that sectarianism was a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798; "In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish". Another anecdote is to the effect of his callousness. Supposedly, upon being informed during a debate in the Irish Parliament that innocent as well as guilty were suffering atrocities during the repression, FitzGibbon replied "Well suppose it were so..", his callous reply purportedly shocking William Pitt. FitzGibbon as a Landlord FitzGibbon, or Clare, was noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate called him "Black Jack" FitzGibbon. There is however no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might have been interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treated other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, FitzGibbon's role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor. Apocryphal story about his funeral Lord Clare died at home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen's Green, Dublin on 28 January 1802 and was buried in St. Peter's Churchyard. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege was the cause of a riot and there is a widespread story that a number of dead cats were thrown at his coffin as it departed Ely Place. Summary FitzGibbon appears to have made little mark in British political history, as compared to Irish parliamentary history. His adversary Henry Grattan and the aristocratic rebel Lord Edward FitzGerald (with the other rebels of 1798) are better remembered. FitzGibbon was apparently a hardline Protestant, a landlord and a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, who naturally supported those political measures that would preserve Protestant domination of Ireland and the continued suppression of the numerically dominant Catholics in Ireland. He won his point in 1801 and its immediate aftermath, when the Irish Parliament was dissolved and Union with Great Britain was achieved - without any concessions to Catholics. In the long run, his views lost out, as subsequent British