Irish and English parliaments; but the family estates were restored by Edward VI. to Gerald, 11th earl of Kildare (stepbrother of Thomas), and the attainder was repealed by Queen Elizabeth. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald married Frances, youngest daughter of Sir Adrian Fortescue, but had no children.
Bibliography.—Richard Stanihurst, Chronicles of Ireland (vol. ii. of Holinshed’s Chronicles); Sir James Ware, Rerum Hibernicarum annales (Dublin, 1664); The Earls of Kildare, by C. W. Fitzgerald, duke of Leinster (3rd ed., 1858); Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (3 vols., 1885, vol. i. passim); Calendar State Papers, Hen. VIII., Irish; G. E. C.’s Peerage; John Lodge, Peerage of Ireland, ed. M. Archdall (1789), vol. i.
FITZHERBERT, SIR ANTHONY (1470–1538), English jurist,
was born at Norbury, Derbyshire. After studying at Oxford,
he was called to the English bar, and in 1523 became justice of
the Court of Common Pleas, the duties of which office he continued
to discharge till within a short time of his death in 1538.
As a judge he left behind him a high reputation for fairness and
integrity, and his legal learning is sufficiently attested by his
published works.
He is the author of La Graunde Abridgement, a digest of important legal cases written in Old French, first printed in 1514; The Office and Authority of Justices of the Peace, first printed in 1538 (last ed. 1794); the New Natura Brevium (1534, last ed. 1794), with a commentary ascribed to Sir Matthew Hale. To Fitzherbert are sometimes attributed the Book of Husbandry (1523), the first published work on agriculture in the English language, and the Book of Surveying and Improvements (1523) (see Agriculture).
FITZHERBERT, THOMAS (1552–1640), English Jesuit,
was the eldest son and heir of William Fitzherbert of Swynnerton
in Staffordshire, and grandson of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert,
judge of the common pleas. He was educated at Oxford, where,
at the age of twenty, he was imprisoned for recusancy. On
his release he went to London, where he was a member of the
association of young men founded in 1580 to assist the Jesuits
Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons. In 1582 he withdrew
to the continent, where he was active in the cause of Mary,
queen of Scots. He married in this year Dorothy, daughter of
Edward East of Bledlow in Buckinghamshire. After the death
of his wife (1588) he went to Spain, where on the recommendation
of the duke of Feria he received a pension from the king. He
continued his intrigues against the English government, and in
1598 he was charged with complicity in a plot to poison Queen
Elizabeth. After this he was for a short while in the service of
the duke of Feria at Milan, then went to Rome, where he was
ordained priest (1601–1602) and became agent for the English
clergy. He was unpopular with them, however, owing to his
subserviency to the Jesuits, and resigned the agency in 1607
owing to the remonstrances of the English arch-priest George
Birkhead. In 1613 he joined the Society of Jesus, and was
appointed superior of the English mission at Brussels in 1616,
and in 1618 rector of the English college at Rome. He held
this post to within a year of his death, which occurred at Rome
on the 7th of August (O.S.) 1640.
Father Fitzherbert, who is described as “a person of excellent parts, a notable politician, and of graceful behaviour and generous spirit,” wrote many controversial works, a list of which is given in the article on him by Mr Thompson Cooper in the Dictionary of National Biography, together with authorities for his life.
FITZ NEAL or (Fitz Nigel), RICHARD (d. 1198), treasurer
of Henry II. and Richard I. of England, and bishop of London,
belonged to a great administrative family whose fortunes were
closely linked with those of Henry I., Henry II. and Richard I.
The founder of the family was Roger, bishop of Salisbury, the
great minister of Henry I. Before the death of that sovereign
(1135) the care of the treasury passed from Roger to his nephew,
Nigel, bishop of Ely (d. 1169), who held that office until the
whole family were disgraced by Stephen (1139). Becoming a
partisan of the empress, Nigel reaped his reward at the accession
of her son, Henry II., who made him at first chancellor and
then treasurer. Nigel’s son, Richard, who was born before his
father’s elevation to the episcopate (1133), succeeded to the
office of treasurer in 1158, and held it continuously for forty
years. His name appears in the lists of itinerant justices for
1179 and 1194, but these are the only occasions on which he
exercised that office. Before 1184 he became dean of Lincoln,
and was in that year presented by the chapter of Lincoln among
three select candidates for the vacant see. The king passed
him over in favour of Hugh of Avalon, having resolved on this
occasion to make a disinterested appointment. Richard I.,
however, rewarded the treasurer’s services with the see of London
(1189).
Richard Fitz Neal is best remembered as an author. He lacked the broad statesmanship of his father and great-uncle; he avoided any connexion with political parties; he is only once mentioned as taking part in a debate of the Great Council (1193), and then spoke, in his character as a bishop, to support a royal demand for a special aid. But his work De necessariis observantiis Scaccarii dialogus, commonly called the Dialogus de Scaccario, is of unique interest to the historian. It is an account, in two books, of the procedure followed by the exchequer in the author’s time. Richard handles his subject with the more enthusiasm because, as he explains, the “course” of the exchequer was largely the creation of his own family. When read in connexion with the Pipe Rolls the Dialogus furnishes a most faithful and detailed picture of English fiscal arrangements under Henry II. The speakers in the dialogue are Richard himself and an anonymous pupil. The latter puts leading questions which Richard answers in elaborate fashion. The date of the conversation is given in the prologue as 1176–1177. This probably marks the date at which the book was begun; it was not completed before 1178 or 1179. Soon after the author’s death we find it already recognized as the standard manual for exchequer officials. It was frequently transcribed and has been used by English antiquarians of every period. Hence it is the more necessary to insist that the historical statements which the treatise contains are sometimes demonstrably erroneous; the author appears to have relied excessively upon oral tradition. But, as the work is only known to us through transcripts, it is possible that some of the blunders which it now contains are due to the misdirected zeal of editors. Richard Fitz Neal also compiled in his earlier years a register or chronicle of contemporary affairs, arranged in three parallel columns. This was preserved in the exchequer at the time when he wrote the Dialogus, but has since disappeared. Stubbs’ conjectural identification of this Liber tricolumnis with the first part of the Gesta Henrici (formerly attributed to Benedictus Abbas) is now abandoned as untenable.
See Madox’s edition in his History of the Exchequer (1769); and that of A. Hughes, C. G. Crump and C. Johnson (Oxford, 1902). F. Liebermann’s Einleitung in den Dialogus de Scaccario (Göttingen, 1875) contains the fullest account of the author. (H. W. C. D.)
FITZ-OSBERN, ROGER (fl. 1070), succeeded to the earldom
of Hereford and the English estate of William Fitz-Osbern in
1071. He did not keep on good terms with William the Conqueror,
and in 1075, disregarding the king’s prohibition, married
his sister Emma to Ralph Guader, earl of Norfolk, at the famous
bridal of Norwich. Immediately afterwards the two earls
rebelled. But Roger, who was to bring his force from the west
to join the earl of Norfolk, was held in check at the Severn by the
Worcestershire fyrd which the English bishop Wulfstan brought
into the field against him. On the collapse of his confederate’s
rising, Roger was tried before the Great Council, deprived of
his lands and earldom, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment;
but he was released, with other political prisoners, at the death
of William I. in 1087.
FITZ-OSBERN, WILLIAM, Earl of Hereford (d. 1071),
was an intimate friend of William the Conqueror, and the
principal agent in preparing for the invasion of England. He
received the earldom of Hereford with the special duty of pushing
into Wales. During William’s absence in 1067, Fitz-Osbern
was left as his deputy in central England, to guard it from
the Welsh on one side, and the Danes on the other. He also
acted as William’s lieutenant during the rebellions of 1069.
In 1070 William sent him to assist Queen Matilda in the government
of Normandy. But Richilde, widow of Baldwin VI. of
Flanders, having offered to marry him if he would protect her
son Arnulf against Robert the Frisian, Fitz-Osbern accepted
