THE PETTY-FITZMAURICES.—(THEIR PEDIGREE.)
THIS family, which had the late Lord Lansdowne survived another year would, probably have been ducal, despite its plebeian name, is of the very bluest blood, being a younger branch of the great House ofiwhich the Fitzgeralds are the elder. The brains of a clothier's son brought them their great wealth, but they are traceable by lineal male descent to Edward the Confessor, and pro- bably five hundred years farther still. In Domesday Survey occurs the name of Walter Fitz-Other, Caatellan of Windsor and Warden of the Forests in Berkshire, being then possessed of two lordships in that county,:three in Surrey, three in Bucks, three in Dorset- shire, four in Middlesex, nine in Wiltshire, one in'Somerset, and ten in Hampshire, all which "Dominus Otherus " his father held in the time of King Edward the Confessor. This Other, or Otho, as he is sometimes called, is said to have been one of the family of the Gherardini of Florence—whence Ghemldiue, Geraldine—and it is conjectured by his descendant, the present Marquis of Kildare, that having settled in Normandy, he was one of the foreign favourites who accompanied Edward the Confessor to England, and created such jealousy among his Saxon subjects. His son Walter at any rate was treated as a fellow-countryman by the Normans after the Conquest. This Walter Fitz-Other is said to have mar- ried a daughter of the Prince of North Wales, and to have had three sons, the eldest of whom, Gerald, mauled, according to the custom ,of that day with eldest sons, the name of Fitz -Walter ; was made Constable of Pembroke Castle by Henry I., commanded the \,,English forces against the Welsh, was made President of the county of Pembroke, and married Nests; the beautiful daughter of Rhys-ap-Griffith, Prince of South Wales, and mistress of Henry I., called from her adventures "the Helen of Wales." When Gerald Fitz-Walter married her she was, according to one authority, widow of the Constable of Cardigan, according to another, Gerald was her first husband and the Constable her second. This Nests was afterwards carried off, with two of her sons, by Owen, her cousin, who set fire to Pembroke Castle during his attack, Gerald escaping by a ladder. The boys were sent back, and Owen fled to Ireland, but returning afterwards, Gerald surprised and slew him in 1116. By Nests Gerald Fitz-Walter had three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, Maurice, was the ancestor of the Fitzgerald family, the head of which is the Duke of Leinster ; the third, David, became Bishop of St. David's ; and the second, William, was the ancestor of the present Marquis of Lansdowne. The daughter, Angareth, married William de Barn, and became the mother of the historian Giraldus Cambrensis. William, the second son of Gerald Fitz-Walter, inherited his mother's property, the castle of Karrin, Carrio, or Carew, in Carmarthenshire, and assumed that name. In the 12th Henry IL he held two knights' fees in the county of Bucks, and the manor of Spersholt and Hermitage in Berkshire. He was sent by Earl Strongbow to Ireland in 1171, along with his son Raymond, but returned to England, and died in 1173. His eldest son, Otho, who succeeded to Carew Castle, took that name, and transmitted it to his descendants, one of whom became Earl of Totness in 1626, but leaving no male issue, the title died out in 1629. The numerous Carews of Devon and Cornwall claim descent from the same ancestor. Raymond (called Le Grosse), the second son of William of Carew, remained in Ireland, became Strongbow's right-hand man there, and for relieving him when in extremity at Waterford received in 1175 the hand of his sister, with the lands of Idrone, Fothard, and Glas-carrigg, and the Constableship of Leinster. Assisting Macarthy, King of Cork, against the King of Limerick, Raymond obtained as his reward a large tract of land in the county of Kerry, where he settled his eldest son MAURICE, from whom,. according to some, the family name is derived, as well as the name of the district, Clanmaurice ; but it does not seem easy to fix the exact time when the name Fitzmaurice became hereditary, and we give the following pedigree with some reserve, on account of that circumstance, though it is probably substantially comet :—He left no legitimate son, but his natural son already mentioned, Maurice Fitz. Raymond, succeeded him in his estates, which took the name of Clanmaurice. He had a grant of five knights' fees from King Richard in Desmond, and was succeeded in his principal property by his eldest son, Thomas, called Fitzmaurice. He had a grant from King John in the first year of his reign of ten knights' fees in Kerry, and a rent out of that territory of fotupence per acre from Bealtra to Gmbane, which is called the rent of the acres. He is said to have died in 1280, but taken in connection. with the grant from John this date looks rather doubtful. He is called the first Lord of Kerry. His eldest son, Maurice, called. Fitz-Thomas of Kerry, served in the Scotch wars of Edward I., and died at his house of Lixmaw in 1303. He married the heiress of Sir John M'Cleod, of Galway. His eldest son, Nicholas, third Lord of Kerry, built a stone bridge at Lixmaw, and was the first who made causeways to that place. He served against the Irish and in the Scotch wars, was knighted, and married a daughter of O'Brien, Prince of Thomond. His eldest son and successor, Maurice. Fitz-Nicholas, had an unlucky career. Having killed a personal enemy on the bench in the presence of the judge of assize at Tralee in 1325, he was tried and attainted by the Parliament at Dublin , but not put to death, forfeiting, however, his lands in Desmond. He afterwards associated with the Irish in their risings, and being seized by the Earl of Desmond, was kept in prison till his death in 1339. His brother John, to whom the lordship was restored, became fifth Lord of Kerry, and died in 1348. Maurice his successor was a Lord of Parliament in the 48th Edward III., served against the Irish, and died in 1398 at Lixmaw. His descendant Edmond, tenth Lord of Kerry, who regained some of the lands in Desmond, eventually died a Franciscan friar in 1543, and was succeeded by his son Edmond, whom Henry VIII. had in 1537 created Baron of Odorney and Viscount Kilmaule. lie had a grant of several abbeys with their lands to him and his male issue ; but in default these reverted to the Crown, his brother Patrick succeeding as twelfth Lord of Kerry, whose sons, Thomas and Edmond, dying without issue, their uncle Gerard (the red- haired), becaaie eventually the fifteenth Lord, another son of the tenth Lord, Thomas, succeeding as sixteenth Lord. There is a romantic story that this Thomas, having no expectation as a younger son of succeeding to the estates, had long served with the
Emperors of Germany at Milan, and was there when his last brother died. Another member of the family seized the estates, and held them for a year, when Thomas Fitzmaurice's old nurse, accom- panied by her daughter, went in search of him, and acquainted him with the news, the nurse dying on her return home. In about two
years Thomas Fitzmaurice recovered his estates, and they were
regranted and confirmed to him by Queen Mary, and settled by him on his son Patrick. He sat in the Irish Parliaments 3rd and 4th Philip and Mary and 2nd Elizabeth, under the title of Thomas Fitz- maurice, Baron of Lacksmaway, vulgariter dictus Baron de Kerry, being placed in the former as first Baron of Ireland, in the other, second. In 1578 he made a tender of allegiance to the Lord Deputy in his camp, but in 1581, the English army being reduced to 400 foot and fifty horse, he for some or no cause rose in rebel- lion, took the castles of Adare and Lisconell, and ravaged the lands of Tipperary, Ormond, and Waterford, till the Governor Zouche marched against him, when he abandoned Adare, took refuge in his castle of Lixmaw, and was defeated by the Governor in the wood of Lisconell. He fled to the mountains, met with another defeat, and at last was reduced to such extremities that he threw himself on the Earl of Ormond's mercy, and was admitted to terms. Lord Kerry was present at the Parliament of Sir John Perrot in 1585, and died 16th December, 1590.
His son, Patrick Fitz-Thomas Fitzmaurice, seventeenth Lord, born in 1541, and educated at the English Courts of Mary and Eliza- beth, with the latter of whom he was in high favour, was at last allowed by her to return to Ireland to see his father. But in 1599 he rose in rebellion, marshalled 500 foot and thirty horse against the Crown in Kerry, and continued a rebel till his death, 12th August, 1600. His son and successor, Thomas, eighteenth Lord of Kerry, born in 1574, on his father's death offered submission to the Government, but some service being required from him as a pledge of his loyalty he refused, and continued in arms till the castle of Listowel, the last he had in Kerry, was betrayed to Sir Charles Wilmot, with his eldest son and all his provisions and goods. The Queen ordered him to be especially excepted, with the Earl of Desmond and others, from any pardon ; but the Lords of the Council modified this order in his favour, provided he would perform some signal service to the State. He still persevered in his rebellion, marched to join O'DonnelPs army and the Spaniards, was again defeated and driven from point to point, his castle of Lixmaw being taken by Sir Charles Wilmot, till he was expelled from Clanmaurice, and at length, after a fruitless attempt at resistance, from Desmond also, the pacification of Mun- ster being thus completed. On the accession of James I. he waited on him and made a humble submission, and the King sent a warrant, 28th October, 1603, to the Lord Deputy to accept of a surrender of his estate, and to grant it again to him by new letters patent, which was done July 16, 1604. In 1612 he obtained a new grant of the property to him and his heirs and assigns for ever. He was present at the Parliament of 1615, and had a dispute for precedency with the Lord Slane, and died at Drogheda 3rd June, 1630. His eldest son and successor, Patrick, nineteenth Lord of Kerry, born at Lixmaw in 1595, took his seat in Parliament 14th July, 1634, but after the Irish Rebellion broke out returned into England in 1641, and remained there for the rest of his life, dying in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London, January 31, 1660. He was succeeded by his son William, twentieth Lord of Kerry, who was born in 1633, and died in 1697. His eldest son and successor, Thomas, twenty-first Lord of Kerry, made the fortunes of the family by a lucky mesalliance. He was born in 1668, took his seat in Parliament 17th August, 1697, was one of the Lords who, on the 2nd December in that year, signed the as- sociation in defence of the person of King William, and was created by George I. Viscount Clanmamice and Earl of Kerry by letters patent dated at St. James's 27th October, 1721, and at Dublin 17th January, 1722. He sat with this title in Parliament 30th November, 1725, and in May, 1726, was called to the Privy Council, and again by George II. He married, 14th January, 1692, Anne, only daughter of Sir William PErry, and died at Lixmaw March 16, 1741. His eldest son, William, second Earl and twenty-second Baron of K erry, died in 1747, leaving an only son, Francis Thomas, third Earl of Kerry, who died July 4, 1818, without leaving children, when the Fitzmaurice titles and estates devolved on his cousin Henry, third Marquis of Lansdowne, the representative of the younger son of Thomas, the first Earl of Kerry, to whom bad been limited the Petty estates.
We must now, therefore, retrace our steps to speak of the Petty family, who had thus aggrandized the old House of Fitzmaurice. Instead of being descended from a favourite of Edward the Confessor, the Pettys can trace no farther back than Anthony Petty, of Ramsey, in Hampshire, clothier in the early part of the seventeenth century. His son, WILLIAM PErrY, however, and not the Florentine-Norman Otho, was the real founder of the greatness of the Lansdowne family. William Petty was born at Rumsey, May 26, 1623, at an early age showed great talent for mechanics, and at twelve years of age could work as well as a regular smith and carpenter. He was educated first at Rumsey, and afterwards sent to Oxford, where at the age of fifteen he had acquired a knowledge of French, besides the classical languages, and those parts of geometry and astronomy, &c., which relate to navigation. He then entered the Royal Navy, where at the age of twenty he had made about 60/., with which he went in 1643 to the Low Countries and France, and studied anatomy, medicine, &c., at Utrecht, Leyden, Amsterdam, and Paris. While abroad he read Velasius with the celebrated Hobbes of Malmesbury, who took great pleasure in his tuition. He returned to Rummy in 1647 with his brother Anthony, whom he had educated, and with 70/. in pocket. On March 6, 1648, the Parliament offered him a patent for seventeen years for teaching his method of double writing. He identified himself with the Parliament's cause, prac- tised as a physician at Oxford, and instructed the young students in anatomy and chemistry, became Deputy-Professor of Anatomy in the University, and March 7, 1650, was admitted as Doctor of Physic on the recommendation of Lieutenant-Colonel Kelsey, deputy-governor of the garrison, and was likewise elected Fellow of Brazenose College. In December, 1650, he restored to life a woman who had been hung for child-murder at Oxford, and pro- cured her pardon. In January, 1651, he was chosen Professor of Anatomy, and soon afterwards received into the College of Physicians in London, and appointed lecturer on music in Gres- ham College. He had then from all these sources only 4001.; but the Commonivealth advanced him 100/., and with this he set out in August, 1652, as Physician-General to the Army in Ireland and its commander, Lieutenant-General Edmond Lud- lowe, with an allowance of 20s. a day. He enjoyed this office till June, 1659. He practised after his arrival as a doctor with great success at Dublin, was made Clerk of the Council and Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant (then Oliver Cromwell, though he was not present in Ireland), and had a salary of 400/. a year for these two offices. In December, 1654, he engaged in a survey of Ireland, and carried it out with such minuteness that there was not an estate of 60/. a year that was not distinctly marked with its true value. By agreement he was to receive a penny an acre from the army among whom the lands were to be distributed. By his employment in this survey he is said to have acquired an estate of 5,000/. or 6,000/. a year, and could from Mount Mangerton, in Kerry, behold 50,000 acres of his own land. He sat for the borough of West-Loe, in Cornwall, in Richard Cromwell's Parlia- ment of 1659, and made some figure therein. After the fall of the Protector Dr. Petty returned to Ireland, where he remained till the Restoration, when he returned to England, was introduced to the King, and graciously received. He was one of the first members of the Royal Society, and in March, 1661, was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Court of Claims for Irish Estates, and by the Act of Settlement all the estates he had already acquired in Ireland were by special order of the King confirmed to him, and other lands assigned to him for his outstanding arrears. On April 11, 1661, he was knighted, and sat in the Irish Parliament of that year for Enniscorthy, in Wexford. In 1663 he increased his repu- tation greatly by inventing a double-bottomed ship, which sailed from Dublin to Holyhead with great success, and a model of which was deposited in Gresham College. He published a book called "Political Arithmetic," in which he laid down the rudiments of that science of figures of which the Society of Actuaries and the Statistical Society are now the chief promoters. Sir William Petty died at his house in Piccadilly on December 16, 1687. His will, which is of great length, contains a minute outline of his life, with all the details of his fortune- making, and minute directions not only as to the disposition of his property, but also to his family as to their proper use of it. It ends thus characteristically :-"As for religion, I die in the profes don of that faith and in the practice of such worship as I find established by the law of my country, not being able to believe what I myself please nor to worship God better than by doing as I would be done unto, and observing the laws of my country, and expressing my love and honour to Almighty God by such signs and tokens as are understood to be such by the people with whom I live, God knowing my heart even without any at all ; and thus begging His Divine Majesty to make me what He would have me, both as to faith and good works, I willingly resign my soul into his hands, re only on His infinite mercy and the merits of my Saviour for ii hap- piness after this life, where I expect to know and see God more clearly than by the study of the Scriptures and His works I have
been hitherto able to do. Grant me, 0 Lord, an easy passage to
Thyself, that as I have lived in Thy fear I may be known to die in Thy favour. Amen." He left personal property to the value of 45,0001., besides his real estate of 6,500/. a year. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hardress Waller, of Castletown, Limerick, one of the High Court of Justice on Charles I., who was nreated Baroness of Shelburne, in the county of Wexford, for life, about a year after her husband's death, and died in February, 1708.
Charles, eldest surviving son of Sir William, was created Baron of Shelburne (an Irish peerage) at the same time with his mother. The Parliament called by James in Ireland in 1689 attainted him and confiscated his estate, and that of his mother and brother, but on the success of William he was of course restored. He married a Kentish heiress, but died without issue in April, 1696, when his peerage became extinct. His younger brother, Henry, succeeded to the property, and in September, 1696, obtained a regrant of his lands in the county of Kerry (135 square miles-80,000 English acres), and these were all by a patent in 1721 created into the manor of Dunkerton, with special power to take cognizance and hold pleas, and all actions for debt, detinue, and trespass not ex- ceeding 201. on each action. On March 14, 1699, he was appointed Joint Ranger and Gamekeeper of the Phoenix Park, Dublin, and all other forests and parks in Ireland ; and by patent, dated June 16, 1699, he was created Baron of Shelburne and Viscount Dunkerton in the county of Kerry, and Earl of Shelburne by patent, April 29, 1719. In 1704 he was made one of Queen Anne's Privy Council, and was also of those of George L and George II. He sat in the English Parliament for Great Marlow, in
in the Parliament of 1715, and for the borough of Chipping Wycombe in the same county in the Parliament of 1722, having in 1700 purchased the manors of Temple Wycombe, Loakes, and Windsor of Thomas Archdale, Esq. He enlarged and much improved the manor-house of Loakes, which became for the time the chief family seat. The estate was afterwards sold to Lord Carrington. His son James, Viscount Dunkerton, died in 1750, and the Earl himself in 1751, leaving no issue, and he bequeathed his great estates to his nephew, John Fitzmaurice, second son of Thomas Earl of Kerry, who thus united the blood of the ancient Irish princes and their conquerors, the first Norman invaders, with the possession of the soil. He was not indeed the eldest represen- tative of this branch of the Florentine-Norman House, but as it chanced both lines centred in his grandson, and the twenty-fourth Baron of Kerry was the greatest proprietor in the county.
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