his wife, and requested her to burn all his papers —'should they remain after me, hundreds may be compromised'— and his wishes were observed (Curran and his Contemporaries, p. 154). A report that he repented of his action with regard to the union (Plowden, Hist. of Ireland, ii. 558) is based on a sentence in an abusive statement of his nephew Jeffreys, who had quarrelled with his uncle over private matters : 'I afterwards saw Lord Clare die, repenting of his conduct on that very question' (Grattan, Memoirs, iii. 403).
Clare married in 1786 Anne, eldest daughter of R. C. Whaley of Whaley Abbey, co. Wicklow, who died in 1844. He left two sons, both of whom succeeded to the earldom. John, the elder (1792-1851), second earl, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, was governor of Bombay, 1830-4. Richard Hobart, the younger son (1793-1864), third and last earl, had an only son, John Charles Henry, viscount Fitzgibbon (1829-1854), who fell in the charge of the light brigade at Balaklava.
Clare has been described as the basest of men, without one redeeming virtue (see the account of him by Grattan's son in Grattan's Memoirs, iii. 393), and he has been represented as an unsullied patriot, thinking only of his country's good (Froude, English in Ireland, ii. 526). The one picture is as false as the other. In Clare's cold and unemotional manner there was a good deal of affectation, and his friends claimed for him that in private life he was kindly and true. There is evidence that he was an indulgent landlord — 'the very best of landlords,' Plowden calls him. It is unreasonable, moreover, to question the general sincerity of his political opinions. He had a fixed purpose clearly before his mind, and he held firmly to it, undeterred by the abuse and the hate which he excited. He was ambitious, not very scrupulous, vain, and intolerably insolent ; but whether he used his power for good or evil he acted with uniform courage, and in point of ability stood head and shoulders above all the other Irishmen of his time who sided with the government (Curran and his Contemporaries, p. 139 ; Magee's funeral sermon in Annual Register, 1802, p. 705 ; Barrington, Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation).
[O'Flanagan's Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland ; Grattan's Memoirs; Phillips's Curran and his Contemporaries ; Dublin Univ. Mag. xxx. 671 ; Metropolitan Mag. xxiv. 337, xxv. 113; Gent. Mag. lxxii. 185; Irish Parliamentary Debates ; Cornwallis and Castlereagh Correspondence.]
FITZGILBERT, RICHARD (d. 1090?), founder of the house of Clare. [See Clare, Richard de, d. 1090 ?]
FITZGILBERT, RICHARD (d. 1136?). [See Clare, Richard de, d. 1136 ?]
FITZHAMON, ROBERT (d. 1107), conqueror of Glamorgan, belonged to a great
family whose ancestor, Richard, was either
the son or nephew of Rollo, and which since
the tenth century had possessed the lordships
of Thorigny, Creully, Mézy, and Evrecy in
Lower Normandy (Roman de Rou, ed. Andresen, 1. 4037 sq.) Richard's son, 'Haim as
Denz' (Haimo Dentatus), was one of the
rebels slain at Val ès Dunes in 1047 (ib. 1.
4057 sq.), and Robert is generally described
as his son (Pezet, Les Barons de Creully, p.
50). But William of Malmesbury expressly
states that Robert was the grandson of this
Haimo (Gesta Regum, bk. iii. p. 393, Engl.
Hist. Soc.) If so, Robert's father must have
been some other Haimo, probably the 'Haimo
vicecomes' mentioned in the 'Domesday Book'
as holding lands in chief in Kent and Surrey,
and who presided as sheriff over the great
suit between Odo and Lanfranc in the Kentish shire moot (Andresen, Roman de Rou,
Anmerkungen, ii. 768 ; cf. Le Prévost's note
to his edition of Ordericus Vitalis, iii. 14,
'grace aux renseignements de M. Stapleton ;'
cf. also Anselm, Epistolæ, iv. 57, complaining
of the outrages of Hamon's followers). Those
who regard Haimo Dentatus as the grandfather of Robert, the conqueror of Glamorgan,
suppose that the former had, besides 'Haimo
vicecomes,' another son called Robert Fitzhamon, to whom the earlier notices of the
name really refer. In that case, Haimo the
sheriff was probably the father of Haimo
Dapifer, a tenant-in-chief in Essex, though
Mr. Ellis (Introduction to Domesday Book,
i. 432) identifies the two Haimos. There is,
however, no direct evidence for this, and it
is quite certain that 'Hamon the steward'
was brother, though hardly, as Professor Freeman (William Rufus, ii. 82-3) says, elder
brother, of Robert Fitzhamon (William of Jumièges in Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt. Ant. 306 c.) Robert held all the family estates, and Haimo was still alive in 1112 (Clark in Arch. Journal, xxxv. 3). It is therefore
not quite certain whether the earlier notices
of Robert Fitzhamon refer to the nephew or
the uncle ; but in any case a Robert Fitzhamon
is mentioned in Bayeux charters of 1064 and
1074 (ib. xxxv. 2). Between 1049 and 1066
the same person assented as lord to the foundation of the priory of St. Gabriel (De la Rue,
Essais Historiques sur la Ville de Caen, ii.
409 ; cf. Nouveaux Essais, ii. 39 ; Pezet, p. 23).
In 1074 he attested a charter of William I
(Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Normandie, xxx. 702). There is no certain
