Kildare Observer
2 May 1896
Death of Daughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald
Romance of the last century
Helen, widow of Mr Hugh M’Corquodale, died at Richmond, Surrey, on the 17th inst, at the patriarchial age of 97. This announcement, says a correspondent (Mr Edward Brownell), recalls an interesting romance of the last century. The deceased lady was a daughter of the unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his charming wife Pamela. Lord Edward was a prominent member of the Society of United Irishmen. He was a younger son of Lieutenant-General James, the first Duke of Leinster, and the Lady Emelia Lennox, daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond and Lennox, and the beautiful Lady Sarah Cadogan, related to our present Viceroy – daughter of Marlborough’s favourite general, William Earl Cadogan, and was born at Carton, the splendid family seat near Maynooth, in 1763. Educated in France he returned to England, and entered the army at the age of 16. After serving with distinction in the American War of Independence he was attracted to Paris by the upheaval which resulted in the French Revolution. There he renounced his title, and married a beautiful woman, around whom much mystery had gathered, but who is now known to have been a daughter of Madame de Genlis by the Duke D’Orleans (Philip Egalite). Subsequently Lord Edward brought his wife to Ireland, where he resided at Friscati, Blackrock, and became a prominent figure in the political conspiracies with which the last century closed. His plot for a French Invasion of Ireland was betrayed by Francis Higgins, or the “Sham Squire,” to the British Government, and his arrest was ordered. The attempt to arrest him he resisted desperately, assisted by his devoted wife, and he received wounds in the struggle, from which he died a fortnight later, and was interred privately in a vault of St Werburgh’s Church. Lady Edward Fitzgerald’s after life, passed upon the Continent, was not happy. Her means were derived from an allowance from her reputed half brother, Louis Phillipe. She died in Paris, 8th November, 1831, aged sixty-five, and was buried in Montmartre, leaving, beside Mrs M’Corquodale, two other daughters, namely – Lucy, who married General Sir Guy Cameron, of Boyle Farm, Thames Ditton, Surrey, and died many years ago, leaving two daughters – Pamela, married to the late Charles Stuart Standford, D D, of Park House, Booterstown, Rector of St Thomas’s Church, Dublin; and Madeline, married to the Hon Percy Scawen Wyndham, M P, son of the first Baron Leconfield (of noble house of Egremont), and father to Capt. George Wyndham, M P, who married Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, daughter of the late Earl Scarborough, sister to the Marchioness of Zetland, and mother to Viscount Belgrave, grandson and heir to the Duke of Westminster, K G.
The Death of Daughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald from the Kildare Observer 2 May 1896, typed by James Durney
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