says :

Thus of dan Waryn in his boke men rede.

It is a compilation from family records and traditions first put into shape by 'an Anglo-Norman trouvere in the service of that great and powerful family, and displays an extraordinarily minute knowledge of the topography of the borders of Wales, and more especially of Ludlow and its immediate neighbourhood' (T. Wright's ed. 1855, p. xv). There are historical anachronisms and other inaccuracies. As a story it is full of interest.

[Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, ii. 2-12, vii. 66-99, xi. 29-42; T. Wright's Sketch of Ludlow Castle, 2nd ed. 1856, and Essays on the Middle Ages, 1846, ii. 147-63 ; Frere's Bibliographe Normand, 1860, ii. 616, 619; Histoire Littéraire de la France, 1877, xxvii. 164-86; Revue Contemporaine, 1858, iii. 308-17; Ward's Cat. of Romances in the British Museum, 1883, i. 501-8. The account of the Fitzwarines by Dugdale (Baronage, 1675, pp. 443, &c.) is full of errors.]

H. R. T.

FITZWILLIAM, CHARLES WILLIAM WENTWORTH, third Earl Fitzwilliam in the peerage of the United Kingdom (1786–1857), only son of William Wentworth Fitzwilliam [q. v.], second earl, by his first wife, Lady Charlotte Ponsonby, youngest daughter of the second Earl of Bessborough, born in London 4 May 1786, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1806 he married Mary, fourth daughter of Thomas, first lord Dundas, by whom he had ten children. The countess died in 1830. In 1807 the earl, as Viscount Milton, was returned to the House of Commons for the county of York, and through five successive parliaments he continued to represent the same constituency. At the elections of 1831 he was returned, together with Lord Althorp, for the county of Northampton, and in 1832 he was again elected a member for the northern division of the same county. This seat he retained until his elevation to the peerage by the death of his father, 8 Feb. 1833. Fitzwilliam was a man of chivalrous honour, high moral courage, and perfect independence and disinterestedness. In the outset of his political career he was opposed to parliamentary reform, but afterwards became an ardent advocate of that measure, although his family possessed several pocket boroughs and had been known for its aristocratic exclusiveness. He was also an early advocate of the repeal of the corn laws, when his own fortune depended mainly upon the land. He took a similar view of the then interesting question of the export of wool. A powerful deputation of Yorkshire manufacturers waited upon the earl (then Lord Milton) soliciting him to oppose a projected measure permitting the export. Fitzwilliam replied that he had embraced the principles of free trade without qualification. He concurred with his father in openly condemning the conduct of the Manchester magistrates at the Peterloo riots of 1819, when for petitioning that the event might be inquired into the earl was deprived of the lord-lieutenancy of the West Riding. In 1851 Fitzwilliam was created a knight of the Garter. In 1853 he was appointed a deputy-lieutenant for Northamptonshire, and in 1856 received the royal authorisation to adopt the surname of Wentworth before that of Fitzwilliam, as it had been previously used by his father to mark his descent from Thomas, first marquis of Rockingham. The earl gave a general support in the House of Lords to the liberal government, but in the debate of 1857 relative to the conduct of Sir John Bowring in the matter of the Arrow he spoke and voted with the opposition. Fitzwilliam published in 1839 his 'First, Second, and Third Addresses to the Landowners of England on the Corn Laws,' in which he supported the free trade policy. By the will of the widow of Edmund Burke, who died in 1812, power was given to Fitzwilliam's father, Walker King, bishop of Rochester, and William Elliot to print and publish such parts of the works of Burke as were not published before her decease, and all the statesman's