Thomas Fitzherbert

Thomas Fitzherbert (155217 August 1640) was an English Jesuit. Early life Fitzherbert was born at Swynnerton, Staffordshire. He was the eldest son and heir of William Fitzherbert and grandson of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, a Justice of the Common Pleas. His father having died whilst he was an infant, he was, even as a child, the head of an important family and the first heir born at Swynnerton, where his descendants have since flourished and still remain Catholics. He was trained to piety and firmness in his religion by his mother, and when sent to Oxford in his sixteenth year he confessed his faith with a courage that grew with the various trials, of which he has left us an interesting memoir (Foley, Records of English Province S.J., II, 210). At last he was forced to keep in hiding, and in 1572 he was imprisoned for recusancy. On his release he moved to London. Marriage and move to France In 1580 he married and had children, but he did not give up his religious works. When Edmund Campion and Robert Persons commenced their Jesuit mission to England, Fitzherbert put himself at their service, and helped Campion in the preparation of his Decem Rationes by verifying quotations and copying passages from the fathers in various libraries, to which it would have been impossible for the Jesuit to obtain admission. Unable at last to maintain his position in face of the ever-growing persecution, he left England in 1582, and took up his residence in the north of France. Here, as a lay Catholic of birth, means, and unexceptionable character, he was much trusted by the Catholic leaders. He was active in the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was closely watched by Walsingham's emissaries, whose letters contain frequent insinuations against his ulterior intentions (see Foley, Records of English Province S.J., II, 220-228). His wife died in 1588, and he soon afterwards took a vow of celibacy. He is next found in the household of the young 2nd Duke of Feria, whose mother was Lady Jane Dormer. With him or in his service he lived in Flanders, Spain, Milan, Naples, and Rome for some twenty years, until the Duke died in 1607, on the point of setting out for a diplomatic mission to Germany, on which Fitzherbert was to have accompanied him.