FITZ PETER, GEOFFREY (d. 1213), earl of Essex and chief justiciar of England, was a sheriff, a justice itinerant and a justice of the forest under Henry II. During Richard's absence on crusade he was one of the five justices of the king's court who stood next in authority to the regent, Longchamp. In 1190 Fitz Peter succeeded to the earldom of Essex, in the right of his wife, who was descended from the famous Geoffrey de Mandeville. In attempting to assert his hereditary rights over Walden priory Fitz Peter came into conflict with L.ongchamp, and revenged himself by joining in the baronial agitation through which the regent was expelled from his office. Though refusing to give him formal investiture of the Essex earldom, Richard appointed him justiciar in succession to Hubert Walter (1198). Fitz Peter continued Walter's policy of encouraging foreign trade and the development of the towns; many of the latter received, during his administration, charters of self-government. He was continued in his office by John, who found him an able instrument of extortion. He profited to no small extent by the spoliation of church lands in the period of the interdict. But he was not altogether trusted by the king. The contemporary Histoire des dues describes Fitz Peter as living in constant dread of disgrace and confiscation. In the last years of his life he endeavoured to act as a mediator between the king and the opposition. It was by his mouth that the king promised to the nation the laws of Henry I. (at the council of St. Albans, Aug. 4, 1213) . But Fitz Peter died a few weeks later (Oct. 2) . Fitz Peter was neither a far-sighted nor a disinterested statesman; but he was the ablest pupil of Hubert Walter, and maintained the traditions of the great bureaucracy which the first and second Henries had founded.
See the original authorities specified for the reigns of Richard I. and John. Also Miss K. Norgate's Angevin England, vol. ii. (1887) and John Lackland (1902) ; A. Ballard in English Historical Review, xiv. p. 93 ; H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins (1905)•