‘Baggs immediately started on his legs and advanced on Fitzgerald, who, throwing the empty pistol at him, quitted his station, and kept a zig-zag course across the field, Baggs following. I saw the flash of Bagg’s second pistol, and, at the same moment, Fitzgerald lay stretched on the ground. I was just in time to catch Baggs as he fell, after firing his second shot. He swooned from intense pain, the small bone of his leg being broken. Mr. Fitzgerald now came up, saying,
‘“We are both wounded; let us go back to our ground.”’
But this could not be allowed, and the wounded were carried home. Fitzgerald’s wound was in the thigh, and rendered him slightly lame ever after.
When he got well, he returned to Ireland, and, thanks to his uncle, the Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, he lived in very fair style, either in Merrion Street, Dublin, or at Rockfield, near Turlough. While living in Dublin he fought a duel with John Toler (afterwards Lord Norbury), fired a pistol at Denis Browne, Lord Altamont’s brother, in Sackville Street, in broad daylight, and insulted and struck John Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Chancellor Clare.
Death now took away his guardian-angel, his amiable and patient wife, leaving him a little daughter. His grief for her loss was extravagant, and amounted to little short of frenzy. After the funeral he behaved more than ever like a madman. He took to hunting by night, and hunted anything that was about after dark. In this wild chase he was always accompanied by a band of mounted servants, carrying torches, and, when the peasants were roused from their slumbers by the noise of hounds, and the cries of men, they knew that Mad Fitzgerald was abroad.
When he hunted by day, he would peremptorily order home anyone to whom he had even a fancied dislike. He would tell one man to go home for he was more fitted to follow the plough than the hounds; another would be bidden to go and mind his sheep, and a third would be told to quit the field, as he was too fat for the sport. And they had to go, for their monitor would not have scrupled to have used his whip, and, if that had been objected to, there was always the ultima ratio of a duel, and men were rather shy of meeting ‘Fighting Fitzgerald.’
He had a particular dislike to the family of Lord Altamont, and behaved in a most high-handed and outrageous manner towards them. For instance, he heard that a relation of my lord’s, a Mr. Browne, was out shooting on a bog near Westport, so he got together his men and dogs, and went in quest of him. When Mr. Browne saw him enter on the scene, he retired; Fitzgerald pursued, Mr. Browne increased his pace, so did Fitzgerald, until he literally hunted the offending sportsman home. Another time he rode over to Lord Altamont’s house, and asked to see the wolf-dog, which, for its size and fierceness, was the admiration and terror of the neighbourhood. No sooner was he shown the dog than he shot it, charging the servants to tell their master that, until he became more charitable to the poor, who only came to his door to be barked at and bitten, he should not allow such a beast to be kept, but that he had no objection to the three ladies of the family each keeping a lap-dog.
After a time, his grief at the loss of his wife subsided, and he fell in love with the only child and heiress of a Mr. Vaughan, of Carrowmore, County Mayo, and singularly, although she well knew his reckless character, she returned his affection. We know how he ran away with his first wife; the story of his wedding with his second is yet more romantic.
Mr. Vaughan was, not unnaturally, averse to Fitzgerald marrying his daughter, but, at the same time, he did not forbid him the house. So one night Fitzgerald was suddenly attacked by a very acute illness, writhing about in great agony, and at last begged to be allowed to remain there that night. In the morning he was much worse, and at death’s door, lamenting the iniquity of his past life, and begging that a priest should be sent for. Of course one soon came, but, in the midst of his spiritual exercises, Fitzgerald sprang out of bed, and, presenting a pistol to the head of the priest, swore he would blow out his brains if he did not instantly marry him to Miss Vaughan, and the terror-stricken priest had no option but to comply. Mr. Vaughan had to bow to the inevitable, and the new Mrs. Fitzgerald never had reason to complain of her husband’s treatment of her, as he was uniformly kind and affectionate to her.
When Fitzgerald returned to Ireland, he found his father, a weak, false, vicious old man, almost in his dotage, and entirely under the control of his younger son Lionel, a low woman whom he had taken as his mistress, and an unscrupulous pettifogger named Patrick Randal MacDonnell. Charles Lionel, the younger son, was his brother’s enemy, because he saw nothing but poverty before him if his father paid George Robert the £1,000 a year to which he was entitled, for the old spendthrift was always in debt. The mistress had every reason to keep things as they were, and MacDonnell did not like to see his pickings done away with. It is questionable whether Fitzgerald had ever received any portion of his settlement—at all events, it was £12,000 in arrear. He saw the estate that was ultimately to come to him being wasted, his father getting more hopelessly into debt, and spending his substance on an immoral and greedy woman, and he was determined to put a stop to it. He had a difficulty to get a solicitor in Dublin to undertake his case, but at last he found one, and arranged with him to accompany him in his carriage to Mayo. The story of that ride is told by Sir Jonah Barrington (vol. iii, p. 170, ed. 1832) as follows: