Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/222

 been great confusion in Offaly and Kildare. Ley, the chief stronghold of John Fitzthomas in Offaly, had been taken and burned on 25 Aug. 1284; the castle of Kildare was captured in 1294, and the country round laid waste by bands of predatory Irish and English; and though the great Irish chief of Offaly, Calbhach O'Conor, was slain in 1305, yet two years later ‘the robbers of Offaly burned the town of Ley, and laid siege to the castle till they were driven back by the combined forces of John Fitzthomas and Edmund Butler.’ In 1309 he crossed over to England with the Earl of Ulster and Roger Mortimer. Three years later (1312) his friendship with the De Burghs was ratified by a double marriage. At Green Castle in co. Down his ward, Maurice Fitzthomas [q. v.], the head of the Desmond branch of the family, married (5 Aug.) Richard de Burgh's daughter Catherine; and on 16 Aug. his son Thomas Fitzjohn married Joan, another daughter of the same earl. At Christmas he held a great court at Adare in co. Limerick, and knighted Nicholas Fitzmaurice, the knight of Kerry (Annals of Ireland, pp. 319, 323, &c.; Loch Cé, p. 531, &c.; Annals of the Four Masters, pp. 481, &c.;, p. 11).

On 26 May 1315 Edward Bruce landed at Carrickfergus (Annals of Ireland, p. 348, &c.; Loch Cé, p. 563; Annals of the Four Masters), and Barbour seems to make John Fitzthomas take part in the Earl of Ulster's expedition which, in the ensuing summer (July–September 1315), forced the Scotch back from Dundalk to the Bann (, xiv. 140–6). After a few months spent in Ulster Edward Bruce made a definite advance south, and by the beginning of 1316 was laying waste John Fitzthomas's own county. At Arscoll in co. Kildare he was met by three hosts, each of which outnumbered his own. But the leaders, Edmund Butler, John Fitzthomas, and Arnold Poer, were at variance, and the Scotch gained an easy victory (26 Jan. 1316). Bruce, however, almost at once began to retreat north, burning John Fitzthomas's great castle of Ley on his way (Annals of Ireland, pp. 296–7, 244–8;, p. 12). John Fitzthomas and the other Irish magnates gathered at Dublin (c 2 Feb.) and took an oath of fealty to the king of England's new agent, John de Hotham (Annals of Ireland, p. 350; Lib. Hib. pt. iv. p. 6). In mid-February the Scotch were still lying at Greashill in Offaly, while the English army lay at Kildare (Annals of Ireland, p. 349). A little later John Fitzthomas crossed over to England, and it was probably soon after this that he was created Earl of Kildare. The patent is dated 16 May 1316 (see patent in extenso,, i. 78–9). Immediately after this the Earls of Kildare and Ulster seem to have taken a second oath (c 3 July), and two months later, just as the news of Robert Bruce's landing reached Dublin, John Fitzthomas died at Laraghbryan, co. Kildare, on Sunday, 12 Sept. (Annals of Ireland, pp. 247, 352). He was buried at the Franciscan monastery in Kildare (ib. p. 297).

John Fitzthomas is said to have married Blanche Roche, daughter of John Baron of Fermoy (Earls of Kildare, p. 28;, p. 79). His children were (1) Gerald, ‘his son and heir’ (d. 1303) (, p. 10;, p. 47; Annals of Ireland, p. 331); and his successor, (2) Thomas Fitzjohn, second earl of Kildare [see , d. 1328]. To these the Earl of Kildare adds Joan, who in 1302 married Sir Edmund Butler (cf. Annals of Ireland, p. 331), and thus became ancestress to the later marquises of Ormonde; and Elizabeth, who married Sir Nicholas Netterville, ancestor of the viscounts Netterville (Earls of Kildare, p. 28).

John Fitzthomas seems to have been one of the most unruly even of the Irish barons. Besides the feuds already noticed, he appears to have had another with the De Lacies in 1310 (Pat. Rolls of Ireland, No. 58, p. 13, cf. No. 240, and p. 16, No. 50). He is said to have built and endowed the Augustinian abbey at Adare (Earls of Kildare, p. 27;, Monasticon, p. 414), ‘for the redemption of Christian captives.’ His fame was of long continuance in his own country, where an Irish poet, in 1601, wrote of him: ‘The first Leinster Earl without reproach … John the redoubtable, than whom no poet was more learned’ (Earls of Kildare, p. 28). At one time or another he must have had under his control no inconsiderable part of Ireland. The fact that he was never justiciar seems to point to some distrust as to his perfect trustworthiness, and his power is shown by his equality in the quarrel with the great house of Ulster, which latterly seems to have been willing to secure peace by mutual marriages. His elder son, Gerald, is said to have been betrothed to a daughter of Richard de Burgh; but if this was so, the agreement seems to have been broken short by the young noble's death.

[Sweetman's Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, vols. i–v.; Rymer's Fœdera, ed. 1720; Calendarium Genealogicum, ed. Roberts; Irish Close and Patent Rolls, ed. Ball and Tresham, 1828; Parliamentary Writs (Palgrave, 1827); Liber Munerum Hiberniæ (Thomas, 1824); Report on the Dignity of a Peer; Book of Howth, ed. Bond and Brewer; Annals of the Four Masters, vol. ii., ed. O'Donovan; Annals