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Walter Fitzsimon

Irish archbishop

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ7964840
Source-derived summary

Walter Fitzsimons (died 1511) was a statesman and cleric in Ireland in the reign of Henry VII, who held the offices of Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Biography

He was born in Dublin, the son of Robert Fitzsimon and his wife Janet Cusack. He had close links to the Anglo-Irish nobility through his sister Alison, who married as his third wife Nicholas St Lawrence, 4th Baron Howth; after Lord Howth's death, Alison remarried into the influential Plunkett family. It is unclear whether he was related to Walter Fitz-Symond, described as a "gentleman of Dublin", who in 1465/6 was threatened with a lawsuit by two London merchants to whom he acknowledged that he was in debt for £40. It is interesting that one of his co-defendants was the then Archbishop, Michael Tregury.

Fitzsimon was appointed precentor of St Patrick's Cathedral in 1476, and represented the Cathedral Chapter in the Parliament of 1478. He was also Vicar-General of the Diocese. He was consecrated Archbishop of Dublin in 1484. He was the first Archbishop to be consecrated in St Patrick's Cathedral. Having accepted the promotion without royal consent, he was required to obtain a pardon.

Editorial summary

“Walter Fitzsimon” enters the record as irish archbishop. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Walter, Fitzsimon and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1511, 1465, 1476, 1478—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Walter, Fitzsimon and Irish.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Walter Fitzsimon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Walter, Fitzsimon and Irish provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7964840. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1511, 1465, 1476 and 1478.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Walter Fitzsimon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.