Fitzgerald, LORD EDWARD

Fitzgerald, LORD EDWARD, a prominent member of the society of United Irishmen, was a younger son of the Duke of Leinster, and was born at Carton Castle, near Dublin, October 15, 1763. After his father's death he was brought up in France, but returned to England in 1779 to enter the army. He served with distinction in the American war, next sat for Athy in the Irish parliament, and was drawn to Paris by the irresistible spell of the great Revolution. Here he renounced his nobility, and married Pamela (long believed to be a daughter of Madame de Genlis by Égalité Orleans; really a daughter of G. de Brixy and Mary Sims, born in Newfoundland). Returning to Ireland in 1793, he joined the United Irishmen in 1796, and went to France to arrange for a French invasion of Ireland. Soon after his return the plot was betrayed to the government, and Fitzgerald, after a few days of hiding in Dublin, was seized, not without a desperate scuffle, in which he received wounds of which he died, sixteen days later, 4th June 1798. See the Life by Moore (2 vols. 1831).