Life
1763-1798 [Lord Edward Fitzgerald]; b. 15 Oct., Carton House, Kildare,
fifth son of first James Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, later Viscount,
and Duke of Leinster in 1766 (d.1773), with his wife Emily [Emilia Mary],
dg. Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, god-gd. of George II, and sis.
of Lady Holland; he was educated along Rousseauesque lines, his mother
having considered employing the Frenchman as a tutor, then taken on William
Ogilvie, whom she later married; brought up Frascati House, Mount Merrion
(Blackrock), in a free atmosphere involving much swimming in Dublin Bay;
served in American War of Independence with Sussex militia, 1779; served
under Lord Rawdon, later Marq. of Hastings; admiring of the independent
Nova Scotia farmers; made brother and chief by Iroquois Indians; severely
wounded at Eutaw Springs, 8 Sept. 1781; when his life was saved by a runaway
slave called Tony Small; read Rousseau’s Confessions instead
of Blackstone’s Commentaries while preparing to take his seat
in parliament as MP for Athy, 1781, acting with Grattan’s opposition;
completely military education at Woolwich; disappointed in his love for
Georgina Lennox, later Lady Bathurst, rejoined with army in Canada as
major in 54th Regt.; crossed Canada from Frederickstown to Quebec, formally
adopted by Bear tribe of Hurons at Detroit, 1789; travelled down Mississippi
to New Orleans, and returned to England; affair with Elizabeth (Linley)
Sheridan, whom he called ‘Little Woman’, and by whom a child
(Mary), who died three months after the death of her mother, 1795; MP,
Kildare, refusing command of Cadiz expedition offered by Pitt; intimate
with Fox, Sheridan, and other Whigs; stayed in Paris with Tom Paine; cashiered
for attending revolutionary banquet in Paris and toasting ‘speedy
abolition of hereditary titles and distinctions’ (18 Nov.), abandoning
his own, 1792; discussed with Thomas Paine the possibility of an Irish
revolutionary coup to be effected by Volunteers, 1792; m. Pamela, dg.
of Duc d’Orleans and [protegée of] Mme de Genlis, at Tournay,
27 Dec. 1792, with Louis-Philippe as one of the witnesses; returned to
Ireland, Jan. 1793; influenced by Tom Paine; required to apologise at
bar of House for violent denunciation of govt. policy; surrendered his
child with Elizabeth Linley to her husband’s charge at her death,
1795; joined United Irishmen, only taking the oath in summer of 1796,
though associated with them earlier; proceeded to Hamburg with Arthur
O’Connor while Tone was in Paris, May 1796; negotiated with the Directory
[Hoche at Basle]; proceedings at Hamburg revealed by Samuel Turner, an
informer; Duke of York tells Pamela that ‘all is known’; abortive
Bantry Bay expedition, Dec. 1796; headed military committee of United
Irishmen, with papers indicating that 280,000 men were ready; seizure
of conspirators at house of Oliver Bond on information of Thomas Reynolds;
Fitzgerald, warned by Reynolds, would not leave the country; martial law
imposed, 30 March, 1798; reward offered for Fitzgerald, 11 May; arrest
of United Irishmen leaders, 12 May; Fitzgerald hiding in house of Murphy,
a feather-dealer on Thomas St.; his hiding-place disclosed by Francis
Magan, Catholic barrister (d.1843), a reward paid by Francis Higgins;
Lord Edward arrested by Major Henry Charles Sirr, 19 May, mortally wounding
Cpt. Ryan, and being shot himself; outbreak of Rebellion, 26 May; Lord
Edward dies, Newgate (Dublin), of his wound, 4 June; Act of Attainder
passed against him but repealed in 1819; his house at Mount Merrion, Frascati,
was demolished to build a supermarket in 1981. DIB DNB OCIL FDA
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Criticism
R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen (1852).
W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Sham Squire (1866; 1872; 1895)
Thomas Moore, The Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 2 vols. (London: Longmans 1831), xi, 307pp, 305pp.
Patrick Byrne, Lord Edward Fitzgerald ([q. pub.] 1955).
M. McDonnell Bodkin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald (Phoenix n.d.; [1896]), a novel.
Gerard Campbell, Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald, An Account of their Lives, compiled from the letters of those who knew them (London: Arnold 1904), ill.
J. W. Whitbread, Lord Edward, or ‘98 (1894), a play; also John Lindsey, The Shining Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (n.d.); anon., The Life and Times of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 24 chps., 248pp. [infra]
Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 1763-1798 (London: Chatto & Windus 1997), 240pp., sequel to Aristocrats by same author.
Oliver Knox, Rebels and Informers: Stirrings of Irish Independence (London: John Murray 1997).
Charles Hamilton Teeling, ‘Lord Edward’ [Chap. XII], History Of The Irish Rebellion Of 1798: A Personal Narrative (Glasgow: Cameron, Ferguson & Co. n.d [1828]).
J. S. Le Fanu, on the death of Lord Edward, ‘The day the traitors sould him and inimies bought him,/The day that the red gold and red blood was paid –/Then the green turned pale and thrembled like the dead leaves in Autumn/And the heart an’ hope iv Ireland in the could grave was laid.’ (‘Scraps of Hibernian Ballads’, Dublin University Magazine, XIII, 78, June 1839, p.754; quoted in Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, Vol 1, 1980.)
Roy Foster, Modern Ireland (1988), p.268.
Cheryl Herr, For the Land They Loved (Syracuse UP 1991), p. 47.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field
Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.241 [George Sigerson, ‘Our attention has
been repeatedly invited to the fac that the social position of Irish insurgents
has greatly fallen since Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s time, and even
since the less brilliant period of William Smith O’Brien. This the
public has been asked to accept as an arguemtn that Fenianism is more
vulgar, and therefore less formidable ...’]; 267, 277 [Isaac Butt,
‘The attempts of Tone and Fitzgerald, and later of Emmet, to overthrow
English rule were powerful arguments in favour of granting emancipations
to the Catholic; and John Keogh and O’Connell reaped to some extent
the fruits of Emmet’s and Fitzgerald’s and Tone’s sacrifices’];
481 [G B Shaw, ‘The Protestant leaders, from Lord Edward Fitzgerald
to Parnell, have never divided their devotion’]; 482n. [err.], 799
[Yeats, ‘[Was it] for this/Edward Fitzgerald died ...?’]; 807
[Yeats (‘Sixteen Dead Men’], ‘For these new comrades they
have found/Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone’]; 854 [Yeats, ‘When strangers
murdered Emmet,/Fitzgerald, Tone,/We lived like men that watched a painted
stage’]; 869 [ref. in Lady Morgan’s O’Briens and O’Flahertys,
‘Edward Fitzgerald sent to his brother Leinster to beg he would put
off the private play at Carton’].
Encyc. Britannica [biog. as supra; Bibl. as infra], ‘small stature and handsome features; winning personality, warm, affectionate and generous nature, made him greatly beloved by his family and friends; humorous, light-hearted, sympathetic, adventurous; entirely without the weightier qualities requisite for such a part as he undertook to play in public affairs. Bibl., Martin MacDermott, ed., rev. edn. of Moore’s Life and Death, entitled The Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1897); RR Madden, United Irishmen, 7 vols. (Dublin 1842-46); C H Teeling, Personal Narrative of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Belf. 1832); W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Sham Squire [1872] and The Secret Service Under Pitt (1892); J A Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (3 vols. 1872-74); Ida A Taylor, The Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1903) [for bibl. of Pamela, see RX infra]. NOTE that he is not included in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821).
Portraits: figure of Lord Edward included in engraving of House
of Commons of 1790, now preserved in Bank of Ireland (College Green) [as
figure No.38 in key]; also Lord Edward Fitzgerald, from studio of Hugh
Douglas Hamilton; see Anne Crookshank (Ulster Mus. 1965) quoted in Herr, For the Country They Loved, 1991, p.25).
Novels in which Lord Edward figures as a character incl. Lady Morgan’s Florence Macarthy (1818) [as Lord Walter Fitzwalter]; M. L. O’Byrne, Ill-Won Peerages or an Unhallowed Union (Gill 1884); James Murphy, The Shan Van Vocht (Gill 1889); Patrick C. Fahy [John Hill], ’98, Being Recollections of Cormac Cahir O’Connor (London: Downey 1897); Robert Williams Buchanan, The Peep O’ Day Boy (Dicks 1902); Matthew McDonnell Bodkin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald (Chapman & Hall 1896);Rupert Alexander, Maureen Moore ([London:] Burleigh 1899); George Gilbert [Mary Lucy Arthur], The Island of Sorrow (London: Long 1903) [List supplied by Eileen Reilly, Hertford College, Oxford.] The fate of Lord Edward, alias Fitzwalter, is mentioned in Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui [132]
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)