Fitzgerald, Lord Edward

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward,

1763–98, Irish revolutionary; son of James Fitzgerald, 20th earl of Kildare and 1st duke of Leinster (see Kildare, James Fitzgerald, 20th earl ofKildare, James Fitzgerald, 20th earl of
, 1722–73, Irish nobleman. He sat in the Irish House of Commons from 1741 until 1744, when he succeeded as earl of Kildare.
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). After an early career in the army and the Irish House of Commons, Lord Edward, attracted by the French Revolution, went (1792) to Paris and was expelled from the British army for his avowed republicanism. Returning home, he joined the United IrishmenUnited Irishmen
or United Irish Society,
Irish political organization. It was founded at Belfast in 1791 by Theobald Wolfe Tone. Disgruntled by the use of English patronage to control Irish politics, the organization aimed at legislative reform "founded on the
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, whom he pledged to assist as commander in chief of their rebel army. In 1796 he went to Basel to negotiate French aid for the planned Irish uprising. On the eve of the rebellion of 1798 he was betrayed by an informer and arrested; he died of wounds sustained at his arrest.

Bibliography

See biography by T. Moore (1831); S. Tillyard, Citizen Lord (1998).

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward

 

Born Oct. 15, 1763, in Carton House, County Kildare; died June 4, 1798, in Newgate jail. Irish bourgeois revolutionary.

In 1783, Fitzgerald was elected a member of the Irish Parliament. In the 1790’s he was one of the leaders of the United Irishmen. He advocated the liberation of Ireland from English domination, as well as the democratic transformation of the country. Fitzgerald was among the leaders who prepared for the armed rebellion of 1798. On May 19, not long after the start of the rebel lion, Fitzgerald was arrested; in the course of his arrest he was mortally wounded.