Sir William Fitzwilliam

Home > People > History > British and Irish History: Biographies

Fitzwilliam, Sir William (1526–99), vice‐treasurer (1559–73), lord deputy (1571–5, 1588–94), the most experienced Elizabethan minister in Ireland, and reputedly the most corrupt. When his account was audited in 1571, it was nearly £6,000 short. Fitzwilliam was nevertheless appointed chief governor with orders to cut costs and reduce the army. This gave him little leverage over the provincial presidencies of Munster and Connacht or over the Enterprise of Ulster, and as a result he quarrelled with their commanders.

Fitzwilliam was back again to retrench in 1588. He conspired against Perrot, his predecessor, and presided over massive bribery with relatives and staff acting as receivers. Fitzwilliam's major policy initiative—the partition of Monaghan (1590/1)—was accomplished in a high‐handed fashion. Hugh Roe MacMahon had bribed Fitzwilliam to succeed to the lordship but instead was executed, leading Hugh O'Neill and other Ulster lords to fear the precedent thus set. Fitzwilliam sparked the Nine Years War by sending a sheriff into Fermanagh. After he had failed to arrest O'Neill on charges of conspiracy at Dundalk in June 1593, the Ulsterman turned the tables on him with a litany of complaints to commissioners the following March. Fitzwilliam was recalled in the summer of 1594.

Hiram Morgan

Sir William Fitzwilliam 1526–99, lord deputy of Ireland. He acquired (1547) land in Ireland by a grant of Edward VI. Although a Protestant, he was loyal to Queen Mary I, and she appointed him keeper of the great seal in Ireland (1555). Under Elizabeth I he was vice treasurer (1550–73) and several times lord justice of Ireland in the absence of the 3d earl of Sussex . His terms as lord deputy (1572–75, 1588–94) were marked by insufficient funds, his own lack of military skills, ineffective communication between him and the English court, and vague charges of maladministration. He did, however, successfully quell an uprising in Monaghan, and thereafter assisted in its resettlement. He was governor of Fotheringhay Castle when Mary Queen of Scots was executed there (1588).