But his next book, The Life and Times of Bishop Doyle (1861), was much more successful, and, besides giving a vivid picture of a powerful personality, it provides a useful contribution to Irish nineteenth-century history.

It was a weak attempt to foster a charge of unacknowledged plagiarism on Sir Walter Scott, and to claim for the novelist's brother, Thomas Scott, the chief credit for a large part of the famous Waverley series; but after four letters had appeared, the editor declined to publish any more.

His hopeless claim on behalf of Thomas Scott was repudiated in a letter to the Times of 5 June 1857 by the three daughters of that gentleman.

[1] In his Lord Edward Fitzgerald, or Notes on the Cornwallis Papers (1859), FitzPatrick first hit upon the vein of inquiry which he afterwards worked with conspicuous success of investigating the inner history of Ireland before the union.

[1] Equally valuable as a contribution to history was his Secret Service under Pitt (1892), a work involving infinite labour among the Irish State Papers of the period, and displaying, even more fully than The Sham Squire, FitzPatrick's detective skill in piecing together scattered items of evidence.

In 1895, shortly before his death, he published anonymously Memories of Father [James] Healy, the well-known wit; but the book was quite unworthy of its subject, partly from the difficulty of communicating the subtle charm of Healy's personality to the printed page, and partly from the writer's defective sense of humour.

His book on O'Connell won recognition in Rome, and he received from Pope Leo XIII the insignia of the order of St. Gregory the Great.