Should anyone wish for a graphic account of Irish life in the later portion of the eighteenth century, he should read Sir Jonah Barrington’s ‘Personal Sketches of Ireland,’ and he will find afterwards that Lever’s novels afford but a faint reflection of the manners and customs existing in the west and south of Ireland. Ignorance, idleness, and dissipation were the characteristic of the wealthier classes, and a meeting of the ‘gentry’ could seldom take place without quarrelling and bloodshed. At races, fairs, and elections, the lower class enjoyed themselves likewise, after their kind, in breaking of heads and drunkenness. It was a singular state of things, but it must be borne in mind, whilst reading the following memoirs, as, otherwise, the facts therein related would scarcely be credited.[34] The Fitzgeralds of County Mayo come of an ancient stock, from no less than the great Geraldine family, through the Desmond branch, and George, the father of George Robert Fitzgerald, had a very good property at Turlough, near Castlebar. It probably had some influence in his future career that ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’ should have had for his mother Lady Mary Hervey, who had been maid-of-honour to the Princess Amelia, and who was the daughter of one, and the sister of two, Earls of Bristol. The family from which she sprang was noted for eccentricity, so much so, that it passed into a saying that ‘God made Men, Women, and Herveys.’ She did not live long with her husband, his lax morality and dissipated manners could not be borne, and she left him to his own devices and returned to England. By him she had two sons, George Robert (born 1749), and Charles Lionel. The elder, in due time, was sent to Eton, where he seems to have learnt as much Latin and Greek as was requisite for a gentleman of those days, and he used occasionally in after life to write a little poetry now and again, of which one piece, ‘The Riddle,’ was printed after his execution.