relic / Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 1795

Cravat of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, green, dated to 1795. With handwritten label ‘His green cravat which he did not take off for the officers on the Curragh’. This refers to an incident at the Curragh Races in 1795 when a group of dragoon officers demanded Fitzgerald remove his green cravat as the colour was too 'national'. Fitzgerald is said to have replied ‘Your cloth would speak you to be gentlemen, but this conduct conveys a very different impression. As to this neckcloth that so offends you, all I can say is, here I stand; let any man among you, who dares, come forward and take it off'. See Thomas Moore’s 1831 biography of Edward Fitzgerald. Part of a collection of personal items relating to Lord Edward Fitzgerald from the Campbell Family, descended from Lady Pamela Campbell, the daughter of Lord Edward and Lady Pamela Fitzgerald.;