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 An Act of Attainder (repealed in 1819) was passed, confiscating his property; and his wife—against whom the government probably possessed sufficient evidence to secure a conviction for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 retainers[1] 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
- ↑ Fitzgerald was known by the sobriquet of “Silken Thomas,” either from the silken fringes on his helmet, or from his distinguished manners.
