FitzGerald Family Tree | Irish Genealogy

today I'm going to show you the family tree of the Fitzgerald dynasty one of the most important noble dynasties in Ireland during the last 1,000 years I'll also be covering a bit of Irish history in general as well as a bit of Welsh history and finally I'm going to share with you what this famous person has in common with this famous person [Music] before we look at the family tree let me first explain how the histories of Ireland and Wales differ from the histories of Scotland and England after the Romans left Britain there were all sorts of small kingdoms on the scene these are just a few of them the seven main anglo-saxon kingdoms in the south eventually merged to become England and the several Gaelic kingdoms in the north eventually merged to become Scotland but in Ireland a single unified Gaelic kingdom never did come to exist sure there was the title of High King but that was more of a ceremonial thing and it wasn't kept within one family likewise there was never really a single unified Kingdom known as Wales there were a few times when one of the Welsh leaders came to dominate but this never lasted for long so what happened was that the English now led by the Normans eventually invaded and took over the various smaller kingdoms that were still left so let me quickly show you some key dates in 1171 henry ii was given lordship over ireland by the pope although in reality several smaller Irish kingdoms went on to exist for several more centuries so basically Lord of Ireland became just one of the many titles that the king of England held then in 1283 Edward the first managed to capture all of Wales but this time there was no title lordship of Wales given instead the Welsh lands simply became part of England and the title Prince of Wales was given to the Kings oldest son next in 1542 Henry the eighth was crowned king of Ireland so now Ireland was finally a single unified Kingdom but the king was well the same guy as the king of England then of course in 1603 the thrones of England and Scotland became united under James the sake and first and therefore all three kingdoms now had the same monarch in 1707 England and Scotland officially merged to become Great Britain but at this point Ireland was still a separate Kingdom albeit ruled by the same monarch this was fixed in 1801 when Great Britain and Ireland merged to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland of course the story does not end there in the 1920s most of Ireland left the UK and by 1937 everything except a small part up here became the Republic of Ireland that left the UK as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which is what it is today well at least for now brexit anyway all of this was just a way for me to explain why I can't do a single family tree of Irish or Welsh monarchs in the same way that I did one for Scotland and England but I did really want to do some sort of family tree relating to Ireland and Wales so what I decided to do was cover one of the most important dynasties to come out of that region so I chose the Fitzgeralds let's now look at the tree first of all you need to know that the word fits simply means son of so Fitzgerald just means son of Gerald and the original Gerald that the name refers to is this guy here he's called Gerald of Windsor because he was born at Windsor Castle in fact his father Walter was the very first constable or governor of that castle Windsor Castle is of course to this day one of the primary residences of the British monarch however it was originally built by William the Conqueror Walter had been a childhood friend of Williams and that's why he ended up in charge of the castle so basically the Fitzgerald dynasty was not originally Irish at this point you could say that it was English or more accurately Norman but even that would be 100% correct because the dynasty actually had its origins somewhere totally different if we go back one more generation we come to earth o Gherardini although was actually born in Florence Italy where the house of Gherardini was already a prominent family so surprise surprise the Fitzgeralds who are said to be more Irish than the Irish actually originated from Italy but they also have a strong connection to Wales that's because Gerald's married nest or Nesta who was a Welsh princess in fact one of the most well known princesses in Welsh history Nest's father was the king of de hui barth which was located in South Wales his grandson known as Lord Rhys is one of the native Welshman who held the title Prince of Wales he is also a direct ancestor of the Tudor dynasty which went on to rule England in a future video I hope to cover more about the original Welsh princes of Wales and their connections to the tutors but for now let's go back to nest early in her life the anglo-norman invaded her father's territory and she ended up in the English palace with the individual who would eventually become King Henry the first and there she became one of his many mistresses in fact she had an illegitimate child with him named Henry Fitzroy Fitzroy meaning son of the king but eventually she was married to Gerald who was one of the Kings allies together they had several children including William and Morris both named Fitzgerald because they were the sons of Gerald some time during their marriage an incident occurred in which nest was abducted by a Welsh Prince much has been written about this and the details are somewhat unclear but because of the abduction nest is sometimes referred to as the Helen of Wales in the end though she was returned to her husband and in fact several years later Gerald was able to get revenge and kill the guy who kidnapped her but he did not live long after that and nest actually ended up marrying a second time to a man named Stephen that's why her son by him is named fit Stephen which finally brings us to Ireland in the years eleven sixty nine to eleven seventy one the Normans you could also call them the English invaded Ireland several times the main leader of the invasion was a man named Richard Strongbow but before Strongbow launched his major offensive he sent several smaller armies ahead of him the first was led by Robert Fitz Stephen the son of nest that I just mentioned the second was led by Raymond Fitzgerald a grandson of Gerald and nest via William he married strong Beau's sister and was thus his brother-in-law so you've got half-brothers here and brothers-in-law here Strongbow himself invaded Ireland in 1170 and overall things went in his favor but by this point King Henry the second started to worry that Strongbow might set himself up as a rival King therefore in 1171 Henry launched his own invasion of Ireland it was from this point forward that the kings of England officially took the title of Lord of Ireland so things died down a bit the Normans who had taken part in the invasion started to carve up the lands they had taken over and were given new titles the Fitzgeralds were chief among the new lords Raymond actually did not have any heirs so the family line continued through his uncle Morris here the family divided into two main branches one branch became the Earl's of Kildare and the other became the Earl's of desmond because these branches both from Morris Fitzgerald some of the descendants ended up using the name fitzmorris and others retained the surname Fitzgerald it's the Kildare branch that we're going to follow as it was the Kildare branch and later the Duke of Leinster that became the top Noble in the peerage of Ireland if we zoom ahead several generations we eventually come to the eighth Earl of Kildare Gerald Fitzgerald he was the first person in the family to serve as Lord deputy of Ireland remember the actual Lord of Ireland at this point was the King of England but obviously the King was often busy with other matters so a deputy was appointed to be the person on the ground who really ran things and Gerald Fitzgerald ended up becoming a very strong and powerful Lord deputy in fact he was sometimes called the uncrowned king of Ireland he had a son also named Gerald Fitzgerald who was the 9th Earl and who also served several times as Lord deputy but it was with his son the 10th Earl that things took a different turn while his father was in London Thomas launched a rebellion and publicly announced his allegiance to the king of England the king at that time was Henry the eighth who had fallen out with the Catholic Church Thomas thought this might be a good time for Ireland to become independent but his rebellion failed and he and several of his uncle's were executed after being held at the Tower of London he was given the name silk'n Thomas because his guards wore silk tassels on their helmets it was because of this Kildare rebellion that Henry the eighth decided to upgrade his own title from Lord of Ireland to King of Ireland and from this point forward the English kept a standing army over in Ireland in order to maintain their control over the next 70 years or so the English also managed to defeat all the remaining Gaelic kingdoms and therefore by the time of the Stuart's Ireland was finally united as a single political entity so with the execution of silken Thomas the earldom of Kildare was forfeited however it was eventually restored and given to his brother Gerald that line eventually died out though and the title passed to the descendants of the next brother Edward if we go down a few generations from him we get to James Fitzgerald the 20th Earl of Kildare it was during his tenure that the family's title was upgraded from Earl to Duke and therefore he became the first Duke of Leinster he married lady emily lennox who was the granddaughter of charles lennox the first Duke of Richmond that Duke was an illegitimate son of King Charles the second this means that the remaining Duke of leinster zhh all have a bit of Stewart blood in them and if we zoom forward to today you can see that a Duke of lynnster still exists and that the title is still held by a member of the Fitzgerald family the current Duke is Morris Fitzgerald and he is the ninth Duke of Leinster but being that the province of Leinster is now part of the Republic of Ireland the current Duke now lives in England Leinster house which is the palace where the dukes of Leinster used to live is now home to the Irish parliament and the offices of the president okay a few more things that I'd like to point out you may have noticed that the Fitzgerald coat of arms looks very similar to a flag known as st. Patrick's cell tyre Saltire means a cross that looks like an X the Fitzgeralds use of the red X on a white background actually predates the use of the same symbol by the order of st. Patrick's so it's possible that the order of st. Patrick's chose it since by then the Fitzgeralds position was so prominent that it had kind of become a symbol for all of Ireland this is important because if you look at the UK flag you'll notice that there's actually three crosses the red cross on the white background is for England the white Saltire on the blue background is for Scotland and finally the red Saltire on the white background is for Ireland nowadays for Northern Ireland so there's yet another example of how important the Fitzgeralds are to the history of Ireland finally let me point out a few other members of the family that I haven't mentioned so far as I talked about in my video on my own family many Irish came to North America in the 1850s after the great potato famine this included many Fitzgerald's so for example one of the greatest American novelists is F scott Fitzgerald author of The Great Gatsby his paternal ancestors came from Ireland and somehow linked into the Fitzgerald dynasty although I'm not sure exactly how then there's this guy John F Kennedy ever wonder what the f stands for yep Fitzgerald that was his mother's last name her paternal ancestors also descend from the Fitzgerald dynasty last let me point out someone from a different part of the world you know this woman as Mona Lisa but her full name was Lisa Gherardini her ancestors came from the same house of Gardini that the Fitzgeralds came from so I guess that makes JFK and Mona Lisa distant cousins do you have any Fitzgerald's in your family tree if you do be sure to leave a comment and let us know some more about this interesting family if you find history genealogy and monarchies interesting be sure to subscribe to the channel if you check the playlists you'll find that I have videos covering the family trees of famous dynasties from all over the world and to see what else I'm up to follow me on Twitter or Instagram thanks for watching

Channel: UsefulCharts

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Id: O3Uy_gqLtAw

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019