Fitzgibbon, John (1708?–1780), barrister and politician, was born probably in 1708, the first of the four sons of Thomas Fitzgibbon of Ballyseeda, Co. Limerick, and his wife, Honor, a daughter of William Hayes of Cahirguillamore, Co. Limerick. Thomas Fitzgibbon, whose father, John, was a physician, seems to have acquired a modest fortune through his marriage. The Fitzgibbons were catholics, the Hayeses (probably) also. At the age of sixteen the young John Fitzgibbon went to Paris to study medicine. An anecdote about his first days there relates that he and another Irishman were inadvertently locked into Notre Dame after midnight and only secured release by ringing the cathedral's bells to alert the sexton. For reasons not explained, he gave up medicine for law, entered the Middle Temple in London (8 December 1726), and was called to the Irish bar (Hilary term 1731). Out of necessity (whatever his convictions) he formally became a protestant (23 November 1731) and, no doubt ambitious for success, published a legal textbook, Notes on cases determined by Westminster (1731).
Fitzgibbon quickly established himself in Ireland as a highly competent and successful lawyer. By 1748 he was able to acquire a house and lands at Donnybrook, just outside Dublin to the south-east. He purchased Mount Shannon, near Limerick, and spent £19,000 building a house there; he owned lands in north Co. Limerick and north Co. Tipperary, as well as property in Limerick city. James Roche (qv), whose father and grandfather knew Fitzgibbon well, stated that ‘his professional gains exceeded one hundred thousand guineas’ and that this fortune was ‘principally acquired as a consulting lawyer, as he had no pretensions to forensic eloquence’ (Roche, ii, 116). Much later he was said to have left over £100,000 at his death. The judgement of Edmund Burke (qv), who claimed him as a kinsman, was that his sympathies with the catholics of Ireland remained. In March 1767 Fitzgibbon defended James Nagle (d. 1782?) and other catholics accused of Whiteboy crimes and treason.
In 1761, presumably purchasing a seat, Fitzgibbon entered the Irish house of commons as a member for Newcastle, Co. Dublin; from 1768 he sat for Jamestown, Co. Leitrim. At first he supported the government but by 1763 he had joined the opposition, where he remained till he retired from parliament. It was said of him in 1775 (by an unknown informant) that he was ‘a lawyer of great eminence – generally in opposition and yet will ask great favours at the most critical time – connected with Lord Tyrone on particular occasions and for himself thro’ the session at large’ (quoted by Hunt). He interested himself in the economic development of Ireland and was the author of a pamphlet, Essay on commerce (1777).
Fitzgibbon married (8 February 1738) Elinor Grove (d. 1786), second daughter of Ion Grove (1687–1730), who had an estate at Ballyhemock, Co. Cork, and whose grandfather had been a royalist officer in 1649. They had four sons and three daughters. The three eldest sons died young; the fourth was John Fitzgibbon (qv), lord chancellor of Ireland and 1st earl of Clare, to whom John the elder imparted his legal knowledge. All three daughters were married well: the eldest, Arabella (qv), to St John Jeffereyes of Blarney Castle, Co. Cork; the second, Elizabeth, to the Rev. William Beresford, a younger son of the earl of Tyrone; and the youngest, Elinor, to Dominic Trant (qv), a successful barrister. Fitzgibbon died on 11 April 1780 at Mount Shannon. Henry Grattan (qv) found him ‘plain straightforward and unostentatious. He lived retired and much respected, hating all parade and grandeur, except the true grandeur of simplicity’ (Grattan, i, 192). John Fitzgibbon is an example of an eighteenth-century catholic from a family of modest means who by conformity to the established church, professional skill, prudence in marriage, and investments, acquired great wealth and a seat in parliament.