Robert Digby (courtier)

Sir Robert Digby PC(I) (1574 – 24 May 1618) was an English courtier who owned an estate at Coleshill, Warwickshire. His marriage to Lettice FitzGerald, heir-general to the 11th Earl of Kildare, led him to spend his life litigating over her claims to the Kildare lands. He divided his time between local business in Warwickshire and in Ireland.

Digby was the eldest son of George Digby of Coleshill and his wife Abigail, daughter of Sir Anthony Heveningham. Robert was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a BA, and then as a barrister at the Middle Temple, which he entered in 1595. He received his MA from Magdalen in 1598. Around this time, he married Lettice FitzGerald, the daughter of Gerald FitzGerald, Lord Offaly. They had seven sons and three daughters:

Lettice's father had died in 1580, around the time of her birth, and her grandfather the Earl of Kildare had died in 1585, leaving all of his property to his heirs male. She and her husband became increasingly convinced that her grandmother Mabel, the earl's wife, had forged the will in the interest of her sons, Lettice's uncles. After Lettice's last surviving uncle William FitzGerald, 13th Earl of Kildare was lost at sea in April 1599, she assumed the title of "Lady Offaly" and laid claim to that barony and some of the Kildare estates. Meanwhile, Robert was knighted in Dublin on 4 August 1599 by the Earl of Essex, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and his wife's first cousin.

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