FITZHERBERT, THOMAS (1552-1640), English Jesuit, was born at Swynnerton, Staffordshire, and educated at Oxford.
In London, he became a member of the association founded in 158o to assist the Jesuits Campion and Parsons. In 1582 he with drew to the continent, where he was active in the cause of Mary, queen of Scots. In 1S98 he was charged with complicity in a plot to poison Queen Elizabeth. Later he went to Rome, where he was ordained priest (1601-02) and became agent for the English clergy. He was unpopular with them, however, owing to his sub serviency to the Jesuits, and resigned the agency in 1607. In 1613 he joined the Jesuits and was appointed superior of the English mission at Brussels in 1616, and in 1618 rector of the English college at Rome, where he died on Aug. 7, 1640.
His chief works are:—A Defence of the Catholycke Cause (1602) ; A Treatise concerning Policy and Religion (1606-10), and a trans. of Turcellini's Latin Life of St. Francis Xavier (1632).