Nicholas Fitzherbert

Honours

Fitzherbert was never induced to take holy orders. When a proposal was made in 1607 to send a bishop to England, Fitzherbert was mentioned by Father Augustine, Prior of the English monks at Douay, as a worthy of becoming a bishop, but he considered himself unworthy of even the lowest ecclesiastical orders.

On Cardinal Allen's death, recommendations were made to Philip II of Spain to note who should receive any of the King's generosity. The note records that: Nicholas Fierberti, copyist and servant from the beginning of the cardinaliate. A gentleman of very noble birth whose relatives have suffered much for their Catholic faith ... His father died in imprisonment of 26 years for the faith, and his uncle also left this life in prison for the same cause, after having been incarcerated for 32 years continuously.

Fitzherbert accidentally drowned while attempting to cross a brook, a few miles south of Florence, on 6 November 1612 on his way to Rome. He was buried in the Benedictine abbey of the Badia at Florence.

Publications Della Casa, Giovanni, Ioannis Casae Galathaeus, sive de Moribus, Liber Italicus. A Nicolao Fierberto Anglo-Latine expressus, Rome, Gilotti, 1595, 8vo. Dedicated to Didacus de Campo, chamberlain to Clement VIII. Reprinted in Padua, 1728, 8vo. Oxoniensis in Anglia Academiae Descriptio, Rome, 1602, 8vo, dedicated to Bernardinus Paulinus, datary to Clement VIII. Reprinted by Thomas Hearne in vol. ix. of Leland's Itinerary, 1712. De Antiquitate et continuatione religionis in Anglia et de Alani Cardinalis vita libellus Rome, 1608 and 1638, 8vo, dedicated to Pope Paul V. The biography was reprinted at Antwerp, 1621, 8vo, and in Thomas Francis Knox, Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, (London) 1882, pp. 3–20.