This intellectual background enabled them to provide Fitzjames and William Coningham with an exceptionally high level of education. Before she married, Louisa Coningham had taught at the Rothsay House girls' school in Kennington and was the author of two books. He was a cousin of the author John Sterling, and a friend of such intellectuals as Julius Hare and Thomas Carlyle. Robert Coningham was a Cambridge-educated clergyman although he never took a living. The Coninghams were a well-educated couple who had extensive connections in British intellectual circles of the time. Robert and Louisa had one son, William Coningham, who was James Fitzjames' closest friend the two boys were brought up together as brothers. The Coningham family seem to have lived at several locations in Hertfordshire, settling in the late 1820s at a substantial 30 acre country estate called Rose Hill in Abbots Langley. The Coninghams were well-off members of an extended family of Scots/Irish ancestry who, with others from a similar background, settled in the Watford area of Hertfordshire. Shortly after his birth, Fitzjames was given into the care of the Reverend Robert Coningham and his wife Louisa Capper, who wrote philosophical and poetical works.

He appears to have had limited contact with Fitzjames. In 1815, with his financial affairs in the hands of trustees, Sir James resumed a diplomatic career by being appointed Consul-General to the Netherlands at The Hague, a position he held until 1825. One of their children was born within one month of the date of Fitzjames' birth and at the time the Gambiers may have been estranged. Sir James had married Jemima Snell and the couple had 15 children altogether. Cut off from the revenues he expected to receive in Rio, he ran up enormous debts, only saved from bankruptcy when a syndicate of his relatives and creditors, led by Admiral Lord Gambier himself, William Morton Pitt and Samuel Gambier, took over his financial affairs and placed them in trust. Sir James had been appointed British Consul-General in Rio de Janeiro in 1809 and held this office until 1814, although a diplomatic faux pas on his part meant that he had to leave Rio for England in disgrace in 1811. The identity of his mother remains unknown.Īt the time of Fitzjames' birth, Sir James Gambier was in grave personal and financial difficulties. His father, and James Fitzjames' grandfather, was Vice Admiral James Gambier. Sir James's cousin was a controversial sea lord Admiral Lord Gambier. Although not always successful, the Gambier family were prominent in the Royal Naval service. But he was actually the illegitimate son of Sir James Gambier, a minor diplomat. In different sources it has been suggested that he was a foundling that he was of Irish extraction, an illegitimate son of Sir James Stephen, or a relative of the Coninghams. The identification of his true family has been a mystery. The names given by the people who posed as his parents, 'James Fitzjames' and 'Ann Fitzjames,' are presumed to be false. Fitzjames was baptised on 24 February 1815 at St Marylebone Parish Church in London. Though biographer William Battersby initially believed Fitzjames was born on 27 July 1813 in Rio de Janeiro in what was then Colonial Brazil, he later issued a correction on his website stating Fitzjames was more likely born in Devon, England, as he stated on his naval entry papers. He was of illegitimate birth, and during his life and after, his friends and relatives took great pains to conceal his origins.

James Fitzjames (27 July 1813 – disappeared 26 April 1848) was a British Royal Navy officer who participated in two major exploratory expeditions, the Euphrates Expedition and the Franklin Expedition.

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