Windsor, of which they held possession till the days of Walter son of Ether (sic). This William had three children; from the first of these, William, sprung the Earls of Windsor; from the second, Robert, the Earls of Essex; but the third, Gerald of Windsor,' was the ancestor of the Geraldines. Walter FitzOther (not Ether) was, as we shall see, a real man, but the connection of the family with Windsor began instead of ending with this Walter.
Let us now turn to what may be termed the authorized version of the origin, that which was given in The Earls of Kildare[1] and steadily repeated in Burke's Peerage. Lord Kildare gave it thus:—
The FitzGeralds, or Geraldines, are descended from 'Dominus Otho,' or Other, who, in 1057 (16 Edward the Confessor), was an honorary baron of England.[2] He is said to have been one of the family of Gherardini of Florence, and to have passed into Normandy, and thence into England.[3] He was so powerful at that period that it is probable that he was one of the foreigners who came to England with King Edward, and whom he favoured so much as to excite the jealousy of the native nobles. It is also remarkable that Otho's son Walter was treated as a fellow-countryman by the Normans after the Conquest. The Latin form of the name of his descendants, 'Geraldini,' being the same as that of Gherardini, also indicates that he was of that family.
I cannot undertake to say at what period or how the story of Other coming to England under Edward the Confessor arose; nor can I explain how 'Otho' replaced the well authenticated 'Other,' probably to give the name a more Italian appearance. But as to the Latin form 'Geraldini,' I can state that the name given by Geraldus Cambrensis to his own family was, on the contrary, 'Giraldidæ.'
Lord Kildare referred, we have seen, to the 'Gherardini MS.' without giving their contents; but to Mr. Meehan we are indebted for printing in an appendix to Father o'Daly's work the contents of these papers, 'to which,' as he observes, 'the general reader would find it difficult to get access.' It must be remembered that, according to the versions given above, the 'Geraldines' came to England at, if not before, the Conquest. In the 'Gherardini MS.' we have a very different
- ↑ By the Marquis of Kildare (afterwards fourth Duke of Leinster). I cite the fourth edition (1864). Compare the version in Burke's Peerage (1902).
- ↑ The authority given for this statement is 'Sir William Dugdale,' but Dugdale's Baronage is silent on the subject. With scrupulous accuracy he began the pedigree with 'Walter FitzOther' in Domesday Book (1086).
- ↑ The reference for this is 'Gherardini Papers, MS.'
