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 12503, f. 389–90. What the Irish said about this transaction may be read in History, bk. i. ch. i.; cf. also, Monaghan, ch. iv.).

In 1589 a quarrel arose between him and the president of Connaught, Sir Richard Bingham, which created considerable excitement at the time. Bingham had been charged by the natives with extreme harshness in his government and as being the sole cause for their rebellious attitude. The deputy, therefore, on 2 June 1589, undertook a journey into that province for the purpose of pacifying it and inquiring into the charges against Bingham. These proceedings Bingham resented and poured out the vials of his wrath upon Fitzwilliam. The charges preferred against him he categorically denied, with the result that the deputy was severely reprimanded by Elizabeth. In reply, he could only say that ‘Sir Richard hath unjustly dealt with me, as in his answers in several parts appeareth, to which upon the margin I have set down some notes of truth. God make him his, but I fear if there be an atheist upon earth, he is one, for he careth not what he doeth, nor to say anything (how untrue soever), so it may serve his turn’ (Ham. Cal. iv. 194–281 passim). Never of a strong constitution, his health had of recent years been very bad. During the journey into Connaught ‘he swooned twice on one day, and after had three fits of a tertian.’ His enemies caricatured him as being ‘blind, lame, burst and full of dropsy;’ nevertheless he contrived manfully to attend to his business, and his conduct in suppressing the mutiny of Sir Thomas Norreys's soldiers (May 1590) won him the high praise of Sir George Carew (Cal. Carew MSS. iii. 33). Hugh MacMahon out of the way, he in October 1591 partitioned Monaghan (with the exception of Donnamyne, which belonged to the Earl of Essex) among the principal gentlemen of the MacMahons, the termon or ecclesiastical lands being reserved for English officials. In July 1592 he proceeded to Dundalk in order to determine certain border disputes between Tyrone and Turlough Lunieach, and in June in the following year he, at the same place, concluded a treaty between them (Ham. Cal. iv. 568, v. 99; Cal. Carew MSS. iii. 73). Hardly had he done this when he was called upon to suppress the rebellion of Maguire, setting out from Dublin on 4 Dec. ‘into the Cavan, whither by easy journeys, yet through very foul ways and deep fords by reason of continual rain, he arrived within five days after his departure’ (Ham. Cal. v. 190). His expedition was successful so far as the capture of Enniskillen Castle and the proclaiming Maguire traitor went; but the rebellion was only the first act of a tragedy, the end of which he was not to see. His health had been fairly good while in the field, but on his return he was confined closely to his chamber. On 30 Jan. 1594 he wrote: ‘It is God's good blessing that this state is reduced to that staidness of quiet that the infirmities of the governor, old, weak in body, sick in stomach, racked with the stone, bedrid with the gout, and disgraced with restraints, do not make it stagger’ (ib. p. 201). In the spring death seemed so near that he deemed it necessary to provide for the government by nominating lords justices. On 31 July his successor, Sir W. Russell, arrived, and on 12 Aug. he and his family sailed for England. His infirmities increased, and eventually he lost his sight entirely. He lived to hear of Tyrone's rebellion, and to hear it laid to his charge. One of his last acts was to dictate a vindication of his conduct during his last deputyship (Addit. MS. 12503, Brit. Mus.)

He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Sidney, and sister of Sir Henry Sidney, by whom he had two sons (William, who succeeded him, and John, a captain in the wars in Scotland) and three daughters. He died in 1599 at his house at Milton, and was buried in the church of Marham, where, on the north side, is a noble monument erected to him by his widow. One of the ablest of Elizabeth's viceroys, it was his misfortune to be vilified by his contemporaries and to be misrepresented in history as the most avaricious and wantonly cruel of English governors.

[Authorities as in the text. In addition to the State Papers calendared by Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Brewer there are in the great Carte collection in the Bodleian at Oxford four volumes of State Papers (lv–viii.) specifically known as the ‘Fitzwilliam Papers,’ relating to Ireland during the period of his government there.] 

FITZWILLIAM, WILLIAM WENTWORTH, second in the peerage of the United Kingdom (1748–1833), statesman, eldest son of William, first earl Fitzwilliam, was born 30 May 1748, and succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father (9 Aug. 1756). He was educated at Eton, where he began a lifelong friendship with his schoolfellows Charles James Fox and Lord Carlisle. From Eton he proceeded to Cambridge, and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1769. On 11 July 1770 he married Lady Charlotte Ponsonby, youngest daughter of William, second earl of Bessborough, by Lady Caroline Cavendish, daughter of the Duke of Devonshire. He adhered to the whig politics of his family, and steadily opposed