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CHAPTER I

 

A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

1737–1757

 

William Fitzmaurice, afterwards Earl of Shelburne, was born on the 13th of May 1737.^[1] He has left the following account of his own early life:

"I was born in Dublin in the house of Dr. Hort, then Bishop of Kilmore, afterwards Archbishop of Tuam, in Bride Street, Dublin, who married my mother's sister. I spent the four first years of my life in the remotest part of the south of Ireland, under the government of an old grandfather^[2] who reigned, or rather tyrannised, equally over his own family and the neighbouring country, as if it was his family, in the same manner as I suppose his ancestors, Lords of Kerry, had done for generations since the time of Henry II., who granted to our family 100,000 acres in those remote parts in consideration of

1. In the first edition the date was incorrectly given as the 20th of May.
2. Thomas Fitzmaurice, Earl of Kerry. Antony Petty, of Romsey, clothier, had a son, William, afterwards Sir William Petty, who died December 16th, 1687. His widow, Lady Petty, was made Baroness Shelburne in the Peerage of Ireland, and his eldest son, Charles, Baron of Shelburne, by a simultaneous creation, December 31st, 1687. The barony of Shelburne became extinct by the death of Charles, Lord Shelburne, without children in 1696. It was revived in favour of his brother Henry, October 26th, 1699, who was further created Viscount Dunkerron and Earl of Shelburne in the Peerage of Ireland, April 29th, 1719. These titles became extinct on his decease without issue April 17th, 1751, when his estates and property passed under the term of his will—to John Fitzmaurice, the fifth and second surviving son of Anne Petty, daughter of Sir William Petty, by her marriage with Thomas Fitzmaurice, Earl of Kerry, on condition of his using the name and bearing the arms of Petty. John Fitzmaurice was in the same year raised to the Peerage of Ireland under the titles of Baron Dunkerron and Viscount Fitzmaurice. In 1753 the earldom of Shelburne in the Peerage of Ireland was conferred upon him, and in 1760 he was raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom by the title of Baron Wycombe.