Ulysses FitzMaurice
Ulysses Fitzmaurice was a British colonial administrator and planter who served as the lieutenant-governor of Saint Vincent from 1766 to 1772.
Early life
Ulysses Fitzmaurice was born in England. He was reportedly the son of William FitzMaurice, 2nd Earl of Kerry, an Anglo-Irish peer and officer in the British Army from County Kerry. His mother was of German descent, and Fitzmaurice had four half-siblings: Aboan, James, Robert and John. On 2 December 1766, he began serving as the lieutenant-governor of Saint Vincent in the British West Indies, succeeding Lauchlin McLean. Beginning on 26 July 1768, FitzMaurice served as the acting governor of the Windward Islands, which had been occupied by British forces, when British Army officers Governor Robert Melvill and Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Gore were both absent from the region.Governorship of Grenada
In 1769, he attempted to appease the French population of Grenada by appointing several of them as justices of the peace in the island's six parishes. On June of the year, he returned to Saint Vincent and sent a report to London addressed to the Earl of Hillsborough, a Board of Trade official. The report detailed FitzMaurice's attempts to prevent an outbreak of violence between the British and the Garifuna people with 9 companies of the 32nd Regiment of Foot. On 15 April 1771, when new members for the Grenadian Assembly were needed, FitzMaurice appointed two Frenchmen.FitzMaurice, whose official title was "Commander-in-Chief in and over his Majesty's Southern Caribbean Islands of Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago", issued a formal proclamation "to preserve the said Caraibes, free mulattoes and free negroes in perfect enjoyment of their freedom".