William fitz Roger

William fitz Roger (died after 1295) was an Anglo-Norman cleric, judge and Crown official in late thirteenth-century Lordship of Ireland. He was Prior of the Irish House of the Knights Hospitallers at Kilmainham, and served as a Privy Councillor and as a justice in eyre (itinerant judge). He led several military expeditions (the Hospitallers were an order of fighting monks), but was a notoriously incompetent commander, whose campaigns invariably ended in failure. He served as Deputy Justiciar in 1284-5, and as acting Justiciar of Ireland in 1294. Early career He is thought to have been a Norman from the Kingdom of England, but little is known of him until 1274, when he was appointed Prior of Kilmainham. There had been a long gap in filling the office: the previous Prior, Henry Kyriell, had died in 1260. Glenmalure and afterwards As the head of a great military order, fitz Roger was expected to lead troops in battle, and soon after his appointment he led an expedition against the O'Byrne clan of County Wicklow, who periodically raided Dublin. These raids were always a cause of great concern to the Dublin Government, and the Prior of Kilmainham was one of those entrusted with the city's defences. The expedition was a disastrous failure: most of fitz Roger's forces, including numerous monks, were slaughtered in the valley of Glenmalure in the Wicklow Mountains, and the survivors, including the Prior himself, were taken captive. They were only released after a hostage exchange was arranged by the Justiciar. An Irish historian of the Victorian era commented severely on the unpleasant spectacle of Christian monks fighting their fellow Christians (he did not mention the O'Byrnes' raids on Dublin, which were themselves notoriously bloody affairs).