bishop consecrated in St. Patrick's (Monck Mason, History of St. Patrick's Cathedral, p. 139). Along with the Earl of Kildare, lord deputy of Ireland, he espoused, in 1487, the cause of Lambert Simnel, to whose coronation in Christ Church Cathedral he was accessory. The pope directed an inquiry to be held, and a full report of the matter having been made, the archbishop, with the bishops of Meath and Kildare, was found guilty. In the following year, however, he was permitted with others to renew his allegiance to the king, and received pardon through Sir Richard Edgecombe. The archbishop, ‘when the mass was ended in the choir of the said church [St. Mary's Abbey], began Te Deum, and the choir with the organs sung it up solemnly, and at that time all the bells in the church rang’ (Harris, Hibernica, pt. i. p. 33). He was subsequently taken into great favour by the king, who made him lord deputy of Ireland in 1492, lord chancellor in 1496 and 1501, and again, in 1503, lord deputy.
Fitzsimons strenuously exerted himself, while holding the office of lord deputy in 1492, to lessen the number of useless idlers in Ireland. He represented to the king the idleness of the younger brothers of the nobility, and the indolence of the common people ‘on account of the great plenty of all kinds of provisions.’ At his suggestion vagrancy was strictly forbidden, and workhouses were everywhere erected for the employment of able-bodied vagabonds, beadles being appointed by him ‘to look after the several cities, towns, and parishes, to keep beggars out, and to take up strangers’ (Council Books, temp. Henry VII).
In 1496, the king, having made his son Henry, duke of York, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, appointed Fitzsimons lord chancellor of Ireland (Rymer Fœdera, ed. 1727, vol. xii.). In the same year Fitzsimons held a provincial synod, on which occasion an annual contribution for seven years was settled by the clergy of the province, to provide salaries for lecturers of the university in St. Patrick's Cathedral (Allen, Registry, f. 105). In 1509 he was again lord chancellor, by appointment of Henry VIII, and held that office until his death, at Finglas, near Dublin, on 14 May 1511. He was buried in the nave of St. Patrick's, but no memorial of him remains.
[Sir James Ware's Works, ed. Harris, i. 343; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ, ii. 17, 110, v. 79; D'Alton's Memoirs of the Archbishops of Dublin, p. 171; Monck Mason's Hist. of St. Patrick's Cathedral; Leeper's Hist. Handbook to St. Patrick's (2nd ed.), p. 89; Smyth's Law Officers of Ireland, pp. 15, 16.]
FITZSTEPHEN, ROBERT (d. 1183?), one of the original Norman conquerors of Ireland, was the son of Stephen, constable of Aberteivi (Cardigan), and of Nesta, daughter of Rhys ab Tewdwr, king of South Wales. Whether Stephen was, as is sometimes stated, a second husband of Nesta is at least very doubtful (Dimock, Preface to Expugn. Hib. in Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera, v. ci; cf. Cal. Carew MSS., Book of Howth, &c., p. 435). If the list of Nesta's children given by her grandson (Giraldus, De Rebus a se Gestis in Opera, i. 59) is arranged in order of their birth, her amour with Stephen must have been after her marriage with Gerald of Windsor and the birth of her eldest son, William Fitzgerald, and before the birth of her son, Meiler Fitzhenry [q. v.], by Henry I. As Aberteivi did not fall into English hands before 1110 or 1111 (Annales Cambriæ, p. 34), Robert could hardly have been born before that date. The birth of Nesta's son by King Henry must have followed his expedition to Dyved in the summer of 1114. Robert was therefore born between these two dates. In 1157 Robert followed Henry II's expedition into North Wales, and narrowly escaped the ambush in which his half-brother, the king's son, was slain. His inheritance included Cardigan and Cemmes, and he became constable of Cardigan town in succession apparently to his father. In November 1166 he was betrayed by his own men (‘dolo Rigewarc clerici,’ Ann. Cambr. p. 50) into the hands of his cousin, Rhys ab Gruffydd, with whom he was then at war. He was released after three years' captivity on the mediation of his half-brother, David II, bishop of St. David's [q. v.], and at the instance of Dermot, the exiled king of Leinster, whom he agreed to help in restoring to his kingdom as an easy release from his promise to join the ‘Lord Rhys’ in his war against the English. In the spring of 1169 Fitzstephen, with his half-brother, Maurice Fitzgerald (d. 1176) [q. v.], landed in Ireland at Baganbun or Bannow, near Wexford (Exp. Hib. p. 230; cf. Regan, p. 23, and Introduction, p. xvi). They were accompanied by thirty knights, sixty men-at-arms, and three hundred Welsh foot soldiers. In conjunction with Dermot's forces they took Wexford, which was assigned, with the two adjacent cantreds, to Fitzstephen. The successful invasion of Ossory followed, but the approach of Roderick O'Conor, king of Connaught, now caused Dermot's Irish followers to desert. But Fitzstephen contemptuously rejected Dermot's bribes, and built so strong a camp at Ferns that Roderick accepted terms that left Dermot king of Leinster. Maurice Fitzgerald now joined Fitzstephen with additional troops from Wales. Fitzstephen
