William FitzWilliam (Lord Deputy) William FitzWilliam (Lord Deputy) Sir William FitzWilliam (1526–1599) was an English Lord Justice of Ireland and afterwards Lord Deputy of Ireland. In 1587, as Governor of Fotheringhay Castle, he supervised the execution of the death sentence on Mary, Queen of Scots. He was the Member of Parliament for Peterborough and represented County Carlow in the Irish House of Commons. He lived at Gainspark, Essex, and Milton Hall. FitzWilliam was born at Milton Hall, Northamptonshire, the eldest son of Sir William (d. 1576) and grandson of William Fitzwilliam, Sheriff of London, who had been treasurer and chamberlain to Cardinal Wolsey and
Fotheringhay 1452, and his father, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York was re-buried at the nearby church in 1476. Duke Richard's wife, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, was later interred in the same tomb. The tomb opposite contains the body of Edward, the 2nd Duke of York, who was killed at the Battle of Agincourt. Fotheringhay is also where Mary, Queen of Scots, was tried and beheaded in 1587, and her body lay there for some months before its burial at Peterborough Cathedral and then its final burial in Westminster Abbey. Although it is often said that James I destroyed the