Lord Castletown.Arms of Bernard FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown:Sable a saltire argent, on a chief azure three fleur-de-lis or, all within a bordure wavy of the second
He served in the Life Guards and fought in Egypt in 1882. After he resigned from active service, he was appointed to the Reserve of Officers in 1886, serving as a volunteer officer until reaching the age limit in March 1900.[2] He was promoted major on 8 June 1896, and later lieutenant colonel in command of the 4th (Militia) Battalion of the Leinster Regiment (Queen's County Militia) from October 1899, and was the first to outfit them with Irish bagpipers.[3] In February 1900 he left for South Africa,[4] where he was posted on special service during the Second Boer War. In recognition of services during the war, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the South African Honours list published on 26 June 1902.[5]
In early 1902 he took part in a special diplomatic mission to promote British interests in Morocco.[6]
Along with Theodore Roosevelt and Douglas Hyde and others, he was elected honorary Vice President of the Irish Literary Society of New York in 1903.[7] In 1905, he proposed a tillage farming plan along the lines of Ireland's old clan system.[8] Castletown was later Chancellor of the Royal University of Ireland between 1906 and 1910.
1882 Spy caricature of the 2nd Lord Castletown in Vanity Fair.
Lord Castletown married the Hon. Emily Ursula Clare St Leger, daughter of the 4th Viscount Doneraile, in 1874. The marriage was childless. Lady Castletown joined her husband in South Africa in early 1900, when he was posted there during the Second Boer War.[12]
He died on 29 May 1937 at Granston Manor, aged 87, when the barony became extinct.[13]
Castletown was particularly interested in Celtic heritage, and was among the founders of the Celtic Association, an organisation concerned with the preservation of the languages, literature, music, dress and customs of the Celtic peoples. In 1900, the Celtic Association was set up in Dublin with Castletown as president and E.E. Fournier as secretary. The Celtic Association is mainly remembered for the three Pan-Celtic Congresses it organized: the first in Dublin in 1901, the second in Caernarfon in 1904, and the last in Edinburgh in 1907.[14] The first Congress had been scheduled for 1900, but had to be postponed when Castletown was called to service in the Boer War. The Association was not without its detractors, in part because many of the Irish sympathized with the Boers.
Originally made up of representatives from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and the Isle of Man; Cornwall was added in 1904.
