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 was busy in fortifying Carrig, two miles from Wexford, while Dermot and Fitzgerald were attacking Dublin; but he marched westwards to aid Donnell, king of Limerick, against Roderick. Dermot now, if Giraldus could be believed, offered the brothers the hand of his daughter and the succession to his throne, and on their refusal to give up their present wives he at their advice called in Strongbow [see, d. 1176], who was now encouraged by Fitzstephen's successes to undertake what he had formally feared to venture. But Giraldus is so extravagantly partial to his uncle that the constant attempt to exalt him over Strongbow fails by reason of its obvious exaggeration. Fitzstephen's exploits are reduced to more modest, though still solid, proportions by the French poet, who derived his information from Maurice Regan.

In 1171 Fitzstephen was shut up in Carrig with five knights and a few archers by his own Wexford subjects, while the mass of the invaders were besieged by Roderick in Dublin. The false intelligence, vouched for by the oath of two Irish bishops, that Dublin had surrendered to the Irish induced him to surrender. They retreated with him, murdering the inferior prisoners, to the island of Begerin (‘Little Erin,’, p. 85), when the news came of the defeat of Roderick at Dublin. There the fears or jealousy of Strongbow (Exp. Hib. p. 271) prevented his deliverance; but on the arrival of Henry II in October at Waterford the men of Wexford brought their lord bound and in chains before the king. Henry ordered him still to be kept in prison ‘in Reginald's Tower,’ ‘because he had invaded Ireland before getting his assent.’ But he released Fitzstephen before his own departure, though he took away from him Wexford and the two cantreds. Immediately afterwards Henry left him at Dublin under Hugh de Lacy. By fighting with distinction on Henry's side in the civil war in 1173 and 1174, both in France and England, Fitzstephen completely recovered the king's favour. In May 1177, at a council at Oxford, he and Miles Cogan received a grant of the kingdom of Cork on condition of the service of sixty knights. Cork city, however, the king kept in his own hands (, i. 163; the charter is printed in, Henry II, app. iii. to bk. v.) If Giraldus can be trusted, Fitzstephen was actually associated with William Fitzaldhelm [q. v.] in the government of Ireland (Exp. Hib. p. 334; but cf. i. 161). On their arrival in Ireland they decided by lot that the three eastern cantreds should be the portion of Fitzstephen, while the tribute of the twenty-four cantreds farmed out and the custody of the city was common to both. Soon after he accompanied Philip de Braose on an expedition against Limerick with thirty knights, but nothing was done. Soon after Maredudd, a bastard son of Robert, a youth of great promise, died at Cork.

For the next five years Fitzstephen and Cogan reigned in peace at Cork, the modest ambition of the elderly leaders restraining the impetuosity of their youthful followers (Exp. Hib. p. 350). But in 1182 the treacherous murder of Miles Cogan and Ralph, another bastard of Fitzstephen, and Miles's son-in-law, by a chieftain called Mac Tire, was followed by a general revolt against Fitzstephen throughout all Desmond. The old warrior was now closely besieged in Cork, but was relieved by his nephew, Raymond Fitzgerald [q. v.] In 1183 he was joined by his nephews Philip and Gerald de Barri. The latter boasts of the help he gave to his uncle (ib. p. 351). Fitzstephen granted Philip three cantreds of his Desmond territory (Cal. Doc. Ireland, 1171–1251, No. 340). He probably died very soon after. Giraldus describes Fitzstephen as by turns the luckiest and most wretched of men. He was rather short in stature, stout, and full of body, liberal and pleasant in his manners. His great faults were his immoderate devotion to wine and women. He left no legitimate offspring.

[The main authority is Giraldus, Expugnatio Hibernica, in Opera, vol. v. (Rolls Ser.). See also the anonymous French poem on Irish history, said to be translated from the original of Maurice Regan.] 

FITZSTEPHEN, WILLIAM (d. 1190?), the biographer of Becket, styles himself the archbishop's ‘concivis.’ He was in the closest connection with Becket for ten years or more, as his ‘clericus et convictor.’ When Becket became chancellor, he appointed Fitzstephen to be ‘dictator in cancelleria ejus.’ Later William became subdeacon in his chapel, and was entrusted with the duty of perusing letters and petitions. Sometimes at Becket's bidding, he either decided these cases on his own authority, or was appointed advocate to one of the parties—‘patronus causarum.’ He was present at the great council of Northampton (13 Oct. 1164), and was sitting at the archbishop's feet, when Herbert of Bosham gave his master the rash advice to excommunicate his enemies if they laid hands upon him. William induced the archbishop to refuse this counsel, as the archbishop afterwards confessed when during his exile he met William at St. Benedict's on the Loire (Vit. S. Thomæ, pp. 1, 2, 59). 