Lord Edward FitzGerald
Lord Edward FitzGerald | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Allegiance |  British Empire  United Irishmen  French First Republic |
| Years of service | 1779-1798 |
| Rank | Major |
| Battles / wars | Battle of Eutaw Springs |
Lord Edward FitzGerald (15 October 1763 – 4 June 1798) was an Irish aristocrat and revolutionary. He was the fifth son of the 1st Duke of Leinster and the Duchess of Leinster (née Lady Emily Lennox) and, was born at Carton House, near Dublin.
Early years
FitzGerald spent most of his childhood in Frascati House at Blackrock in Dublin where he was tutored by William Ogilvie in a manner inspired by Rousseau's Emile.
American War of Independence
Fitzgerald joined the British Army in 1779, he served on the staff of Lord Rawdon during the southern campaign of the American War of Independence. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of Eutaw Springs on 8 September 1781, his life being saved by a newly-liberated black slave named Tony Small ('Faithful Tony'), whom Lord Edward employed to the end of his life.
He was evacuated from Charleston, South Carolina in 1782 when the British forces abandoned the city.
Post-War Military Career
In 1783 FitzGerald returned to Ireland, where his brother, the 2nd Duke of Leinster, had procured his election to the Irish Parliament as a Member for Kildare. In Parliament he acted with the small Opposition Irish Patriot Party group led by Henry Grattan, but took no prominent part in debate. After spending a short time at Woolwich to complete his military education, he made a tour through Spain in 1787; and then, dejected by unrequited love for his cousin Georgina Lennox (who later married the 3rd Earl Bathurst), he sailed for New Brunswick to join the 54th Regiment with the rank of Major.
Explorer in the "New World"
The romantic temperament of the young Irishman found congenial soil in the wild surroundings of unexplored Canadian forests, and the enthusiasm thus engendered for the "natural" life of savagery may have been already fortified by study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writings, for which at a later period Lord Edward expressed his admiration. In February 1789, guided by compass, he traversed the country, practically unknown to white men, from Fredericton, New Brunswick to Quebec, falling in with Indians by the way, with whom he fraternized; and in a subsequent expedition he was formally adopted at Detroit by the Bear tribe of Hurons as one of their chiefs, and made his way down the Mississippi to New Orleans, whence he returned to England.
Enters politics
Finding that his brother had procured his election for the County of Kildare, and desiring to maintain political independence, Lord Edward refused the command of an expedition against Cadiz offered him by Pitt, and devoted himself for the next few years to the pleasures of society and his parliamentary duties. He was on terms of intimacy with his first cousin C. J. Fox, with R. B. Sheridan and other leading Whigs. According to Thomas Moore, Lord Edward FitzGerald was the only one of the numerous suitors of Sheridan's first wife, Elizabeth Ann Linley whose attentions were received with favour; and it is certain that, whatever may have been its limits, a warm mutual affection subsisted between the two.
Marries in France
His Whig connections, together with his transatlantic experiences, predisposed Fitzgerald to sympathize with the doctrines of the French Revolution, which he embraced enthusiastically when he visited Paris in October 1792. He lodged with Thomas Paine and listened to the debates in the Convention. At a convivial gathering on the 18 November he supported a toast to "the speedy abolition of all hereditary titles and feudal distinctions", and gave proof of his zeal by expressly repudiating his own title, a performance for which he was dismissed from the army.[citation needed]
While in Paris, FitzGerald became enamoured of a young girl whom he chanced to see at the theatre, and who is said to have had a striking likeness to Mrs Sheridan. Procuring an introduction he discovered her to be a protégé of Madame de Sillery, Comtesse de Genlis. The parentage of the girl, whose name was Pamela (1773-1831), is uncertain; but although there is some evidence to support the story of Madame de Genlis that Pamela was born in Newfoundland of parents called Sims, the common belief that she was the daughter of Madame de Genlis herself by Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (to whose children she was then acting as governess), was probably well founded. On 27 December 1792 FitzGerald and Pamela were married at Tournay, one of the witnesses being Louis Philippe, afterwards King of the French; and in January 1793 the couple reached Dublin.
The couple eventually had a son, named Edward and two daughters, Pamela and Louisa. After her husband's death in Newgate Gaol, Dublin, Pamela, Lady Edward FitzGerald, was no longer welcome at Boyle Farm, the house of his brother Lord Henry FitzGerald in Thames Ditton. But her daughters found much happiness in the village, living with an aunt. After she died, her mortal remains were buried at St Nicholas Churchyard, Thames Ditton.
Return to Ireland
Ireland was by now seething with dissent which was finding a focus in the increasingly popular and revolutionary Society of the United Irishmen who had been forced underground by the outbreak of war between France and Britain in 1793. Lord Edward FitzGerald, fresh from the gallery of the Convention in Paris, returned to his seat in the Irish Parliament and immediately sprang to their defence but within a week of his return he was ordered into custody and required to apologise at the bar of the House of Commons for violently denouncing in the House a Government proclamation, which Grattan had approved. However, it was not until 1796 that he joined the United Irishmen, who by now had given up as hopeless the path of constitutional reform and whose aim after the recall of Lord FitzWilliam in 1795 was nothing less than the establishment of an independent Irish republic.
Revolutionary activities
In May 1796 Theobald Wolfe Tone was in Paris endeavoring to obtain French assistance for an insurrection in Ireland. In the same month FitzGerald and his friend Arthur O'Connor proceeded to Hamburg, where they opened negotiations with the Directory through Reinhard, French minister to the Hanseatic towns. The Duke of York, meeting Pamela at Devonshire House on her way through London with her husband, had told her that "all was known" about his plans, and advised her to persuade him not to go abroad. Also, in Hamburg Lord Edward met with Johan Anders Jägerhorn (or baron de Spurila, as he called himself), a Finnish Swede who had advocated Finnish autonomy and now acted as an intermediary between Lord Edward and the French.
The proceedings of the conspirators at Hamburg were made known to the government in London by an informer, Samuel Turner. Pamela was entrusted with all her husband's secrets and took an active part in furthering his designs; and she appears to have fully deserved the confidence placed in her, though there is reason to suppose that at times she counselled prudence. The result of the Hamburg negotiations was Hoche's abortive expedition to Bantry Bay in December 1796.
In September 1797 the Government learnt from the informer MacNally that Lord Edward was among those directing the conspiracy of the United Irishmen, which was now quickly maturing. He was specially concerned with the military organisation, in which he held the post of colonel of the Kildare regiment and head of the military committee. He had papers showing that men were ready to rise. They possessed some arms, but the supply was insufficient, and the leaders were hoping for a French invasion to make good the deficiency and to give support to a popular uprising. But French help proving dilatory and uncertain, the rebel leaders in Ireland were divided in opinion as to the expediency of taking the field without waiting for foreign aid. Lord Edward was among the advocates of the bolder course and there is some evidence that he favoured a project for the massacre of the Irish peers while in procession to the House of Lords for the trial of Lord Kingston in May 1798, despite the fact many were his own relations[citation needed].
Net tightens
It was probably abhorrence of such measures that converted Thomas Reynolds from a conspirator to an informer; at all events, by him and several others the authorities were kept posted in what was going on, though lack of evidence produced in court delayed the arrest of the ringleaders. But on the 12 March 1798 Reynolds's information led to the seizure of a number of conspirators at the house of Oliver Bond. Lord Edward FitzGerald, warned by Reynolds, was not among them.
As a fellow member of the Ascendancy class, the Government were anxious to make an exception for FitzGerald, and also avoid the embarrassing and dangerous consequences of his subversive activities, communicating their willingness to spare him from the normal fate meted out to "traitors". The Lord Chancellor, Lord Clare, said to a member of his family, "for God's sake get this young man out of the country; the ports shall be thrown open, and no hindrance whatever offered."
FitzGerald however refused to desert others who could not escape, and whom he had himself led into danger. On 30 March the government proclamation of martial law authorising the military to act as they saw fit to crush the United Irishmen, led to a campaign of vicious brutality in many parts of the country, and forced the United Irish executive to bring forward plans for the rising, with or without French aid.
Arrest
The capture of Lord Edward FitzGerald, the most dangerous United Irish leader still at liberty, was now the top priority of Dublin Castle and on 9 May a reward of £1,000 was offered for his apprehension. Since the arrests at Bond's, FitzGerald had been in hiding, but had twice visited his wife in disguise and was himself visited by his stepfather. Meanwhile, the date for the rising was finally fixed for 23 May and Fitzgerald awaited the day hiding in a house in Thomas Street, Dublin.
However, his hiding place was disclosed by a Catholic barrister and informer named Magan and on 18 May Town Major Henry C. Sirr led a military party to the house where Lord Edward was in bed suffering from a fever. Alerted by the commotion, he jumped out of bed and, ignoring the pleas of the arresting officers Major Swan and Captain Ryan to surrender peacefully, FitzGerald stabbed Swan and mortally wounded Ryan with a dagger in a desperate attempt to escape. He was only secured after Sirr shot him in the shoulder and was beaten unconscious by the rifle butts of the soldiers.
He was conveyed to Newgate Prison, Dublin, and denied proper medical treatment where he died of his wounds as the rebellion raged outside on the 4 June 1798. An Act of Attainder confiscating his property was passed but was repealed in 1819.
Sources
- 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. Teelin 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 llchester 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.
- Tilyard, Stella, Citizen Lord: Edward Fitzgerald. 1763-1798 (1998)
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.) -
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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