land, and in 1314 one of the justices of oyer and terminer in Cumberland and Westmoreland for the trial of offenders indicted before the conservators of the peace. In January 1315 the magnates of the north appointed him one of the wardens of the marches. The king ratified their choice, and nominated him captain and warden of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and of all Northumberland. In March 1315 he was also made captain and warden of Carlisle and of the adjoining marches. In June 1316 he was appointed one of the wardens to defend Yorkshire against the Scots. The last writ addressed to him as a commissioner of array was on 15 Sept. 1316. He died soon after, apparently about November, certainly before February 1317, and is said to have been buried in Nesham Priory, Durham (Dugdale).
Fitzwilliam inherited and acquired very considerable estates in Northumberland, Yorkshire, and Cumberland (Cal. Inq. Post Mortem, i. 282). In 1296 he was declared nearest heir to Gilbert Fitzwilliam (Cal. Geneal. p. 515). In 1303 he got one-fourth of the manors in Northumberland belonging to John Yeland (ib. p. 646). In 1306 he succeeded to the estates of his cousin John de Greystock (ib. p. 713), for the repose of whose soul he founded a chantry at Tynemouth.
Fitzwilliam married, about 1282, Marjory, daughter and coheiress of Hugh of Bolebec and widow of Nicholas Corbet. She died before 1303. His eldest son William died before him. He was succeeded by his second son Robert, who died before the end of 1317 (Cal. Inq. Post Mortem, i. 282). The estates then went to Ralph, the son of Robert, who assumed the name of Greystock. The barony remained in the family until 1487, when it passed through females to the Dacres of the north (Dugdale, ii. 24).
[Parl. Writs, i. 615–16, vol. ii. pt. iii. pp. 880–1; Rymer's Fœdera, vols. i. and ii. Record ed.; Calendarium Genealogicum; Stevenson's Documents illustrative of the History of Scotland, vol. ii.; Calendarium Inquisitionum Post Mortem, vol. i.; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 740; Foss's Judges of England, iii. 89–91; Biographica Juridica, p. 272.]
FITZWILLIAM, RICHARD, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Meryon (1745–1816), founder of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, eldest son of Richard, sixth viscount, and Catharine, eldest daughter and coheiress of Sir Matthew Decker, bart., of Richmond, Surrey, was descended from a member of the English family of Fitzwilliam, who, attending Prince John to Ireland on his appointment to the office of chief governor, founded the branch which flourished in that kingdom till the early part of the present century. He was born in August 1745, and having entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduated M.A. in 1764. On 25 May 1776 he succeeded his father in his Irish titles of viscount and baron and to his large estates. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, vice-admiral of the province of Leinster, and M.P. for Wilton from 1790 till he died on 4 Feb. 1816, in Bond Street, London. Most of his property passed, in accordance with his will (dated 18 Aug. 1815, and printed in Acts 3 & 4 Wm. IV, c. xxvi. s. 1, and 5 & 6 Vict. c. xxiii. s. 1), to George Augustus, eleventh earl of Pembroke, while the titles devolved upon the viscount's brother, John, by whose death without issue in 1833 they became extinct.
Playfair, in his ‘British Family Antiquity,’ gives a high character of Fitzwilliam. Though a member of the church of England and Ireland, he was the author of a rather remarkable publication, entitled ‘The Letters of Atticus’ (or, ‘Protestantism and Catholicism considered in their comparative Influence on Society’). These letters, composed in French, and issued from the press at different dates, were collected and reprinted anonymously in London in 1811. Another edition appeared in Paris in 1825; and in the following year, in London, an English version with the author's name on the title-page. He is best known by his bequest to the university of Cambridge, of his splendid collection of printed books, illuminated manuscripts, pictures, drawings, engravings, &c., together with the dividends of 100,000l. South Sea annuities for the erection of a museum. The dividends having accumulated to more than 40,000l., the existing building was commenced on 2 Nov. 1837, from the designs of George Basevi [q. v.], and the work was carried on under his superintendence until his death in 1845, when C. R. Cockerell [q. v.], the architect of the public library, was selected as his successor.
[Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall, iv. 306; Graduati Cantabrigienses; Cambridge University Calendar (1887), p. 451; Playfair's British Family Antiquity, v. 38; Blacker's Brief Sketches of the Parishes of Booterstown and Donnybrook, pp. 89, 108, 314; Gent. Mag. (1816), vol. lxxxvi. pt. i. pp. 189, 367, 627; Annual Register (1816), lviii. Chron. 213.]
FITZWILLIAM, ROGER, alias Roger de Breteuil, Earl of Hereford (fl. 1071–1075), was the younger son of William Fitzosbern [q. v.], to whose earldom and English estates he succeeded at his death (1071). He is described by William of Malmesbury as ‘a youth of hateful perfidy,’ and the letters
