Progress of Geology in England” for the Philosophical Magazine (1832–1833). His only independent publication was A Geological Sketch of the Vicinity of Hastings (1833). He was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1852. He died in London on the 13th of May 1861.
Obituary by R. I. Murchison in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xviii., 1862, p. xxx.
FITZBALL, EDWARD (1792–1873), English dramatist, whose real patronymic was Ball, was born at Burwell, Cambridgeshire, in 1792. His father was a well-to-do farmer, and Fitzball, after receiving his schooling at Newmarket, was apprenticed to a Norwich printer in 1809. He produced some dramatic pieces at the local theatre, and eventually the marked success of his Innkeeper of Abbeville, or The Ostler and the Robber (1820), together with the friendly acceptance of one of his pieces at the Surrey theatre by Thomas Dibdin, induced him to settle in London. During the next twenty-five years he produced a great number of plays, most of which were highly successful. He had a special talent for nautical drama. His Floating Beacon (Surrey theatre, 19th of April 1824) ran for 140 nights, and his Pilot (Adelphi, 1825) for 200 nights. His greatest triumph in melodrama was perhaps Jonathan Bradford, or the Murder at the Roadside Inn (Surrey theatre, 12th of June 1833). He was at one time stock dramatist and reader of plays at Covent Garden, and afterwards at Drury Lane. He had a considerable reputation as a song-writer and as a librettist in opera. The last years of his life were spent in retirement at Chatham, where he died on the 27th of October 1873.
His autobiography, Thirty-Five Years of a Dramatic Author’s Life (2 vols., 1859), is a naïve record of his career. Numbers of his plays are printed in Cumberland’s Minor British Theatre, Dick’s Standard Plays and Lacy’s Acting Edition of Plays.
FITZGERALD, the name of an historic Irish house, which descends from Walter, son of Other, who at the time of the Domesday Survey (1086) was castellan of Windsor and a tenant-in-chief in five counties. From his eldest son William, known as “de Windsor,” descended the Windsors of Stanwell, of whom Andrew Windsor was created Lord Windsor of Stanwell (a Domesday possession of the house) by Henry VIII., which barony is now vested in the earl of Plymouth, his descendant in the female line. Of Walter’s younger sons, Robert was given by Henry I. the barony of Little Easton, Essex; Maurice obtained the stewardship (dapiferatus) of the great Suffolk abbey of Bury St Edmunds; Reinald the stewardship to Henry I.’s queen, Adeliza; and Gerald (also a dapifer) became the ancestor of the FitzGeralds. As constable and captain of the castle that Arnulf de Montgomery raised at Pembroke, Gerald strengthened his position in Wales by marrying Nesta, sister of Griffith, prince of South Wales, who bore to him famous children, “by whom the southern coast of Wales was saved for the English and the bulwarks of Ireland stormed.” Of these sons William, the eldest, was succeeded by his son Odo, who was known as “de Carew,” from the fortress of that name at the neck of the Pembroke peninsula, the eldest son Gerald having been slain by the Welsh. The descendants of Odo held Carew and the manor of Moulsford, Berks, and some of them acquired lands in Ireland. But the wild claims of Sir Peter Carew, under Queen Elizabeth, to vast Irish estates, including half of “the kingdom of Cork,” were based on a fictitious pedigree. Odo de Carew’s brothers, Reimund “Fitz William” (known as “Le Gros”) and Griffin “Fitz William,” took an active part in the conquest of Ireland.
Returning to Gerald and Nesta, their son David “Fitz Gerald” became bishop of St David’s (1147–1176), and their daughter Angharat mother of Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambrensis, q.v.), the well-known historian and the eulogist of his mother’s family. A third son, Maurice, obtained from his brother the stewardship (dapiferatus) of St David’s, c. 1174, and having landed in Ireland in 1169, on the invitation of King Dermod, founded the fortunes of his house there, receiving lands at Wexford, where he died and was buried in 1176. His eventual territory, however, was the great barony of the Naas in Ophaley (now in Kildare), which Strongbow granted him with Wicklow Castle; but his sons were forced to give up the latter. His eldest son William succeeded him as baron of the Naas and steward of St David’s, but William’s granddaughter carried the Naas to the Butlers and so to the Loundreses. Gerald, a younger son of Maurice, who obtained lands in Ophaley, was father of Maurice “Fitz Gerald,” who held the great office of justiciar of Ireland from 1232 to 1245. In 1234 he fought and defeated his overlord, the earl marshal, Richard, earl of Pembroke, and he also fought for his king against the Irish, the Welsh, and in Gascony, dying in 1257. He held Maynooth Castle, the seat of his descendants.
Much confusion follows in the family history, owing to the justiciar leaving a grandson Maurice (son of his eldest son Gerald) and a younger son Maurice, of whom the latter was justiciar for a year in 1272, while the former, as heir male and head of the race, inherited the Ophaley lands, which he is said to have bequeathed at his death (1287) to John “Fitz Thomas,” whose fighting life was crowned by a grant of the castle and town of Kildare, and of the earldom of Kildare to him and the heirs male of his body (May 14th, 1316). Dying shortly after, he was succeeded by his son Thomas, son-in-law of Richard (de Burgh) the “red earl” of Ulster, who received the hereditary shrievalty of Kildare in 1317, and was twice (1320, 1327) justiciar of Ireland for a year. His younger son Maurice “Fitz Thomas,” 4th earl (1331–1390), was frequently appointed justiciar, and was great-grandfather of Thomas, the 7th earl (1427–1477), who between 1455 and 1475 was repeatedly in charge of the government of Ireland as “deputy,” and who founded the “brotherhood of St George” for the defence of the English Pale. He was also made lord chancellor of Ireland in 1463. His son Gerald, the 8th earl (1477–1513), called “More” (the Great), was deputy governor of Ireland from 1481 for most of the rest of his life, though imprisoned in the Tower two years (1494–1496) on suspicion as a Yorkist. He was mortally wounded while fighting the Irish as “deputy.” Gerald, the 9th earl (1513–1534), followed in his father’s steps as deputy, fighting the Irish, till the enmity of the earl of Ormonde, the hereditary rival of his house, brought about his deposition in 1520. In spite of temporary restorations he finally died a prisoner in the Tower.
In his anger at his rival’s successes the 9th earl had been led, it was suspected, into treason, and while he was a prisoner in England his son Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, “Silken Thomas,” broke out into open revolt (1534), and declared war on the government; his followers slew the archbishop of Dublin and laid siege to Dublin Castle. Meanwhile he made overtures to the native Irish, to the pope and to the emperor; but the Butlers took up arms against him, an English army laid siege to his castle of Maynooth, and, though its fall was followed by a long struggle in the field, the earl, deserted by O’Conor, had eventually to surrender himself to the king’s deputy. He was sent to the Tower, where he was subsequently joined by his five uncles, arrested as his accomplices. They were all six executed as traitors in February 1537, and acts of attainder completed the ruin of the family.
But the earl’s half-brother, Gerald (whose sister Elizabeth was the earl of Surrey’s “fair Geraldine”), a mere boy, had been carried off, and, after many adventures at home and abroad, returned to England after Henry VIII.’s death, and to propitiate the Irish was restored to his estates by Edward VI. (1552). Having served Mary in Wyat’s rebellion, he was created by her earl of Kildare and Lord Offaley, on the 13th of May 1554, but the old earldom (though the contrary is alleged) remained under attainder. Although he conformed to the Protestant religion under Elizabeth and served against the Munster rebels and their Spanish allies, he was imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of treason in 1583. But the acts attainting his family had been repealed in 1569, and the old earldom was thus regained. In 1585 he was succeeded by his son Henry (“of the Battleaxes”), who was mortally wounded when fighting the Tyrone rebels in 1597. On the death of his brother in 1599 the earldom passed to their cousin Gerald, whose claim to the estates was opposed by Lettice, Lady Digby, the heir-general. She obtained the ancestral castle of Geashill with its territory and was recognized
