committed to gaol for contempt. Next day, regretting his hasty action, the deputy summoned him to take his place at the council board; but he, declining to be thus thrust out of gaol privily, complained to the queen, who, evidently without due consideration of the merits of the case, sharply reprimanded the deputy, praised Fitton for his loyalty, and then bade them become friends again. No doubt Fitzwilliam lost his temper, but the treasurer's conduct was exasperating to the last degree (Bagwell, Ireland, ii. 256). On 18 June he was commissioned, along with the Earl of Clanricarde, the archbishop of Tuam, and others, to hold assizes in Connaught. On his return he accompanied the deputy to Kilkenny; but when it was proposed that he should proceed into Munster and endeavour to prevent the disturbances likely to arise there owing to the escape of the Earl of Desmond, he flatly refused to play the part of 'a harrow without pynnes,' protesting to Burghley that 'if I must neuely be throwen upon all desperate reckes (I meane not for life but for honesty and credit) I may say my hap is hard' (State Papers, Eliz. xlvi. 46).
In May 1575 he escorted the Earl of Kildare and his two sons, suspected of treason, into England, but returned in September with Sir H. Sidney, Fitzwilliam's successor, whom he attended on his northern journey. In April 1578 he was the cause of another 'scene' at the council board owing to his refusal, apparently on good grounds, to affirm with the rest of the council that there had been an increase in the revenue. The only governor with whom he seems to have cordially co-operated was Sir William Drury. With him he was indefatigable in his preparations to meet the threatened invasion of James Fitzmaurice. He died on 3 July 1579 'from the disease of the country, ' caught during an expedition into Longford. 'I know,' wrote Drury, 'he was, in many men's opinions, over careful of his posterity, and was not without enemies that sought to interpret that to his discredit; but I wish in his successor that temperance, judgment, and ability to speak in her majesty's causes that was found in him. And for my own part, if I should (as of right I ought) measure my liking of him by his good affection to me, truly my particular loss is also very great' (ib. lxvii. 25).
He was buried on 21 Sept. in St. Patrick's Cathedral beside the 'wyef of his youth, Anne, the second daughter of Sr Peter Warburton, of Areley in the county of Chester, knight, who were borne both in one yere, viz. he ye last of Marche 1527, and she the first of Maye in the same yeare, and were maried on Sonday next after Hillaries daye 1539, being ye 19 daye of Januarie, in the 12 yere of their age, and lyved together in true and lawfull matrymonie iuste 34 yeres, for ye same Sonday of the yeare wherein they were maried ye same Sondaie 34 yeres following was she buried, though she faithfully depted this lyef 9 daies before, viz. on Saturdaie ye 9 daie of Januarie 1573, in wch tyme God gave theim 15 children, viz. 9 sonnes and 6 daughters’ (from a brass in St. Patrick's, of which there is a rubbing in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 32485, Q. 1).
Sir Edward Fitton the younger (1548?–1606), son and heir of the above, being disappointed in his expectation of succeeding his father as vice-treasurer, retired to England shortly after having been knighted by Sir William Pelham (Ham. Cal. ii. 175; cf. Domestic Cal. Add. p. 25). His interest in Ireland revived when it was proposed to colonise Munster with Englishmen, and he was one of the first to solicit a slice of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond. On 3 Sept. 1587 he passed his patent for 11,515 acres in the counties of Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford; but the speculation proved to be not so profitable as he had anticipated, and on 19 Dec. 1588 he wrote to Burghley that he was 1,500l. out of pocket through it, and begged that his rent might be remitted on account of his father's twenty years' service and his own (Ham. Cal. iv. 87). He was most energetic in his proposals for the extirpation of the Irish, but failed to fulfil the conditions of the grant, and was noted as an absentee. He was M. P. for Boroughbridge in 1588. He married Alice, daughter and sole heiress of Sir John Holcroft of Holcroft, Lancashire, who survived him till 5 Feb. 1626, and who, after his death in 1606, erected a monument to his memory in Gawsworth Church (Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 295). His daughter Mary is noticed below.
[Authorities as in the text; J. P. Earwaker's East Cheshire.]
FITTON, MARY (fl. 1600), maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, and alleged to be 'the dark lady' mentioned in Shakespeare's sonnets, was the fourth child and second daughter of Sir Edward Fitton the younger [see above], by his wife, Alice, daughter of Sir John Holcroft. She was baptised at Gawsworth Church, Cheshire, 24 June 1578. In 1595 Mary was one of the maids of honour to the queen. In 1600 Queen Elizabeth attended the festivities which celebrated the marriage of Anne Russell, another of her maids of honour, and Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester. Mary Fitton took a
