Fitzgibbon, John (1749–1802)

Irish Unionist politician and lawyer. As lord chancellor of Ireland, he opposed all moves towards Catholic emancipation, and was instrumental in having the pro-Catholic lord lieutenant, William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, dismissed from office after just a few months in 1795. Thereafter, he was a prominent supporter of the Act of Union that merged the British and Irish Parliaments.

Born near Donnybrook, Dublin, Fitzgibbon studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and Christ Church, Oxford, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1772. He entered the Irish Parliament in 1778 and became Irish attorney-general in 1783. When appointed lord chancellor in 1789, he was the first Irishman to hold the post for almost a century. He was popularly despised for his fervent support for the union, and at his funeral in Dublin his coffin was pelted with dead cats.

Fitzgibbon was raised to the peerage as Baron Fitzgibbon and later promoted, receiving his earldom in 1795 and a British peerage as Lord Fitzgibbon of Sidbury (Devonshire) in 1799.