Background
He was born John Purcell, the son of John Purcell, a Dublin physician and his wife Eleanor, the daughter of John Fitzgerald of Waterford.
He was born John Purcell, the son of John Purcell, a Dublin physician and his wife Eleanor, the daughter of John Fitzgerald of Waterford.
John Purcell, junior was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (1790) and trained in the law at the Middle Temple (1792) and King"s Inns (1793).
The Purcells were an Anglo-Irish family who had arrived in England at the time of the Norman conquest and settled in Ireland by 1172. He was called to the Irish bar in 1796, but never practiced. In 1810 Mary Frances, whose elder brother had died in 1807, inherited her great-aunt"s estate, including the 3,000-acre manor of Naseby Wooleys, Northamptonshire.
In 1823 he erected an obelisk to mark the site of the battle of Naseby.
When she then inherited her father"s estates in 1818, Purcell took the name of Fitzgerald. He was appointed High Sheriff of Suffolk for 1824-1825.
The following year he leased Wherstead Lodge, near Ipswich and also bought property in Seaford, Sussex in order to stand for Parliament in 1826 as candidate for the Seaford constituency. He was duly elected, sitting until the constituency was abolished in the Great Reform Acting of 1832.
In the late 1820s he commissioned Robert Stephenson, (brother of George Stephenson), to commence coal-mining on his Lancashire estate, but fraud and flooding made the Pendleton Colliery venture unsuccessful and he was forced to file for bankruptcy.
In 1835 he moved into Boulge Hall, near Woodbridge. In 1838-1839 he served as High Sheriff of County Waterford.
8th United Kingdom Parliament. 9th United Kingdom Parliament. 10th United Kingdom Parliament.